Anglican Community Project

Theoretical Words via Leithart

2011-12-07T12:04:00.000-06:00

Eric Gregory offers this wise counsel: “Words do not work the same way in normative theorizing as they do in historical inquiry. It is enough that ‘Donatist,’ ‘Pelagian,’ and “Manichean’ exist as live options in moral, political, and religious discourse – even if Augustine or later storytellers invented them in order to coordinate doctrine with their experience of God in Christian faith and practice. These words, and the narrative scripts they signify, provide broad classifications for a range of commitments.”

Historical study has an important role in helping “dislodge settled grooves of thought and make us skeptical of the stories we tell. They can show the normative consequences of how we construct intellectual histories. They can also challenge us with an Augustine we thought we already knew by helping us understand the world behind the texts.” But also those uses don’t rob terms like “Stoic,” “Platonic” or “Augustinian” of their conceptual usefulness, especially in “normative theorizing.”

Dreher Follows up on the Crunchy Cons

2011-11-08T18:03:00.001-06:00

The article is here.

As Pope Benedict XVI has said about believing Catholics in secularized Europe: “I would say that normally it is the creative minorities that determine the future, and in this sense the Catholic Church must understand itself as a creative minority that has a heritage of values that are not things of the past, but a very living and relevant reality.” So it must be with us crunchy cons. What else is there?

R.V. Young on the Benedict Option

2011-10-30T10:39:00.000-05:00

My friend Scott passed along this article to me. The conclusion of the article says:

At the end of After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre remarks that the world is waiting not for Godot but for a new St. Benedict. When Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger took the name Benedict upon his election to the papacy, an important motive may well have been to inspire a renewal of the civilizing work of Benedictine monasteries amidst societies in cultural decline during the anarchy of the Dark Ages of the first millennium. Perhaps a new “Benedictine moment” is already at work during our current era of cultural decline, carried out quietly and modestly by dozens of small liberal arts colleges, many of them Catholic or Protestant, by private preparatory schools and high schools, by institutes and foundations dedicated to nurturing the Western tradition, and by home-schooling parents and associations. The monks inspired by St. Benedict withdrew from a corrupt, chaotic world to do their work of restoration; the small traditional centers of liberal learning in our time are regarded with disdain—if noticed at all—by the progressive elites who dominate the decadence and disorder that we observe all around us. Nevertheless, the seeds planted in obscure corners may one day flourish, and the meek may indeed inherit the earth, as modernity at length completes its slow disintegration, displaced by a renewal of tradition.

This fits in well with a lot of our thinking on this blog. In other words, small pockets of people preserve the classical Christian heritage through dark times. I must confess however, that my own thoughts on the Benedict Option and the way I envisioned it (moving to one location and 'taking over' a town culturally) have moved into a bit of despair.

I would like to believe that a move towards an intentional parish with a vision of the Benedict Option is possible, but it runs into the realities of everyday life that frustrate it. Jobs, family, commutes, and so on militate against establishing a new community like this. What is ultimately required is a critical mass of people with the same vision who are willing to make big sacrifices to make something happen, and I don't know that such a vision is necessary. Perhaps we do better to flourish where we are and attempt to build institutions that will last.

Thoughts on Christian Community

2011-02-27T17:48:00.001-06:00

. . .from Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, author and activist in the 'new monasticism' movement:

Christian Community w/Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove from The Work Of The People on Vimeo.

The Church Must Preserve our Culture

2011-02-02T17:51:00.001-06:00

Over at the Touchstone blog, Anthony Esolen writes about the history of the Church in preserving our cultural past. He writes:

When I was in Sweden with my daughter this summer, we saw some churches with plaster ceilings that were entirely white. But now and then we'd see a shadow beneath the white, and that made me wonder if there hadn't been paintings underneath, whitewashed over. My guess was correct. In the Enlightenment, that period of self-satisfied bigotry, the constriction of the arts, and the consigning of centuries of human learning to the flames, the smart people of the day commissioned the destruction of works of folk art that were learned, intricate, and quite beautiful. It is hardly an isolated instance of the phenomenon of culture-destroying among deistic or antiecclesiastical elites. Francis Bacon consigned Aristotle to irrelevance, but it is much to be doubted whether he actually read such Renaissance Thomists as Suarez and Banez, much less Thomas himself. The smarties of the eighteenth century sniffed with contempt upon things medieval -- for almost two hundred years Dante is almost wholly unread outside of Italy. What happened, too, to all the stained glass windows in the cathedrals of France? One wonders how much literature has been lost because the courtiers of the Renaissance, unlike the monks, were simply not interested in preserving medieval manuscripts. John Dewey, despiser of all learning originating in an age before John Dewey's, tried his hardest, and with wonderful success, to eliminate classical learning from American public schools.

And now in our own day, who are the burners of books? I note with real pleasure that homeschoolers, the large majority of them Christian, and those in charge of upstart evangelical and Catholic high schools and colleges, are the ones in the United States who are preserving classical learning. They study Aristotle -- with impressive care -- at Thomas Aquinas College in California. They learn Latin and Greek at Patrick Henry College, a school whose students are to the typical Ivy Leaguers what linebackers are to waterboys. I could say similar things about the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola University, the Great Books program at Baylor, the Catholic Studies Program at the University of Saint Thomas in Minnesota, Thomas More College, and many more such places, but I could not say them about too many other schools.

If we as a people do not work hard at passing our faith and our past on, it will not be preserved. Knowledge is fragile and must be tended, just like anything else worth having.

The Difference

2011-01-04T17:27:00.000-06:00

What should be different about community life in an Anglican parish vs. in any other strand of Christendom? Off the top of my head, it seems that our office of prayer provides the opportunity for small groups of people to pray in a church building or outside it in an equally structured manner. The lectionary means that we can theoretically be reading in harmony with large segments of the Church at the same pace and thus think about some of the same topics together.

