Gathered: A Theology for Institutions in a Changing Church

Abstract

Practical theology has historically engaged in sustained theological reflection on the practices of the Church that intersect with the practices of the world. As field of study, it engages in interdisciplinary engagement that combines social and theological forms of reasoning and analysis. As a broader field of praxis, it seeks to support the conditions where people of faith are formed, and communities of faith may flourish. In both expressions, practical theology exists in a dynamic relationship to institutions (e.g., congregations, denominations, universities) and contributes research and praxis that supports the future of institutions and the faith they mediate. While institutions are often the source and site of practical theology, “institutions” are taken for granted as a clearly-identifiable social form and a fixed expression. However, transnational changes in congregations and related faith-based institutions require an account of the nature and role of institutions within practical theology. In this gap, this paper advances a two-part argument: first, institutions are sites of multimodal gathering, creating containers for various forms of encounter where individuals and communities gather around a shared context, shared stories, shared practices, shared resources, and a shared journey. Second, theology for institutions can be sustained by attending to five modes of institutional engagement and analysis that are marked by attention to shared context, narratives, practices, resources, and a journey. Three sections advance this argument. The first part introduces three different situations of institutional encounter to question the relationship between theology and institutions amid a changing organizational landscape. The second part engages Alasdair MacIntyre as an interpretive framework to identify the gap of institutions in the field of practical theology. The third part concludes by detailing the structure of a theological account that resolves this gap in the field and may attend to the forms of gathering institutions provide.

1. Introduction1

The transnational changes in congregations and related faith-based institutions require an account of the nature and role of institutions within theology and the practice of ministry. Practical theology has historically engaged in sustained theological reflection on the practices of the Church that intersect with the practices of the world (Swinton and Mowat 2016). As field of study, it engages in interdisciplinary engagement that combines social and theological forms of reasoning and analysis (Miller-McLemore 2014). As a broader field of praxis, it seeks to support the conditions where people of faith gather and communities of faith may flourish (Ward 2017). In these expressions, practical theology exists in a dynamic relationship with institutions (e.g., congregations, denominations, universities) and contributes research and praxis that support the future of institutions and the faith they mediate. While institutions are often the source and site of practical theology, “institutions” are taken for granted as a clearly identifiable social form and a fixed expression.

When the social and religious landscape that surrounds religious life is changing, it is not always clear how to respond or what to study within the institutions we inhabit. The statistics cross continents and contexts—decline, disaffiliation, rising institutional distrust, and fragile institutions—but more importantly, individuals and communities feel these changes in personal and collective bodies, through a combination of restless, anxiety, and polarization. Organizational change does not impact all communities equally, and that there is more to the story than a simple narrative of decline. However, individuals do not always have evidence to document the complexity of lived experience. Without a theology for institutions, we react to anxiety in our institutional system or chase the latest trends and quick fixes. In brief, individuals trade the distinctive life that emerges in and through Christ for a lesser alternative.

In this particular spot of time, that is marked both by transition, uncertainty, and hope, I want to provide the preliminary structure of a theology for institutions, arguing institutions are sites of gathering that create containers for various forms encounter where individuals and communities transmit stories, practices, value-laden traditions, and resources from one generation to a next.2 There will be three moves. First, I introduce three different scenes of institutional encounter in order to raise the question about the relationship between theology and institutions amid times of organizational change. Second, I engage Alasdair MacIntyre as an interpretive framework to provide a preliminary interpretation of these scenes, while also noting the limits of existing frameworks and the need for more reflection on the nature and role of institutions in the practical theology. Third, I conclude by detailing the structure of a theological account that is required to attend to the forms of gathering institutions provide.

2. Presenting Situations

2.1. Situation 1: Durham Cathedral, Durham, England, 2021

The bells tolled from a thousand-year-old cathedral, calling worshippers and wanderers to gather. Built in 1093 as a monastic cathedral, Durham Cathedral regularly welcomes pilgrims, tourists, and students through its doors. Sprawling ceilings and towers reach towards the heavens, and the grounds include a combination of relics, stories told through stained glass, and spaces for worship. Located at the crest of a hill in Durham, England, the Cathedral is an institutional space that enables individuals and communities to gather and creates opportunities for encounter around shared values and across individual differences and particularity. A sign at the entrance reads: “We invite you to journey as a pilgrim and explore this ancient and living centre of faith.”3

I have entered to this particular space for Even Song—a daily prayer service—but my motive is not entirely distinct from students or tourists in this space: I have come to watch and wonder at a way of life that almost feels foreign. As the service begins, a friend leans over and whispers: “It is stunning to be here on the eve of the Queen’s funeral.” Indeed, the order of worship before us reads, “Lord, now lettest though thy servant depart in peace: according to thy word. For mine eyes have seen they salvation: Which though has prepared before the face of all people. To be a light to lighten the Gentiles: and to be the glory of thy people Israel. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost; As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen.” Sitting on red pews with worn kneelers, tea-light candles, representing prayers of visitors, flicker next to me. As a colleague later notes, we gather at a time of dramatic transition in Christendom as the last vestige that linked Christianity and Empire is no more: Elizabeth, the last explicitly Christian Queen, will be buried tomorrow.4 It is a space that feels foreign and familiar at the same time.

