Tag Archives: Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Into Culture: Curated Silence

Conversations are broken

So begins the blurb on the back of Nihal Arthanayake’s new book ‘Let’s Talk: how to have better conversations’. I picked up Arthanayake’s book whilst on holiday and devoured it within a few days. It was a timely read for me as I continue to imagine what is being shaped at Bradford Cathedral in the run up to City of Culture. We have articulated aims at the Cathedral to “be a place where challenging issues facing the world can be discussed and debated openly and safely” as well as being recognised “as the safe place for gathering when local or global events require a spiritual response or an honest conversation.”

So what makes for good conversation? Why is the art of disagreement such a popular idea at the moment? From ‘The Rest is Politics’ podcast’s stated aim “to disagree agreeably” to the Church of England’s repeated mantra to learn to “disagree well”; lots of people are trying to recapture the skills to debate safely in an increasingly polarised world. Public discourse has lost a sense of maturity, calmness and creativity. We can point fingers towards the rise in social media (or, should we call it unsocial media?) or the cuts to education which disproportionally impact the humanities and thus our ability to learn the empathetic imagination required to converse with people of difference. There are, however, many other factors that have led to the erosion of social cohesion and community integration. The Covid 19 pandemic didn’t cause this conversational decay but it has undoubtedly accelerated the degradation of all the skills required to interact with others.

This month we have held 3 events at Bradford Cathedral that I have helped to produce, all aimed, in different ways, to position us as an organisation to fulfil the aims stated above. Each of these spaces, in different ways, used the arts to inspire and/or hold difficult, contested views in the hope of discovering, with people of difference, a new way forward together.

‘Journeys of Hope’ was an exhibition that told the stories of both the Ugandan Asian diaspora, who travelled to Britain in 1972 after being expelled from their homeland by Idi Amin, and ‘the Windrush generation’, who arrived from the 1940s seeking to fill labour shortages after World War II. As part of our engagement in ‘Black History Month’ we wanted to hear different black histories alongside one another to discern the universal experience as well as the nuanced and distinct narratives from different ‘black communities’. The banners that made up the exhibition depicted, in word and pictures, the journeys made by these different migrant communities. The public were invited to engage in the dialogue between the two different narratives.

The launch event amplified the voices from these two particular communities of Bradford. Individuals talked about their experience of having multiple ‘homes’ e.g. both the Caribbean or Uganda and Britain. The contributors began to explore together what they understood by ‘identity’ the painful memories that have shaped them as well as the joyful realisations they have discovered. I chose to give space for those stories, particularly the painful parts to just hang in the air. The silence inviting us to face the uncertainty without the pressing need to respond immediately; to ‘befriend’ the emotions that were stirred.

In the press coverage surrounding the exhibition the media were most interested in the deliberate shift we are making in Bradford from talking about multiculturalism to interculturalism. Multiculturalism carries connotations of a kind of deceptive ‘tolerance’; a meagre allowance of another’s existence. It rarely inspires any creative interaction and, indeed, I would, in some small way, agree that “multiculturalism is dead”. I do not see how this acceptance of the other in my periphery as doing anything beneficial and will, with little encouragement, fall into ghettoisation and conflict. Interculturalism, on the other hand, invites ‘inter’action between cultures. It means, as one local, Bradfordian broadcaster said at a recent Religion Media Conference hosted in our city, “getting up in each other’s business.” 

Secularists would have us all believe that the public realm is a naturally neutral space. This is not true. There is no such neutrality because it is always curated by a particular worldview, most often a secularist’s. A healthy and honest public space that encourages healthy, creative conversation around shared political and social goals is hard built and even harder to sustain. Intercultural practice, as opposed to multiculturalism, requires particular skills which are not obvious or easily learnt. One principle is deep, empathetic and imaginative listening. I explore this and a complimentary principle of ‘overaccepting’ in an article soon to be published in the Oxford Journal of Intercultural Mission, entitled, ‘Improvisation as Intercultural Practice’. Essentially I argue that the skills that make improvisatory drama work are the same that make public discourse work: curiosity and mutual trust. This is what is lacking so often in our interactions with others.

We were also invited, by the Council, to host an ‘interfaith service’ to begin Hate Crime Awareness Week. This year’s theme was tackling religiously motivated hate crime. Because interfaith worship/prayers are more complicated than many understand, I decided to invite friends from different faiths an opportunity to share, from a personal perspective, what their particular faith teaches them about relating well across religious difference. This kind of sharing can easily descend into a kind of Faith Battle as individuals feel they must ‘represent’ and defend their position. It was specifically to counteract that temptation that I encouraged contributors to speak only from their personal view and followed it with silence, reflection and, if the congregation wished, to pray privately. This approach disarmed the pressure we put upon ourselves when we talk publicly about a deeply held, identity shaping thing such as faith. It encouraged people to simply accept the offer being made with no need to respond either affirmatively or negatively.

The event was held on 16th October, just 9 days after the atrocities seen in Israel and the subsequent heartache across the region as Israel and Gaza fell again into bloody conflict. This event was naturally overshadowed by the pain, confusion and anger felt by many in our community in Bradford and across the world. Fortunately I had already devised a creative way that we could stand together as people of different faiths in a meaningful way without using words that can regularly, particularly at such times of heightened hostilities, get taken out of context, misheard/misunderstood. We simply lit a single candle from individual candles representing our different faith traditions. We held silence together and allowed one another to lament and be baffled together without requiring a verbal response.

Sometimes the skill of conversation is knowing when not to speak.

Finally we hosted a delegation from one of our Diocesan links. Bradford has partnered with the Church District of Erfurt in Germany for over 30 years. We have regularly engaged in an exchange programme: us visiting them and they us. This year it was their turn to come over to us. As we devised an event at the Cathedral we discovered it had been 90 years since Dietrich Bonhoeffer visited Bradford and made, what became known as the Bradford Declaration. It was the start of the work that culminated in the much wider known Barmen Declaration which spoke against the Nazi regime and led, ultimately, to Bonhoeffer’s arrest and death in 1945.

In honour of this anniversary we decided to host an event that helped us to reflect on the role of faith in politics and politics in faith. We had three speakers: Dr Matthias Rein who is a Lutheran pastor in Germany who gave us a good background to Bonhoeffer and his ongoing legacy in Germany in 21st century, Revd Dr Noel Irwin, a Methodist Minister who teaches community development and organising, political and public theology who spoke about the impact of Bonhoeffer’s thoughts on violence/non-violence during the Trouble in Northern Ireland and Rt Revd Nick Baines, bishop of Leeds who talked from his experience of being a bishop in the House of Lords. Tough questions were raised and some complex ideas began to be unpacked.

Again, in the media interviews I engaged with they focussed on the common request that people make to ‘keep faith out of politics’ or ‘keep politics out of faith’. In the light of the Israel/Gaza situation and the overwhelming complexities involved in that historic, multifaceted issue, such requests are, in my mind, naive and reckless. Whether you ascribe to a particular shared religious doctrine or are not part of an organised expression of belief we all believe in something. This is either a spiritual, political or psychological idea or, most likely, some mixture of all three. There is some set of values which coalesce into some form. This is your faith. This shapes your decisions and choices. Those choices direct your actions and engagement in the social world. This is politics. It is, therefore, dishonest, to suggest that anyone can separate their faith/beliefs from their political choices.

The event was held within the context of a bilingual choral evensong. I had thought that many would only turn up for the intellectual part of the evening but in fact we had all 80 or so audience members from various backgrounds come and experience the sung liturgy which included prayers of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The music, I felt, played a significant part in settling people into our time together and expressed in the hauntingly beautiful harmonies the complexities Bonhoeffer faced in his time. In our own time, as demands are made on us to make choices and to pick sides, I listened to the quartet of voices sing words of trust often creating deliberate dissonance in the melody. I was reminded of a contemporary of Bonhoeffers, Karl Barth, who once wrote,

And he who is now concerned with truth must boldly acknowledge that he cannot be simple. In every direction human life is difficult and complicated… Men will not be grateful to us if we provide them with short-lived pseudo-simplifications.

Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans (Oxford: Oxford Univeristy Press, 1968) p.5

Arthanayake, referring to words spoken by Professor Tanya Byron earlier in his book, concludes by saying, 

…we must make sure that our education system encourages rather than diminishes curiosity. The curious may well dive into the online world to find answers to questions they have, but they will also wish to discuss those answers, refine them and even have them changed by new advice or evidence. The curious will have their ears open to empathise with the experiences of others or to process and push back on opinions they do not agree with. The curious will talk to strangers.

Nihal Arthanayake, Let’s Talk: how to have better conversations (London: Trapeze, 2022) p.266

That curiosity should be directed towards deliberately shaped silences in the world around us in order that we can engage better with to the daunting silence we find within. The arts should curate public spaces of silence to invite us, to woo us, into the uncomfortable conflicts that lie within us all so we can hold firm in the conflicts outside. When people declare our silence as deafening or that non-words are hurtful I weep. It’s because they cannot feel the gift that shared silence can be.

Into Culture: City of Travellers

I have become fascinated with a particular phrase that I hear quite a lot: “But we want to make it Bradford.” What does it mean to be ‘Bradford’? My colleague the Dean praises certain things by the adulation of, “We made that Bradford.” I was in a discussion about the creation of an Artists’ Charter to be proposed for the City of Bradford. As part of the consultation we were asked “how we would make this distinctly Bradford?” This singular cultural concept rooted in a local place is interesting to me in a city which is so global in its population.