But these elements can be duplicated in Lutheran settings, Catholic settings, and a host of other traditions, so it is not uniquely Anglican. But perhaps that is a good thing. While I see a revived Anglicanism as the best hope for Protestantism in America and elsewhere, it is not the One True Church (copyright). So my attempts at thinking through an ideal Anglican community do not have to uniquely apply to Anglicanism, but should be able to be duplicated in many communions.

The Barbarian Conversion

2010-03-14T18:53:00.000-05:00

Richard Fletcher [The Barbarian Conversion] notes that ancient Christendom was not monolithic:

In terms of custom and practice there were many churches in sixth- and seventh-century Europe, not One Church. Christendom was many-mansioned.

Fletcher talks about the motif of exile in the monastic expansion. Christians, following the writing of Augustine, saw themselves as exiles and pilgrims and then the monastics took this exile literally. They often left their homeland and people to found monastic missions amongst others. Fletcher says:

Pilgrimage, in the sense of ascetic renunciation of homeland and kinsfolk, is of special importance in our understanding of the phenomenon of conversion in the early Middle Ages. Pilgrimage merged insensibly into mission. The monasteries that were founded by the exiled holy men had something of the character of mission stations. It was not that they were established primarily among pagans; indeed, they could not have been, dependent as they were on wealthy patrons, necessarily Christian...for their endowments...But their monastic communities were situated on the margins of Christendom, and had what might be called "diffusive potential" among nearby laity who were Christian only in the most nominal of senses.

It seems to me that we could apply this same method to the diffusion of the faith in our day. Establishing tightly-focused communities at the margins of our society, for example in rural areas and urban areas that aren't glamorous. Communities devoted to Biblical saturation, mission and learning which could aim to gradually convert the surrounding area.

Joy

2010-01-01T13:46:00.002-06:00

One of the puzzling facets of the Christian life as I live it and see it lived is the lack of joy that we have. It seems to me that many Americans are living lives of quiet desperation, under layers of regret, hopelessness, frustration and outright depression. This applies to the unsaved as well as the saved, but in our case it is puzzling because of what Jesus has told us.

Jesus said, “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” I imagine that the joy of Jesus is of such an infinite magnitude that it would be wonderful to experience. Furthermore, God sternly rebuked Israel for not serving him with joy. He said, “Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joyfulness and gladness of heart, because of the abundance of all things, therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you, in hunger and thirst, in nakedness and lacking everything.”

That seems to summarize our American condition succinctly - an abundance of things but no joy or gladness of heart. I’m sure that the reasons for this condition are many, “you must realize the depth of your sin and the reality of God’s sacrifice” I can hear someone saying. But I have some ideas on why we feel down in the middle of everything, or sometimes in the face of great actual suffering. In no order they are:

1. We don’t do what we should due to fear of man, i.e. we don’t suffer because we are too worried about our reputation. I often hold back in public situations when I think I will be mocked for Christ, I don’t identify with him when I should. Jesus said that in this world we will have suffering and he is the prime example of it. The Apostles rejoiced to be counted worthy to suffer with him. The mockery, beating and death they endured was a liberating cause of great joy for them. I avoid this kind of suffering and therefore my joy is not full.

2. Church isn’t what is should be. I don’t mean this in terms of a primitive, “New Testament” church or in terms of doctrine (thought it might be that too), but rather in terms of love, relationships, care for the poor, missions mindedness, and so on (think about the ‘one anothers’). To me, this is a huge factor in joylessness. Our relationship with Jesus is supposed to be lived out horizontally amongst God’s people. Instead, churches are full of people with clue about how to be hospitable, how to love, how to eat together, talk to each other, or otherwise be the body of Christ. When your church situation is good, the rest of life coheres and is easier. When it isn’t, the rest of life suffers from isolation, alienation and depression.

3. Debt. Our society is structured around debt slavery. Because we are in debt, we cannot contribute like we should, help those in need like we should and so forth. In my case, there aren’t good church options around me and I can’t move close to a good church due to the housing situation which essentially boils down to a debt situation.

There is a certain grim determination to put one foot in front of the other that gets many of us Christians through life and I think that is fine in a sense. The lie of “happy all the time” positive-thinking Christianity is a nauseating answer to legitimate suffering and depression. That’s not what I’m advocating at all. We will all suffer. Until recently, when I though of suffering I thought of persecution, medical problems or death. But now I think suffering includes (and perhaps primarily includes) the daily grind, boredom, Groundhog Day like repetition, rejection from the Church you are part of, not being able to exercise your gifts for God, things like that.

There are many other legitimate reasons for this lack of joy. I don’t have the answers, I just know the dilemma. Thank God we do have Jesus, for without him this joylessness would be truly overwhelming. The world if full of people numbing themselves with movies, consumption, hobbies, family activities or whatever and all for nothing. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Fear God and keep the commandments, this is the whole duty of man.

Anglican Studies Houses

2009-07-24T07:30:00.004-05:00

In two previous posts on this blog, I have written about an idea for an Anglican educational community, what I now call an "Anglican Studies House." I can report some progress on that front, and would like to issue a call, as well.

Progress: I have now shared this idea with several leaders in the ACNA (and to a lesser extent, the Episcopal church), and it has received enthusiastic support. Along the way, I have also learned of at least one other such initiative already under way. I am working to organize people locally so that we might begin planting one in the Chicagoland area sometime in the next year or so.

In these conversations, I have sensed a deeply felt need to 'do education' differently, in a way that forms young people in the Anglican ethos with a uniquely Christian worldview, to the glory of Christ and the advancement of His kingdom. Many have genuinely agreed with my general assessment that Anglicans (in north America at least) have done a poor job at this. We might worship Him well in our liturgy, but do we equip people faithfully, rigorously with the mind of Christ? All our endeavors, including learning and intellectual inquiry, should be seen as sacrificial offerings unto the Lord.