When I planned this travel months earlier, I could not have forecast that it would coincide with the Queen’s death at 96 and burial several days later. She was, as one commentator noted, “The last Christian monarch” (Pepinster 2017), marking a public presence that bridges the memories of a millennia, even as Christianity in public life is marked by declining interest in institutionalized religion (Smietana 2022). At the same time, the structure and many of the practices of this space have not changed. Fittingly, those who are gathered for Even Song sing. It is an ordinary and everyday practice, something done in this space hundreds if not thousands of times before, but they continue without concern of monotony. Singing with others is, as Saliers has noted, one of the “primary instruments of the soul” (Salier 2010). This particular space, echoing with the memories, holds their voices, and then releases them into the world. Singing carries those gathered forward.

Like many of the early followers of Jesus, I am one of the unnamed members that gather in the crowd. My subject position in this situation and those that follow is one that feels equal parts familiar and foreign. I am an American in the UK at a time of national reflection; the Queen was not my Queen, even though I hold her in high regard. At the same time, the worship practices that are carried out in Durham Cathedral feel familiar enough that I am able to understand myself as a participant in these collective practices. My presence in this space requires relatively little risk, as I enter the space as a body that the institutions of Christendom have historically favored: a white, abled-bodied male who enters this space with three degrees in theology. I enter this space cloaked in a combination of features that convey a sense of belonging and not belonging among the people gathered here. Much as the vestments worn by the priests purposefully conceal aspects of the liturgist’s particularity, I stand among the crowd, marked by my particularity, while also cloaked in anonymity that I carry into this space.

2.2. Situation 2: Kings Cross, London, England, 2021

Less than twelve hours later, I stand in Kings Cross Station in London, surrounded by a different company. This is a transportation corridor for travelers and professional to move in and out of a global city. Built in 1852, it was one of the earliest rail stations in London and stands on the northern edge of the UK transportation corridor. More than 50 million passengers pass through every year (London King’s Cross Station n.d.). If Durham Cathedral is an institutional space for pilgrimage, Kings Cross is a space for passing through, it is a transitional platforms that provides passageways for travelers.

Yet, on this particular morning the commotion stops. “Ladies and gentlemen”, a PA announcer begins, “On the occasion of the Queen’s death, we will mark two minutes of silence out of respect for the Queen.” Business professionals and travelers pause in silence. Some gathered stand at attention, others pull out their phones to film. As the departure times still blink on the terminal screen, the shocking silence of this bustling space almost hums. It is a moment of collective solemnity for these disconnected travelers who are moving through this space on a Monday morning. Far removed from those gathered at the same time around symbols of the Church—such as at Westminster Abby, or the State, such as at Buckingham Palace, the mixed collective that stands in silence here marks a form of institutional life that is navigated in public and beyond the jurisdiction of public institutions. It is an “undercommons”, as Moten and Harney’s language suggest (Harney and Moten 2013), a form of gathering that resists the hegemony of coloniality. The moment passes quickly, and the trains return to their scheduled departure, but for a moment the cacophony of footsteps and voices stops, and everyone pauses in silence. Silence carries those gathered forward.

2.3. Situation 3: St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London, England, 2021

Only hours later, following a brief train ride, I enter St. Martin-in-the-Fields, which stands on Trafalgar Square. More than 1 million gathered in downtown London to pay their respects to the Queen (Associated Press 2022), and they are now filing out of the exits to return to other parts of the city. It is an event that is both “ordinary and extraordinary,” as one public announcer observes, gathering Brits and non-Brits who want to honor the Queen, or simply observe the ritual solemnity. I exit at a less-than opportune moment just as individuals are leaving the processional and streaming out the exits. I am walking against the flow of traffic, straining to work my way toward Trafalgar Square, and lugging a roller bag across an uneven path.

Film crews stand recording outside. A helicopter circles above. Police offers and security direct the crowds as they make a slow exit from the route. Those in the crowd carry a combination of chairs, flags, and flowers. Sitting on the steps leading up to St. Martin-in-the-Fields, a father and child sit eating a sandwich. Apart from the suitcase that I wheel behind me, I fit into the crowd, coming as another traveling pilgrim who is passing through, pausing to gaze at the collective splendor.

