Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself: Community Formation and the Church

The church has played a central role in establishing and maintaining, as well as undermining, communities throughout modern history. In this paper we explore some of the mechanisms through which the church can coordinate individual behavior to achieve improvements in individual and social welfare, and reveal the ways in which the church can fail, causing established communities to founder or dissolve. In our model inherently religious individuals may become trapped in a secular equilibrium that is strictly dominated by a religious equilibrium in which individuals’ actions bestow positive external benefits on other community members. The church, via its teachings, clergy and ministries, reveals the benefits of coordinated behavior, both in this world and in the world to come, and the costs of uncoordinated behavior, separation from God and one’s fellow man, to induce community members to take actions which are both individually and socially beneficial. External forces, such as the state and secular society, and internal forces, such as doctrinal disputes, inconsistencies, and incoherence, can reduce a church’s ability to coordinate, to the detriment of all