Ultimately, it is my vision to see these popping up around the country and in a variety of settings. Some may be connected directly to an existing college or university (a kind of 'fraternity' or 'sorority' for students wishing to be formed in the Anglican ethos while in school). Still others might be 'free standing,' in a part of town where unique work and/or ministry opportunities might provide a inspiring context for community building (e.g., in an arts district, a poor inner city neighborhood, a pastoral location in the countryside, to name just a few). Uniting these Houses could be a network(s) for sharing ideas or collaborating. A network of Houses could be united by a common rule of life.

Now for my call: I would like to connect with you if this vision moves you. Check out my initial posts (links above) which are brief sketches of the basic vision. I want to begin organizing a conversation about these Houses, perhaps the beginnings of a network.

Are you interested? Please leave a comment, below, with your e-mail address, identifying yourself and explaining the nature of your interest. The comment will need to be approved by me, the moderator. However, out of confidentiality, I will not approve it (unless you say so). In short, your email or identity will be held in confidence by me. Then, I will know to contact you privately from my own email address. Thanks!

Of course, feel free to leave comments, too! Either way, let's do talk. . .

A Canticle for Leibowitz and the Benedict Option

2009-07-21T09:50:00.000-05:00

     I have been reading and enjoying A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller, Jr. The novel outlines a grim future where a global nuclear holocaust has sent man back to primitive times and an order of Catholic monks preserve any knowledge of our age that they can get their hands on. They laboriously copy and re-copy blueprints, scraps of textbooks and so on.
     The book describes how in the wake of the nuclear war, the people who survived turned on anyone of learning and killed them because they blamed the intellectuals for creating nuclear weapons and allowing or causing the massive death and suffering across the globe. In their fury the mobs kill anyone with knowledge and burn every book they can get their hands on. Vast stores of learning are wiped out of existence by these mobs. Add to this the nuclear war which has turned cities into lakes of glass and you have almost erased our civilization overnight.
     Reading this scenario in 2009 conjures up a Cold War feelings and the whole thing at first seems a bit quaint: mutually assured destruction and all of that. But when I step back and think about it, how absurd is it really? There is no real cause for the United states and Russia, China, or another nuclear power to start a war right now, but will it always be that way? India and Pakistan could certainly nuke one another which would not be a global conflagaration, but could produce horrors. And the future possibility of the USA and Russia nuking each other cannot be ruled out totally because we don't know what the future will look like and one thing is certain: man's evil nature has not changed.
     I highly doubt that there will be a "Flame Deluge" such as the one portrayed in Leibowitz, but the book does illustrate the fragility of our cultural heritage. With the increasing reliance on electronic storage for our texts, this heritage becomes even more fragile.
     Beyond the possibility of worldwide destruction, there is a more potent threat of the simple vanishing of knowledge due to self-imposed ignorance and the loss of habits of virtue. What I mean is that if texts are not studied by people living in community and then lived out in real life, they also can cease to exist in some sense. If the Bible is just a book that gets studied and no one lives what it teaches, it has lost all cultural value, at least for a time. If texts on electronics exist but no electronics are manufactured, the texts have no impact on the world.
     This again leads me to reflect on an Anglican Benedict Option. I see the preservation of texts by a community in an intentional way as part of that option. This would involve buying books, re-binding old books, printing books and perhaps acquiring the ability to hand-copy books for the unlikely eventuality that our society would experience a catastrophic reversion to a pre-Guttenberg age.
     Most important however is for us to re-invent ways of living the good life together that can be sustained in the modern world. The fragmented suburban life is not conducive to living out the Gospel, period. The suburbs could be made to sustain such a life, but it would still involve moving to the same subdivisions, working near them and having a parish near them. This is hard to do. Politics are harder to influence in communities of 30,000 versus communities of 3,000. My theory is that it would be better to attempt a reconstruction of a vibrant parish life that preserves the past as well as influences the future in a smaller town somewhere on the fringes of our empire. Making it our ambition to lead a quiet life and work with our hands, we could foster communities that might last for several centuries or longer, on into the future when the Church again holds sway over the West.

Rumblings of the Benedict Option?

2009-05-05T05:57:00.002-05:00

The hunger is there, see this post:

New Towns

The Anglican Benedict Option

2009-03-25T19:59:00.002-05:00

I’ve written a bit about creating an Anglican community by like-minded Anglicans moving to the same location. Steve has put down some great thoughts about what educational praxis could look like in an Anglican setting. I’d like to see all of this come together in an Anglican Benedict Option - fleeing the collapsing modern state and “preserving the remnants of Christian and classical virtues and laying the groundwork for the rebirth of a new civilization.” If you have any interest in really doing this and not just thinking about it, please contact me!

It seems to me that this would require some agricultural know-how. Working the land might be necessary in a small town with no big job-provider around. I am presuming that the internet and modern communication will persist, but that the permanent things will be left behind by a reckless culture. So I speculate on other trades that could provide income in a situation where a new community attempts to carve out a place and survive on the outskirts of the empire. I wonder if typography in the form of a type foundry could work in a small town? Fonts are distributed globally so perhaps that is a flexible enough craft to be performed from anywhere. Book binding is a niche market that would seem logical for the people of the book. Publishing in general would be desirable, and creating lasting editions of works like the Book of Common Prayer, the Bible, and the Church Fathers would be essential to a Benedict option for Anglicans. Depending on proximity to the ocean or lakes, some type of boat building / repair might be profitable. Establishing a school and a university would seem to be necessary to perpetuate learning in the face of global ignorance and the bankrupt university system of the United States.

We can cultivate a different way of life in the face of the moral miasma that is the air we breathe. Formed by the cycle of the Church year and daily prayer, devoted to alms giving and works of mercy, fearless in proclaiming the Gospel and practicing the liturgy that has undergird the Church since her earliest days, we can begin again.

Whither Religious Communities?

2009-03-18T14:29:00.003-05:00

Two recent stories in the Church Times lament the demise of religious (monastic) communities in the U.K., and especially within the Church of England.

