The Output of Belonging

The Homebound Symphony: Rowan Williams on solidarity …in what is really in many ways the heart of Rowan’s argument, the history of the term “solidarity” that links it with labor movements becomes essential. The solidarity of labor is based on the idea that if we have a common work, then we have a common cause. In a way, Rowan is reversing that: He’s saying that if we have a common problem — the failure to acknowledge the full humanity of others — and if we have all, in one way or another, undergone the discipline of suppressing our instincts for solidarity, then we need to engage in the common labor of restoring those instincts to their proper place. That is, solidarity in this broad, moral, philosophical, and theological sense calls for work. So Rowan seeks to conceptualize and formulate the kind of work that we need to do. Thus much what Rowan does here is the terminological and conceptual excavation that lays the groundwork for this common labor of restoring solidarity. Naz Hamid:…