New 'monastic' movements. Can they be counter-cultural?
Gamma Gamaliel
Shipmate
in Purgatory
Here's a thread about 'neo-monastic movements' but taking a different tack to one I've taken in the past.
Bear with me a moment ...
It's been mentioned on the 'dissent' thread that the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience taken by RC (and other) monastics can have a counter-cultural element.
We could argue that this aspect is obviated to some extent if it's hidden away in a monastery or convent or because it's all quite exotic monks and nuns are seen 'differently' to other people and it doesn't pose any 'challenge' to the status quo as it were - if indeed providing some kind of 'challenge is part of the point of it.
Some would argue that it is. Others that it isn't.
I've been impressed by monks and nuns I've met, but I've also met some eccentric and frankly quite nutty ones.
I've also been impressed by 'third-order' lay people I've met who are attached to a religious order of some kind.
I'm also intrigued by more recent Protestant attempts to set up 'distributed' or 'neo-monastic' orders following a 'rule of life' and sharing common values and expressing these things in the context of their own traditions.
My question is whether these can or should express something 'counter-cultural' or whether they can simply become a hobby, club or 'lifestyle choice' thing in a similar way to sports or special interest groups be they train-spotters, water-colourists or historical re-enactors?
Not that I'm knocking any of those activities.
Personal 'spiritual formation' should have some kind of impact or influence on how we live of course.
What role do people think these newer groups have, or could potentially have, in the overall scheme of things?
Bear with me a moment ...
It's been mentioned on the 'dissent' thread that the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience taken by RC (and other) monastics can have a counter-cultural element.
We could argue that this aspect is obviated to some extent if it's hidden away in a monastery or convent or because it's all quite exotic monks and nuns are seen 'differently' to other people and it doesn't pose any 'challenge' to the status quo as it were - if indeed providing some kind of 'challenge is part of the point of it.
Some would argue that it is. Others that it isn't.
I've been impressed by monks and nuns I've met, but I've also met some eccentric and frankly quite nutty ones.
I've also been impressed by 'third-order' lay people I've met who are attached to a religious order of some kind.
I'm also intrigued by more recent Protestant attempts to set up 'distributed' or 'neo-monastic' orders following a 'rule of life' and sharing common values and expressing these things in the context of their own traditions.
My question is whether these can or should express something 'counter-cultural' or whether they can simply become a hobby, club or 'lifestyle choice' thing in a similar way to sports or special interest groups be they train-spotters, water-colourists or historical re-enactors?
Not that I'm knocking any of those activities.
Personal 'spiritual formation' should have some kind of impact or influence on how we live of course.
What role do people think these newer groups have, or could potentially have, in the overall scheme of things?
Comments
Next question.
You haven't answered the question as to what 'role' groups like this should play in the wider scheme of things.
Within Orthodoxy there's a lot of talk about monasticism and its importance. You'll hear people say that Orthodoxy will only really 'take off' in the West once more monasteries are established.
Getting them off the ground is easier said than done.
RC monasteries and religious houses are struggling.
Do the newer Protestant neo-monastic movements provide a model we can all learn from?
How can they contribute to the wider scene? What can we expect from them and what can they teach us?
I was struck by an observation at an ecumenical conference some years ago that very few of the Anglican religious orders that emerged from the Oxford Movement and Anglo-Catholic 'revival' lasted beyond the lifetimes of their founders.
I've read accounts of some of these orders and it's interesting how they all seemed to struggle to perpetuate themselves once they'd become established.
I think the same issue faced/faces new independent evangelical groups or new Orthodox parishes so it's not just something that applies to new religious orders.
Some RC religious orders have remarkable longevity, although that in and of itself is no guarantee of effectiveness - although I think that some monastic principles are more sustainable.
I'm thinking aloud here, but I'm wondering whether hybrid models or the more 'distributed' forms of Protestant 'neo-monasticism' may offer ways of 'grounding' such communities into a wider context for the benefit of each.