The religious life within Anglicanism has never enjoyed the level of support found in Roman Catholicism. As a church born of the Reformation, religious communities were suppressed within the Church of England. They were, however, revived thanks to the Oxford Movement of the 19th century. Even some seminaries (like the one I attend) were inspired to follow the daily rhythm of Benedictine Rule.

Today, though, such communities are--again--on the decline. The stories in Church Times describe the paradox that ours is an age that enjoys anew contemplative forms of spirituality but yet membership in religious orders is at an all time low, and many communities as a whole are dying a silent death. The problem seems to be commitment. The idea of committing oneself, lifelong, to the rigors of monastic oaths--particularly, celibacy--is a cross too heavy to bear.

How might we address the problem (if you, like me, agree with the authors that this is genuinely a problem)? The second story raises this fascinating proposal:

Sometimes I wish we had a kind of monastic National Service, akin to the tradition of temporary monasticism found in some Buddhist countries. This is not as implausible as it might seem. The Melanesian Brothers and Sisters, the Anglican religious order in the Solomon Islands, take vows for five years at a time. Unlike most religious communities in the UK, the order is youthful, vibrant, and growing.

The predictable objection to the idea of temporary vows in the context of traditional monastic communities is that it would undermine the principle of stability, which is the very basis of their life. I wonder. Presumably among those who signed up for a limited term, there would be some who would stay longer, perhaps even for life — as is the case with the Melanesian Brothers.

It is possible that by removing the forbidding notion of a life-sentence, the prospect of being a monk, a friar, or a nun would seem a good deal more feasible to people who might like to explore the possibility, but felt unable to make a life-long commitment at the outset.

I like this idea a lot. In fact, it could easily become a feature of other kinds of faith-based communities--non-celibate intentional communities, for instance--where Christian brothers and sisters, perhaps even families too, could enter into a deeper form of community for a certain stage of one's life. Perhaps it is during one's graduate education; or during an transition stage, where one career path is opening onto another; or during an interim phase, where one lacks a clear path ahead and needs time for prayer and reflection. A family who finds itself homeless might join such a community as the parents train for new careers. For me, personally, the idea that I could have taken a 3- or 5-year vow during my graduate education, for instance, would have held genuine appeal. I needed the daily discipline of prayer and study, and doing so within a community of brothers in Christ could have given my education an entirely deeper spiritual dimension.

On a grander scale, my suspicion is that the luster of the modern world is beginning to wear off in the West. More and more, people sense that consumerism is vapid. The economy itself is teaching us that the pursuit of wealth is a vain delusion. Happy-go-lucky relativism is a luxury we can ill afford in a world full of 9/11s, Darfurs and AIDs pandemics. What has not faded yet, however, is a whole other panoply of romantic delusions. They live on. To whit: that we can live life on our own terms; that sexual experimentation is a right everyone ought to invoke as soon and as often as possible; and that commitment is only bondage, not genuine freedom.

Religious communities clearly are not immune from these cultural tides. But while the modern world dies in fits and starts, it seems to me that the things of enduring value will persist, even if they must--for a time--adapt. Religious communities are well poised to help us negotiate these turbulent times, and serve as a beacon amidst the storm. I hope that they will not die but will find a way to adapt and renew their vision and mission. For their sake. For ours. And ultimately, for our Lord's.

The Smaller, the Better

2009-03-07T14:49:00.012-06:00

I can't find the quote right off, but I believe it is in his book The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction where Eugene Peterson states that a local church really ought not to be greater in size than about 200 people, give or take a few. The reason is quite simple. A pastor cannot get to know by name more people than that and continue to take an active, praying and listening role in each of their lives. Pastors must fundamentally be people of prayer and listening. Pastors ought not to be distant figures up on some stage, but incarnate amongst their people a prayerful, listening form of ministry.

Now, megachurch-type ministries have sought to honor this principle in their own way by breaking the big church up into smaller units, sometimes quite intentionally calling them separate "congregations." But I think the economy of scale presupposed by the church as a whole may just miss the point and perhaps undermine the concept from the start. Big churches accustom people to, train their sensibilities in anonymity. What's more, when they fight anonymity, they generally do so by allowing people to 'shop for' their own 'niche,' for their own congregation or social grouping among more people like themselves (e.g., the 20s, young professionals, seniors, etc.). In a sense, they have you go deeper into your individuality, not transcend it. If you are never really forced to pray for or listen to someone outside your social group--which you can easily avoid in a megachurch--then you are far removed, I believe, from growing in the love of neighbor. As such, megachurches can exacerbate inter-generational or social group differences and lose any sense of cohesion.

That's the point of Peterson's model. It actively seeks to resist anonymity throughout an entire church not just throughout one's self-chosen small group or the like. Church should challenge us to love our neighbor right next to us, whether they are like us or not, by having that neighbor right there next to us at each point along the way.

I am deeply moved by Peterson's vision, to the point where it has opened my eyes to a whole new sense of what church ministry possibly could be. (I sense that part of why his vision inspires me so much is that I see such strong elements of this embodied in our very own pastoral team. I've seen it work, and it is good.)

As a result, I now believe firmly that any church which approaches, roughly, 200 active attendees ought to raise up a core group of 30 to 50 to plant a new church. If not before!

For me, the key now is not size, but dynamism. You want a church where intimate relationships can develop, and one-on-one discipleship is a living reality. You want that church to reach out well to folks in the community with whatever gifts the parishioners bring to the table. Small is better in this sense because it remains personable, not threatening and overwhelming as some shopping-mall sized megachurches probably are to the unchurched. We need to be busy in the relationship business, and you can only do that when you have a church where everyone can realistically get to know everyone.

