Intentional Communities in the United States and Canada—Current Movement

Difficulties in Counting and Identifying Intentional Communities

For a variety of reasons, it is difficult to draw firm conclusions about what is happening in the communities movement today, and how that compares with prior trends. Only since 1986, with the revitalization of the Fellowship for Intentional Community (FIC), has there been an ecumenical organization attempting to collect and maintain information about all North American intentional communities. Thus, communities today are almost certainly better reported than they were prior to 1986. It should also be noted that the people who comprise the FIC are mostly from the secular side of the movement. That is, they come from groups that do not make spiritual orientation a condition of membership. Both because it is easier to collect information from those one knows best, and because spiritual groups tend to consider their community life secondary to their spiritual pursuit, there is reason to believe that spiritual groups are undercounted. Beyond that, intentional communities can be sorted into those that include outreach to the wider culture as part of their purpose and those that are focused more internally. Naturally, the former are more motivated than the latter to answer inquiries about what they are doing and to be included in surveys.

It is hard to say exactly when a group house becomes an intentional community, or whether a retreat center is more a business or a community. (Harbin Hot Springs in California, High Wind in Wisconsin, and Breitenbush in Oregon are examples of groups that have struggled with their community identity.) Some groups dance back and forth between the two, and whether they are counted in any given community survey depends a greatly on when they were asked and which individual responded.

Further, people mean very different things when they use the label “intentional community.” There are groups such as Ganas in New York where the norm for many years has been to meet for five or more hours every day to explore interpersonal and group dynamics; [Page 759]there are other groups that gather only once a month for a potluck dinner. Obviously the level of engagement and expectations about working and living together are altogether different in these two examples, yet both identify as intentional communities.

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