Stepping inside St. Martin, another form of silence meets me; it is a sustained silence. I am fifteen minutes late for a Eucharist service—in all honestly, it is not a service I was planning to attend. Yet, I have been gathered here with twenty to thirty others. Three candles are lit, but the room has no lack of light because the sanctuary is filled with natural light that streams in through the windows. The iconic East Window, designed by Shirazeh Houshiary Pip Horne, looks down upon the Eucharist, altar, and presiders. As the artists noted in 2016: “the transparent/translucent glass allows the world outside to enter inside… It suggests the outside world is part of the sacred and that the mundane and the sacred belong together” (Modus Operandi Art Consultants n.d.).

The doors are open, but the crowds that mill around outside have not converged in this space. The silence is broken only by the whisper of hospitality from a chapel steward, the prayers of the priest, and the response of the people. There is no recording device in sight, despite the move to online worship for many faith communities. Following confession, prayers for the Queen, readings from scripture, the presider, Rev. Sam Wells, prepares the tables and invites those gathered to pray: “Yours, Lord is the greatness, the power, the glory, the splendour, and the majesty; for everything in heaven and on earth is yours. All things come from you, and of your own do we give.”5 He invites those who are gathered to come and receive the elements. Not everyone partakes, but everyone is invited to gather at the table.

I realize this particular space is also “ordinary and extraordinary”, but not in the same way that the public commentator may have intended. As the service concludes, the rector pauses to offer a brief word of hospitality and invitation: “We do not view you as visitors, but as pilgrims.” Following this moment of multimodal celebration, we all exit, returning to the crowded streets. Solemn celebration gathers us, marking us with the memory of the death and life of Christ, and allows us to return to the bustling masses in the public square.

Separated by less than a day’s time, these three situations provide a way to untangle the relationship between theology, institutions, and religious practice amid a shifting organizational landscape. The institutions of church, crown, cathedral, and transportation corridor intersect in ways that are intertwined, complexifying, and competing. While the particular political–ecclesial landscape in Great Britian is a context that is able to provides a unique display of the particularity of theological reflection on institutional life, these scenes also thematize a reality and set of questions that are shared by individuals who inhabit institutions in other regions once marked by Christendom.6 Changes are underway, but the dominant forms of institutional life and corresponding modes of interpretation lack an account of the relationship between theology, practice, and the (institutional) ordering of a life we share with others.

3. Gathering

If practical theology invites individuals and communities to “see in depth” (Dykstra 1991), we first need a way of seeing, or a way of interpreting, what is going on both in these three presenting situations and in a changing Church. Alasdair MacIntyre’s account of the interlocking role of tradition, narrative, and practices in After Virtue provides an initial typology to consider what is going on in these situations and consider the broader relationship between theology and institutions. The publication of After Virtue introduced a sea change in virtue ethics, and it would later influence research and practice law, theology, politics, and philosophy. For practical theology, After Virtue provided a theological grammar to consider the interrelationship between history, community, and embodied practice.7

For MacIntyre, institutions mediate meaning and structure a common life. However, the shifting structure of religious life now requires modes of analysis that can consider how institutions function both as fixed and fluid containers for association, belief, and meaning. Even as MacIntyre’s work provided a catalyst to the field, the limitations of his typology also demonstrates the gap in constructive engagement with the role of institutions and the form of institutions that are required to guide a new form of religious life. In this gap, I will argue two things: first, institutions are sites of multimodal gathering, creating containers for various forms of encounter where individuals and communities gather around a shared context, shared stories, shared practices, shared resources, and a shared journey. Second, research within a theology for institutions can be sustained by attending to these five modes of institutional engagement and analysis that are marked by attention to shared context, narratives, practices, resources, and a journey.

Before I begin, two brief definitions are needed. First, by institutions I mean organized, patterned processes of social engagement that provide dynamic, ordered ways of living to determine the ways that individuals-in-communities are for each other (Berger and Luckmann 1967; Scott 2014; Dykstra 2009).8 Institutions are fundamentally a form of gathering, in concrete places and across generations. This definition is substantive, describing not only how institutions function, but also what they are. This definition of institutions is also able to capture congregations, faith-based organizations, educational institutions, and emerging forms of organized religious life.9 This definition also provides a way to characterize institutions as creaturely creations, providing pathways for theological engagement and reflection as well as social description. With Winner (2018), institutions contain the possibility of promoting the flourishing of life together as well as the characteristic damage that all creatures carry. Second, “modal” describes the various ways, or modes, in which people gather for a common life. This definition draws guidance from recent work in theology and theological education that describes the importance of formation through different modes of engagement. Additionally, drawing inspiration from the function of modal verbs in English grammar wherein, “modal” provides a way to describe “possibility, intention, or necessity” within institutional life (MODAL Definition and Meaning|Collins English Dictionary n.d.). For example, “can” describes the ability or capacity to act in a particular way. “May” is an expression of both permission and possibility. “Need” expresses necessity and urgency. Hence, modal provides a category to describe the plurality of ways people gather in and through institutions and sense of possibility that is contained in these various forms of gathering.