Before moving to Bradford last year I began to be interested in a similar philosophical question but on a slightly larger level: “What does it mean to be British?” or, at times, “What does it mean to be English?” Do such conceptual categories exist? The term is used enough that we all seem to accept it and to bestow upon it meaning but is that meaning shared? I have witnessed it being used in contradictory ways and yet I still feel a truth lying at the heart of the sentiment; or, maybe, I long for it to mean something even if it does not.

A friend of mine often says that stereotypes, however insulting, are rooted in some truth. The issue is the removal of nuance and dimension from the object we’re stereotyping so they become caricatures without dignity and a deeply mysterious depth. Indeed, to stereotype is the start of the de-humanising of a person, but my friend is right in that these broad and basic categories have an element of truth: they’re just isolated from the plethora of other factors that make up a person or nation. Take Germany for example. There is a broad truth that there is, within the German culture, a valuing of efficiency and order. This is also seen in the wider category of germanic cultures outside of the current national identity of ‘Germany’. The question should be asked, therefore, are the people of germanic countries culturally conditioned or is the culture shaped by the people?

As we at Bradford Cathedral go through a vision and value setting process looking ahead to further strategic development, I am aware of the balance of listening and receiving a culture as well as shaping and making a culture. As part of our listening and consultation process we studied our history and probed it for cultural markers and definition. There are certainly some cultural artifices that repeat over the centuries of the community that worshipped on the site of the Cathedral; we have articulated this as ‘a story of change and ambition, of hard work and dedication, of failures and yet trust and hope in a God who changes lives and transforms communities.’ 

We hear the story of the civil war and how the people of Bradford were outnumbered by Royalists. They were besieged many times and cannons opened fire on the parish church (the future Cathedral that stands today). At the final battle, the Earl of Newcastle ordered the whole of Bradford to be killed. This order was rescinded after he had a visitation from a girl in white who famously said, “Pity poor Bradford.” Whether the people of Bradford like that story or not it is part of the history and it tells us several things that can still be felt and experienced in Bradford today. 

Firstly there is a history of being small, outnumbered underdogs who punch above their weight and, with daring do, manage to survive against all odds.

Then there is a sense of being people of protest. Bradford is protestant not just religiously but politically as well. We are the birth place of the Independent Labour Party don’t forget and there is still an alternative or contrary spirit in Bradford but there’s also something radical about our protest. What I mean by that is, like our Puritan ancestors, our protest is about reforming traditions rather than making up new ones. It’s hard to express this cultural nuance in detail but it is a particular Yorkshire trait of being both stubborn and proud of our heritage as well as being radically fresh and innovative. There’s a strange cultural importance, I feel, to the fact that Dietrich Bonhoeffer made his de-nazification speech in Bradford (now called the Bradford Declaration). This was a protest against the Nazi regime and how it had infiltrated all cultural institutions in Germany. This was not a progressive vision but rather a radical demand to return to some previous, lost tradition.

These two aspects could, I suggest, play a major part in what makes ‘Bradford’, but it equally, I think, makes it ‘Yorkshire’. Does it also just make it English? British?

My interest in Englishness was first raised after lockdown as I reconnected with my love of Tolkien. Tolkien had a particular interest in England, as separate from Scotland, Ireland and Wales. He believed that England lacks a cultural myth, whereas the other peoples of Great Britain have such myths. It is this mythological foundation that shapes culture. So what, Tolkien asked, is England’s mythological foundation? This question led him to write the sagas of ‘Middle Earth’ and to formulate a pre-Danish, pre-Beowulf mythology of England.

When people ask me, “Where are you from?” I say I am from Kent. It is where I was born and brought up. It is where my maternal family hold strong roots (my paternal family are mongrels from all over!) I don’t say Tunbridge Wells, although it is more factually accurate, because I do not associate myself with that town, despite being shaped there. When I say, “Kent” I have a mythological concept of green wolds, softened sea breeze, apples and woodlands. I feel comfortable with that imagery and have a nostalgia for that place. It is, I have come to realise, my subconscious attempt at identifying with the Shire and the world of Tolkien’s hobbits. The hobbits, more than any race in Middle Earth, are the English people. 

I want to be a hobbit. That is my cultural archetype.

So what of Bradford and it’s cultural shape?

As well as the underdog fighting against all odds against the ruling class and the radical protest for ancient principles there is one historic cultural expression that repeats itself in Bradford: we are ‘a city of travellers’. This phrase appears in J.B. Priestley’s ‘English Journey’. Priestley, a Bradfordian himself, returned to his hometown in 1933 as part of his grand tour of England. He wrote the following,

Bradford was always a city of travellers. Some of its citizens went regularly to other side of the globe to buy wool… They returned to Market Street, the same sturdy Bradfordians, from the ends of the earth… When they returned they did not give themselves cosmopolitan airs; it was very dangerous in Bradford to give yourself any airs, except those by tradition associated with solid wool men. And then there was this curious leaven of intelligent aliens, chiefly German-Jews and mostly affluent. They were so much a part of the place when I was a boy that it never occurred to me to ask why they were there. I… obscurely felt that they had always been with us and would always remain… Bradford was determinedly Yorkshire and provincial, yet some of its suburbs reached as far as Frankfurt and Leipzig. It was odd enough. But it worked.

J.B. Priestey, ‘English Journey’ (Manchester, Harper North, 2023) p.197-198

Although the German-Jews left during the 1920s, Bradford soon welcomed other migrants. First came those from Poland and Ukraine, then South Asians and Caribbeans and we are proud of our City of Sanctuary status. We are not naive in thinking that such welcomes were/are not hard, challenging and, at times, some may experience racism and hostility but we have a way of welcome and are happy to broaden out the category of ‘Bradford’ to encompass people who settle and make this place their home. 

It is this singular cultural value that we retell at Bradford Cathedral. The reason is this: we boast a history of Christian witness on the site of the Cathedral that stretches back 1,400 years. Back then there was no settlement, no village or town. A preaching cross was established and from all around people journeyed to hear the Christian faith proclaimed. Soon a market was established to cater for the travellers and then a small village, growing to a town and now a city. This legend says something about the heritage of this place but, as well, says something of a cultural narrative that might be. A unifying story in a multicultural society. We all bring with us a cultural narrative; mine of a Shire and the unassuming littleness of Tolkien’s England, others of family honour, generous gift giving, etc. We all value different things but, if we are to genuinely say something collectively then we need to do the work of exploring shared values and mythologies.

This is the challenge of City of Culture. When all eyes look at Bradford, what is it that we want them to see and to celebrate? What cultural narrative do we want to tell? How might Bradford stand up to the prevailing culture of division, polarisation, post-truth, etc. and protest for a better story? I think it starts by exploring this historic value of welcoming fellow travellers in a uniquely Bradfordian way, which is, in itself, a Yorkshire way of welcome, and, even an English/Hobbit welcome… for more on that read about Bilbo Baggins.

Into Culture: Post-Industrial Cathedrals

When I started as Interim Canon Missioner last year (before being invited to take on the full time role as Canon for Intercultural Mission and the Arts in January), I joined Rev. Canon Philip Hobday who had only recently been appointed as Canon Missioner at Wakefield Cathedral. I invited myself to go and have a look round Wakefield as one of our sister cathedrals in the Diocese of Leeds and to get to know him and see how we might work together. He had already been in contact with our counterpart in Ripon, Rev. Canon Matthew Pollard who started as Canon Chancellor at the same time, in the hope that we might support one another.

I greatly appreciated my time with Philip and our visit raised lots of questions around models of cathedral ministry, particularly, in our case, being one of three cathedrals in a diocese (unique in the Church of England) and also being in post-industrial towns/cities. My reflection, after my visit, was that I went too soon. Philip and I hadn’t gained enough experience or insights in our contexts. Our conversation was, therefore, much more about sharing aspirations. That was still beneficial but I now want to visit again and have deeper and more detailed conversations with him and, indeed, Matthew in Ripon; different as that context is to Bradford.

If three new Canon Generals (the common name for residentiary canons who are not precentors) starting in post at the same time was not interesting enough, in December, Rev. Canon James Lawrence began as Canon Missioner in Blackburn Cathedral. James and I have a very tenuous link through a mutual friend but I was very excited to hear that he was beginning in cathedral ministry with me. He was quickly adopted into the small, informal Canon Generals network. The group also extends to Rev. Canon Maggie McLean, Canon Missioner at York Minster who has been in post longer than us all and brings a wealth of experience.

Wakefield Cathedral

As I had reflected that my visit with Philip in Wakefield was too soon I gave James six months to settle in before asking if I could visit him in Blackburn. I was keen to visit Blackburn because, like Wakefield, it has a very similar history, foundation and population demographic to Bradford. Blackburn became a diocese in 1926 only seven years after Bradford. The cathedral was created from a large, central parish church and over the next decades (during the great financial challenges between the two world wars) expanded and redesigned the building. The design, therefore, in both, is 1950/60s in style. Around this time the British wool trade, which was a large industry in both Blackburn and Bradford, began to shrink as cheaper products were imported from elsewhere. Bradford Diocese was dissolved in 2014 and, in this way Blackburn and Bradford differ in status slightly. But there are great similarities still, in multi-faith dynamics and demographics as well as in economic indices. For all these reasons it was going to be useful to go and see how the team at Blackburn Cathedral were responding or reflecting on their own future.

