APPENDIX I 

 THE FORUM AND THE COMMUNITY 1 



The rise of the community is one of the outstanding social 

 phenomena of our time, not yet generally discerned, much less 

 accepted as a working basis of social reconstruction. 



THE FIRST COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION 



The forum is the first distinctively community organization 

 emerging out of the reconstructive chaos through which yes- 

 terday is becoming to-morrow. Isms no longer cohere; sec- 

 tarianism is a spent force ; dogma is dead ; and the caste castles 

 of yesterday are everywhere capitulating to democracy. So- 

 ciety is being reconstructed in terms of human essentials, and in 

 many instances the forum has already become not only human- 

 izing but human. 



A COMMUNITY CRUCIBLE 



Because of this, the forum is a community crucible, in which 

 Jew and Gentile have offensive Judaism and defensive Gen- 

 tility burned away; in which the ignorantly bound are made 

 intelligently free, and the coldly free are warmed to com- 

 munity service. 



A COMMUNITY SCHOOL 



These things happen because the forum is a community 

 school. Educated people are beginning to be socially intelli- 

 gent, or at least to understand that social ignorance is the un- 

 pardonable sin against the Holy Spirit that indwells in all life 

 as well as over-broods it. In the forum, knowledge is in- 



1 By Harold Marshall, of the Community Forum Movement. 



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