3.1. Practice

MacIntyre’s understanding of a common life as comprised of practice, narrative, and tradition includes a distinct, though obscurely defined, emphasis on institutions.10 A review of MacIntyre’s weight bearing concepts—practice, narrative, and tradition—provides an initial typology to describe what is going on in these three situations, while also providing a further horizon to build an account of theology for institutions. This next section will briefly introduce the three themes that organize MacIntyre’s account in order to interpret these introductory scenes. I will then illustrate how the limits of MacIntyre’s account require moving beyond the starting point he provides. The implications of this move not only impact the work of social analysis, but also the broader field of practical theology that has been shaped by the durability of his account.

For MacIntyre, practices give embodied expression to the moral logic of human life. As MacIntyre notes, practice is:

Any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conception of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended.

(MacIntyre 1984, p. 187)

Three elements of MacIntyre’s definition of practices require explanation in relation to the present reexamination of institutions: (1) Practices are coherent, complex, socially established, cooperative activities; (2) practices possess goods internal to them and are sustained by standards of excellence; and (3) practices are systematically extended. Each practice is historically embedded, and each successive iteration of a practice socially extends it in particular ways. In contrast to accounts of practice that are primarily socially defined, MacIntyre’s provides an understanding of practice that is morally defined. I will offer two brief examples: Chess is a practice that include an understanding of how to play the game that leads to an understanding among those who play it about how to play the game well. There are goods internal to the practice, beyond simply winning, that emerge through sustained engagement in this practice and apprenticeship to those who have engaged in this practice over time. To perform a practice requires an understanding of the goods of practice, including the ways of life that allows one to pursue and evaluate good practice. Second, following the recent death of Willie Mays, individuals celebrate the quality and character of his play, or the excellence of his practice. “It was so exciting just to watch him,” Reggie Jackson, a Hall of Famer during the time Mays played reflected. “To watch Willie warm up, to throw the ball underhand, to make a basket catch. The beauty and the grace…. It was poetry in motion. It was so beautiful, so pretty, to watch this athlete just run on the field, catch a ball. I loved to play against Willie Mays because it meant that I got to watch Willie Mays.” (Tim Kurkjian 2024). Practices are, in sum, the concrete activities that shape and order a common life.11

Practice also provides a way to see in depth about what is going on in these three opening scenes: individuals are gathering to memorialize the death of Queen Elizabeth, which includes singing, prayers, and forms of liturgy. In the second situation, the practice of silence carries those who gathered forward. While those who gathered were not bound by a particular building or facility, much less Creed, the intelligibility of the practice of silence provided an uncommon glimpse of collective activity in a space that is typically governed by individual autonomy; instead of moving through space as self-regulated, productive selves, people paused for a defined moment of collective reflection. In the third situation, those gathered participated in a practice that provided a counter-performance to the collective practice of remembering that was taking place just beyond its doors. “Eat and drink in remembrance that he died for you, and feed on him in your hearts by faith with thanksgiving,” the Eucharistic liturgy read. The significance of this practice provided the central site for gathering amid an invitation to pilgrimage.

3.2. Narrative

Following from practices’ socially embodied character and systematic extension through performance and institutions, narrative conveys historical continuity for individuals’ exercise of virtues as appropriate to their particular setting. For MacIntyre, narrative provides unity to human life from birth to death and constitutes one of the primary means by which individuals are educated into the virtues. As actors participating in socially embodied expressions, human action takes place in particular settings that give actions intelligibility. Chess, for example, is played in a particular setting and follows the rules about how to play the game well. For MacIntyre, ‘setting’ references the milieu in which an action or behavior occurs. Settings function to situate individuals and activities within an historical narrative that provides coherence to actions. Much as narrative contributes decisively to establishing the settings of human action and how those actions are interpreted, institutions also have the capacity to play a formative role in constituting the ‘stage’ for human activity and thereby informing the manner in which acts are performed and interpreted.

One’s role and the correlative character of embodied narratives follow naturally from MacIntyre’s understanding of setting and narrative. As actors in a particular story, human action involves stepping onto a ‘stage’ that we did not create. Although there is a sense in which one’s setting is inherited, one also has the ability, as an active agent, to function not only as an actor on this stage but as an author in the development of the narrative. However, narrative also endows human life with a correlative character such that individuals simultaneously serve as participants in others’ stories. As MacIntyre notes: “The story of my life is always embedded in the story of those communities from which I derive my identity.” Accordingly, the virtues enable an actor within a community to understand and pursue the good throughout the story of one’s life.12

The three situations presented here include multiple narratives. A first feature is the narrative framing I have given to them: because of my framing, I have elected to emphasize certain features, center or decenter particular actors, and obscure details that other writers my deem essential. Moreover, I have presented these three scenes as an unfolding narrative, drawing connections between them and configuring them in such a manner to pose a central question. Narratives are included within them. My colleague leans over and interprets this moment as a “a time of dramatic transition in Christendom as the last vestige that linked Christianity and Empire is no more.” Commentators situate and celebrate the Queen’s life and death within a broader historical narrative, while others note the complexity of this moment because of the legacies of Empire that are carried and possibly praised in this moment. In the final scene, the movement of the liturgy orders worship according to the story of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus; this story is centered amid the clamor of alternatives.

