End of Semester Thoughts on Community

I've been thinking quite a bit about community this semester. Some of this is because of two of my classes. On of them was on Pennsylvania Dutch, both the language and the people, and the other was on the German immigration experience in America. In both of these cases, various forms of German began to decline around the turn of the century, with the last native speakers born before WWII. The popular and obvious blame is that Germany's involvement in the world wars cause this. While this certainly was a catalyst, it was happening anyway, and happened uniformly across many other minority languages (Norwegian, Czech, Italian, Native American languages, etc). Both courses addressed the loss of minority language in favor of the prestige/majority language with the processes of verticalization and physical and social mobility. The more domains you can speak your language in, the more likely you keep speaking your language and teach your children. So if in a small town in the middle of cheeseland, you can go to church in German, send your children to school taught in German, read the local German newspaper, and conduct business in German, you're going to keep learning German and so are your kids. But if the schools are consolidated, the newspaper closes, Germany stops sending pastors and you have to conduct your business in the next biggest town in English, then you're going to stop maintaining German and more importantly your kids will stop maintaining it as well. This gets worse for German when you move due to economics or your kids start marrying outside their religious and/or ethnic group and the default language of their home is English. Pretty soon (if 50 years is soon), German disappears.

Funnily enough though, of the few stable minority language in the US, "German" makes up a large number: Pennsylvania Dutch, Hutterisch, Mennonite Low German and Yiddish. The other stable minority languages are the signed languages (primarily ASL, but also the Mexican-Spanish and Quebecois-French varieties), Romani/Sinti dialects spoken by the Roma/Sinti ("Gypsies"), and Shelta spoken by the Irish Travellers. Corresponding with a stable minority language is a stable community, that is none of these groups are dying or assimilating. In the case of Romani and Shelta, the language functions as a cryptolect. It is also interesting that the German varieties are now only spoken by various "conservative" religious groups. Pennsylvania
Dutch= Old Order Amish and Old Order Mennonites. Hutterisch=Hutterites. Mennonite Low German=Russian/Colony Mennonites. Yiddish=Hasidism. Each of these religious groups has resisted verticalization and assimilation to the extent that they can by pro-actively maintaining their communities and the boundaries of those communities. This does not mean that they live in isolation or that they believe that they live in isolation - in fact, they are quite aware of their dependence on the larger society and all groups are fully bilingual with English (if not trilingual, if you count their religious languages of Early Modern German or Luther German for the Christians and Biblical Hebrew for the Jews). Yet they do what they can to maintain their separation as a believing body.

I know the most about the Old Orders (Amish and Mennonites) and this accounts for most of their "strange" practices. For example, they don't use central heat because they believe that allows parents and children to disperse to separate rooms in the evening, instead of spending time together as a family in front of the hearth. Similar is the reason for restriction on automobiles (although that is different for the "Black-bumper" variety of Mennonites): community ties are stronger if the members stay physically closer together. These ties are reinforced by overlapping domains - members worship together, go to school together, work together, share in the same recreations, etc. And for Hutterites, their communal lifestyle means the share property as well.

Since I've been reading and discussing these communities, I've been reflecting on my own place in various communities. First and foremost (and the most fraught) is that of my religious affiliation. Although Mormonism maybe hard to define, the fact that I am a Mormon isn't (unsubtle jab at a certain ex-governor). But that doesn't mean that I'm a "member" of the local Mormon community, a fact which has only been reinforced since moving to Madtown. Community membership requires a degree of acceptance by the already accepted members of that community. It quickly became apparent after moving here that I was unacceptable, for a number of reasons. I do not live in the married student housing. I do no have children. I am pursuing a graduate degree. I am pursuing a graduate degree in the humanities. My husband did not have a job. My husband does not attend church every Sunday (health reasons). While these have nothing to do with the beliefs and practices that make me a card-carrying Mormon, they do mean that I am on the periphery (if not on the other side) of the borders of this particular congregation.

Contributing to this problem is that I only see with the majority of my ward on Sunday during the block. But since I play the organ in sacrament meeting and the piano in primary, I actually interact very few members of the ward. The women's-meeting-which-shall-not-be-named has once again been reduced to happening once a quarter, so I only meet with my women's organization four times a year (often I can't go because of school obligations, so I usually only met with them once or twice a year). For the majority of the time, the only other Mormon I see during the week is Matt. So the contact time I actually have with this community is quite limited by number but also in space, since I see other members almost exclusively at church and only occasionally on campus or somewhere else. If Mormon were a language, I would have stopped speaking it by now.

Last year I was growing weary of not having any Mormon friends in Madtown. Have you ever read any official advice on feeling isolated in your ward? All of says that *you* need to be more pro-active. So I decided to see if there was interest in starting a group that would meet to eat lunch on campus once a month. After talking to a few of the women who worked or went to school on campus and were enthusiastic, I emailed the RS mailing list and set up a time based and place that would seem to work for the most number of people (there were about a half dozen). Two women besides me showed up the first month, and the rest of the semester, only one woman came. That was fine with me because we get along, but we both thought it would be nice if more people came. This past semester we set up a new time, this time twelve people said that they would come. Unfortunately the girl who came the first semester couldn't come this time. I went the first time to meet everyone and no one showed up. Only one bothered to email me to tell me she couldn't come due to unexpected circumstances. I was so disappointed that I couldn't bring myself to attempt to set it up for the next month.

The lesson I learned was that you can't be a part of a community without their permission. This happens a lot to second language learners - just because we send German students over to Germany, doesn't mean that they will be accepted into the German-speaking community. We do this as Americans - even if an immigrant becomes a legal citizen, that doesn't mean that we'll accept him as an American. Even if I want to be a member of this ward, I can't be. What do you do? I guess you just keep plugging away.

While my membership in my local religious community is marginal, my Mormon lifestyle basically prevents me from becoming a full member of other communities. The first being that of the German grad students. In comparison to my ward, I'm a pretty much a fully-involved member of my department community. I work with them, I socialize with them, I see other members nearly everyday of the week on campus and off campus, etc. I even play in a bluegrass band made of up members from our department! But I know I'm not as integrated as I could be because I don't drink. I do go to the happy hours because I don't understand alcohol consumption as a sin per se (unless you've promised God no to) and I have no interest in drinking so being around it is not a temptation. But I'm not interested in seeing my friends drunk, so I usually leave early. I know I've precluded myself from certain types of social bonding because I do not drink with them. I think I've made up for it in other ways, but it is not always equal to all people.

The Mormon lifestyle also prevents me from becoming a member of other communities just from a time factor. I have two callings (ward organist, primary pianist) and three assignments (visiting teaching, family history center volunteer, enrichment committee). While I consider this rather light, I probably average ten hours a week on church stuff. Sometimes when I am envious of my colleague's hobbies, I realize that while I'm in grad school, church is my hobby. I'm hoping that when I'm dissertating, I'll feel less pressure and can find pursue some fallen by the wayside hobbies (music, quilting, medieval recreation, etc) and maybe get involved in those communities.

What communities are you a part of?