I knew James and I had similar methodologies of reflection and research and was delighted when he not only agreed to welcome me but then produced a thorough tour with meetings with key members of staff. In advance he contacted his staff team and clearly outlined the purpose of my visit: to be an opportunity for mutual learning and reflection on our models of ministry and mission. I was not disappointed with my visit. Here are my two main takeaways.

Cathedrals, like Blackburn and Bradford, who are situated in small but ethnically and religiously diverse towns/cities must quickly acknowledge that faith is a cultural object. What I mean by that is, quite simply, for the global majority, faith is not relegated into the private realm and plays a significant role in public identity. This is because, as I was reflecting with James in Blackburn, other nationalities, ethnicities and cultures that we encounter day to day have a deep recognition and appreciation for how faith shapes and/or has shaped their native/historic cultures. Faith for most other peoples is still able to be proudly owned culturally. The secular West is an outlier in this respect and so, for those of us working amongst global majority heritage communities, we are faced with the challenge of what it means to be a confident Christian community in Britain today. The historic and classical liberal approach to Christian mission and civic engagement is no longer working when faced with people whose faith is central to their public identity and whose differing culture is also lauded by our secular society in Britain.

The cultural value in diversity and celebrating difference has a strange shape to it in its current form, in my mind. I continue to reflect on the selective way in which our current society goes out of its way to highlight and amplify different, often conflicting, faiths and cultural heritages. Mainly white, middle-class people who feel divorced or estranged from their own religio-cultural history seem to spend so much time promoting the faith and cultural heritage of others and express appreciation for their beauty and power. They stop short, however, of adopting it for themselves. Why is that? Is it a kind of faith tourism which demands nothing of them but where they feel virtuous for embracing it publicly. The same embracing does not happen with the public expressions of Christian faith and heritage. This is where cathedrals find themselves challenged. Gone are the days, or they are going as we speak, when we are cultural centres producing socially valued cultural expressions. For this reason we are driven to remain relevant by importing other cultural events (even if they are jarring) in order to attract people into our costly historic buildings. 21st century Britain does not flock to the Church as a connection to our shared past because modern Britain seems to want to cut itself off from its past.

Sure there are some painful and difficult things in our collective past but if we are not willing to be reconciled to it then we will continue to float adrift from any potential cultural narrative that could unite us. Without an historic story our identities will have no roots and will not survive the storms of our current age. It is this very problem that the smaller, more industrially shaped cathedrals must lead on if all cathedrals and, indeed, Christian communities are going to be renewed.

Blackburn Cathedral

Leading on from this, I was greatly encouraged that in both Philip in Wakefield and James in Blackburn I found young (ish) academics who are keen to think theologically about these very practical issues facing our cathedrals. Both of these partners were not embarrassed about asking challenging questions of the status quo of cathedral ministry. It has been even more encouraging because I have long felt called to cathedral ministry but have never seen someone like me doing it.

There is a type… If you know, you know.

I’m not dismissing them nor criticising these fellow cathedral ministers but there is a certain person who fits ‘cathedral ministry’ and if we don’t at the start, we somehow get shaped into it. I am not looking forward to my seemingly inevitable transformation! I don’t know if it is the highly public nature of the role that pushes us towards a more performative persona or the privileged positions associated with our work that give us an inflated sense of our own abilities. Somehow, at some point we fall for the temptations and traps of cathedral life which means we fixate on processional orders, protocols, historic traditions, etc. and our egos expand within the shrinking ecosystem that is our particular cathedral.

I feel it within myself already. It begins subtly with the sheer scale of financial pressures and, alongside that, cultural expectations. I have started explaining to my peers who are in parish ministry that being in a cathedral is like the parish but more so: all the challenges are scaled up but, thankfully, all the benefits and opportunities are too. The problem comes when you succumb to repeatedly dropping your guard and allowing things to happen without consideration or reflection. I get why! We don’t have the time or the energy but step by step, precedents are set and accidents become habits become practice become strategy.

It is in this time and resource poverty that the cultural pressures from other organisations and individuals with their own political and personal agendas just wear us down and we take the easy road of least resistance. Risks are not worth it. Optics are! And, again, I get it! This is what I was touched by meeting with James and speaking candidly with him about our hopes for our own futures but also the future potential of cathedral ministry, if only it could be re-framed: there is a new breed of ministers who are joining the ranks of the AEC. I am glad that I have someone who is young enough and still idealistic enough to keep me from slipping into the full pastiche of a cathedral dean of the 1970s!

Our country and society does not need cathedrals to ‘absolve an entire people, unquestioned and unconditionally’ (Dietrich Bonheoffer, Discipleship (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) p.53), nor to open our doors and meekly ask “if we could but beg a few moments of your time to ask that you might consider giving a few pence to our collection.” In the post-industrial areas like Blackburn and Bradford where families are struggling not with philosophical issues of identity but with practical things of unemployment and poverty, where popular culture is increasingly passing them by and has no relevance to them, it matters who the Church is seen to be blessing, partnering and dialoguing with and the language they are adopting. It is in this confusing and traumatic time that the Church needs to be robust in our proclamation and coherent in our offer of an alternative solution to the problems of our time. Seeking to agree with the often incoherent and conflicting cultural narratives in the public square will not bring Jesus Christ and his Kingdom into the places we are called to evangelise.

Bradford Cathedral

Interfaith work, as with intercultural work, is not about keeping silent or denying the very real and significant distinctions between our very different worldviews. If we pretend that we are all the same we undermine all of our beliefs and we are all poorer for that. Instead it is about being rooted in our heritage and being able to see it with all its strength and with its challenges. It’s about being clear as to what it is that is unique about your own faith and the faith of our friends and neighbours. It is about being hospitable in seeking our own healing, humbly accepting where we need to repent, and seeking the healing of those who we differ from.

I am grateful that I have colleagues who are ready to wrestle with the very keys of discipleship as a catalyst for mission in the very public life of cathedral ministry. I only pray that I will remain sharp and passionate about it myself.

On Discipleship Within The Monastic Tradition

This is the text of a paper presented at the first Postgraduate Research Morning hosted at St Hild’s College in Sheffield on Monday 5th June 2017.

 

I want to talk about discipleship today from within, what many are calling, ‘the New Monastic Movement’ of which I am part. This movement has emerged out of a protest against the steady increase of individualism prevalent in our Western culture. Many would argue that the individualisation of our society began in the Enlightenment with philosophical thought becoming more introspective and focussed on the subjective interpretation of reality famously summarised in René Descartes, “I think, therefore, I am.” The Church has not been immune to this social deconstruction and this has led to a powerfully individualised faith experience. This erosion of the corporate understanding of faith has impacted the Church’s discipleship and life together.

With the secularisation following on from the Enlightenment project and the further mechanising and fragmenting of all aspects of our lives, the place of community has diminished. In the late 20th century, with the Church increasingly  unwilling or unable to offer intensive forms of Christian discipleship, some have gathered together to re-discover what it means to live out the communal life as described in the New Testament. The faithfulness of the monastic and mendicant saints throughout history became wells around which these small groups were nourished, inspiring them to live counter-culturally. These ‘pioneers’ discovered that the shared life they dreamt of had long been practiced by communities like the Franciscans, Benedictines and the Jesuits, among many. Others arrived at a similar place by a different route, having sought, in the first place, to rediscover the spiritual fortitude and charisms of the very same saints of old and so to re-dig wells of Grace in the ‘places’ where God has worked for generations before. Regardless of the path towards a contemporary articulation of the monastic way of life, they all learned that the historic forms were in need of some re-imagining for the new context in which we now live. In this way these expressions of communal discipleship can all be reasonably described as ‘new monastics’.

The term ‘New Monasticism’ was first used by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in a letter he wrote on 14th January 1935. This is what he said,

the restoration of the church will surely come only from a new type of monasticism which has nothing in common with the old but a complete lack of compromise in a life lived in accordance with the Sermon on the Mount in the discipleship of Christ.  I think it is time to gather people together to do this. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Testament to Freedom (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997), p.424)

Two years later, Bonhoeffer published ‘The Cost of Discipleship’ in which he seems to expand on his view of classic monasticism. He writes,

The expansion of Christianity and the increasing secularization of the church caused the awareness of costly grace to be gradually lost…. But the Roman church did keep a remnant of that original awareness.  It was decisive that monasticism did not separate from the church and that the church had the good sense to tolerate monasticism. Here, on the boundary of the church, was the place where the awareness that grace is costly and that grace includes discipleship was preserved…. Monastic life thus became a living protest against the secularization of Christianity, against the cheapening of grace. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) p.46-47)

This ‘toleration’ of monasticism by the Church, however, relativized the discipleship lived out in the monastic houses. The Church was able to avoid the criticism of secularisation by living the life of holiness vicariously through the achievements of these monks who obeyed the radical call to forsake all earthly things and follow Jesus Christ in discipleship.

