The diagram of this model I’ve presented before is below:

Here, the overlapping smaller circles are social groups (or other relevant, relational groups), and the heavy black circle is the organizational boundary of the overall group.

There’s another diagram which could be drawn, though.  It would look something like this:

This diagram looks not like a bunch of circles but rather a network, a series of connected points.  Each point is a different social group or relevant, relational group that makes up part of the overall group.  Hence, the aggregate model of unity is also a networked model of unity.  Not every point in the network is connected to every other point, but to be part of the network, each point must be connected to some other point, and preferably to several other points.

What are these connections?  They’re the same thing as the overlaps in the circle diagram: people who are part of more than one group.  These individuals, whom we might call go-betweens, cross-cultural agents, or simply bridge-builders, are what hold the various points of the network together.  They are what provide the unity in this model.

To be a true bridge-builder, though, a person must do more than just have membership in two different groups.  They must work to connect these groups to each other in some way, whether that be by elaborating shared values, projects, language, goals, or just some sense of affinity.  Establishing such connections requires a variety of skills and characteristics on behalf of the bridge-builder: trust from both groups, an aptitude for understanding each group, the ability to translate between groups, and a knack for building relationships.

Bridge-builders then are crucial to having unity within larger societal groups, be they The United Methodist Church, the United States of America, or some other group.  Unfortunately, they also seem to be in short supply nowadays.  We hear more and more about the polarization of the church and American political society.  In the church, liberal and evangelical groups have distinct and usually non-overlapping memberships.  In politics, the most conservative Democrat and the most liberal Republican no longer overlap, as they used to do.

Without any overlap, without any bridge-builders, there is no sense of unity.  We become a polarized people.  We are left to fight about the money and power involved in the formal structures that hold us together, be that denominational structures or governmental structures, without any sense that this money and power could be used in ways which can benefit all.

If we want to be able to hold together and work together as a larger group, we desperately need people who can be bridge-builders, who can act as go-betweens between different groups.  We need them in the church, and we need them in the broader society.  Let us pray that there will be some who will answer this call.

This week, I want to say a little bit more about the role of relationships is promoting and sustaining unity.  While this role holds true for unity in general, it will set up what I want to talk about next week, which is the role of networks in the aggregate model of unity, a topic which depends on recognizing the relational nature of all unity.

The picture I showed last week for how the aggregate model of unity works looked like this:

As I talked about them last week, the smaller circles represented shared characteristics.  Yet it is perhaps more appropriate to think of them as social circles or social groups.  Such groups may be (and often are) defined by shared characteristics.  Yet merely having a characteristic in common with someone else is not always enough to foster some sense of togetherness or unity.  For instance, “innie” and “outie” bellybuttons can be shared characteristics, but do not usually form the basis for social unity (though I realize that somewhere out there, probably on the Internet, there may be an “Innie Bellybutton Club” that is based around just this thing).  While this is a somewhat flippant example, the point remains that unity is not merely a function of having some shared characteristic.

That’s because unity is a relational quality.  United describes the nature of people’s relationships with each other, and it is ultimately relationships was form the basis of unity, not shared characteristics.  People are thrown together by sharing some characteristic (whether it’s rooting for the same sports team, attending the same church or school, working at the same job, living in the same neighborhood, or something else), and that shared aspect of their lives may be enough for them to develop some sort of relationship (classmate, coworker, neighbor, etc.)  Nevertheless, one can have a relationship with someone without it being particularly characterized by unity.  How many people work at or live in places where they feel little attachment to those around them or, worse, find themselves at odds with those around them?

Hence, shared characteristics can serve as the basis of unity only in so far as they can create substantive similarities that lead people to really relate with one another in a positive way.  These relationships then add up to community.  Thus, shared characteristics can create communities, but they are (as all communities are) imagined or constructed, not given by the mere fact of sameness.  It’s the relationships that ultimately make the community, not the common characteristics.

Fortunately, finding communities or social groups united through relationships by some characteristic they consider salient isn’t hard to do.  Such groups are all over in the church and the world.  In The United Methodist church, there are congregations, conferences, and caucuses.  In the world, there are clubs and organizations, friend groups, fan clubs, neighborhoods, etc.  Not all may give each of these groups the same degree of salience, but usually there are some groups people feel an affinity toward.  Yet all of these groups, to the extent that they are salient, are so because those who are members of them have taken a shared characteristic and turned it into the basis for real, positive relationships, which are the context for unity.

That makes sense.  United almost always has the connotation of sameness is some way.  My next suggestion for source of denominational unity, however, calls that idea of united by sameness into question.  It’s a major departure, so I’m going to spend two or three posts exploring it.  It’s also an idea I think can have much wider application than The United Methodist Church, so there will be a lot fewer Methodist-specific references.

The idea of unity I would like to explore can still be thought of not as united by sameness, but unity through relationships and networks.  This model of unity actually presupposes that there is nothing that’s going to apply to everyone, instead looking for overlapping things that, when you add them all up, include everyone.  To make myself clearer, let’s look at a couple of diagrams.

The first diagram is a diagram of the unity by sameness model.  It’s pretty simple:

It’s just a circle.  The outline of those who are united and the outline of those who share a certain characteristic coincide.  The diagram for the unity through relationship or network is a bit more complicated, though.  It looks something like this:

Here the heavy black line is the group of people who are united in a certain organization.  The thinner black lines are groups of people who share certain characteristics.  None of these circles coincide with the heavy black circle.  None cover the entirety of that circle.  All of the thin circles overlap with some other circle, but there are pairs of circles which don’t overlap with each other.  Nevertheless, by adding all of the thin circles together, all of the area inside the heavy circle is covered.  Note, though, that the thin circles include not just area in the heavy black circle, but area outside of it as well.

I think this is a truer-to-life model of how unity works.  There is some functional way in which the heavy black circle is drawn (polity, in the case of The United Methodist Church), but most of the uniting factors that hold us together are like the thin circles – they’re things we have in common with a subset of the group as a whole as well as others outside of the group.  But there’s nothing that we have in common with the group as a whole (except the polity which defines the heavy black circle).  Only by adding up a series of uniting factors are we able to include the group as a whole.

This model depends crucially upon relationships and networks, and it’s to that aspect of the model I will turn next week.