24 Essays in Anarchism and Religion: Volume 1
was a general tendency to treat the idea of exemplarity metaphor-
ically, to see in exceptional behaviour a moral lesson perhaps,
but also the presence of something which, for the average person,
was unreachably divine. As Christ began to be conceptualized less
as an impossibly exalted, quasi-supernatural figure and more as
the most perfect human being who ever lived, the idea that oth-
er human beings could live in “imitation” of Him became more
influential. Figures like Saint Francis of Assisi adopted a more lit-
eral interpretation of what it meant to “imitate” Christ, aspiring
not only to live up to His moral vision, but to replicate His vol-
untary poverty and His translation of neighbourly love into an
active principle manifested in an ongoing commitment to good
works. The godliness of Francis and those he himself inspired was
expressed in a consistent and all-consuming pattern of life.^16
Aside from what has already been canvassed in this necessarily
brief overview, there are three further things to note about the
Christian exemplum before assessing the way it was taken up by
the Catholic Worker. First of all, the moral quality of Christian
exemplarity was central—Christian exempla united not just uni-
versal and particular (as a more technical definition of exemplum
might connote) but “ought” and “is.” They fit that category of ex-
emplarity identified by the critical theorist Alessandro Ferrara as
overcoming the “dichotomic view of our world as split between
facts and values, facts and norms, Sein and Sollen, is and ought.”
Exemplars, from this perspective, are “entities, material or sym-
bolic, that are as they should be, atoms of reconciliation where is
and ought merge and, in so doing, liberate an energy that sparks
our imagination.”^17 Secondly, it is important to note that within
mainstream Christianity the notion of the “imitation” of Christ
was invoked not as a binding moral commandment so much as
an exemplary ideal. Understandings of just how relevant such
an ideal was to everyday people evolved over the course of time.
Isolated groups always existed in which individuals attempted
to attain a state of Christ-like “perfection,” but only gradually
did similarly ambitious movements arise (like the Franciscans)
that were strong enough to carve out an officially recognized
place within the Church. Were we to carry the story of Christian
exemplarity beyond the Catholic tradition specifically and into the