What's more, it's gotten me thinking that the most logical way that you keep a church congregation small but dynamic is to have it plugged into a local community. Here I want to revive the old historic 'parish model' of doing church, where a church is at the center of a local community--the living, breathing hub of spiritual and social life. In such a model, the priest is a pastor not just to those on the inside but, in a sense, also to even the non-churched person who lives down the block. A pastor should know all the people in the surrounding community by name. They should know who could pray for them, if they want, where to find pastoral help, if they need it. And so the small, local congregation should end up being the hub for everything from after school tutoring and summer programs for kids to feeding the hungry, providing food for shut-ins and the sick or hosting block parties. To be sure, the church is not just a dispenser of social services (which is what I fear some socially active Roman Catholic parishes end up becoming). Rather, the Gospel is preached with power, and lived out within a local community. It ought to be an attractive way of doing church, with a genuine appeal to those who do not know Christ (yet) because the Body of Christ incarnates Him and makes Him real in the community.

On this model, local parishes should not be about recruiting members from outside of a given radius but constantly focused on getting to know and then serving everyone within their own. If enough people from another local community start attending--as they are certainly welcome to do--then they ought to begin thinking about how they are going to plant a similar church in their own neighborhood. And so on. Church growth, then, is a process of planting small but dynamic congregations who know their communities and serve them with the hands and feet of Christ.

My sense is that this model would work not only in densely populated urban areas, but especially well in the suburbs, where we could begin seeing subdivisions as parishes with their own church and the like. Rural areas may cover relatively larger swaths of land, but that is well-known terrain for such people. They are used to 'driving into town.' All is means is that the pastor must visit homes much more--and be the kind of person whose presence is always welcome.

Being a welcoming presence: that, to my mind, is the key. Everything else follows from it. For example, in contemporary American suburbs there could easily be zoning issues if a parish wanted to build a building (which would serve as a visible sign and physical meeting place for the community). But I would like to insist that before there is ever talk of a building, there must be genuine worship and service flowing out of the homes of parishioners to that community. If the church is a welcoming presence, it will likely be welcomed by her neighbors. Welcome enough, I would hope, to where the people of that community might actually desire the parish to build a facility, where they might see the value of having one in their midst--even if they themselves never intend to darken the door for worship. If church is built on relationship first--the core of Peterson's model for pastoral ministry--then everything else, including a meeting space, etc., will follow on its own.

In general, Christians need to stop viewing church as an organization whose members meet to worship and engage in all sorts of 'Christian activities.' Rather, church is the relationship we have amongst ourselves and to the world. To be the church, rather than to have one--that is the heart of the matter.

A Dying Age

2009-02-19T11:28:00.001-06:00

As Americans, we've lived with the idea of our own permanence for so long that we can't imagine a post-American world. I think that the entire 20th century was almost an American eschaton. Our way of life triumphed and seemed forever stable. How could we ever descend into anarchy when Leave it to Beaver re-runs are on every day?

When day to day life involves trips to the grocery store, watching TV and living in ever-expanding suburbs, you don't see it ending. Perhaps we will have another century of more of this, but it seems to me that the end of our order is in sight. The old agrarian republic is long since dead, the Constitution is a meaningless document and we live in a centralized empire that bears only skin-deep resemblance to the Republic or the Colonies. But what does it look like when an empire really dies?

Charles Norris Cochrane provides some idea in his book "Christianity and Classical Culture." He writes:

The period following Theodosius may be characterized in general as one of twilight government by twilight men, whose puny and distracted efforts proved utterly inadequate to forfend the approaching doom. That doom was signalized in the destruction of cities, the devastation of the countryside, and the disruption of communications. Already in 396, the first year of Arcadius and Honorius, the situation, as portrayed by a contemporary observer, was little better than hopeless.

"The mind shudders," declares St. Jerome, "to contemplate the ruin of our time. For the last twenty years, the blood of Romans has drenched the lands between Constantinople and the Julian Alps, where innumerable and ferocious tribes spread devastation and death...The bodies of the free and noble, of matrons and virgins have become the prey of lust. Bishops are imprisoned; churches plundered; horses have been stabled at the altars of Christ; the bones of martyrs flung out of their coffins...Everywhere grief, everywhere lamentation, everywhere the shadow of death!"

Cochrane outlines how buildings fell into ruin due to no money being available to repair them. Taxes and duties became so onerous that people stopped paying them and fled into the barbarian regions. Thieves multiplied, roads became unsafe, and foreigners poured over the borders of the Empire and gave feigned allegiance to Rome while remaining citizens of their tribe. The laws were unenforceable, the armies weak. Centralized authority broke down everywhere and the Medieval Age began.

So where are we at on that kind of timeline? It is of course impossible to know the future. Our military is still in the field, our systems of communication are intact, and our imperial center is still able to enforce the law. We do appear bankrupt on every level, much of our recent architecture and building has been ephemeral rather than durable, so our cities and suburbs will fall into ruins unless continuously updated. We lack any unifying or central purpose of life, we have no clue what we are here for or what we are trying to accomplish. Our institutions are generally filled with people who hate our own history and way of life. We have experienced massive waves of illegal immigration which will forever alter what this nation thinks and how it is governed. We are not yet in total disintegration, but you can now see how it could happen.

I believe we will recover from the present economic turmoil, perhaps quickly. But the bigger picture is one of a balkanized and incoherent nation which is living on the fumes of past glory. I think Christians are being called to a new Benedict moment - a withdrawal to a new monasticism. Not monasticism of the celibate, but of the married - a Protestant monasticism if you will. Families may need to relocate to small communities where we can preserve the heritage of the past and put down roots which will endure in the coming ages. Because on the other side of the Roman collapse came Christendom, led by a Church that spanned nations and tribal boundaries. Our nation may become three nations, or ten, all spanning this continent. The old configuration may collapse of exhaustion and debt. But the Church will endure, God's Word will stand forever and communities that love the permanent things can shape a future age.

Clear Creek

2009-02-11T20:10:00.002-06:00

Clear Creek is a Catholic community that is living the Benedict option. There is a monastery with a growing community of lay people around it. While I would suggest a different configuration, largely based on Protestant ecclessiology, this is a good model for us to consider.