Practical theological engagement with narrative, however, also requires considering the account we give for disrupted narratives that come from trauma. Trauma is a “wound” that follows “an attack by an external agent upon a vulnerable body in such a way that a wounding occurs,” including the mind and emotions (Jones 2019, p. 28). Trauma disrupts existing narratives, interpretive horizons change, and individuals often need a new story to make sense of traumatic experiences in their lives and communities. As O’Donnell and Cross note: “Regardless of context, trauma is a particular form of suffering and anguish that does not go away” (O’Donnell and Cross 2022, p. 1). Following Benac’s (2023b) article “Theology for Crisis: Practical Theology and the Practice of Giving an Account,” the disruption trauma brings often requires a new narrative, but the presence of trauma does not negate the need to give a theological account. Accordingly, even as individuals across these scenes carry the “wounds” of trauma, they still seek an interpretive horizon to tell the stories of their lives within and alongside institutions, even when institutions are the site our source of harm.

3.3. Tradition

Finally, MacIntyre’s understanding of the narrative of life and social embeddedness gives rise to his understanding of tradition’s role in orienting human activity towards a particular teleological order. MacIntyre defines tradition as “an historically extended, socially embodied argument … about the goods which constitute the tradition.” MacIntyre suggests that tradition represents the historical continuity of practices as constructed through narrative unity. Critical to this understanding is the individual’s embeddedness within a narrative, which implies that the individual does not choose the tradition she receives but nevertheless has a role to play. Thus, as an actor plays their part, through practices, an actor participates in a series of relationships “to the past—and to the future—as well as in the present.” As such, virtues sustain individual relationships with the past, present, and future traditions in which one participates.

Tradition is also socially embodied in that it takes form through the expression of embodied practices and requires larger social constructs to sustain the practices and stories that are integral to the tradition. If one cannot pursue the good or exercise the virtues “only qua individual”, the performance of embodied practices on a ‘stage’ with other actors, over time, knits the practices of a community together in a “traditioned” memory. As such, individual actors become “bearers of tradition” as through their actions they preserve and transmit their inherited tradition. Larger social constructs such as universities, farms or hospitals, in turn, function as macro-bearers of tradition through the amalgamation of practices contained within them and their capacity to transmit practices and narratives.

The opening scenes both clarify and complexify this account of tradition and institutions. They illustrate the multiple and intersecting traditions that provide the guardrails for the forms of gathering in these spaces. Tradition is expressed in religious and civic forms. For examples, the Church of England tradition, broadly speaking, guides worship liturgy of worship in Durham Cathedral and St. Martin-in-the-Fields. The public forms of gathering—both in Durham Cathedral and in the public venues surrounding Trafalgar Square—are carried by a tradition of national and civic identity surrounding the Crown, even amid arguments about the significance of this symbol the people who occupy an office. While in some instances, these two visible traditions in these scenes intersect in ways where they can coexist, as happens in Durham Cathedral. There are also moments where they are juxtaposed. The tradition of the national and civic identity in relation to the Crown is prominent in the momentary gathering on the platform, but religion is not present in this moment of silence. Conversely, the gathering that occurs in St. Marin-in-the-Fields occurs amid the backdrop of a collective expression and renegotiation of national and civic identify in relation to the Crown. While the national significance of the moment is acknowledged, the significance of the Queen’s funeral is marked by the memory of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection.

At the same time, these situations also demonstrate how appeals to “tradition” may require an account that expands beyond a fixed and clearly identifiable designation. The individuals in these scenes inhabit and occupy multiple and intersecting traditions of formation and relation. In practice, tradition is not a fixed social, religious, or moral reality that is received or expressed whole cloth. Rather it comes to us, as Stout (2001) argues, in a “bricolage” manner; tradition is constituted and negotiated amid the particularity of human experience and through the various forms of encounter that comprise individual lives. Similarly, Herdt (1998) has argued it is better to speak in terms of the “traditions,” in the plural that guide individual and collective life. While traditioned forms of reflection and formation remain important in this account, the identification of a single, dominant tradition may be a mirage, requiring the construction of a fixed reality that does not reflect the complexity of lived experience.

3.4. The Role of Institutions in Practical Theology

This tri-fold account now provides an opportunity to return to our central question: What is the role of institutions within practical theology and a broader theological vision for a common life? Despite the influence of institutions on MacIntyre’s tri-fold narration of practice, narrative, and tradition, their precise position and function remains obscurely defined. For scholars who have followed MacIntyre’s analysis, MacIntyre’s bracketing of institutions may have resulted in the eclipse of institutions as a critical site of theological reflection. However, throughout the pages of After Virtue, if not also in contemporary society, institutions loom as a pervasive presence such that institutions should be understood as constituting a fourth element of our common life. We can make three constructive extensions from MacIntyre’s account for understanding how institutions contribute to our common life.

