Belonging

When Joyce and I adopted Ruby in January 2020, we did not know she would become a “pandemic puppy.” We simply felt ready, a year after our Hannah Estelle died, to welcome another dog into our home. Within two months, however, Covid-19 shutdowns began, and throughout all the disruption and isolation and anxiety the pandemic created, Ruby became our “sweet and loyal companion” (To Sing Once More, p. 66).

Longing for Connection

Ruby was two and a half years old when I found her at a local adoption agency. She had grown up in a household with young children, and that didn’t work—whether because of Ruby or because of the kids, we don’t know. Clearly she needed a stable home. Since the day of her arrival, she has claimed us as her people. She stays near me all day and regularly nudges my hand to reconnect. If she were smaller, she would be a lap dog. During my pandemic Zoom calls with friends and colleagues, Ruby would sit right next to me and ask me to hold her paw. She greets any ring of our doorbell with ferocious home-protecting howls. And when Joyce and I have been away, even if only for an hour, Ruby is eager to welcome us back. She wants us to remember that we belong together. 

All of us are like Ruby. We want to belong somewhere with someone. That helps explain why nearly one in five American households adopted a pet during the pandemic. It’s not simply because people were bored and needed new distractions. The pandemic made us lonelier, and it strengthened our longing for connection with others. This longing inhabits all be-longing.

But what happens when the Covid crisis ends and life with Rover becomes a burden for millions of pandemic puppies and their companions, as the Washington Post reported in January 2022? Doesn’t the need to belong also support intractable patterns of abuse in countless families, relationships, religious communities? Aren’t racism, sexism, and political violence often fueled by an exclusionary sense of the need to belong? How do we distinguish a genuine need from its unending distortions? Our answers will shape how we organize institutions and social structures.

Dutch Pillarization (Verzuiling)

Responding to my Shattering Silos post, Barbara Carvill has asked whether I plan to talk about verzuiling (pillarization) in the Netherlands. That’s a good question; my social philosophy stems in part from the Kuyperian tradition, and Abraham Kuyper was a leading architect of Dutch pillarization. Scholars don’t agree on what pillarization is, why it arises, and how common it has been. The sociologist Staf Hellemans, for example, argues that it is more complex and widespread than Dutch history suggests. But let me stick to the Dutch example, since it figures prominently in my own tradition of reformational philosophy. There pillarization refers to how four blocs—Protestant, Catholic, Socialist, and Liberal—organized Dutch cultural, political, economic, and religious life. It lasted from the late nineteenth century until the later twentieth century.

These blocs were called pillars (zuilen) because they were like discrete columns supporting a shared pediment, namely, a parliamentary government in which all major blocs are represented. Each pillar had its own schools, news media, political parties, labor unions, hospitals, sports clubs, and the like. This created a strong sense of group identity, of where one belonged in society.

Although this social architecture began to disintegrate in the 1960s, one can still see evidence of its impact on Dutch society. The question is, was this a good societal way to meet the need to belong? Whereas religious advocates of pillarization valued the integrity and influence it gave them in national life, critics said it isolated people in their own politico-religious silos, reinforcing parochial prejudices and blocking progress on society-wide issues. 

Integrity and Solidarity

I grew up in a miniature Dutch-immigrant version of such a silo: church, home, and school were tightly interlinked. But our subculture lacked the national political and economic organizations that characterized Dutch pillars, making it easier for us to belong to an American melting pot where two-party politics put a premium on national unity. Consequently, I can sympathize with both advocates and critics of Dutch pillarization. Both communal integrity and society-wide solidarity are good things.

Maybe that’s what North Americans can learn from the Dutch experience. Deep rips in the fabric of American and Canadian social life are no longer hidden. Massive cultural, political, and religious realignments are underway. According to the U. S. Surgeon General, loneliness has become an epidemic, and it seems all notions of common purpose are under attack. To weather this storm, many of us retreat into our own social-media bubbles. Others lash out at anyone who does not think, look, or act like them. The loudest, most obnoxious bullies often seem to carry the day.

Colorful Coalitions

If we want to foster both diverse communities and societal unity, we will need to find better ways to organize social life. Forming power blocs around racial, ethnic, or gendered identities doesn’t work, and inevitably it stokes the paranoia and resentments of “Christian” white nationalists. Nor can we simply rely on national political or religious leaders: our political parties often fail to speak for and with the people they represent, and the major religious communities, including Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and Muslims, are split into opposing factions. We need to find better ways.

Moreover, despite all they may have contributed to the Netherlands, the old Dutch pillars were never fully viable in North America, with its mixed history of individualism, institutional racism, and aboriginal genocide. Even faith-based education, whether in residential schools for indigenous peoples or in religiously affiliated “private” schools, has participated in this history.

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

Instead of the old pillars, we need to build new coalitions that weave colorful fabrics of communal integrity and society-wide solidarity: interfaith collaborations around issues of social justice; new educational ventures transcending the divides among so-called private, public, and commercial schooling; political rainbow coalitions, to borrow a familiar phrase from Jesse Jackson, breaking the deadlocks of outdated party politics. Doing this won’t be easy. But it will help create a society where everyone belongs.