Bonhoeffer argues that Martin Luther’s journey through the monastic life led him to see how the monastic life had failed the Church by perpetuating this lie that Christians could pay others to be ‘disciples’ on their behalf. The monastic houses had become, by the time the Reformation began, propped up by the financial donations by the Roman Church paying a select few monks to be obedient for the rest of God’s Church. Luther’s protest was an attempt to release the radical  obedience to follow Christ, found in the charisms of monastic life, and invite all Christians to participate in this form of devoted life of monasticism.

I say all this, yes, in order to justify the New Monastic movement as a continued protest for the Church to embrace the way of life outlined in the founding documents of the Benedictines, Franciscans, Jesuits and others. But I also say it in order to acknowledge and outline the popular portrayal of monastic life and the criticisms that it therefore receives. I want to argue that it is the early monastic life, articulated most purely in the Rule of St Benedict, that holds the key for us todayas to how to live as ‘a living protest against the seculariztion of Christianity, against the cheapening of grace.’

Listen, my son, and with your heart hear the principles of your Master. Readily accept and faithfully follow the advice of a loving Father, so that through the labour of obedience you may return to Him from whom you have withdrawn because of the laziness of disobedience. My words are meant for you whoever you are, who laying aside your own will, take up the all-powerful and righteous arms of obedience to fight under the true King, the Lord Jesus Christ. (RB Pro:1-5)

Thus starts the Rule of St Benedict. It begins with an unswerving command to obedience, not a popular command in our individualised, self-autonomous culture but the monastic life centres on the vow to stability, obedience and conversion of life. Columba Cary-Elwes helpful highlights that ‘the very word obedience has a treasure hidden in its history.’ She writes,

If you unpack it, ob audiere, to listen intently is the language of love. When you really love, you listen intently to know what the one you love wants to happen. (Columba Cary-Elwes, Work and Prayer:the rule of St. Benedict for lay people (London:Burns & Oates, 1992) p.182)

This understanding of obedience is acceptable in the context of our personal relationship with Christ but it becomes problematic for many in our post modern, subjective culture. To love and obey another is seen by our self-autonomous society as oppressive and open to all manner of abuse. In outlining the role of the abbot in his Rule, St Benedict, on more than one occasion, however, quotes Christ, “Whoever listens to you, listens to me.” Christ imparts authority to his disciples in order that they may speak on his behalf to others. The abbot in the monastic community is to represent Christ to his monks. The risk of abuse to that kind of power is real and Cary-Elwes acknowledges as much when she states,

No doubt also an abbot can go beyond his rights, and what is wrong or evil should not be obeyed. Yet all that happens is under divine providence and God’s wise guidance of the world, and this includes commands of superiors. (Cary-Elwes, Work and Prayer, p.40)

St Benedict spends many chapters portraying what an abbot should and should not do; he spends so much time that it begs the question, “why is it so important?” It is important because the role of the abbot directly impacts the discipleship of the rest of the community. ‘The first thing that defines the abbot,’ Esther de Waal writes, ‘is not the position at the head of an institution but his relationship with sons’ She links this with the model of discipleship undertaken by monks.

The learning process is more analogous to that of apprenticeship by which one person learns a skill from another. In the ancient world skills were handed down from father to son, and so apprenticeship also carries with it the implication of a father-son relationship. It involves imitation and long, patient watching and copying, a shared learning that owes much to the fact of daily living together.(Esther de Waal, Seeking God: the way of St. Benedict (London: Fount, 1985) p.130)

Discipleship, within the monastic tradition, begins with obedience; to listen intently to God through His Spirit and His people under authority. Rowan Williams paints a beautiful image of this model of discipleship as he suggest that being a disciple ‘is a state of being in which you are looking and listening without interruption.’

You are hanging around; you are watching; you are absorbing a way of being that you are starting to share. You learn by sharing life; you learn by looking and listening. (Rowan Williams, Being Disciples: essentials of the Christian life (London: SPCK, 2016) p.3)

‘Obedience is not an imposed subservience to an external authority but a condition of inward growth,’ as Dominc Milroy writes,

The monk who is not authentically obedient to his abbot and his brethren will not be a happy monk; the carpenter who is not obedient to the laws of governing joints will make an unreliable table. All disobedience represents, in this sense, the pursuit of illusory freedom which obstructs the acquisition of real freedom. (Dominic Milroy, “Education According to The Rule of St. Benedict”, Ampleforth Journal, no.84 (Autumn 1979) p.4)

As well as obedience, discipleship, within the monastic tradition, also begins with stability. Brian C Taylor says,

The Benedictine vow of stability is a vow to a community of people… In this sense it is a marriage…The grass is not greener “over there”: one must work out one’s problems with this person because, if one doesn’t, one will have to work it out with that person. This is precisely what is so freeing about the vow of stability, both in monastic life and family life. To have to work it out is to demand growth, as painful as it is, and that is freeing. Faithfulness is a limit that forces us to stop running and encounter God, self, and other right now, right here. (Brian C. Taylor, Spirituality For Everyday Living: an adaptation of the rule of St. Benedict (Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1989) p.17)

Or to put that more succinctly, Meister Eckhart wrote: ‘The meaning of stability: God is not elsewhere.’

If obedience is about listening intently, then stability aids our silencing of unnecessary distractions ‘for stability says there must be no evasion.’ There must be no escaping into a fantasy world or the day dreams of how we’d do great things if only… ‘At the heart of stability,’ Metropolitan Anthony bloom suggests, ‘is the certitude that God is everywhere, that we have no need to seek God elsewhere, that if I can’t find God here I shan’t find Him anywhere.’

Both obedience and stability combine with the commitment to seek out the conversion of our lives and gives the framework within which discipleship occurs in the monastic tradition. Conversion of life is about life-long, inner transformation which ensures discipleship is not a course to complete but a way of life to journey deeper into. Thomas Merton argues that a commitment to total inner transformation is to be regarded as ‘the end of the monastic life, and that no matter where one attempts to do this, that remains the essential thing.’

The Rule of St Benedict is immensely practical and pragmatic and can be used as a manual for a devoted life to following Christ. What we need to learn from it and the wider monastic heritage is the communal necessity of this way of life. Discipleship for Benedict, Francis and the other monastic fathers and mothers can only be done with others. Love can only be practised in the cut and thrust of community life. If the vows to stability, obedience and the ongoing conversion of one’s life can be seen as the soil in which monastic discipleship is rooted and from this the tree of discipleship can bear good fruit then we must acknowledge that all three require other people to be faithful and obedient to and to be changed by.

The monastic tradition has always rejected a form of life that attempts to replicate the religious life outside of a communal setting. John Cassian describes a type of monk called Sarabaites in a derogatory manner,

They… go on living in their homes just as before, carrying on the same work; or they build cells for themselves, call them ‘monasteries’ and live in them as they please… Shirking the austere rule of a community: living two or three together in a cell; under no direction: aiming above all else at having freedom from the elders, of going where they like, and of satisfying whatever passion they like. (John Cassian, The Conferences of Cassian, “Conference 18: Conference of Abba Piamun on the three sorts of monks”, Owen Chadwick (trans.), Library of Christian Classics Volume XII: Western Asceticism (London: SCM Press, 1958) p.268-269)

St Benedict also depicts this type of monk as,

…unschooled by any rule, untested, as gold is by fire, but soft as lead, living in and of the world… They live together in twos or threes, more often alone, without a shepherd in their own fold, not the Lord’s. Their only law is the pleasure of their desires, and whatever they wish or choose they call holy. They consider whatever they dislike unlawful. (RB 1:7-9)

The monastic life, I would argue, is still ‘a living protest against the secularization of Christianity, against the cheapening of grace.’ But in our modern context this requires us embracing the challenge of community life as outlined in the Rule of St Benedict. In this portrayal of community life discipleship is intrinsically linked with the submission of our self wills to the discipline of the larger community’s apprenticeship training. This is not the romantic, sentimental community life that we all easily describe in our dreams of missional communities but a very real and costly life which demands obedience and stability in order to enter into the inner change of discipleship.

Without this ultimate commitment to the other monks, to wife or husband, to child or parent, change is difficult at best because it lives under the threat of abandonment. With a commitment to stability, change is no longer a threat but something to be undertaken together. One can change or ask for change in the other when one knows that one is loved and that this request will not drive the other away.

What the monastic tradition offers the Church today is a communal way of life that challenges our cultures hyper-individualism by demanding the sacrificing of the idol of self and ‘a complete lack of compromise in a life lived in accordance with the Sermon on the Mount in the discipleship of Christ.’ We must discover that on the boundary of the Church today the monastics still preserve ‘the awareness that grace is costly and that grace includes discipleship.’

Stability

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Suscipiendus autem in oratorio coram omnibus promittat de stabilitate sua et conversatione morum suorum et oboedientia.

Upon admission, in the oratory, before all, he is to make a promise to stability, conversion (of behaviour/morals/life) and obedience,

For me the Rule of St. Benedict is a guiding document for the balanced life of discipleship, whether you take vows or not. As the New Monastic movement evolves and emerges I am finding it interesting to observe the different commitments and the different Rules that are being lived out. I wonder whether there might be room for a generally accepted shape to the life of New Monastics (in contrast to the traditional monastic life) whilst giving space for contextual charisms and callings to be expressed too. I wonder whether there are some key principles around which different communities can gather and be shaped by and for the living out of those principles to be changeable to assist the different expressions across the country/world.

