The healing minority

Image: Microsoft Copilot

The late British historian Arnold Toynbee coined the term "creative minority" in reference to those members of a society whose insights give rise to growth and progress over time. Similarly, Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor points to creative thinkers whose ideas give rise to what he calls a "social imaginary" Pioneers of foundational ideas about society in the early modern period--think of figures like Hugo Grotius and John Locke--influence others who in turn shape societies.

I draw on the work of Bernard Lonergan, who was deeply influenced by Toybee's ideas and who invokes the term "creative minority" in several places in his writings. One of those places is in a 1975 lecture at the Thomas More Institute in Montreal, published as "Healing and Creating in History." I draw from that lecture in arguing for a healing minority.

A civic spirituality, as I am calling it, is constituted by practices which orient us toward doing good in the face of evil, of seeking the good of others, of building where there is destruction, of offering hope where there is darkness.

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