Local catholicity: The bodies and places where Jesus is (found) 1

Abstract

Inspired by Stanley Hauerwas and building on the lives and writings of Wendell Berry and William Carlos Williams, this article argues that locality and catholicity incorporate one another and must account for one another if Jesus is to be made visible in the world. A locally catholic vision of the church emphasizes the visible, gathered church as a “placed people,” which holds in appropriate tension the local and the catholic without retreating to isolated places or escaping to a disembodied universal conception of the church. Intercessory prayer and the fellowship hall windows of Highland Baptist Church, Louisville, Kentucky are offered as two examples of how local catholicity is attentive to the faith lived locally and to the broader Christian tradition.