What follows is a hypothetical outworking of potentially using the phrases used in St Benedict’s Rule; the vow to stability, conversion and obedience.

Stability

The famous vows to ‘poverty, chastity and obedience’ are not explicit in the Rule of St. Benedict but the seed for these vows can be seen in St. Benedict’s choice of vows to ‘stability, conversatio murum and obedience’. I have already spelt out a possible correlation between these two sets of vows. In my framework stability is akin to chastity.

Stability is about faithfulness, commitment in relationship. This is absolutely key in living out a counter cultural life in a world where individual freedom is increasingly the central tenet in our society. Committing to another person or people no matter what comes with the baggage of historical examples of cults, abusive relationships, etc. and so is shied away from or seen negatively. Relationships are increasingly seen as good things until they ask you to hand over personal freedom.

Our society has a big problem with relationships. The whole topic is confused with different socio-political and philosophical wordlviews using the same language to describe completely different concepts. How Scripture describes loving relationships and covenants is very different to our view of more contractual, secular view of relationships and add to that the capitalist, consumer, neo-liberal and liberal political philosophy into the mix and it is no surprise that marriage and sexuality are such explosive conversations at the moment.

The English Benedictines released a very good video recently outlining the life of Benedictine monks. In the first part of this video Dom. Alexander Bevan discusses stability. He says,

In the first place, monastic consecration involves ‘stability’; persevering in the monastic life in a particular community. Stability, here, is connected to the people rather than to the place. (Dom. Alexander Bevan, To Prefer Nothing to Christ Part 1 – Consecration, English Benedictines, https://vimeo.com/153230237)

This commitment to others, persevering with them despite pain and heartache is picked up by Brian C. Taylor. I am indebted to Taylor for his insights into these Benedictine vows. On stability, he writes,

The Benedictine vow of stability is a vow to a community of people… In this sense it is a marriage…The grass is not greener “over there”: one must work out one’s problems with this person because, if one doesn’t, one will have to work it out with that person. This is precisely what is so freeing about the vow of stability, both in monastic life and family life. To have to work it out is to demand growth, as painful as it is, and that is freeing. Faithfulness is a limit that forces us to stop running and encounter God, self, and other right now, right here. (Brian C. Taylor, Spirituality For Everyday Living: an adaptation of the rule of St. Benedict (Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1989) p.17)

There is some richness in referring to a married partner as ‘the ball and chain’ (Sorry Mrs. Lunn!) because on a spiritual level that is what they are. Being bound to that person with no escape route is what gives the freedom outlined above. Yes, life-time commitments are incredibly risky; rife with potential pain and abuse. I’m not painting married life as glorious technicolour. There is an overly romantic vision of marriage which, although no one admits to agreeing with, still shapes our expectations.

There is a similar romantic vision of the monastic life which many see New Monastics as inhabiting. I’ve been told that what I want is ‘to have my cake and eat it’. There is the suggestion that those of us discovering this new monastic call are implanting a subjective, consumerist approach to the monastic life; choosing for ourselves the parts we like and are comfortable with and disregarding or reinterpreting the parts we don’t. This is a fair concern and one that I have wrestled with over the last six years.

All I know is that for me, I see the life discovered by the monastic saints of old and outlined in the Rule of St. Benedict and others as the stimulus for the holy life of discipleship. I am convinced that Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his prison cell, began to see what St Odo, St Bernard, Martin Luther and many others saw as the failings of the monastic life (cut off and divorced from ordinary life) and the continued potential of that same life (deep discipleship and transformation). I believe that his unfinished book that he was working on at the point of his execution was an exploration and teaching on birthing a new ecclesiology and, therefore, a new missiology for a post war world.

The commitment to seek stability is rooted in the knowledge that we humans balk at pain and heartache. We learn and train ourselves to accept it as part of life and avoid it. The Church of England is learning to live out commitment and stability in a world crying out for more schisms, polarisation and chaos. The recent decision by the Primates a few weeks ago was another example at how trying to work out commitment and faithfulness in pain and heartache is met with frustration by our culture. The alternative was to choose sides and divide. A vow to stability is about disagreeing well and in humility.

Practical

So what might stability look like in different contexts across the New Monastic Movement?

I want to try and contain these suggestions into broad categories: sodal, modal and nodal categories. I won’t be outlining what it looks like in traditional monastic communities as they will know how they do that!

Sodal

Sodality comes from the Latin root, Sodalis. This can be translated comrade, or using other words, all of which suggest closeness and active partnership: companion, associate, mate, crony, accomplice, conspirator, are all listed. Sodalitas was used for social and politics associations; religious fraternities; electioneering gangs (an interesting take on mission); and guilds. (Church Army, “Why Modality and Sodality thinking is vital understand future church”, 5th January 2016, http://www.churcharmy.org.uk/Publisher/File.aspx?ID=138339)

Sodal communities ask for an explicit commitment. They are communities made up of people who share a passion or desire to work on a particular task and forge new things. In religious terms they are usually spirituality and/or missional groups. Usually sodal communities are task orientated. This is not to say that there is no emphasis on relationships with others; in fact, most of these communities are highly relational but there is a purpose around which they gather.

Stability within these have been, on the whole, self-enforcing. People commit because they want to and that commitment is taken very seriously and is tested before entry to it happens. When there is a breakdown of relationship, however, people can move and many do. Some stay but become more task-orientated and there is space for that within many sodal communities. Those that leave can be tempted to set up a new expression of the community, either taking the name and visionary principles just with different people, or create their own association where they can have more autonomy and/or correct mistakes of the original group.

A vow to stability would fit neatly into many of these gatherings and would challenge members at the point of relationship breakdown. In order to limit the community with enforced stability, a group would need to adopt reconcilers/facilitators who will help to heal the pain and difficulties brought about in tough pastoral situations. The practice would need to be worked out within the group contextually.
The entry to these groups would change, no doubt, if the vow to stability was adopted. Not everyone is comfortable or ready for this level of commitment and so noviciate/discernment phases would need to be included. These processes will already be present in sodal groups and the explicit vow to stability would encourage sodal groupings not subtly morph into more modal expressions of community.

Modal

Modality comes from the root word mode. This in turn refers to the customary way things are done. One might say it is the default position, or prevailing fashion or custom. Mathematically modal is the greatest frequency of occurrences in a given set, and there is a corresponding sense socially that it is the most common way things are…Modal church tends to make minimal demands upon its members.(ibis.)

In Anglican terms, the parish is the modal community. Modal communities primarily sustain what is there. The comparison between Petrine and Pauline ecclesiology aptly depicts the difference between modal (Peter and Jerusalem Church) and sodal (Paul and Missionary Church). The Fresh Expressions Network is made up of sodal communities and they are now seeking to connect them into modal communities. It is this marrying together that many are suspicious and cautious of. At the heart of this disconnect, I think, is a feeling from sodal communities that modal communities are maintaining the status quo which is no longer sufficient at evangelising and spreading the gospel. There may be some truth in that view but it is by no means completely accurate. many modal communities are proving to be good soil for new converts and transformation of life.

The truth is many sodal communities are becoming modal as they seek to sustain the initial impetus of their grouping even if it was some ten or fifteen years ago. There is great pressure to continually change and reinvent to keep that novelty energy going and so many formalise and become modal. Likewise, many modal communities, in desperation to remain relevant and competing with the fervour of sodal alternatives adopt many sodal practices. Whereas sodal looks to conversion for church growth, modal looks at organic church growth through maintaining families and/or relying on people moving to the area and joining.

Stability within the modal (mainly parish) is more tricky. Modal is almost defined by the soft edge, non-explicit commitment of members. I would argue that my exploration into Parish Monasticism has unearthed the need for more sodal practices to be adopted whilst maintaining the historic and strength of modality. It is the balancing of these that I am advocating. More conversation would be needed about how to adopt these structures whilst not losing the heart of parish mission and ministry. How do you develop an explicit, committed core without excluding visitors and spiritual seekers? This is already being wrestled with in most parishes. Could the monastic life not help discern possible solutions with the use of vows/aspirations?

Nodal
Nodal communities are hubs/ connecting groups. In many ways the New Monastic Movement is looking at becoming nodal and bringing together different groups. In this sense what has been discussed above fits in here as both modal and sodal gather into nodal groupings.

Stability for nodals is about commitment to dialogue and respect. Like the Anglican Communion Worldwide this not about centralising power but about relating and supporting one another. To be connectors, however, there will need to be arbitration policies in place to protect against disagreements and divisions but this is where a shared Rule of Life, allowing space for unique expressions to be worked out contextually whilst holding together in commonality.

Stability for religious nodal communities must come from a deep understanding of the Trinity. Stanley Hauerwas’ trinitarian ethics is key, I feel, to expressing a way forward for the New Monastic movement in this country. Using John Milbank’s view, set out in ‘Theology and Social Theory’, Hauerwas sates,

the Christian faith owes no allegiance to the idea of the univocity of Being, which can only uphold difference coercively and violently, but is instead moved by a trinitarian understanding of God, an absolute that is itself difference, inclusive of all difference, and thus able to affirm difference in a peaceful manner. (Stanley Hauerwas, Performing the Faith: Bonhoeffer and the practice of nonviolence (London: SPCK, 2004) p. 87)

We should not fear homogenising the different missional communities by bringing them together under one umbrella grouping. If the said grouping is explicitly trinitarian in its understanding of membership then difference can be contained within it but there needs to be a singularity in Being as well. For me the vow to stability enables the discovery of that mystery to happen because inhabiting the life of the Holy Trinity is going to involve suffering.

