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These marks connect like-minded communities, new and older, to each other. They also provide a discipline and structure some observers say communities a generation ago lacked. "The marks show the common threads that connect Christian communities that might otherwise be seen as scattered anomalies, rather than vibrant cells of a body," says Claiborne, who is becoming a spokesman for the movement. "There are literally dozens of communities that I could consider a part of the new monasticism." The Simple Way's annual family reunion has served as a gathering place for many new monastic communities, and for several years running, more than 100 people meet for worship and to discuss community life and social justice issues.

Despite a growing interest, the conference was a surprise kickoff. Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, a graduate student at Duke Divinity School and conference organizer, initially invited 10 practitioners and 10 academics, but word spread and in the end 60 attended. It was overrun by newer communities, says David Janzen, who participated in the conference and has lived at Reba Place since 1984.

Janzen, Wilson, Chris Rice, Norman Wirzba, and other members of older communities offered guidance on the 12 marks: Rice on racial reconciliation, Wirzba on environmentalism, and Janzen on forming novitiates, for example. About 14 newer communities attended, traveling from across the United States, including Iowa, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Oregon, Washington, California, Kentucky, Georgia, and Washington D.C. The conference culminated in a book, Schools for Conversion: 12 Marks of a New Monasticism, which introduces the movement. I had an opportunity to visit three of these communities, whose differences and similarities reveal the movement's core commitments.

Kensington was once one of the most productive areas in America. It is home to hundreds of factories and thousands of row houses built a century ago for the workers. Residents used to say that job hunters walking down "factory row" on American Avenue would have a job by the time they reached the end. Huge stone churches, including St. Edward's, testify to a once-prosperous community. But over the last 30 years, the neighborhood lost more than 250,000 jobs as factories moved overseas, became automated, or simply went out of business. Families moved too, leaving 25,000 abandoned homes. Today it is Pennsylvania's poorest neighborhood. All the manufacturing is gone, leaving 700 crumbling, empty brick factories—often home to the replacement economy of prostitution and drugs, and sometimes, like abandoned churches, shelters for families with no better place to stay.

Despite Kensington's blight, the Simple Way has put down roots in the neighborhood, allowing members to intimately know the needs of residents and work on their behalf. For years, Claiborne says, the Simple Way tried to get the city to condemn an abandoned home at the end of their street, which had become home to drug dealers, users, and prostitutes. "It was unacceptable," Claiborne says. They petitioned the city to condemn the building and allow the Simple Way, which is registered as a nonprofit organization, to buy and rehab it. The city said it would cost $30,000 to buy it and take two years to process the paperwork.

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September 2005, Vol. 49, No. 9