It may help if I provide this link to New Communities, of which there are several founded in the UK.
From the above link they do have some common characteristics. I don’t know much about many of them but I’ll take the word of the link!
These are certainly features of the Northumbria Community (NC).
The NC neither requires folks to be members of any denomination nor does it require friends to leave any denomination they belong to. It is dispersed and international, though it does have a central location (in Northumberland).
Personally I was drawn to it because I had this growing sense that I was missing something. I had a vague sense that it had something to do with contemplation. I met one of the founders (Roy Searle) at a conference in 2000 and was sufficiently intrigued by his presentation at that conference to find out more. I’ve found the association to be very helpful.
As well as the regular daily rythms, I have found the values of the NC to be illuminating. I’ll mention a few.
1. Availability and vulnerability.
2. A deep respect for the value of questioning (called the heretical imperative). Faith is seen as being for all of us “in draft form”.
3. A way of life not a formula.
4. Alone and together, kept together as a dispersed community by shared rhythms and values.
It expresses its way of life in three questions.
Who is it that you seek?
How then shall we live?
How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?
I’ll let others judge how counter-cultural it is. I guess I’ve always been a dissenter, which may be why I’ve found it a good second home in addition to my local church.
Is that it? We thought.
Perhaps we caught it on an 'off' day.
I've had some slight contact with him since and read more about the Northumbria Community and certainly regard it very positively.
I'm not sure about the 'heretical imperative' as the 'h' term is a loaded one. Questioning is fine, of course.
I think the 'contemplative' dimension is a valuable corrective or addition to Protestant activism - and both is a welcome combination.
What did I get, given “is that all there is?” I thought the values and ethos gave me confidence of finding some constructive and creative answers to the second and third questions of the way of life. How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?
Basically I’m happy to explore territory where the maps aren’t precise but provide a reasonable guide. So far the exploration has been well worth it.
I wouldn’t expect it to suit everyone.
People can't help their "diversity" or otherwise, but they can help their values. Living by different values is inherently a culturally diverse activity.
Posted in the other thread
This referred to monastic communities, not neomonastic communities.
And so I agree with you about the structural challenge they present.
So far as the neomonastics are concerned, it’s some and some.
In order to determine whether anything countercultural is going on, you first have to identify the culture that might be countered. At least where I live, there are a number of cultures co-existing with one another, sometimes placidly and sometimes not.
As for whether communities should express something countercultural (and again, once you’ve jumped the hurdle of exactly what culture is being countered), that seems to me to be getting priorities mixed up. They should be and do whatever they discern God is calling them to be and do. If what they are called to be and do involves being countercultural in some way, then that’s what they should be and do. If it what they are called to be and do doesn’t involve being countercultural in some way, then that’s that.
Is there a danger of judging a whole movement on one metric?
None of the neomonastics intend to be counter-cultural. At least none that I know.
I think Gamaliel was thinking in Christian cultural terms. Thunderbunk brought in the wider community. But I agree your general point. Which culture (or cultures) might they run counter to?
In my neck of the woods, there is a strong Christian Nationalist movement. A particular group is in the process of buying up businesses, reality property and encouraging people from outside the area who are supportive of their goals to move in.
Local congregations who are opposed to that movement are speaking out. Universalists, Episcopalian, Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterian, are taking a stand. Many of the mainline congregations are open and affirming, countering the general motif that marriage involves one man and one woman. They provide many services not offered by local governments like food banks, diaper banks, quilts for world relief and the like.
When Idaho eliminated all the "woke" diversity, equality, inclusion programs on its campuses, the common ministry house took them all on, That group is strongly supported by the same mainline congregations I have already mentioned.
I would argue one does not have to join a monastic order to be counter cultural. Simply being a Christian implies you are countercultural in some way. Christians look at the world through different eyes. They have a different motivation for life. They relate to others differently.
