ORTHODOX AND AVANT-GARDE, TRADITIONAL AND TATTOOED BY JOSH ANDERSEN
a great gift,” says Wilson-Hartgrove. “But it has looked different in different times. ‘new monasticism’ is a way of saying, ‘Same God, new time.’” And the times—as Bob Dylan reminds us—they are a-changin’. Many traditional churches in the West are emptying of younger generations. Countless kids growing up in the institutional church are finding the walls of the buildings restrictive and irrelevant. Yet in much the same spirit as the Jesus movement of the ’60s and ’70s, new monasticism is rattling the well-worn images of what following Christ can look like. It is a movement that is leading young people directly into urban environments where they are setting up communities committed to principles such as hospitality, simplicity, and peacemaking. “It gives me hope for the word church,” says Jes Karper of the movement. “I’ve kind of lost hope for a lot of institutions.” Bearded, guitar-toting, wearing well-worn T-shirt and sandals, Karper describes his new monastic friends as pioneers in reorienting the church toward the true gospel—one in which communal living, environmental stewardship, living and working among the poor, and the classical spiritual disciplines are central. Of his friends Karper says, “It’s our hands and eyes and mouths and existence on this planet that are capable of either creating heaven or hell right here.”
The term “new” is the go-to marketing word of our consumer culture.Want to increase sales? Slap “new” on the label. Indeed, the last few decades have brought us an avalanche of products, ideas, and movements that all promise to be the next big thing, the new and improved. So exploring the world of “new monasticism” begins with a measure of trepidation, even of cynicism. “What was so wrong with the old monasticism?” one asks. “Does the ancient tradition of quiet devotion and asceticism really need a sprucing up? Yes. And no. “We’re not trying to be different, but rather to live up to the best of our tradition,” says Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, a founding member of the Rutba House in Durham, N.C., an intentional community committed to racial reconciliation and simple living. “What the monastic tradition knows well is that God always wants to do a new thing. That’s something totally different from the market economy’s obsession with ‘new.’ It has to do with incarnation.” Wilson-Hartgrove says that God is always in the process of meeting a new generation in its particular cultural and social setting.The monastic tradition is one way he sees God consistently calling the church, throughout history, to her true vocation. “That 1500-year tradition of communities devoted to Christ in stability, obedience, and the monastic way of life is
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