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For example, young, unmarried Christians might find a "mission field" within the United States (in this case), settling here with the long-term vision of living together simply, agreeing on the radical witness of life together lived nonviolently, in poverty and celibacy.

Adopting a less radical but still crucial form of witness, families might gradually buy up homes in the same neighborhood, enabling them to meet daily for common worship and mutual discipleship.

Given increased longevity, Christians at retirement might form their own communities, devoting themselves to intensive worship and study of the Scripture, and to service in the world.

The main objections to remonasticization are clear and serious, but, we believe, surmountable. One major objection is that, if taken too seriously, remonasticization will render the church ineffective in the world. It is irresistible to reply that if the church is effective now, ineffectiveness must be impossible to achieve. But a more sober response is that the objective is to be distinctive, not distant. The church has nothing to offer the world if it loses the distinctiveness bestowed on it by its genuine living under the gospel.

A second objection is that remonasticization will lead to spiritual pride and snobbery, to an obsession with personal purity at the expense of being responsible in the world. This, too, is a serious objection. But remonasticization as we understand it has as its aim witness to Christ rather than personal purity. "Remonks," if you will, intend centrally to point beyond themselves, not draw attention to themselves.

What remonks will do
What, then, will remonks do? We can only introduce the idea; it will take others to expand on it and make it live. But we would suggest two endeavors as central for evangelical remonks.

First, they must learn and then teach others how to live our world into line with that of the Bible. Evangelicals heartily agree with Erich Auerbach's observation that, "Far from seeking, like Homer, merely to make us forget our own reality for a few hours, [biblical narrative] seeks to overcome our reality; we are to fit our own life into its world … " Yet it is far easier to read our world and our ways into the Bible than to truly understand the Bible and gradually live our world into congruence with its world. A friend tells us of his experience, meeting regularly with the same small group of highly committed Christians to read Scripture and then work at living by what they had read. It took four years, he reports, before that group could even begin to agree on where the Bible was taking them. How much harder it is, then, for suburban Christians who often move to a new city—and so a new church—every two years. Increasingly divided doctrinally and in our social and political visions, we evangelicals desperately need some among us who will patiently and enduringly attend together to Scripture, then begin to show us ways to live more faithfully to its story.

Second, remonks must recover the life of prayer. The pace of our society, with its intense and demanding variety of endeavors and diversions, disallows a life patiently and steadily centered on the one thing that really matters—the worship of God. Quiet times and morning devotions are simply added items on overcrowded agendas. We suspect a life of prayer will mean radically abandoning the busyness and fragmentariness of contemporary life. Once again we need communities that will model and point the way to this bold abandonment. Given the deep importance of freneticism and variety to the current ethos, genuinely living into prayer may be the church's most subversive act.

Copyright © 2005 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

The New Monasticism | A fresh crop of Christian communities is blossoming among the urban poor.

A More Demanding Faith | Christian history is full of attempts to lead a more radical faith.

Drop Out and Tune in to Jesus | Today's communities are very different, and very similar to, those that formed in the 70s.

Alisdair McIntyre called for a "new Benedict" in his bookAfter Virtue.

More information about the new monasticism and a discussion more on is available at newmonasticism.org.

More about the Camden House and the Simple Way are available from their websites.

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September (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49