Now, if you are saying, this does not apply to me, or to the community I am in, then I would say maybe it is time to do some self examination.
I think perhaps when it boils down to it, “countercultural” can be so broad and have so many contextually contingent considerations as to be almost meaningless when just used on its own.
I've been doing some soul searching as to whether the way I practice my faith makes muchnog a difference to those around me. Someone was asking me about it at the amateur dramatics group the other night. They've seen me post things about Christian events I've attended. I told him how I'd become a Christian but wasn't sure whether anything I said made any sense.
It made me realise how little 'unchurched' people in society at large know about Christianity and what we believe. This chap seemed to think you had to be some kind of fundamentalist to even engage in churchy stuff at all.
So I'm wondering how we begin to bridge that gap and whether things like neo-monasticism can help us embody our faith wherever we are without withdrawing from the world and entering monasteries.
Not that I have anything against monasteries of course.
I sometimes wonder if much of contemporary Christianity - across all traditions/Traditions - is some kind of privatised 'holy club' activity, rather like Pilates or yoga or some kind of self-help and well-being practice.
How much is it affecting those around us for good?
I know that's a broader question but it was at the back of my mind when posing this one.
As far as groups like the Northumbria Community go, yes, I'd 'get' it and if I were still in a Baptist church I'd certainly consider joining.
I wouldn't join now, not because I think Protestants are icky or because I think there's something 'wrong' with the Northumbria Community, but because I think I'm running parallel with most of their values in my own practice.
If I pray the 'Hours' and follow the Orthodox rhythm and pattern of prayer I'm joining in with the whole Church as it were, in a 'distributed' kind of way.
That doesn't mean I wouldn't visit the Northumbria Community's HQ nor spend time there if I was in that area.
I quite like their liturgies, for instance.
I brought in the 'counter-cultural' issue as I was trying to think of ways of expressing these ideas in ways which go beyond the term 'dissent' which is closely allied to particular ideas of 'non-conformity' in an English and Welsh context.
I'm struggling to think of a term that doesn't suggest 1960s counter-culture nor specifically British concerns that don't apply in other contexts.
So you can see why I'm struggling to express myself adequately here.
I have to use a jargon word I’m afraid. Something I learned from 25 years in youth ministries and also talking to modern missionaries (training missionaries has moved on miles from the old 19th century imperial model).
The word is Incarnational.
Coming out of a holy huddle private language holy club involves learning to understand the culture outside your holy club.
It’s extremely challenging and can take a long time.
The best way I can describe it is to revert to a first century phrase from John’s gospel, “In the world but not of it”. Which means being actively engaged with the wider community but preserving our distinctive beliefs and values.
I agree with Gramps49 that such a way of living can be demonstrated from within mainstream churches and when it is, it is increasingly counter to the culture around us.
“How then shall we live?” Well, I think incarnationally is a major part of the answer.
Holy huddles can be dangerously exclusive. They may be necessary to protect the essentials of the faith in the Dark Ages. It’s getting darker but not quite that dark yet. Hiding away isn’t required quite yet.
Calvin didn’t try to “impose Christianity on Geneva.” Geneva was Christian long before Calvin came along. Calvin, together with the magistrates who actually governed in Geneva, sought to establish a particular interpretation of or approach to Christianity in Geneva, and in that regard he and they were more or less consistent with the approach taken by Catholics and magisterial Protestants throughout much of Europe at the time. (Prior to the Reformation, the bishop of Geneva was a prince of the Holy Roman Empire.) The idea that a ruler had the authority to dictate the religion of those he or she ruled—Cuius regio, eius religio; “whose realm, his religion”—was a given in Europe. A similar dynamic was seen in Puritan colonization in New England.
And I would say that what Christian Nationalism seeks to impose on society is not what most Christians would recognize as “Christianity.”
And absolutely @Barnabas62 also.
The Incarnation is key to everything.
I s'pose my question involves how we incarnate that faith.