Now more than ever

2009-01-14T19:26:00.000-06:00

We need community. The need is everywhere present and easy to see. Much of life in the Church is shallow and meaningless. We are not bearing each other's burdens. We are not discipling, we are not evangelizing, we do not live near each other, we do not care for the neighborhoods we live in. Let's make 2009 a year where we begin to reverse these trends and carve out an Anglican response to this sickness.

Keble House--A Curriculum

2008-12-31T12:47:00.006-06:00

Here are some 'curricular' ideas for the intentional educational community I just described--what I have, provisionally, called 'Keble House.'

I think there should be certain core aspects to life in such an intentional community. Common worship and work should always be intrinsic parts of the daily life in the House. On the other hand, residents should also be challenged to set forth a personal 'formation plan' for each year or, perhaps, even for a longer period of residency (say, an entire 4 year plan). Build into the life of the House a sense that personal formation--spiritual, intellectual, emotional--is a project each of us can intentionally and communally undertake. Build into it regular moments of self-reflection and -evaluation. And as a result, residents would be trained in a very meaningful set of disciplines for life, that would help transform them and their world.

For instance, formation plans should include goals for spiritual disciplines (e.g., prayer, fasting, etc.); reading and study; writing, both private and writing that might be shared with the community as a whole (e.g., talks or presentations); relational and emotional goals; and service or outreach. The plan would be carefully formulated each year with the consultation of the director of the House. Goals should be realistic yet meaningful. They should not heap unreasonable amounts of additional study or work upon already challenged college students; but like any extra-curricular activity, life in the House can call forth special commitments of time and energy. Each resident could then share their plans with the others and together covenant to support one another in achieving the goals they set for themselves. The discipline of formation planning could be a part of an initial retreat to inaugurate each year; progress could be evaluated at a second retreat; and a concluding assessment performed at a final retreat. The House should help residents set goals for and assess their personal growth throughout the residential experience.

Here's a concrete example: A resident might agree to read certain works of the Church Fathers and to keep a on-going journal of his reflections. Then he might offer a couple of talks for the residents about his reading. He might also set the goal of fasting to begin each new season of the church year, and ask to be held personally accountable to remain true. Perhaps the resident needs to work on a relationship with a parent or friend, or develop more courage in speaking up in class. Residents of the House could come alongside him and encourage him in these personal goals. And finally, he might coordinate an outreach activity of the House: a drive for a food pantry or regular visits of House member to a nursing home.

At any rate, each resident (and perhaps even 'associated' non-residents) could set forth personal plans as a kind of curriculum for their residency, weaving the life of the House into the very fabric of the plan. It then becomes much more than a mere residential community with some worship and work requirements along the way. Rather, it becomes a context for personal formation.

A Vision for an Anglican Educational Community

2008-12-31T12:37:00.004-06:00

Anglicans have always had a great commitment to learning. We have a rich tradition of clergy-scholars, and more importantly, of educational institutions committed to forming hearts and minds for Christ. The history of Christianity in the British Isles inspires admiration for bishops, priests and laity who have sought to form young lives for Christian service through educational institutions.

I fear, though, that Anglicanism's educational identity has not weathered well the storms of the modern world and I suspect that the failure of education in the Anglican way has helped lead us to the crisis we are in. We see revisionism ripe in our seminaries. We see primary, secondary and higher educational institutions moving away from a Christian identity all together. And at the parish level, it is far too common to find uneducated laity, who cannot effectively disciple others in the basics of Scripture and doctrine. So we need to renew and deepen our commitment to the authority of Scripture. We need to renew and deepen our commitments to discipleship and mission. We need laity and clergy who genuinely cherish a Christian worldview and can thoughtfully, creatively confront the challenges of an increasingly post-Christian world. We need to enrich our educational communities so that they become training grounds for genuinely being the church, for truly submitting to one another in love under the lordship of Christ.

I believe, however, that intentional community in an educational context holds real promise. Of course, it will not 'solve' these problems, as if any single initiative could accomplish such a task. Rather, just like the religious communities of the Middle Ages, intentional educational community can provide a bulwark for orthodoxy. It can be the place where essentials are cherished and handed down, preserved amidst the ravages of the age. Intentional educational communities of the sort I envision could cultivate deeply Christian habits of heart and mind in the next generation.

Here, then, is my vision:

At colleges around the nation, Anglicans should start small, residential houses where students could live together, worship together, study together. It might seem like a fraternity/sorority house, but with key differences. A room in the house should be dedicated as a chapel. Each day's activities should be structured around the rhythm of Morning and Evening Prayer, so students would learn the habit of praying the Daily Office. A house director could serve as a spiritual director for the residents, and if ordained could celebrate the Eucharist daily. Other Anglicans at the host college/university could attend as well. They might also attend reading groups or lectures, hosted by the house. I could envision tutorial-type courses be accredited through the host college or else through an Anglican/Episcopal seminary for grad credit. One variation on my vision would have a residential director who was also a faculty member at the host college/university. That professor could offer Anglican Studies-type courses under the aegis of the house.

Residents would share meals, cleaning and chores, and in addition to the other formation activities. They would learn to live in community together. A particular focus of these Houses could be the cultivation of a missional outlook in the residents. Help them catch the vision for communal living as a means of mission--to the poor and needy, in urban contexts or suburban, in north America or abroad. The idea is that life shared together can be a great training in grace, especially at a key point in life like college.

For my part, I would call them Keble Houses, after John Keble, the great leader of the Anglo-Catholic renewal in the Church of England, the Oxford Movement. He was a man of great learning, deep and humble spirituality and reformist fervor--the very traits these houses seek to pass on to their residents.

On the whole, the House would serve as a focal point for training college students in the Anglican Way. It would be a place that would pass on the best of Anglican spirituality and theology and whose ethos would always be outward looking--of bringing the grace they received at the House to a needy world.

still alive

2008-12-17T20:30:00.000-06:00

...but just barely! I hope this blog can lift off again soon.

