New Monasticism
New Monasticism is a diverse movement, not limited to a specific religious denomination or church and including varying expressions of contemplative life.
[1] Bede Griffiths, a Catholic Camaldolese Benedictine monk who oversaw a Christian Ashram in India from 1968 to 1993, spoke often of the future of monasticism as being a '"lay movement"', and developed a vision for new monastic life.
The notion and terminology of Protestant "new monasticism" was developed by Jonathan Wilson in his 1998 book called Living Faithfully in a Fragmented World.
[4] Wilson was, in turn, building on ideas of theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who said in 1935: "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.
Noting the decline of local community that could sustain the moral life, MacIntyre ended his book After Virtue, by voicing a longing for "another... St.
[7] Calling the vision a "new monasticism", he proposed four characteristics that such a monasticism would entail: (1) it will be "marked by a recovery of the telos of this world" revealed in Jesus, and aimed at the healing of fragmentation, bringing the whole of life under the lordship of Christ; (2) it will be aimed at the "whole people of God" who live and work in all kinds of contexts, and not create a distinction between those with sacred and secular vocations; (3) it will be disciplined, not by a recovery of old monastic rules, but by the joyful discipline achieved by a small group of disciples practicing mutual exhortation, correction, and reconciliation; and (4) it will be "undergirded by deep theological reflection and commitment," by which the church may recover its life and witness in the world.
[8] The middle months of 2004 became a defining moment for the movement, when there was a gathering of a number of existing communities and academics in Durham, North Carolina, where they drew together something like a "rule of life," referred to as the "12 marks" of new monasticism.
[12] Dreher points to intentional communities such as Trinity Presbyterian Church in Charlottesville, the Bruderhof,[13] or the School for Conversion as examples of the Benedict Option being lived out today.
She writes: "As a distinct spirituality, via feminina is attentive to the multiple wisdoms of body, psyche, and soul, placing primary importance on healing those social factors - whether gender, culture, race, sexual orientation, religious belief, etc.
It thus is an invitation to divest one's being of subtle forms of injustice imbedded in the categories that define the religious life - redemption, salvation, nirvana, samadhi, soul, god - as well as in the processes of mystical ascent - purification, great death, annihilation, union - and hinder the full integration and liberations of the self.
[24] Other collaborators include Episcopal priest Matthew Wright, Sufi lineage holder Pir Netanel Miles-Yepez, David and Tamara Milliken and their "InnerSky Community", V.K.
Brother Wayne Teasdale coined the words interspiritual and interspirituality, which he described in his books The Mystic Heart: Discovering a Universal Spirituality in the World's Religions and A Monk in the World: Cultivating a Spiritual Life as a new orientation of religious and spiritual life with the following elements:[25][26] The Universal Order of Sannyasa (UOOS) uses the term "neoteric monasticism" to self-identify their interspiritual form of new monasticism, and "NeMon" is an abbreviated term designating a "neoteric monastic", according to UOOS's group description on Facebook.
In McEntee and Bucko's The New Monasticism: An Interspiritual Manifesto for Contemplative Life,[24] they describe the "Nine Vows of the New Monastic", which were based on Brother Wayne Teasdale's "Nine Elements of Spiritual Maturity"[28] and developed by the Rev.