Chapter 64: election of the abbot

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He must be knowledgeable in Divine Law so as to know when to “bring forth new things and old”

Should we be trained and ordained locally?

I have written a lot on leadership and ordained ministry on my journey through the Rule of St Benedict. As I read this chapter on the election of an abbot I can see some of my own personal journey to ordained ministry in it but there are differences which mainly focus on the Benedictine understanding of leadership within a local context. It calls me to ask questions about our understanding of leadership:

Is it better to be called from and to a local community? Should we be training people to serve in their local church?

Currently in the Church of England one is called to ordained ministry to the national Church. It is the laity, on the whole, who are called to the local church. There is a growing sense, however, of the local call of ordained ministers with the rise of training programs offered by St Mellitus and St Barnabas Centres and other local training courses. I have mixed views about these.

I still fundamentally believe that residential training for ordained ministry is the ideal due to the opportunities and space for deep reflections and theological study. The local training is fantastic in preparing deacons and priests for the practical work of ministry but, from conversations with those trained in these ways, there is little time and space given for the possibility of adaptation and growth in personal theologies.

For me training was done in the common room where I learnt to hear opposing views of theology in the context of a lived out community. There was little escape from having to eat and serve those who you disagreed vehemently with. It was in the common room experience where I learnt the practical way to love in disagreement; something the Church of England desperately needs to explore and work out.

The residential model of training does leave gaps in training particularly, as I say, in the more practical experience of leading, preaching and long term pastoral work and mentoring. Yes, curacy picks up these gaps but expectation gives little room for mistake and genuine learning on that. The local forms of training, with the long term placements of over two/three years, give more space to learn such skills.

It is here that the difference between monks and ordained ministers in the Church of England must remain distinct. A monk chooses stability and their life is one dedicated to a community over their life time. Clergy dedicate themselves to itinerant ministry going where God calls them. Their stability is to the order of deacon and priest and to the institutional church.

Treasures Old and New

Having reflected on how an abbot is chosen in Chapter 2: the qualities of the abbot, I was struck, when reading this chapter, the instruction that an abbot ‘must be knowledgable of Divine Law so as to know when to “bring forth new things and old” (Matthew 13:52).’

This passage from Matthew was used for the title of a conference which gathered traditional and emerging communities within the Anglican tradition (Treasures Old and New). The couple of days in Whitby earlier last year was an important gathering for those of us who are sensing a movement of the Holy Spirit to a renewal of religious life in different forms.

I was sad not to be able to make it to these days but continue to hear from many of my friends who went about what God is beginning to reveal amongst us. I have had the privilege of journeying with many of those present and gaining from the wisdom gleaned together.

The title says something important for me of where God is speaking to us in the Church of England.

As I wrote in Parish Monasticism: a conference, I have an unsettling feeling about our current culture within the Church to create new groupings, new labels, to be new, fresh, relevant, cutting edge, etc. Yes, God creates and brings new things to birth but for me new comes from the old. I said,

In our desire to be relevant to the present, I feel, we have sold our inheritance and we have no sight on our descendants.

I am deeply concerned that we are throwing babies out with bath water in our desperation to remain in step with the world. The Church, particularly the Anglican Church, is feeling much pressure to keep up with the world, its ‘wisdom’ and its progress. We make knee jerk responses to questions and challenges posed by the people outside the Church, whom we serve in love. We have a selective replacement theology in every wing of our broad family, and a view of Jesus as someone who came and said,

So that Jewish thing hasn’t really worked, so let’s start again.

Yes, Jesus preached a ‘new’ commandment but ‘new’ is ironic because what he preaches is right at the heart of the Hebrew Scriptures: Love God, love your neighbour.

The sound system in one of our churches was quite old and temperamental and there had been cries for a new one for over four years. I had often joined with these calls to throw this old system out and get a brand new one. I was asked to look at the system and make some recommendations. In looking at it and studying it careful I realised that it was perfectly fine as it was. The problems stemmed from not using it right. The wrong cables were plugged into the wrong inputs and the speakers are not powerful enough for the amplifiers but when you use the system as it is meant to be used it works well. The problem was we wanted to throw it out and get a brand new one without asking the question: are we using it right?

I think there’s a similar problem with the Church.

We are not spending enough time thinking and studying how the Church is meant to work and we all presume it’s no longer fit for purpose. In fact, I think a lot of what the Fresh Expressions movement has discovered is what we knew before but had forgotten. The New Monastic movement (or whatever name you want to give it) has discovered what Martin Luther and Dietrich Bonhoeffer and many others already identified.

This does not mean that I am suggesting blindly clinging to the old, the fatal choice to remain faithful to a potentially sinking ship. There is much need of re-newing and discovering how God is adapting his plans to accommodate the world’s freely chosen direction. The world is changing and we can’t allow our world to become so alien to us that we can no longer communicate with it. Jesus shows us God is a being who loves us enough to enter into our lostness in order to be with us and save us. We must go to where people are, often places and situations where the Church has not been before because people have not been before.

The danger is allowing the new situations to change who we are in Christ. The danger, as it has always been, is to return to the life of the flesh and darkness when we have been given a life in the Spirit and of light.

I have been reading the biography of Oscar Romero and the following quote sums up what I feel God calling me to say in this generation,

The Church, then, is in an hour of aggiornamento, that is, of crisis in its history. And as in all aggiornamenti, two antagonistic forces emerge: on the one hand, a boundless desire for novelty, which Paul VI described as “arbitrary dreams of artificial renewals”; and on the other hand, an attachment to the changelessness of the forms with which the Church has clothed itself over the centuries and a rejection of the character of modern times. Both extremes sin by exaggeration. Unconditional attachment to what is old hampers the Church’s progress and restricts its “catholicity”… The boundless spirit of novelty is an impudent exploration of what is uncertain, and at the same time unjustly betrays the rich heritage of past experiences… So as not to fall into either the ridiculous position of uncritical affection for what is old, or the ridiculous position of becoming adventurers pursuing “artifical dreams” about novelties, the best thing is to live today more than ever according to the classic axiom: think with the Church. (Oscar Romero quoted in Morrozzo Della Rocca, Roberto, Oscar Romero: prophet of hope (London: Dalton, Longman and Todd, 2015) p.22-23)

Reflection

At this point in the Church of England’s history with so many questions over our inner polity and interactions with the world in mission, we desperately need leaders who are knowledgable of Divine Law, who are virtuous, sober and merciful, prudent, moderate and humble. Above all of these things spiritual men and women who are wise in administering the Rule of Life for all disciples. Servants of the gospel who can bring forth treasures old and new so that the Kingdom of God can establish itself amongst us.

Loving Father, the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of your children who grow in the likeness of your Son are who are led by your Spirit. You did not give a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear but you gave us a spirit of adoption to future glory. Elect men and women from amongst us who will guide us through temptations and live out a stable and pure life.

Come Lord Jesus

Parish Monasticism: the conference

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Suscipe me, Domine, secundum eloquium tuum, et vivam; 
et non confundas me ab expectatione mea.

Receive me, O Lord, according to your word, and I shall live: and let me not be ashamed of my hope.

Emerging communities. Missional communities. Alternative Worship. New Monasticism. Parish Monasticism… What’s in a name?

I must confess that in my deep desire to be validated by others I relished the idea of having a day, gathered by a Diocesan Training Team, named after a term that I coined through this blog. I wrote about it being a ‘thing’ and it was great but ‘pride comes before a fall’.

The temptation to arrogantly believe that this blog had made an impact on the national discussion around New Monasticism was too much and I approached the day discussion this week with a divided heart. I vainly hoped, I admit, that I would be looked upon with admiration or asked to give an authoritative voice on the topic. When it became clear that I was not invited to come and offer any thoughts on the concept of ‘parish monasticism’ I sinned in my heart and dismissed the day as misguided. I booked my place with some misplaced notion that I might still be able to speak into the conversation my pearls of wisdom and insights. It tapped into my sinful pride to be seen as an expert.

Lord, have mercy upon me.

At the same time I did want to gain from the experience of others who are also exploring this ‘move of the Spirit’ to develop some monastic principles within the parish context. I desperately wanted to see people practically working out the theories I have been mulling over for nearly two years and celebrate and learn with them.
I’m going to be honest, it was difficult sitting in a circle of people, most of whom were in the early stages of exploration for whom the phrase ‘parish monasticism’ had struck a chord but they hadn’t got further than that. The day began with the facilitator saying,

We were at a gathering in Whitby and discovered lots of us were wanting to develop monastic communities in the parish. I’m not sure where the name came from.

They then asked my friend who was sat next to me who had named a Facebook group Parish Monasticism. I’m saying this, not to gain sympathy for being somehow sidelined or underappreciated but rather to gain pity for my sinful response to this. In my frailty I angrily stewed on how I wasn’t being credited for working on this concept for years. I wanted recognition. I wanted to be known and respected.

