book87 Putnam deals with many different companies and organisations that have increased American social capital stocks through a whole variety of different ways. He says, ‘The benefits of social capital spill beyond the people immediately involved in the network and can be used for many other purposes…’88 ‘Each of the stories in Better Together illustrates the extraordinary power and subtlety of social networks for enabling people to improve their lives.’89 Two excellent examples Putnam uses are Saddleback Church in California and All Saints Church in Pasadena. ‘Saddleback is a highly successful evangelical Christian megachurch, with some 45,000 members and a sprawling complex of facilities on 74 acres of land. Yet it manages to turn its vast crowd of “seekers” into a genuine congregation, and then into committed, core members, by fostering real community through intentionally organizing congregants into hundreds of small groups.’90 At All Saints Church, a very different, theologically liberal Episcopalian Church, the ‘…staff also adopted the small-group idea as part of their growth plan, recognising that pastoral care and personal connection would depend more on the small communities within the greater community as the church got bigger.’91
The increases in mobility and technological advances that have brought about the network society that we are a part of are here to stay. Robert Putnam and his colleagues are seeking to further the positive aspects of network society and it is of vital importance that the church grasps hold of these and not run from them. If the Church of England wants to have a voice in network society, to speak prophetically into the context, it will need to take seriously the above points of view and particularly these words of Manuel Castells. ‘What I call the ‘network society’ is simply a society made up of networks. It’s a society in which everything that counts, the economy, technology, politics, the media, social movements and interpersonal relations, is increasingly made out of information-technology powered networks.’92 87
Putnam, Robert D. and Lewis M. Feldstein, Better Together (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003) 88 Putnam, Robert D. and Lewis M. Feldstein, Better Together p. 269 89 www.bettertogether.org/pressrelease.htm accessed 11/05/04 90 http://www.bettertogether.org/pressrelease.htm 91 Putnam, Robert D. and Lewis M. Feldstein, Better Together p. 136-137 92 Castells, M. and B. Catterall, The Making of the Network Society (London: Institute of Contemporary Arts, 2001) p. 8
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