Next Christendom

2008-08-26T20:56:00.000-05:00

Writing in Touchstone magazine, Eric Miller says:

And what of the old "Christian" West? Maybe, in God's providence, it was time for it to recede. Like a college, a civilization that fails to incarnate many of the chief ideals it has championed deserves, if not ridicule, at least a stern rebuke and a sober exit.

Maybe instead of fighting so hard to preserve a dying civilization, people of Christian faith should allow the most noble ideals and practices of our Western heritage to call into existence a new people, one that more faithfully adheres to that timeless vision of the good life the West at its best conserved, a people that will begin this time with a markedly improved awareness of the worth of each particular creature of God, and, indeed, of the inestimable worth of the entire creation.

This is another call to thick community, to a new way of living rooted lives, to striking out against our current atomized way of life.

Ave Maria

2008-07-10T20:38:00.000-05:00

Here is one high-end approach to creating an intentional community in our day:

Ave Maria

and here's a video of the area:

video

Gas Prices and Community

2008-06-11T18:59:00.002-05:00

I don’t need to outline the pain that the price of gas is inflicting on us all. It is an albatross around the collective neck of our country. When you live in the exurbs like I do, you drive a lot. I drive an hour to work and an hour-twenty to church at 85 mph. I would never choose to live like this, but it is something of a lack of foresight on my part, and something of a lack of financial possibilities. I have a feeling that many people are absolutely sick of living in this manner.

Now, there is also a large sector of the population that thinks the American dream is living on as many acres as possible, as far away from people as possible, in the biggest home that is possible. I think there is a change in the air, indeed upon us, but it will take decades to work itself out.

One large factor in my thinking is the definition of the good life, as posited by Aristotle, Aquinas and the Christian tradition. Philip Bess sums up the tradition on the good life:

...the good life for individual human beings is the life of individual moral and intellectual virtue (or excellence) lived with others in communities. Aristotle himself characterized the four components of the good life as good health, sufficient wealth to satisfy our bodily needs, good habits, and good fortune.

Did you catch ‘with others in communities’? In the past, this was a given, you lived in the same town, village or state for most of your life. Your family surrounded you, for good or ill. But as we know, this has completely changed. We are hyper-mobile, generally don’t care about where we grew up, and like to stick family members in day care and nursing homes.

But again, change is in the air, younger Christians are yearning for tangible community, seeking to be free of the poverty of suburban bubble life. But can such ‘community’ be lived in churches that we drive hours to? Churches that we do not live near? People that we see once or twice a week? I would argue no, it cannot be. I believe that the thoroughly medieval notion that you attend the parish next to your house, that you know and are known by your neighbors and fellow believers. And yet I am by no means living this. For me to attend the parish closest to home would mean going to a Restorationist Church that denies all the creeds. Since I have strong convictions that faithful Anglicanism is the best hope for the revival of Christendom in the future, I remain Anglican, which entails a lot of driving.

This is now how it should be. And yet I cannot afford to live near the parish I attend. But here is where my vision comes in. I believe we are in a period of great darkness and yet great opportunity. Ignorance abounds, and we need communities that will preserve ancient knowledge and advance the gospel. We need something along the lines of monastics, but monastics who are married, work a day job, and live in the world. We need a Christian town, a Christian city. Several thousand actually.

Stephen and I may diverge here, but my vision is for a group of Christians to sacrificially pioneer an effort to relocate to a specific geographical location, and plant a new Anglican parish there. We would work in that community, live in that community, worship in that community, and fellowship in that community. No more hour-long commutes, we’d be thinking local here. This idea seems absurd to me, because I think that no one out in cyberspace will care enough to do it. And yet, Stephen found my initial post, and the idea spread. If you are reading this, perhaps the idea will spread to you.

This is a call to a totally counter-cultural way of life, to creating an oasis in the midst of post-modern America by planting roots, sinking them deep, and looking to the distant future for a full blossoming. But this is also a liberating and glorious idea. Walking to work, walking to church, knowing your neighbors, and not wasting endless hours in traffic. It all seems surreal to me, and perhaps it is. Perhaps this will never happen, but it is my dream.

Crunchy Con on Cohousing

2008-06-11T05:46:00.005-05:00

This story from yesterday is another sign to me that the ideas of shared community - not as just a concept but as a concrete reality - are catching on:

Cohousing

The idea in play here is discussed from a secular angle, but still has merit. It includes:

1. Participatory process.
2. Neighborhood design.
3. Common facilities.
4. Resident management.
5. Non-hierarchical structure and decision-making.
6. No shared community economy.

I'd like to interact with some of these ideas as I have more time. But this is at the heart of what I see as gathered communities heading into a new Dark Age. These communities would serve as bastions to preserve Biblical learning, the best of Western culture, and a rich and winsome Christian fellowship, with all that it implies.

The Birth of a Vision

2008-06-08T17:00:00.000-05:00

It was the beginning of Lent (2008) and I was walking out of a beautiful Roman Catholic retreat center, talking with a dear friend from our beloved church. We were talking about our parish life, especially our rhythm of seasonal retreats (like that very one), practicing the spiritual disciplines together. We were rejoicing in the community Christ is building in our midst and out of us. And on the grounds of this serene retreat center, our unity in Christ seemed more palpable than ever.

Like many in our church, and like my wife and I were until deep into our thirties, this friend is single. Singleness has its rewards, no doubt. I could not have gone to grad school in Europe for as long as I did (won't say how long!), and could not have taken quite the cultural education in languages and travel that I did, were I not free-wheeling it. But singleness is difficult, too. I struggled with loneliness and felt forced to forge communal ties on my own, sometimes without much reciprocation.

What's worse, I think that singleness in Europe may be easier to bear than in America because here in the U.S. of A.--especially in Christian churches--so much community life seems to hinge on being married with children. I guess it was because European life does not feel as socially segregated as in America; marriage was not the threshold requirement it has always felt to me in America. Still, I say 'may' because I truly had limited experience, State-side. I was only single for 2 years once I returned to America. . .then again, is it telling that they were two of the most difficult years of my life?

