Nestled within a massed array of administrative buildings and banks in the City of London is the so-called “new monastic” church of St Mary Aldermary. Early before work, instead of going to the gym or shuffling into Pret A Manger, a growing number of City employees enjoy early silent prayer, intercessions and Taizé chants. A CD player simulates the calm of monasteries – piercing birdsong, slow-tolling church bells, the rustling of cattle.
Such is an example of “new monasticism”, a “fresh expressions” movement in the Church of England. A few churches in London have been turned over to the new monastics, where they adopt an unorthodox ministry of cultivating contemplative prayer and Benedictine spirituality – for example, praying at the start of the working day, thanking God and expressing penance as the working day ends – within parish work.
Moot, the community which runs St Mary Aldermary, has even codified a “rhythm of life”. There is a café – the kind of place you’d just stumble into, which Keira, the elected churchwarden, tells me is “deliberately over-staffed because we want it to be hospitable”. This addresses the spiritual needs of the parish – the City of London has everything, yet its frenetic commuters grapple daily with the gap at the heart of secular society. However, they are less sure about a coherent theology underpinning the new movement.
This is because “new monasticism” is a strange new term: it was imported from America, where it was probably first expounded in Shane Claiborne’s book The Irresistible Revolution. Claiborne is an Evangelical: he values monasticism as a means of establishing communities “marked by interdependence and sacrificial love”. Claiborne founded a movement of such communities: the Simple Way movement. One of these centres, Rutba House, even codified its own monastic rule.
Yet while Claiborne is sure that new communities of structured prayer will reinvigorate the spirit of Christianity, he distrusts asceticism and mysticism, contradicting our Catholic understanding of monasticism as the renouncement of pleasures to realise only the greater pleasure of God.
The movement differs in Britain. Here, it is an extension of the Oxford Movement and linked to Anglo-Catholicism, with several epicentres in London. At St Luke’s in Peckham, the formula of Benedictine spirituality is being experimented with for parish work. Ian Mobsby of the Wellsprings Community, who helped set up Moot, wants to cultivate a contemplative and hospitable Anglican place of worship with daily prayer. Yet the challenge here is even harder than in the City.
The parish is predominantly West Indian and West African, ethnic groups who are used to a more Pentecostal form of worship, which establishes a more concrete link between prayer and material gain (the so-called “prosperity gospel”.)
“The contemplative tradition makes absolutely no claims about any gain from that way of life,” Ian tells me. “It opens up life and all its challenges. The disconnect with modern life is always quite hard.” Fatigued from a Sunday service, Ian admits of Peckham: “It’s not an easy place to do church at all.”
As Catholics, we might question “new monasticism” in terms of its lack of a coherent theology to anchor it and its confusing integration of the contemplative and active. We might also question to what extent some practitioners are indeed “monastic”, if they are neither fully committed nor solemnly professed (although some do make serious vows).
“When you have shut the door, pray to your Father which is in secret” (Matthew 6:6). Perhaps such profundity does not allow for casual drifters, or people not even professing to believe in the same God, though Ian did tell me that theological discussion groups are part of his programme.
In inner-city London, we do have one Catholic programme that resembles “new monasticism”: that of the Catholic Worker. Guiseppe Conlon House, in Harringay, north London, is a “house of hospitality” that provides shelter for 20 destitute refugees as well as an interlaced programme in accordance to some degree with St Benedict’s vision.
Having cooked for the whole house and cleared it, community members pray Compline. There is Bible study, a book group, and the community runs group prayer sessions such as Lectio Divina. Yet the volunteers also take part in resistance and vigils in addition to the work around the House, testifying to a diversity within the movement expanding beyond the Benedictine tradition. Roland, a live-in volunteer there, tells me that the community consists of so much, yet “our faith, our religion and our spirituality is what pulls us back. It provides the anchor and the vision of what we’re doing.”
The Catholic Worker movement – often a path towards a contemplative religious life as well as an active calling – might give us some insight into how to respond to “new monasticism” as Catholics. New monasticism reaches out to the “un-churched”, allowing those cynical about faith to reconstruct it afresh, to experience the type of prayer that typifies a sustained relationship with Christ rather than a passing nod to Him on a Sunday morning.
Yet the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing memorably states that “even the Devil has contemplatives”: surely, contemplations must be properly lucid in order to bear fruit, guided by a single vision of a loving God rather than a mishmash of competing theologies.
Areas of Catholic Herald business are still recovering post-pandemic.
However, we are reaching out to the Catholic community and readership, that has been so loyal to the Catholic Herald. Please join us on our 135 year mission by supporting us.
We are raising £250,000 to safeguard the Herald as a world-leading voice in Catholic journalism and teaching.
We have been a bold and influential voice in the church since 1888, standing up for traditional Catholic culture and values. Please consider donating.