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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   3125 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 11, 2024

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Why don't any Christian groups try forming communities similar to the Hasidic communities of places like Kiryas Joel? Or have some done so, and I'm just not aware of it?

(When I've asked this question to a few people IRL, I basically got two answers, both of which — in different ways — boil down to "because we're not Jewish.")

Do the Amish not count?

They do, they’re called cults. And that’s what Hasidim basically are as well.

Would something like the Bruderhof count for you? They're not fully Amish, but they do form little Christian communities or villages in the middle of a larger society.

Jews have a long tradition of both urban and communal living, even in mildly or intermittently hostile environments. Setting up NY. "public housing" with built-in yeshivas that are advertised only in Hebrew is childs play for them.

Christians who lived in villages around a church don't actually have any way to exclude people from their territory (let alone drive out non-members), so only actual cults can set up shop in the first place.

English speaking Christians also can't take advantage of "minority-serving" government programs to route around anti-discrimination law, by getting funding specifically directed to their community in a way that excludes outsiders.

The closest you'll get is Arizona retirement communities. And those rely on liquidated boomer house money that young families don't have access to.

They do periodically, and most fail within a generation with little fanfare. American history is littered with failed utopian commune experiments from the Shakers to the Mormons to the Manson family.

Throughout history most Jewish attempts at this have also failed within a generation. The Books of Jacob explores this in the context of the 19th century.

They do. That's what most of the initial American colonists were doing.

More recent ones that spring immediately to mind are L'Abrie (friend stayed there, founded by Francis Schaeffer), a bunch of Mormon towns, some Amish areas, and the community around St Innocent Academy in Kodiak.

As to why it isn't all that common anymore, some possibilities:

  1. people are suspicious of cults, because they've often found to be covering up negative behavior,
  2. the modern economy rewards living in larger cities
  3. modern cities forbid red lining practices, so it's mostly not legal to intentionally build a religious suburb that feels like a village. People also like ethnic neighborhoods, which modern cities also discourage. Much ink has been spilled over that.

Some mennonites do.

The effectiveness of Kiryas Joel is in its extreme shunning of outsiders, its top-down centralized hierarchy which works extrajudicially, and its extreme ingroup-centrism. No one would want to move in Kiryas Joel because as a gentile you will not have access to any of their communal wealth: the library is in Yiddish and Hebrew, the parties are religion-centered, the schools are all private, the security is private. No one will talk to you. The Hasidic members all know not to “let the world in” and this is enforced through shunning. It was maybe in Lakewood or Kiryas Joel, I forgot which, where a rival teacher set up shot and then had his house burned down. The person who attempted to kill him this way got a sweetheart thanks to Hasidic lobbying. That’s a totally extrajudicial way of enforcing communal norms. And the schools enforce ingroup centrism and hierarchy through the texts and stories. And of course there is tax corruption and the wealthy members subsidize the lives of the poor members.

For Christians to imitate this requires a lot just to get going

Who says they aren't already?

They're certainly not anywhere on the scale of Kiryas Joel (population 41,857).

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