Lord, have mercy upon me.

Once I subdued my pride and arrogance the day continued with an interesting presentation on the national perspective on culture by Chris Neal and I had a series of short conversations with Mark Berry who has been part of the New Monastic conversation for many years. The conversations going on throughout the day, however, led me to ask more questions of what this thing, ‘parish monasticism’, is.
What is distinctive between this and New Monasticism? What is distinctive between this and Traditional Monasticism?

This question of distinctiveness tapped into my own desperation to be recognised as something ‘new’ and novel and this suddenly felt totally wrong. The question mark in the title of this blog became more and more important to me as the day went on. Do we need ‘parish monasticism’ as distinct from ‘New Monasticism?

I was deeply humbled by the members of traditional monastic orders who came to listen in on this conversation. I wondered what they made of this discussion, novices thinking they are discovering some revelation and new movement of God when in fact it is written into the history and tradition. I suddenly felt like a child who had understood the principle of causality for the first time and went around showing anyone who would watch. I’m sure they wouldn’t have had such a patronising and cynical thought but I still found myself acknowledging my own naivety.

At the end of my day of sustained thinking on this concept of ‘parish monasticism’ I had a deeper sense of engaging with the historic tradition. There is a huge danger with Fresh Expressions and all its offshoots that we jump to revolution and innovation rather than renewal and reform. There is value in innovation and novelty but I find it more satisfying if it is what improvisers would call ‘reincorporation’. I was reminded how Martin Luther and the Wesleys held onto their deep desire for renewal of their tradition and from that a new movement appeared. Have we really understood the historic narrative and improvising from a place of respect or are we improvisers who are too interested in being distinct and stand out but to the detriment of the relationship with other improvisers?

Is our culture too keen on finding the new, world changing idea and will pay any price?

Yes, our tradition needs renewal and reform but my deep concern is that under the name of ‘context’ we cut off a history that unites us with our past and gives us an authority that will ground us and humble us. What is it that connects us with the Early Church, the Patristic Saints, the Reformers? In our desire to be relevant to the present, I feel, we have sold our inheritance and we have no sight on our descendants. Are we Esau who sells his inheritance for short term gain?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer presented Martin Luther’s reformation as moving the cloistered monasticism into every neighbourhood. He did it from a desire to correct the vicarious religion of that age, where Christians could dismiss the call to holiness and faithfulness because the monks performed that role. In our own day we have returned to a vicarious religion for the English people and there is a genuine concern that, if we develop ‘parish monasticism’, this issue is not solved; are we not just creating a spiritual elite within a congregation?

I’m grateful for the discussion day for guiding my thoughts on the real heart of my parish monasticism question: it is this Lutheran desire to place the monastic discipleship in the heart of every neighbourhood with a missional imperative to never be satisfied with any vicariousness of faith. This desire is not new and the practical suggestions put forward by this blog are not new. The fact that I am reading St. Benedict and applying those principles to modern parish ministry is not innovation it’s rediscovery.

So what do we do, those of us who have this thought that monastic discipleship might be important in any parish church? Do discipleship. What do we call it? We call it discipleship. Is there a place in the church for distinctive calls? Yes; George Lings identifies ‘sodal’ and ‘modal’ but I will always be deeply uncomfortable with any division or branding within the church and for my part in that by this blog…

Lord, have mercy upon me.

Parish Monasticism: an update

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Suscipe me, Domine, secundum eloquium tuum, et vivam; 
et non confundas me ab expectatione mea.

Receive me, O Lord, according to your word, and I shall live: and let me not be ashamed of my hope.

I started this blog at the end of 2013 as a learning project. I had no plans of what I would learn but would journal an intentional study programme of the Rule of St Benedict. I called is ‘Parish Monasticism?’ The question mark was important as I didn’t know if such a concept would work or be helpful to frame my reflections.

Well, 1 year and 9 months later and ‘Parish Monasticism’ is a thing! Who’d have thought it. By ‘a thing’ I mean other people are using the term independent from me. I had a parish priest who met me at a training event early this year use it and ask if I had heard of the idea. I asked him where he had heard it and he told me he had been told about it by a friend and that there was a Facebook group called ‘Parish Monasticism’ (no question mark). It’s funny how things develop…

I began this blog with a hunch; a hunch and a challenge laid down by Rev. Pete Askew at the Northumbria Community during a placement I did at Nether Springs in Felton. He said to me,

It’s impossible to live the way of life we live here at Nether Springs and be a parish priest. You’d have to be very stubborn to achieve it.

I don’t know if it is my stubbornness or something else but an increasing number of parish priests and ministers are not only discovering the benefits of monastic principles to ministry but also feel a sense that God is calling them to commit to the location in an intentional, communal way with other disciples.

This is at the heart of what ‘parish monasticism’ is, I feel. What I’ve been discovering in theory and, only in some parts, in practise is a way to effectively minister and transform neighbourhoods and communities through these basic monastic principles. No, it’s more than that. Parish monasticism is about reformation of the parish system to an explicit commitment to discipleship. I’ve discovered that the lack of effective mission and evangelism is a result of faulty discipleship. As I wrote before,

If a community is not engaged in mission then their discipleship is faulty; mission is the fruit of the tree of discipleship. There is no point in just forcing a community to ‘do mission’ and expect it to work. It would be better to go back to the basics of discipleship, correcting that and the fruit of mission will grow. You judge discipleship by the mission. (Ned Lunn, ‘Chapter 49: observance of lent’, Parish Monasticism? (Jan 17th 2015))

As the Church we have lost sight, as it did in Germany before World War II, of the cost of discipleship. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s observations and reflections on the antidote to this is what has fuelled the New Monastic movement and I think we are now beginning to discover that it must be planted within the parish system.

It must be within the parish system because there is something deeply counter-cultural for the increasingly urbanised 21st century Britain where transport is easy and more people consume worship and community rather than create/live it. Where we have no strength to withstand the temptation to make everything into our own image and just as we want it we justify or sanctify our freedom to choose where we go and what we do/allow in our lives. The parish system challenges that ego-centric part of each and everyone of us who refuses to allow something external to change our inner life.

This journey of discovery has unearthed the interconnected roots of the saints of old who speak so clearly to me; St Aidan, Thomas Merton, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Shane Claiborne to name a few. In focussing my reflections I have discovered a call deep down within me that sings of a theology rooted in Ash Wednesday and the creation story; we are made of dust, we must fully grasp humility and acknowledge we are nothing without the tender touch of our Loving Father God, humanity needs transformation and grace. From this root it grows into an acceptance of God’s mercy and love reaching out to lift us up from humble beginnings to healing and salvation as God adopts us and works on us so we can conform to His Son, the perfection of humanity, Jesus Christ. When we give ourselves totally to this process of redemption in every part of our life He seals us with His Holy Spirit to equip us for the task of heralding in His Kingdom in our lives and the lives of those around us like the first discipleship at Pentecost.

It all begins with humility.

It all demands obedience.

It all leads to community.

Parish monasticism, for me, is an emerging call to intentional, radical discipleship that seeks to convert our entire life to that of Jesus and heals us of our capitalist consumer, neoliberal culture that Stanley Hauerwas critiqued 34 years ago. Are we willing to be a stumbling block to both poles of the political and moral map found in the UK today? Parish monasticism is not about being ‘relevant’ which is banded about so much, it is about being faithful to the distinctive call to follow Christ who came to heal and healing means things change! We look at the complexities and crisis facing us on every side of our world today and we keep kidding ourselves that we know how to solve them: we don’t! We desperately want our situation to change but Jesus changes situations by changing us… and that means you and me.

Thomas Merton, who I return to whenever I reflect on our self-identity crisis in our society, continues to inform me,

The reason we hate one another and fear one another is that we secretly or openly hate and fear our own selves. And we hate ourselves because the depths of our being are a chaos of frustration and spiritual misery. Lonely and helpless, we cannot be at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we cannot be at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God. (Thomas Merton, The Living Bread (London: Burns and Oates, 1976) p.9)

This is the root of our problem. This is where real conversion and deep discipleship works out the healing and salvation of God’s grace, mercy and love for us.

So let us humbly acknowledge our total need for change. Let us obediently follow our healer’s instruction towards salvation and let us be adopted, by grace, into his family and live in true peace with him, ourselves and with others.

Chapter 58: the admission of new brothers

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Admission to the religious life should not be made easy for newcomers.

What does it mean to be a ‘Christian’?

It seems to me we have reached, in this chapter, another pivotal moment in the Rule. The issue raised in this chapter comes close to my central thesis (that sounds too pretentious) to this whole ‘parish monasticism’ project: what does it mean to be a ‘Christian’?

One of the trickiest parts of my role as a minister of religion in an established church is baptisms. You can choose any Anglican church in this country and ask the minister about their baptism policy and I can guarantee that they will speak, at some point, about it being ‘complicated’ or ‘disappointing’. It is on this single issue that I begin to consider disestablishment as a useful proposal!

I don’t want to go into my baptismal theology (it’s more Baptist than Roman Catholic but I understand the role of infant baptism) but I have never seen baptism as a legitimate evangelistic opportunity. The reason it remains disappointing is that we continue to delude ourselves that the majority of people bringing their baby to be ‘christened’ want anything to do with God. We invest time in ‘preparing’ babies to be ‘christened’ because we cannot refuse but in the end a small number of these families take the promises made at the baptism service seriously or anywhere close to understanding what they are committing to. The service becomes a theological farce in my mind and it forces me to ask: what is actually going on at those secular celebrations of our profound mysteries of God’s grace?

