What is a Gathering?

BETTER HOUR GATHERINGS can take many forms. You can show the new television documentary THE BETTER HOUR: The Legacy of William Wilberforce on DVD at your high school, college, house of worship or public library. You can invite others from your community to a large screening with directed group discussion for the purpose of including many different kinds of people. Or you can host smaller, less formal gatherings over lunch with friends or a seated dinner party in your home.

All venues can be followed with engaging discussion by using the film discussion guide we have created (coming soon). You may also develop a six-to-eight-week book club, using Creating the Better Hour: Lessons from William Wilberforce, which has discussion questions at the end of every chapter. (Chapters 1-6 with 12 and 13 are good for short term discussion groups.)

The resources you need--DVD, book, plus audio series--are available here.

Engaging Others About the Meaning of Life

During the discussion, it is important to reflect on and include life issues. Who are we? Why are we here on earth? What is the purpose of our life? These questions, often called “the big questions in life” go to the very core of our identity and our purpose in life. Socrates in his trial noted that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” From that time, there has been people that have found that this has been an important discussion. Rhetoric and debate have always been central to basic education for young people. From the 5th century B.C. up until the late 18th century, rhetoric, the art of speaking and persuading, was generally a separate subject studied at school. In Roman times, students would copy a speech of a famous person in their wax note books, go home and memorize the speech and present it orally the next day.

Studying great ideas including life issues, presenting them and debating them has a long tradition up until recent times. In his speech for Harvard commencement, Alexander Solzhenitsyn pointed out how in the contemporary world “the Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party and of course in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society.” Solzhenitsyn then lays out “the well being in the life of Western society has revealed its pernicious mask” by focusing on individual rights and forgetting about the importance of human obligations to the community and community well being. Social conflicts resolve themselves around the letter of the law. “Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space.” The solution Solzhenitsyn sees is to “rise to new heights of vision, to a new level of life where our physical nature will not be cursed as in the Middle Ages, but, even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon as in the Modern era. This ascension will be similar to climbing onto the next anthropologic stage. No one on earth has any other way left but – upward.”

How do we engage in this upward lift? Solzhenitsyn suggest by asking questions such as “Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man’s life and society’s activities have to be determined by material expansion in the first place? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our spiritual integrity?”

All around us are various issues, we need to have a place to engage in conversation with each other and in action in creating “THE BETTER HOUR.” Drawing on this need and the traditions that addressed these issues throughout the ages, we can create THE BETTER HOUR and leave the world better than when we found it.

Shalom

While the Hebrew word “Shalom” is most often translated into English as “Peace”, it really means “wholeness” or “the way things are supposed to be.” Fabric as it is worn wears out. Human beings physically wear out during life. Shalom is restoring the things to the way they should be. This means reweaving fabric, including the fabric of society. Human beings are promised in the Bible physical restoration where in the afterlife there is no death, no pain, no suffering. In the Bible, God is restoring everything, making all things new, NOT all new things.

Restoring the Fabric of Society

BETTER HOUR GATHERINGS have the opportunity to restore the fabric of society and thus work cooperatively in creating Biblical Shalom. It is important to keep this in mind during the discussions and to propose practical applications towards restoration.

Groups may want to use other resources for discussion such as those below from Trinity Forum which have been time tested with groups in North America, Europe and Asia. Alternatively, the host can invite participants to send in advance questions on culture, theology, political-economy, philosophy and history. The host selects four to five different topics for conversation.

The guidelines are:

1. One person presents a topic and some background for discussion. Those around the table participate by either commenting on or asking questions about the topic under discussion. The host insures that no one person dominates the conversation.
2. The topics of discussion are limited to culture, theology, political-economy, philosophy and history
3. All conversations are governed by “The Devil’s Rule”, which means that anyone can assume the devil’s advocate position on any topic without announcing it
4. All participants are expected to honor one another above themselves and the point of each gathering is mutual improvement
5. All participants must engage themselves in the conversation and dialogue. Apathy about anything is out of order.

In a similar fashion to Ben Franklin’s Junto Gatherings described below, the host begins with an overview of Better Hour Gatherings tradition and principles and selects which participants will offer propositional statements. Each proposition must deal with one of the five topics of discussion. Each proposition must be a statement of belief which includes a basic rationale. The group interacts with each “truth proposition” for 15 minutes. The host provides context where appropriate during the discussion and when the timer alarm sounds, the host offers concluding remarks and moves to the next topic. This continues for about two hours for an average of 6 to 8 discussions per gathering. The dialogues are facilitated around the classical Greek method by asking:

1. how one defines their terms
2. how they know what they propose is true
3. why it matters

Food platters and drinks typically rotate around the table at the end of each round.

Historic Group Models

Ben Franklin and the Junto Society

Junto Society (pronounced who-n-toe from the Latin word meaning “meeting”) founded by Benjamin Franklin was a place where such questions were asked. In 1727, Benjamin Franklin who loved to sit down with friends and acquaintances and have long conversations convinced a group of 12 of his friends to form a club for mutual improvement. It was a group of people drawn from diverse occupations and backgrounds, yet shared the same spirit of inquiry and desire to improve themselves, their community and assist others. The initial members were printers, surveyors, a mathematician, merchant’s clerk, a cabinetmaker, a cobbler, a wealthy gentleman who did not have to work, but had a great library.

The club met on Friday nights, first in a tavern and later in a house to discuss morals, politics and natural philosophy and scientific topics of the day. The group lasted for 40 years and eventually became the nucleus of the American Philosophical Society.

While not motivated uniquely by matters of faith as that of William Wilberforce’s Clapham group, Franklin’s Junto was a private forum for discussion and an instrument for leading public opinion, while incorporating discussions of matters of faith among one issue of many. One of the functions of the group was to brainstorm publicly beneficial ideas.

Franklin described the Junto this way in his Autobiography

I should have mentioned before, that, in the autumn of the preceding year, [1727] I had formed most of my ingenious acquaintance into a club of mutual improvement, which we called the JUNTO; we met on Friday evenings. The rules that I drew up required that every member, in his turn, should produce one or more queries on any point of Morals, Politics, or Natural Philosophy, to be discuss'd by the company; and once in three months produce and read an essay of his own writing, on any subject he pleased. Our debates were to be under the direction of a president, and to be conducted in the sincere spirit of inquiry after truth, without fondness for dispute or desire of victory; and to prevent warmth, all expressions of positive opinions, or direct contradiction, were after some time made contraband, and prohibited under small pecuniary penalties.

The Friday evening meetings were organized around a series of questions that Franklin devised covering a range or intellectual, personal, business and community topics. These questions were a starting point for discussion and community action.

The results of the original Junto are still evident today as an integral part of American society. The Junto gave us our first public library, volunteer fire departments, the first public hospital, police departments, improved security (night watchman), paved streets and the University of Pennsylvania.

C.S. Lewis and the Inklings

In the 20th century, a group of scholars at Oxford University formed a similar group of friends to discuss ideas called “The Inklings.” The literary works of C.S. Lewis, J.R. Tolkein and Dorothy Sayers were discussed and debated in their draft stages. The bottom line of each of these groups was to improve the world around them.

Learn How to Start a Gathering.