The Reformers and Puritans were right to emphasise the idea of 'calling' and 'vocation' in things like trades and family life, reacting to an over-emphasis on 'religious vocation' in late medieval times.
I've met some very grounded monastics but equally a number who are literally too heavenly minded to be of any earthly use.
I've even met one who is an anti-vac conspiracy theorist.
They are an 'old' monastic not a 'neo' one.
I do warm to the idea of Protestant 'neo-monasticism' and not only because it seems like a recovery of patterns of prayer found in the older Christian traditions, but because there's an order and intentionality about it which I find attractive.
As @Barnabas62 has said though, not everyone will 'get' that. It's heart as well as head. Not that I m saying that there is anything 'wrong' with the heart of the guy who didn't 'get' it.
On the 15th May I go to spend a year living alongside a religious order. It is a traditional one. This took me by surprise but at the heart of it is the need to countercultural and oddly enough the separateness is essential.
Firstly it is a comtemplative order but I did not go to learn contemplative prayer. In my book, people who "teach" contemplative prayer are only teaching assistants and places are only providing possibilities. There is one teacher and he will decide where and how he teaches. In the end we can only make space for the fire to fall not determine the place.
So two years ago, I was basically going through the process of formalising what I had been doing for probably thirty years and formally commiting to the Single Consecrated Life when life took a sudden and unexpected change. I am not going into all the ins and outs but only the one relevant.
I have a training in the social science and am used to the idea of people being interlocuted by society in specific roles. I felt quite strongly at the start of 2025 that all society was doing was interlocuting me as a financial pot of money to be mined. There were reasons: situation in work, both personal and across the whole of my employer, changes I sensed in social media and also the situation in United States. A deterioration in a personal relationship did not help.
Out of that was forged that the belief that I as a Christian:
- Had to stand for treating people primarily as children of God
- in order to do this needed to be in a community committed to do this
I felt strongly that I could no longer do it alone. I needed to be with others in a close way struggling to do that.It is why I said the mother superior last week that I came not to learn how to pray but to learn how to love.
It is the commitment to do that, but also the knowledge I cannot do it alone that drives me.
I can't speak for anyone else here @Jengie Jon but I feel the visceral integrity and authenticity of that.
No need to apologise for the 'personal' nature of the post. I feel privileged that you felt able to share it with us here.
I like what you say about about not 'directing' the fire but simply preparing a place where it may fall.
Let the fire fall ...
🙏🏻🙏🏻
Amen and amen!
I had not intention of hijacking the thread, it seemed relevant. My stand against the culture is to go into a traditional community. I admire people who can sustain a Christian identity in the current world without the support, I can't anymore in a way that feels it holds integrity. That is me. That is not you but it does say something about counterculturalism. I have described it as a call to the desert. I do not know where it will lead but it is a rejection of what I see as inimical to the faith as much as any protest movement. Those are not my tools, may be this is.
The Catholic Worker Movement and indeed their cousin the Mennonite Worker Movement (which comes from a more progressive branch of Mennonites than a lot of non-Mennonites are familiar with) are effectively religious communities. Certainly I think that monastic traditions and Plain traditions have a good deal in common - look at progressive modern Quakers choosing to dress in a Plain style for a fascinating look at something very comparable to a monastic habit in terms of counter-cultural ethos.
I do think that seeking to be counter-cultural can turn into an unhelpful form of one-upmanship, and I think that this kind of power dynamic is often a driving force behind more reactionary forms of being counter-cultural.
However, when you invest deeply in a social narrative that is not formed solely by the prevailing culture then you are inevitably counter-cultural. How deeply counter-cultural depends on the degree of divergence between your narrative and the level of your commitment to it.
What I would say is that at present in the prevailing western culture and my reading of the Christian narrative are seriously divergent, more so than when I was younger. It is that which makes me take counter cultural stance albeit not one that is often seen as that.