So, yes, I’m pretty distressed about this and easily slip into emotional rhetoric on the subject but to try and outline a positive response to the dilemma I will return to the question: what does it mean to be a ‘Christian’?

I ask this question at preparation evenings we host for potential baptism families. The phrasing of the question is important; I ask,

If your child, when they are 7 or 8 years old, comes up to you and asks, “Mummy/Daddy, are we Christian?” What will you say? And they ask, as they are likely to do, “why?” What will your response be?

From my year and a half of asking this question I have yet to hear any answer other than,

Yes. You were christened.

My heart sinks when I go month after month desperately hoping that one day someone will articulate in some way their desire to know Jesus. After they’ve answered I talk, quite passionately, about being a Christian, about following Jesus, wanting to be transformed into His likeness, to acting, speaking, loving like Jesus, to inviting him to direct my life, my behaviours and my attitudes. I, like many ministers, comfort myself with the only thing left to us: the ‘planting seeds’ analogy.

It is not that I don’t understand the sowing analogy but I have major theological issues when we’re sowing seeds at the point of baptism, our welcoming of new Christians into the Kingdom of God. Infant baptism, for me, relies, in part, on the faith of the parents and/or godparents. Of course, baptism relies on the grace of God and God’s relationship with the child but there remains big questions over whether salvation can be removed from someone; can someone turn away from God’s grace? It is about free will and choice in the matter of relationship with God. If choice is taken away from baptism then we may as well go round pouring holy water over people and proclaiming faith over them!

No, it will not do, for me!

Here, in the Rule of St Benedict, we hear of the admission to the religious life not being made easy for newcomers. In my heart I believe that baptism into the Christian faith ideally should be akin to taking up monastic vows. This does not deny infant baptism for the commitment made in that instance still takes the vows of the parents and/or godparents.

But, Ned, that’s monasticism and not ordinary folks!

Why do we still differentiate so much in this respect? Why can we not take the model of monasticism for general faith? Why must there be different levels of holiness, one level reserved only for the ‘monks’? Why do we not expect all Christians to be holy?

I have been reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer recently and studying his views on ‘new monasticism’ as well as discipleship. I’ve recently been skimming through his ‘Letters and Papers From Prison’ in which he begins to outline a book he never had the chance to complete. In this book he begins to formulate a ‘religionless Christianity’. The argument, for me, is persuasive but, unfortunately, he never fleshed out the practical implications of his theories. If I ever return to academic study I would probably base my dissertation on Bonhoeffer’s use of monastic models in his view of Christian discipleship.

His use of monastic metaphors began well before his time in prison of course. It was in his book ‘The Cost of Discipleship’ that I first came across his explicit use of monasticism.

The expansion of Christianity and the increasing secularization of the church caused the awareness of costly grace to be gradually lost. The world was Christianized; grace became common property of a Christian world. It could be had cheaply. But the Roman church did keep a remnant of that original awareness… Here on the boundary of the church, was the place where the awareness that grace is costly and that grace includes discipleship was preserved. People left everything they had for the sake of Christ and tried to follow Jesus’ strict commandments through daily exercise. Monastic life thus became a living protest against the secularization of Christiantiy, against the cheapening of grace. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001) p.46-7)

This whole section from the chapter on ‘Costly Grace’ jumps from the page and into our time. He attacks the division of the church into ‘a highest and lowest achievement of Christian obedience’. The work of the monks was used to justify the lack of discipleship of the many in churches.

But the decisive mistake of monasticism was not that it followed the grace-laden path of strict discipleship… Rather, the mistake was that monasticism essentially distanced itself from what is Christian by permitting its way to become the extraordinary achievements of a few, thereby claiming a special meritoriousness for itself. (Ibid., p.47)

Prior to his publication of ‘The Cost of Discipleship’ Bonhoeffer wrote to his brother and proclaimed,

The restoration of the Church will surely come from a kind of new monasticism, which has in common with the old kind only the uncompromising nature of life according to the Sermon on the Mount, following Christ. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Testament to Freedom (San Francisco:HarperSanFrancisco, 1997), p.424)

If you put these two writings together you can see Bonhoeffer beginning to formulate an ecclesiology which broke down the cloistered walls and brought the discipleship of the monastic life into the wider Church. Bonhoeffer goes on to use the biography of Luther, himself a monk, who ‘escaped the monastery’ to bring the discipleship to all the world.

By the time he reached prison, Bonhoeffer was grasping the implications of this ‘new form of monasticism’ which was based fully in the world. Part of Bonhoeffer’s argument for a ‘religionless Christianity’ centres on the un-biblical premise that Christianity is a cosmic escape plan from this world to heaven. In this schema Christianity is a religion interested only in metaphysics and individual salvation. His prison letters to his friend Eberhard Bethge, critiques our modern view of Christianity which desperately attempts to preserve itself against an increasingly forceful argument against the existence of God. In an baptismal homily written for Bethge’s son, Bonhoeffer writes,

Our church, which has been fighting in these years only for its self-preservation, as though that were an end in itself, is incapable of taking the word of reconciliation and redemption to mankind and the world. Our earlier words are therefore bound to lose their force and cease, and our being Christian today will be limited to two things: prayer and righteous action among men. All Christina thinking, speaking, and organizing must be born anew out of this prayer and action. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison (London: SCM Press, 2001) p.105)

If the reality of faith in Christ that God does not desire us to leave this world or be concerned with other worldly things but to follow Christ in committing to this world in all its suffering and challenges then what place does something as religious and metaphysical as prayer have in this faith?

I discovered later, and I’m still discovering right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. One must completely abandon any attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman (a so-called priestly type!), a righteous man or an unrighteous one, a sick man or a healthy one. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In doing so we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world–watching with Christ in Gethsemane. That, I think, is faith; that is metanoia; that is how one becomes human and a Christian (cf. Jer: 45!)(Ibid., p137)

I know I’m quoting alot of Bonhoeffer but I think it’s important to show his thorough study towards an ecclesiology which I find helpful in pursuing this disturbing experience of baptising, wholesale, babies to parents who show no indication of any desire of relationship with Jesus Christ.

It is not with the beyond that we are concerned, but with this world as created and preserved, subjected to laws, reconciled, and restored. What is above this world is, in the gospel, intended to exist for this world; I mean that, not in the anthropocentric sense of liberal, mystic pietistic, ethical theology, but in the biblical sense of the creation and of the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Barth was the first theologian to begin the criticism of religion, and that remains his really great merit; but he put in its place a positivist doctrine of revelation which says, in effect, “Like it or lump it”: virgin birth, Trinity, or anything else; each is an equally significant and necessary part of the whole, which must simply be swallowed as a whole or not at all. That isn’t biblical. There are degrees of knowledge and degrees of significance; that means that a secret discipline must be restored whereby the mysteries of the Christian faith are protected against profanation. (Ibid., p.369-70)

And so here it is, what I’ve been building upto!

Confession of faith is not to be confused with professing a religion. Such profession uses the confession as propaganda and ammunition against the Godless. The confession of faith belongs rather to the “Discipline of the Secret” in the Christian gathering of those who believe. Nowhere else is it tenable…The primary confession of the Christian before the world is the deed which interprets itself. If this deed is to have become a force, then the world will long to confess the Word. This is not the same as loudly shrieking out propaganda. This Word must be preserved as the most sacred possession of the community. This is a matter between God and the community, not between the community and the world. It is a word of recognition between friends, not a word to use against enemies. This attitude was first learned at baptism. The deed alone is our confession of faith before the world. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Testament to Freedom (San Francisco:HarperSanFrancisco, 1997), p.91)

Baptism is not an opportunity to teach people the faith. Baptism must remain the result/ the response to an encounter with the resurrected Jesus in this world. Baptism is the secret admission of another into the community which professes by its prayer and action the reality of God amongst us, reconciling and restoring this world.

Reflection

I believe, now more than ever, the reformation of the Church will come through a new form of monasticism which breaks down the cloisters and is embedded in the lives of all Christians. By Christian I mean those who seek to know God in the world through the resurrection of Jesus Christ and his Holy Spirit. This means a Church which knows itself as disciples living contrary to the world around them but still remaining embedded in it as Jesus once did. Jesus remains enfleshed in the very reality of God and so there will never be any division between flesh and spirit.

Jesus also differentiated between the crowd and the disciples and was unashamed in the distinction. We are not disciples to sell Christ as a product. We are disciples to seek Jesus and to be more like him. The established church has lost this distinction in our baptismal theology and we continue to cheapen the power and transformation of grace by colluding with it.

Having said all of this, I fall into silence at the horror and pain of my feelings and pray earnestly for wisdom. I know that I am at the very first stages of understanding and may be heading down a treacherous path but still that dissatisfaction for where we are now.

Gracious Father, let me not be pushed down the wrong path but rather be led by your Spirit into your will and right thinking. May my mind be your servant as well as my heart and life. I pray, have mercy on us all and lead us into the path of righteousness for your Sons sake.

Come, Lord Jesus.