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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A former Pennsylvanian now living in Belize, Karper was one of a few hundred people who gathered in June in east Tennessee for a weekend of fellowship, learning, and living upstream—against the flow of a society addicted to upgrading and upward mobility. The P.A.P.A. Festival (People Against Poverty and Apathy) provided a lush and relaxed space in which friends and fellow monastics did their best to create a model community—if just for a weekend—of sharing and dancing, singing and discussing. Groups of people gathered in the mornings and afternoons for “learning sessions,” finding the shade of trees an appropriate setting for topics as diverse as “The Philosophy of Food” and “The Theology of Nomadism.” A large barn was transformed into a bartering village—an almost entirely cash-free environment where people traded necklaces for posters, T-shirts for CDs—and a makeshift stage became a platform for rock bands and worship. But what’s so “new” about a gathering and a movement that seem to meld the style of a Grateful Dead show with the sensibility of St. Francis? “I don’t think we’re doing anything that’s unprecedented,” says Chris Haw, a founding member of the Camden House in New Jersey, an intentional community of young people that has become something of a model for new monasticism. “This is more a transitional people. This is a people who are coming out of a certain kind of thing that has been handed down and it’s forming into something new.” What Haw sees his friends and him “coming out of ” are those mainstream and evangelical institutions that seem determined to separate the flesh from the spirit and elevate the latter into a position of primacy. Add to this the recent marriage of evangelicalism with the Bush administration’s foreign policy, and the seemingly blind eye many conservative Christians have cast on environmental issues, and you have a recipe for dissent. Yet monastics such as Haw aren’t finished with the church. He sounds more reformer than revolutionary. “We very much love the church, but we hurt because it is tied with the destructive and violent ways of the world,” he says. “A lot of the time we all feel like new monasticism is in reaction to the church or opposed to the church, but it would be great to see this as part of the church and in service of the church.” And perhaps American Christianity is undergoing changes that will accommodate a generation focusing on the inner cities and fed up with the status quo. It is difficult to pick up a current newspaper without reading articles covering major shifts in conservative churches. According to Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr., “New breezes are blowing through the broader evangelical Christian world.” Dionne writes of a fresh interest in justice among evangelicals, and an increasing concern over issues of poverty, HIV/AIDS, and human
New monasticism is producing a grassroots ecumenism and a prophetic witness within the North American church. It is diverse in form but characterized by the following marks: 1. Relocation to the abandoned places of Empire. 2. Sharing economic resources with fellow community members and the needy among us. 3. Hospitality to the stranger 4. Lament for racial divisions within the church and our communities combined with the active pursuit of a just reconciliation. 5. Humble submission to Christ’s body, the church. 6. Intentional formation in the way of Christ and the rule of the community along the lines of the old novitiate. 7. Nurturing common life among members of intentional community. 8. Support for celibate singles alongside monogamous married couples and their children. 9. Geographical proximity to community members who share a common rule of life. 10. Care for the plot of God’s earth given to us along with support of our local economies. 11. Peacemaking in the midst of violence and conflict resolution within communities along the lines of Matthew 18. 12. Commitment to a disciplined contemplative life. Learn more at newmonasticism.org.
trafficking. “The evangelical world is going through a quiet evolution as believers reflect on the perils of partisanship and ideology and their reasons for being Christian,” writes Dionne. “This will probably affect the nation’s political life, but it will certainly affect the country’s spiritual direction” (“A Shift Among Evangelicals,” June 16, 2006). Haw, Wilson-Hartgrove, and many others are hoping that the “new breezes” billowing in the sails of the church will find a solid anchor in new monasticism. And with a generation grieving over the present state of the church, immersing themselves in St. Francis, and pushing at the periphery of what it means to follow Christ, the church could find herself headed in an entirely new (and profoundly old) direction. “I’m excited about the dialogue between our communiContinued on page 30.
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Eventually, Jim and Cara married, and two years later they had Alex. Amazingly, they asked me to be Alex’s godmother. This wasn’t a request to be a fairy godmother but the real thing—the “I’ll pray for you for the rest of your life and be there as much as I can” kind of godmother. I’d already made that commitment to one little boy and knew how it had galvanized my relationship with him and his parents. So I said yes. Jim, Cara, and I now have a tiny slice of community cemented with a permanent and shared purpose: Alex’s wellbeing. Six years ago, when this all began, I could never have predicted this outcome. And while the four of us don’t live in Camelot (our schedules are quite full and we no longer live so close to each other), the periodic tastes of the village are real—we are people who can grill out, talk about real things, connect with one another’s extended families, or just do nothing in each other’s presence and enjoy it. Maybe the final lesson in all of this, as least as far as I can see, is that community—even in an unraveling world—is possible. It just might mean starting small with something as little as a newborn, as daunting as one drug-filled street, or as vulnerable as a personal need.We might have to risk tabling our fantasies and frustrations for a while and grabbing onto whatever bricks and mortar—whatever truth and love—we can get hold of and start building. Who knows, maybe with a real God who really wants a kingdom of villages built, we will slowly see the least of us—fun-loving toddlers, that broken-down neighborhood, or a too-busy single woman— become a thousand. Maybe our small efforts will have mighty results. Maybe with God’s presence, his children really can raise a village or two. ■
Be the Village continued from page 19. For it is only God’s grace that can undergird and enable the crucial work of forgiving—and replacing—dropped bricks or sloppy cement. Without it, our attempts might be in vain. With it, hope is real. Of course, willingness to rely on God’s help depends on believing that God actually yearns to be in this whole villagebuilding thing with us. That’s a faith gamble, but I think it’s a good bet. If the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit live together in some kind of divinely mysterious community, it makes sense that this triune God would long for something similar for his children. Given who God is, I think it’s safe to trust that we will be supported in our wee attempts to build God-pleasing villages. One of the most observable, if small, examples of this building process in my adult, still-single life occurred over the last six years here in D.C. It started off with a friend’s brother moving to town. Jim was (and still is) handsome, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he might be the knight sent to rescue this princess. But he wasn’t interested in me that way, and when I’d ask God about it, all I’d hear was “Be kind and be real.” So I committed to relinquish my agenda (not easy to do, but possible), respect God’s request, and practice being kind and real, whatever that meant. It turned out to mean playing some tennis, having some honest talks over Thai food, and offering genuinely mutual encouragement. Over time, Jim started dating Cara, and she and I subsequently got to know each other. What was amazing was that Cara’s and my interactions became part of a larger conversation she was having with Jim and a few others about God. Somewhere along the line, Cara ended up embracing a faith in Jesus. I remember feeling awed knowing I’d been a part of her process. The reality of her newfound faith was so much more real and life-giving than my initial empty speculations about a rescuing knight.
Connally Gilliam (connallyg.com) works in Washington, D.C., with the U.S. Navigators as a “faith-based life coach” among 20somethings. She is the author of Revelations of a Single Woman: Loving the Life I Didn’t Expect (Tyndale House Publishers, 2006), from which she adapted this article.
The New Monasticism continued from page 21.
country. It gives me hope that we really can be the people of God together in America.” ■
ties and more conventional congregations,” says WilsonHartgrove. “I’m excited that so many young people are energized to be the church they long for. That they’re moving beyond cynicism to believe that it really is God’s good pleasure to give us the Kingdom. I’m excited to see new monastic communities springing up in cities all across the
A regular contributor to PRISM magazine, Joshua Andersen has operated a bakery in Albania, won the Tennessee state tree-climbing championship, done marketing for Sojourners magazine, traveled through 28 countries with a backpack, and is now a full-time student at Eastern University in St. Davids, Pa.
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