• Institutions sustain practices.
  According to MacIntyre’s understanding of practices as socially extended, social institutions serve to sustain and perpetuate practices. Although institutions can also coopt practices in the service of external goods (MacIntyre 1984, p. 194), for MacIntyre, virtues have the capacity to protect against institutional excess and enable institutions to sustain practices. Institutions have the capacity both to sustain and perpetuate practices as well as to coopt them to serve external goods. When the formative capacity of institutions is governed by the appropriate exercise of the virtues, institutions sustain practices in institutional form and give traditioned expression to the practices’ performance throughout history. Although institutions have the capacity to perpetuate practice, virtues such as justice, courage, and truthfulness are necessary to preserve practices’ integrity against institutions’ corrupting capacity (MacIntyre 1984, p. 194). In this sense, institutions inform the practice that constitutes a common life, for MacIntyre, and their primary value is their function, their utility, as containers for expressing and transmitting practices. I will later discuss this as a functionalist account of institutions.
• Institutions embody and transmit narratives.
  Of these three elements MacIntyre’s account of narrative emphasizes institutions the least. However, MacIntyre’s characterization of institutions as a setting suggests institutions’ relation to narrative and a common life. For MacIntyre, institutions influence the development and transmission of the virtues by embodying and transmitting narratives. Within MacIntyre’s account, institutions’ role can be understood as the stage for storytellers. As transmitters of practices and preservers of tradition, institutions create the context to embody and transmit narratives. MacIntyre’s characterization of institutions as a “setting” which makes actions “intelligible both to agents themselves and to others” suggests institutions’ story-telling capacity. Although neither the sole transmitter of narratives nor the only setting that grants practices intelligibility, for MacIntyre, institutions exert decisive influence on the development and transmission of the virtues by embodying and transmitting narratives.
• Institutions preserve and perpetuate tradition.
  According to MacIntyre’s understanding of tradition as socially embodied, institutions—as larger social constructs—have the capacity to preserve and transmit tradition. Hence, institutions function as macro-bearers of tradition through the amalgamation of practices contained within them and their capacity to transmit practices and narratives. Institutions emerge in MacIntyre’s account as functional sites that mediate and negotiate the content of tradition, but they go largely under-examined. MacIntyre tacitly acknowledges institutions—as larger social constructs—as having the capacity to preserve and transmit tradition. However, his analysis of institutions in relation to tradition expresses a degree of ambivalence about institutions in which the corruptibility of institutions requires the application of virtue in order to preserve both tradition and institutions. For MacIntyre, a common life finds its “point in purpose not only in sustaining [relationships necessary for a variety of goods] … but also in sustaining those traditions that provide both practices and individuals with their necessary historical context.” The lack of virtue (e.g., courage, justice, truthfulness) gives rise to corrupt traditions and institutions that sustain them.

In their simplest form, institutions provide sites and spaces for gathering. They gather practices, and institutions allow individuals to be gathered through the exercise of practice. Institutions gather stories, and those who tell stories—as well as those who argue about a story’s significance—gather in and through institutions. Institutions provide ways to gather and transmit meaning over time in ways that come to reflect and sustain what MacIntyre calls a tradition. At this point, we face a crossroads. Do we simply amend this tri-partite account of individual and collective formation by adding a fourth element? Do we scrap it entirely? Or is there a third way, a conjunctive option, that allows us to combine the interpretive power of this account with a theological vision of a common life? I want to suggest that the contemporary reshuffling of organized religious life, invites us to pick up the third option by moving beyond MacIntyre, rather than amending his account of virtues by adding institutions onto a three-fold account of virtue. However, this conjunctive option requires using a different starting point to develop an account of the nature, function, and substance of institutions.

Although it is right to critique MacIntyre for providing an insufficient examination of institutions, one cannot fault him for it. His reliance on Aristotle virtually occludes such a possibility. In short, MacIntyre’s analysis starts from the wrong end. Drawing from Aristotle, he takes the immanent as the given and attempts to develop a theory of a common life that enables him to develop a deeper account for the formation of virtue.13 This yields an account that helpfully narrates the interlocking formative logics that construct meaning and contribute to formation, but he, nonetheless, pays insufficient attention to the social construction of the reality he describes. Institutions are an essential and functional property, but they have no intrinsic good. As a result, he provides an account of formation that begins with the immanent, which is the social reality, rather than the transcendent.

Instead, a theological account for institutions—and the formation that occurs in relation to them—requires starting with the social and ecclesial dynamics of Christian existence to demonstrate the priority of institutions, the relationship between institutions and human flourishing, and the patterned processes that can contribute to their formation. Institutions are sites and sources of gathering because it is ultimately God who gathers us. This Christological, ecclesial, and pneumatological reality provides the relational basis of a theology for institutions.

