The Communitarian Dream
Objectives:
Skills: Demonstrate your skills in reasoning, argumentation, and written communication
Knowledge: Demonstrate how well you’ve assimilated and understood the historical concepts of communitarianism and your ability to engage in critical dialogue (in written form) about the idea and its consequences
Instructions:
Write a 3 page essay that addresses one of the topics below. Use normal fonts and margins; university-level standard American English is expected (grammar, spelling, punctuation).
Appropriate citation is required. Use MLA, APA, or Chicago style.
Cullen, Intro and Chapter 1
M. Bush & R. Bush, “The Shifting Terrain Makes Clear the Tensions in the American Dream”
Winthrop, “A Model for Christian Charity” (1620)
TOPICS:
The earliest ideal of life in North America (before the United States existed) was that of creating a community worth living in. Echoes of this ideal continue to be heard even today in the 21st century.
Choose one of the following:
a) Explain how systems of hierarchy and assumptions about social status (status differences) inform and support Winthrop’s conception of a “Christian community” in Puritan New England.
How do underlying systems of hierarchy effect his moral argument? In other words, is his moral argument still compelling or workable when hierarchy is accounted for?
b) Although few Americans today would point to communitarianism as their American Dream, most Americans do report today a strong sense of isolation and alienation, and a strong desire to belong and be recognized and understood by society and by their communities. Explain how social status and hierarchies in the United States today prevents us from taking Winthrop’s ideal community seriously as a goal for our current American Dream.
Does his argument on accepting difference and “divinely ordained” differences have purchase in today’s American culture? Why or why not?
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