At any rate, as my friend and I talked, an idea hit me. There we were on the grounds of a retreat center, where Catholic sisters share a common life and so graciously welcome others into their midst. Why don't we Protestants--specifically we Anglicans--do (something of) the same? And why does that communal life have to be for celibates only? Why couldn't we, as a church, invest in property like this and build our single-family homes, our condos and townhomes, even our apartment buildings together? We could meet together for daily prayer and weekly worship. We could dine together and relax together, too. All of it, I dreamt, within an Anglican context, with its ethos of common prayer, centered around parish life. What better way to rebuild broken lives and churches and reach the world than to live out of faith together?

This idea--this dream, this vision--struck me with a force I've rarely experienced before. Those who know me, know I am a dreamer. Big ideas are not unusual for me. (It took my wife awhile to recognize the difference between my dreams and my plans for action, but I gather it was a (sometimes unwelcome) roller coaster ride for her until she did.) But this was different than just another big idea. Simultaneous with the idea, the dream, the vision came an overwhelming sense that I was called to pray for this. I could dream about the idea, but if it were to become a vision that others might share with me, I would need to pray and invite Jesus to inhabit it. He would have to move me forward in this vision and bring others into the picture to collaborate with me, if I were to act at all.

So starting this past February, I began to pray about a vision for community building in and around Anglican parish life.

A week or two into my praying I discovered this post (which its author and I now reproduce below). I'd never read (or even heard of) the All Souls Anglican Missionary Journal before, but I agreed with the vision at every single point. It seemed like an initial answer to prayer to find someone else dreaming of the potential for community within the Anglican tradition.

So I contacted the blogger and to make a long story short, our e-exchange eventuated in this joint-blog. Together, we decided to found the Anglican Community Project blog. As the subtitle above indicates, we are devoted to "exploring the renewal of Anglicanism through intentional community."

Let me highlight a few points worthy of note.

First, our collaborative effort is an exploration. We are, as it were, on the way to intentional community. The two of us met, initially, as total strangers and are now traveling (at least a ways) together, and who knows when or where this may end. That said, we are not about to run off and do something rash. We may not ever be in an intentional community ourselves, let alone together. I am sure we won't even agree on all points. I expect, too, that our individual and collective visions may evolve. Nevertheless, this blog exists in order to find greater wisdom and insight about sustainable community-building efforts within the traditional Anglican ethos. We invite others to join us in our search and to contribute their knowledge and resources, too.

We do both agree on the 8 points of "An Anglican Community" and are especially committed to classical, Anglican orthodoxy. That brings me to a second point. We are committed to the renewal of Anglicanism. Both of us attend AMiA parishes and share its missionary passion for reaching the lost for Christ by drawing on the riches of historic Anglicanism. Born out of the Reformation but nurtured by its continuity with the apostolic faith and life of the early church, the Anglican way can only maintain its vitality amidst its current strife if it reclaims its heritage, not revise it in light of the prevailing culture. The Anglican Community Project is an effort to think creatively and constructively in a time of spiritual crisis within our church. We hope to point towards a hopeful Anglican future--and perhaps be a part of its formation.

Finally, I readily acknowledge that this vision is not unique. Let no one misunderstand us: we do not claim to have 'discovered' the idea of intentional community. Not in the least! For me, at least, the idea is only newly on the radar. Whether it be the Christian monastic tradition, Anabaptist communities like the Amish, hippy ventures like the Jesus People, Emerging Church experimental communities, the Ave Maria project in FL, and others: many other Christians have sought to live together in community to the glory of Christ. The results may be mixed; these examples alone show that we cannot uncritically adopt what others have done. Nevertheless, where others have already tread, we seek to learn. So we expect that diverse sources will come to inform our vision.

As well as diverse voices: Just as we have come together for the sake of this vision, if there is something you can contribute, please do. I welcome you and encourage you to contact us through the comments with your ideas and interest. Part of the reason we started this blog was to get the idea out there and hopefully, attract others to it. Please pray with us, think with us, for how God can use Anglican intentional community to renew our church and bring the light of Christ to the lost.

That's what has led me to the Anglican Community Project. Thanks for stopping by. May the grace and peace of Christ be with you.

An Anglican Community

2008-05-28T19:03:00.000-05:00

I have a vision for an intentionally Anglican community, that is, a town or urban area where Anglican deliberately move to coalesce around a parish and influence the geographical area around them. Such a community would have to reflect the Anglican way.
What is the Anglican way? It is difficult to say after a century or more of muddle and confusion. However, some core elements of what I see as the Anglican life would include:
1. The parish being at the center of life. This means both literally and figuratively. Ideally, an Anglican town would have the parish building somewhere in the center of the physical location. Also, life would rotate around worship and interaction at the parish building, and in homes. If the community grew sufficiently, I envision several parishes of a couple hundred people all within the same town. Perhaps a central cathedral could be build for large gatherings of the saints.
2. Daily worship. The church doors should be open all day every day for the Offices to be prayed, and for other worship services to be conducted.
3. Feasting. Feasts should be a regular occurrence in an Anglican community. The church calendar provides the structure of when these feasts should take place. Our feasts and celebration of the church year should make national and Hallmark holidays look like what they are: pale imitations of life in the City of God.
4. Education. The Anglican communion is famished for good, Anglican institutions of higher learning. A new Anglican university should be founded in a new Anglican community.
5. Commerce. Localism would demand that people work and worship near home, not miles and miles away. Anglicans should form businesses or work at businesses in this new home, to make the community self-sustaining and able to absorb others of a like mind.
6. Mercy ministry. Christians should be identified with alms-giving to the poor, and health-care for the sick. Any new community should be marked out by sacrificial charity.
7. God-honoring architecture.
8. Missions-minded. In line with the African revival, any Anglican community in the United States should raise up and send missionaries to either re-evangelize our nation, or head to the unreached globally.