Choosing a tagline for an initiative like this isn’t easy. You want to convey your why and the essence of your vision in just one readable sentence,
This week, I did something that felt nervy: I changed the Summit Stages tagline from “Building belonging with musicals that lift and unite” to “Building Beloved Community with musicals that lift and unite.” It was either courageous or foolhardy, because I’m not at all confident that the phrase “beloved community” will immediately resonate with many of the people I’m currently inviting to this site. Most of my immediate circle of friends and family are Canadian, and we didn’t get acquainted with the rhetoric of Martin Luther King in high school. For some who are familiar with the phrase, the fact that it is often used by progressive Christians may be off-putting, either because of the progressivism on one side or the Christianity on the other.
And yet I’ve decided to use it anyway, because once you know what Beloved Community means, I believe you’ll love it too. And I hope you’re going to want to help us build it.
The Beloved Community is modern phrasing for an ancient dream, something people have been striving after for millenia. That is, a plentiful and prosperous society where people have achieved such peace within themselves and toward each other that there are no wars, no factions, no violence and no poverty. Everyone deals justly with their neighbor. No-one is marginalized. Each person is precious, contributing according to capacity, and sharing equally in the bounties of the Earth.
Excepting tyrants and demagogues, it’s something almost all of us long for. And even the tyrants and the demagogues pay homage to the idea, reeling us in with promises that they’re going to lead us and our loved ones there, if we just do what they say and defeat this or that enemy that stands in the way. But it hasn’t worked that way and despite our common longing and our concerted efforts over the span of human society, we continue to fall short. It seems like we are more at odds with each other today than we were just a decade ago, and we have become so preoccupied with defending ourselves and people like us that it’s hard to keep space in our hearts for the dream of Beloved Community.
But keep it we can, and build it too. We just need to change our ways of going about it.
The way I see it, today’s culture wars are really about different groups trying to achieve cultural dominance so they can build Beloved Community. All sides are sure they know the path to peace. They just need to get the upper hand, so they can move society there. But we have learned in thousands of years of striving that you can’t build unity, belonging and good will by trying to dominate, shouting down your opponents, taking up arms or driving them out. Doing so just creates bitterness and oppression, alienating us from each other and locking us in an endless cycle of violence.
Neither can you build universal harmony by just getting everybody to abandon (or keep quiet) their differences, their convictions and their ideals. When individual conscience is denigrated and deeply held beliefs are chased from the public square, we are in danger of losing our Why. If we turn our backs on the transcendent -- that which is bigger than us, lifts our vision higher and motivates our forward movement -- then we lose the glue that holds us together. We lose our reasons for digging deeper than our passing fancies. That’s a road to isolation and apathy, not peace.
It was in a time of enormous tension and division, like ours, that Martin Luther King started using the language of Beloved Community. While refusing to give in to pressure to walk small, to give up on true equality and content himself with limited gains for Blacks, he also called on his people to avoid domination, to keep their hands clean and their hearts kind. This, even while they were being brutalized for daring to claim racial equality. “[T]he aftermath of violence is bitterness;” he warned. “The aftermath of non-violence is the creation of the beloved community; the aftermath of non-violence is redemption and reconciliation. This is a method that seeks to transform and to redeem, and win the friendship of the opponent, and make it possible for men to live together as brothers in a community, and not continually live with bitterness and friction” (MLK, “Justice Without Violence,” April 3, 1957).
In that spirit, Summit Stages seeks to build Beloved Community by helping people of good will to reach for the best within themselves while also listening deeply to others of good will, whom they’ve seen as opponents, in order to understand and value the best in them. We will do this through both our products and our processes.
Our products will be world-class musicals that lift our vision and unite our hearts. Can musicals really do that? Absolutely! Les Miserables and Fiddler on the Roof are two excellent examples of musicals that already can and do.
Les Miserables leads us through the story of Jean Valjean, an angry, disenfranchised convict whose redemption begins when Bishop Myriel, his benefactor-turned-victim, both forgives his theft and prevents his being re-arrested. The bishop sees him, not as a thief, but as a brother, capable of goodness, beloved of God. Valjean spends the rest of his life striving to live up to the bishop’s trust. He struggles with his baser inclinations. He chooses, again and again, to reach deeper, show kindness to those who revile him, and pass on the gift that the bishop gave him. Sometimes, his gift is rejected or turned against him. He continues striving to live in generosity and mercy anyway. For myself, this story burns itself into my consciousness. Put to music, it becomes unforgettable. It’s always there, somewhere in the back of my mind, inviting me to reach for my better self, and to treat my enemies in a way that could turn them into friends.
Fiddler on the Roof introduces us to the inner world and family life of Tevye, a peasant Jew. A devoted father, he struggles to provide for his large family while devoutly complaining to God about his lot in life. His identity is deeply connected to the traditions that have governed every aspect of life in his community for generations. He lives in a time of change, when he needs to adapt or lose everything. But he also needs to hold fast to the culture and faith that define him. Finding the balance is difficult, awkward, and sometimes agony. It is love for his daughters and a longing for their happiness that first impels him to create some wiggle room in the traditions that bind them. Then there comes a point where he doesn’t know how he can hold onto himself and give what is asked.
As a Christian, I find the way this musical affects me to be extraordinary. I am brought so fully into this father’s world that I mourn when his daughter elopes to marry in the Russian Orthodox Church. Tevye’s pain feels fully justified, even though from my perspective, conversion to Christianity is far from a tragedy. A musical that causes us to feel somebody else’s pain over what would seem a triumph to us is building Beloved Community. When their pain becomes ours, we are becoming one and our tiny part of the world is moving closer to peace.
Another thing that I love about Fiddler is that, although Tevye and his community are persecuted and driven out by Christians, all the Christians whose names we know are portrayed sympathetically. This is stunning, given all that Jews have suffered at the hands of Christains. It helps me look for the humanity in those who wrong me.
Summit Stages is about creating and promoting these kinds of musicals that lift our vision higher and unite our hearts across divides. Audiences who come to see them will leave feeling inspired, valued and better connected to humanity. Casts and crews that put them on will be affected even more powerfully. The messages of their productions and their music will have become a part of them, beckoning them to love themselves, their neighbors, and even their opponents, for the rest of their lives. That’s how we’ll build Beloved Community with our product.
And how will we ensure that our musicals have such an effect? By our processes. We are a collaborative community, dedicated to seeking after personal discoveries and over-arching truths, to listening to each other long enough to get to understanding and then telling shared stories that turn our differences into harmony. We will offer training in nonviolent communication and tools, like templates for collaborative conversations, that help us get beyond our entrenched positions to our common dreams. And we will hold annual contests that encourage our playwrights and composers to collaborate across divides.
We will also offer support to directors and producers who want to maximize the positive impact of our plays on their cast and crew. We’ll share our successes and our challenges and work together to build Beloved Community with all of those who are putting on our musicals.
That’s the vision. I hope you’ll help us bring it into reality!
If this vision calls to you, would you please forward this post to somebody else you think might want to join us?
And please message info@summitstages.org with tips about great stories that need to be brought to the stage, or someone who should be profiled in our newsletter.
Finally, if you have not already done so, please consider subscribing to our weekly update here.
See you next week!
Rebecca Burnham
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