by Freeman Wicklund
Do you want to be peaceful, happy, and safe? Don't all human beings want these things? Don't all feeling beings seek these things? When we look at trees and flowers, and how they grow towards the light, can't we infer that they, and all life forms, desire these things? Since peace, happiness, and safety are universally shared goals, how can we live in a way that allows all life to thrive?
Previous generations of wisdom teachers, healers, reformers, and activists have pondered these questions and come up with the idea of the Beloved Community. (We have started capitalizing the term to highlight the fact that we speak of the historically well-defined Beloved Community as outlined in this article.)
What is the Beloved Community?
Although the idea behind the Beloved Community is timeless, the phrase was first used by philosopher-theologian Josiah Royce (1855-1916) who founded the Fellowship of Reconciliation. It was then popularized by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) and the civil rights movement.
Here are five defining characteristics of the Beloved Community:
1. Given our shared desire to be peaceful, happy, and safe, the Beloved Community described a practical, realistic, and achievable society.
2. In the Beloved Community, conflict still exists, but it is resolved peacefully, nonviolently, and without hostility, ill will, or resentment.
3. In the Beloved Community, we recognize the interdependent nature of all life, so we appreciate, recognize, and value the inherent worth of all people, animals, and ecosystems.
4. In the Beloved Community, kindness, compassion, and love for all life motivates our actions. We work cooperatively to peacefully end hunger, prejudice, poverty, homelessness, climate change, environmental destruction, factory farming, and violence and injustice of all kinds.
5. In the Beloved Community, the means we use to create change are just as kind and compassionate as the ends we seek. Our commitment to unconditional and all-inclusive kindness and goodwill allows the Beloved Community to become what Dr. King called "an engine of reconciliation."
Why is it important for community members, activists, reformers, teachers, public servants, healers, helpers, and everyone to understand the Beloved Community?
In Dr. King’s Sermon on Gandhi, he explained both the strategic and ethical reasons why the Beloved Community must be the end goal of all efforts to create positive change:
“The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, so that when the battle’s over, a new relationship comes into being between the oppressed and the oppressor…. The way of acquiescence leads to moral and spiritual suicide. The way of violence leads to bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers. But, the way of non-violence leads to redemption and the creation of the beloved community.”
When we understand, as King did, that Beloved Community is the end goal of all of our campaigns and efforts for peace and justice, we can better plan and implement effective campaigns, actions, legislation, curriculum, and live in ways that continually move us towards the creation of the Beloved Community. Keeping our “eyes on the prize” of Beloved Community, reminds us to treat all life, be they friend or foe, with courtesy, compassion, and kindness; and it prevents us from being seduced into the narrow ends-justify-the-means thinking, which ultimately undermines our efforts and delays genuine, lasting progress.
How do activists and reformers help create the Beloved Community?
According to the King Center, Dr. King asserted that the Beloved Community is a practical and realistic vision that will naturally arise when "a critical mass of people are committed to and trained in the philosophy and methods of nonviolence."
That's why the Southern Christian Leadership Conference during the height of the U.S. civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s conducted regular trainings in nonviolence and created pledges such as the Commitment Card (view in full here) which all volunteers needed to sign. Furthermore, all volunteers who planned to demonstrate needed to further agree to, and through intense role play (click the link to watch an example) show they can live up to, the pledge Dr. King called the “Nonviolent Creed in Action: to resist without bitterness; to be cursed and not reply; to be beaten and not hit back.”
These trainings and pledges gave people the knowledge and experience they needed to wield nonviolence effectively, and inspired activists to do the necessary inner work to embody the values and viewpoints of the Beloved Community. The more who did this, the more the Beloved Community manifested in the world.
What can everyone do to help create Beloved Community?
All of us can do the inner work necessary to become members of the Beloved Community. This inner work refines our minds and hearts to let go of the greed, prejudice, blame, and falsehood that reside there. As we weaken and erode these forces, our infinite and all-inclusive kindness, compassion, and goodwill (which were buried underneath them all along) shine through.
Through this inner work, we learn how to unconditionally love, forgive, and offer compassion and kindness to ourselves. We learn how to be patient with ourselves and radically include all aspects of ourselves, even those parts we dislike. We learn how to reconcile and integrate the competing forces and agendas within our body and mind. By learning these skills, we become more able to love, forgive, radically include, offer compassion and kindness, have patience with, and be reconciled with others, even those who think and live very differently than us.
Such change takes persistence, determination, and time, but it is the way out of our suffering, and the way to a more just, peaceful, and happy world. We will know our inner work is working if we start to live with more love, peace, compassion, and joy, even when our outer situation hasn’t changed.
Mindfulness and meditation help us do this inner work. That's why the Boundless Love Project offers free, nonsectarian meditation trainings, guided meditations, and the Beloved Community Pledge to assist you with doing that inner work.
In our lawful cause-and-effect universe, the inner work we do lawfully creates outer change. As we do the inner work and start to embody a genuine kindness and compassion for all life, this inner transformation will create powerful and positive outer changes in our lives and in our relationships with those around us.
For those of us who are activists, doing this inner work makes us better prepared to wage skillful and powerful nonviolent campaigns to create lasting outer change. Driven more and more by compassion and love, we spend less time controlled or distracted by our rage, anger, bitterness, and hatred, all of which clouds our thinking and seduces us to act out unskillfully in ways that harm ourselves, others, and our cause. Driven by compassion and love, and free of ego, our work is more and more focused, efficient, and effective. We do what is necessary to heal relationships, build bridges, create justice, and birth Beloved Community.
Of course, activists must not neglect learning the methods of nonviolence. This too is a skill and to be effective you need to understand how it works. The Boundless Love Project offers Mindful Direct Action Trainings to help with that as well. See below for more resources on that.
Let’s all commit to doing the inner work and outer work necessary to creating a global Beloved Community where all life thrives. Wishing you boundless love, peace, health, joy, and success in all of your efforts to create a more peaceful, humane, sustainable, and just world.
More Resources on the Beloved Community
Inner work REsources
Nonviolence Resources
Banner photo credit: Freeman Wicklund