4. A Theology for Institutions in a Changing Church

The reality of Christ, not the structure of moral formation, is the point of departure of a theology for institutions in a changing Church. As Benac argues (Benac 2023b, p. 758, FN4), the distinction between theology of and theology for has theological and normative consequences.14 Specifically, the life of faith and the forms of moral and academic inquiry emerge from a dense set of relations that occur in response to and through the reality of Christ. In Christ, God invites individuals-in-communities into a participatory form of life that leads to individual and collective transformation. Through the Spirit, God is gathering an unexpected community that is marked by the forms of belonging that exist in, through, and to Christ. While the formation of this community has historically been articulated and expressed as the Church, the forms of gathering that provide the basis for participation and communion cannot be restricted to congregations alone. Gathering takes place in public, in open fields, in the hulls of slave ships, online, and in the corridors of educational institutions. God’s gathering activity is the starting point and defining feature of a theology for institutions. In Christ, God has and is gathering people in multiple ways, through multiple forms of connection, and in order to craft multiple forms of community, both in particular spots of time and across time. The gathering that happens is at once spiritual, connecting individuals to Christ, social, inviting people to belong in and to one another, and transhistorical, connecting people of faith throughout time and history. This is what I want to describe as multimodal. God does not gather individuals in a single space, for a singular connection, or a single outcome. Instead, God’s gathering is marked by multiple forms of gathering, and God’s work reflects and promotes a multimodal reality, one in which meaning, connection, and belief, and identity are co-constructed through the series of relationships that follow God’s gathering. The new reality that emerges in Christ is simultaneously social and theological, providing a basis to begin developing a theology for institutions. Amid the shifting structures that surround religious life, God’s decisions to be for creation and for us creates the conditions that gather individuals into forms of association called institutions that allow us to be for one another.

As a result, institutions do not simply have a function relative to the exercise of practice, the transmission of tradition, and the telling and retelling of stories. Institutions are inherent and intrinsic to the way of life that emerges in and through Christ. Even in malformed expressions and coercive and exploitative activities, institutions remain inherent to the life of faith and the way of life Christ constitutes. God’s gathering invites individuals into creaturely creations of institutions, spaces marked by the potential and characteristic damage that is shared by all of creation. Institutions thus have the potential to create space that releases and enables the flourishing of life, as well as to diminish and damage it. As a result, part of the work of theology for institutions requires consider the kinds of institutions that will order a common life, the modes of analysis that can guide engagement, interpretation, and critique of institutions, and the forms of leadership that are needed to steward the relations that are carried in and through the ways institutions enable individuals to be for one another. This task also requires an account of justice, accountability, discernment, and the conditions about actions that advance the common good in institutions, as well as when an institution no longer advances a common life, and it is time for a particular institutional expression to cease.

I want to conclude by detailing the structure of a theological account of institutions. I will discuss five modes of a common life that cultivate a theology for institutions through research, study, and religious service: (1) our shared organizational context; (2) our shared texts; (3) our shared practices; (4) our shared resources; and (5) our shared journey. This account resolves the gap in the field and may resource the forms of gathering institutions provide.