Right now I see it as counter-cultural to be non-materialist, peace-loving, and to love our neighbors, practically in ways that help them, that they chose. I have tried to do that in an intentional community. Our attempt at community fell apart for various reasons, but I think a new monastic movement clearly could do those things, probably better than the rest of us could.
I think any monastic movement is going to be counter-cultural. Bigger question might be "relative to which culture," and "to what effect?"
How does the way I live differ from anyone else's? Not that I'd advocate a kind of show-offy, 'virtue-signalling' look how counter-cultural I am, kind of way. As @Jengie Jon points out that isn't the point and doesn't achieve anything.
I don't expect to disappear off to a monastery anytime soon and in many ways it's as much of a challenge to be 'in the world but not of it.'
I'm very moved and stirred by what @Jengie Jon has shared, particularly the thing about 'learning to love' rather than simply learning to pray.
It's shaken me to be quite honest.
I'm now wondering, 'What shall this man do?' in terms of how to 'act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God.'
Needing to separate from society in order to participate in community strikes me as being rather more than odd, and a rather telling comment on prevailing western culture.
Another contrast that struck me years ago is that participation in church is very different from participation in community. Or maybe it's that participation in church ceased being counter-cultural participation in community a long time ago.
I'm also wondering about the level and nature of our commitment to community, and whether it is one of those things for which there is a season. And was this always the case, or was there a time when community was more essential and integral to our human-ness? (Our survival, our flourishing?)
Let me explain my take on white martyrdom, I will leave the red out of it. I understand that as part of Baptismal vocation we are all called to some form of martyrdom but that those forms differ from person to person. These are the ways that we bear witness to the fullness to the gospel but rather than all Christians doing every part of it, there are specific Christians called to each part of it. So the question is "How is God calling you to bear witness to the Kingdom?" Normally it is not by going and shouting about it on street corners but by some discipline or way of living that questions how the World is. In these you follow the high path, in others you follow the low path, the basic commitments of a Christian.
Now Gluttony is a sin, all Christians are therefore called to moderate eating, some are called to disciplines such as Vegetarianism or even veganism as a witness to the damage our eating does on the World.
Or Murder is a sin, all Christians are called to be peace lovers and to seek ways of peace but few are called to be complete pacifists and bear witness to the peaceful nature of the Kingdom
There is something similar with the monastic life. All Christians are called to make space for God and to live in fellowship with each other but not all are called to do that 24/7 with the intensity of the enclosure.
Christian culture can perpetuate associations between fatness and sin, and making food into a moral issue fuels eating disorders and orthorexia. I also think that associating vegetarianism and veganism with penance or self-denial is harmful, because it fuels the (false!) idea that being in good health means a "no pain, no gain" attitude and that you have to beat the sinful, decadent body into submission. I think this smacks rather heavily of gnosticism - the pure and good soul/spirit vs the fallen and degraded body. But our bodies experiencing joy, happiness, pleasure, and taking up space isn't in itself sinful or harmful. The Incarnation rejected the idea that bodies or our fleshly nature are the problem.
We aim to go vegan so far as is possible during Lent and also on Wednesdays and Fridays apart from during 'feasts'.
Nobody enforces it with a big stick and we are encouraged to eat whatever is put in front of us if it'd cause offence or put people out or cause extra work if we didn't.
I've never seen it associated with 'weightism' or 'fatophobia' or anything of the kind.
Similarly if a monastic or anyone else wishes to adopt a celibate discipline it doesn't necessarily imply that they have hang-ups and phobias about sex or think that non-celibacy is icky or wrong.
None of these disciplines imply that there's something 'wrong' with enjoying food and drink or physical pleasure.
That's not the intention nor is it how it works in practice.
'Matter matters.'
Fasting and other physical disciplines - if we can do them - help to 'embody' that.
They serve the opposite purpose to what you have suggested and warned against.
That doesn't mean that there haven't been extreme ascetics who have taken things too far and damaged their health.
But I don't see anyone here advocating that.