What’s Love Got to Do With It? Was Mr. Rogers on to Something? Do You Know Your Neighbor?

In Genesis 2:18, the very first thing God declares “not good” in all of creation is human isolation. The belief that human beings need community is one of the great shared convictions of the world’s religious and moral traditions. And it should come as no surprise that science agrees. In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General warned that lacking social connection can be as damaging to health as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day.

What exactly has happened? Do you know? Using personal and documented cultural observation, we’ll map the changes in community over time and identify the surprising causes in today’s social climate. This first session lays the groundwork for not just the importance, but the fundamental need, for rich “social capital” to provide human flourishing.