• Our shared organizational context.
  Part of the practice of research and study within a theology for institutions is to give an account of where we are. The sustained reflection on, about, and within a shifting organizational environment provides a “frame of appearing”, as Fulkerson (2007) aptly notes, making the interplay of social, theological, organizational, and interpersonal dynamics visible through an orderly account.15 As I have argued elsewhere (Benac 2023b), practical theology is distinguished by the practice of giving an account. As contemporary organizational life shifts and changes, part of the work of theological research and study is to offer a generous and generative description of what is going on and why it matters. In congregations, chaplaincy settings, government, mental health wards, church plants, business, community organizing, and the many other settings that order and organized how individuals are for one another, a theology for institutions can guide and enrich research and study.
• Our shared texts.
  The work of theology for institutions also requires considering and creating shared texts to guide a common life. Research and study in this mode certainly requires that we consider the wisdom that is drawn from the reading and interpretation of Christian scripture, but it is not restricted to it. The contemporary order and reordering of institutional life occur within a textual revolution as individuals and communities seek to make sense of the religious texts that have guided their work, the role of technology to produce text, and the composite texts that they use to determine the shape of a common life.
• Our shared practices.
  As activities individuals and communities participate in together, practice remain a key aspect of a theology for institutions. They are the social media out of which a common life emerges, and they reflect the value laden expressions that transmit meaning, purpose, and belonging from one generation to the next. The key distinction, however, is that the form(s) of practice that guide and ground theology for institutions are not principally moral, they are, first, epistemological, and second, social (Dykstra 1991).16 Practices are both an expression of the multimodal gathering that comprises theology for institutions, and they are a constitutive property of the new reality that is emerges in Christ. Further, just as you cannot separate this reconceived account of practices from the broader institutional fabric in which they form and flourish, the creation and care for institutions is itself an animating Christian practice. As Dykstra concludes an essay on Christian practice, he quotes MacIntyre, to note how the coherence of a gathered life requires “the practice of ‘making and sustaining of forms of human community—and therefore of institutions’” (Dykstra 1991, p. 57). Leading and serving institutions is an essential and constitutive practice within theology for institutions.
• Our shared resources.17
  The material and economic realities that make a common life possible are essential for any form of theological reflection about, on, or for institutions. The earliest faith communities attended to the economic realities in which the Gospel message was proclaimed, and substantive theological reflection about shared resources have emerged from individuals who rightfully demand greater attention to social conditions that surround and make possible the life of faith. While individuals writing from and for a marginalized social position have given voice to the economic needs, structures, and lived experience that requires an account, perspectives that may criticize or somehow questions prevailing institutional orders need not be mislabeled as anti-institutional. We are all called to life, as Reyes (2021) notes, and institutions play an essential role in the life-giving or life-taking experience of the life of faith. Theological reflection on the shared resources that govern a common life will benefit by incorporating interdisciplinary perspectives drawn from economics, philanthropy, and empirical studies of giving. Insofar as individuals and communities hope to imagine and offer alternative institutional forms to guide the life of faith, it will require developing corresponding economic models that cohere with the shared contexts, texts, practices, resource, and journey that marks the life of faith (Sampson 2022). The imaginative and strategic work that is required at this stage is equally the work of language and metaphors as it is about the material and economic realities that surround institutions and emerge from within them.
• Our shared journey.
  As we prepare to conclude this framework of a theology for institutions, I want to return to two lines from our opening scenes. At Durham Cathedral, let us note how they described their intention toward the people who entered this historic, gothic Cathedral: “We invite you to journey as a pilgrim and explore this ancient and living centre of faith.” (See note 3). Similarly, following a short train ride and a journey through crowds, I received these words from Rev. Sam Wells at St. Martin-in-the-Field: “We do not view you as visitors, but as pilgrims.” The metaphor of pilgrimage has an elaborate and complex history in Christian thought and practice. In Augustin’s writings in The City of God and Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, the metaphor carries a virtuous component, describing the aspirational quality of Christian existence. Dante’s use of this image throughout The Divine Comedy, however, is more muted, as he describes the moral and psychical purification the journey toward God requires. Similarly, Aquinas’ description of human beings as “wayfarers” in Summa Theologica (Aquinas 1966) describes the creaturely journey of discipleship.18 Within the history of Christian thought, as well as in contemporary practice, the prevalence of refuges requires considering how some pilgrimage are enforced, and the end is not always known.19
  Within a theology for institutions, the reality of our shared journey—whether it is chosen or forced—directs our attention to two important realities about the relationship between theology, individual agency, and the broader institutions that support a common life: (1) both institutions and the individual lives that are live with(in) them are ordered by shared understanding of their ends or aims. Even when the end is not clear or is called into question, shared purpose is required for a healthy and vibrant imagination for institutional life. (2) Individual and collective existence with(in) institutions is transitory, seeking to pass onto to others what we received. This has been various ways, e.g., “institutional thinking” (Heclo 2011) or “boundary spanning,” (Ernst and Chrobot-Mason 2010), but I think it is better to describe these in terms drawn from the Christian tradition as “stewards of saints.” The individual and collective work that guides institutions, including the care of existing institutions and creation of new ones, seeks to pass along the realty and memories of the love of God from one generation to the next.

5. Conclusions

In conclusion, a theology for institutions presents a way to see in depth amid a changing Church. Theology for institutions provides pathways for students and researchers to come alongside faith communities in ways that invite each to see what is going on and what is possible together. This dually descriptive and invitational task can be a form of scholarly service that simply comes alongside this community when they are brought up short. Finally, this account of institutions invites and enables individuals and communities to consider how they actively gather within a particular place and are also gathered by God. If God’s gathering is to remain the preconditions for a common life, theology for institutions requires eyes to see and attend to the holy mystery of how God has gathered and will continue to gather, even when the future is uncertain.

This is the holy-yet-ordinary work of a theology for institutions. In Christ we are gathered together into a new social and theological reality. It is a particular way of life, marked by the love of God and the love of flourishing and floundering institutions. As we seek to discern the new forms of gathering that will guide our work on the other side of a time of transitions, institutions remain an integral part, but they must be thematized and theorized in a way that does not reduce them to a functional role alone. They are essential and intrinsic to the life of faith, inviting each of us into the work of gathering and being gathered by God. These five modes, shared contexts, shared texts, shared practice, shared resources, and a shared journey provide pathways for the next phase of study on and within institutions, while also providing a shape to consider the form of institutions we steward and the role(s) of those who inhabit them as stewards of saints.