merefaith: two friends on pilgrimage

Martin Luther's religious life centered in the worship and practice of the Order of St. Augustine until his excommunication. Five years later, he married Katharina von Bora, a former nun. They made their home in a former monastery.


Henry VIII of England received the appellation "Defender of the Faith" from Pope Leo X for writing a book that denounced Martin Luther. After pulling England out of Rome's ecclesiastical orbit, he closed the monasteries and confiscated their lands.

Protestant reformers attacked priestly celibacy as an unnecessary and unbiblical doctrine. They rejected its communal institutionalization in the form of convents and monasteries as a distraction from the real work of proclaiming the gospel. Much of the history of so-called "Protestantism" has carried forward this bias against specialized Christian communities.

Yet early in the Reformation a movement of Protestants implicitly seized upon the monastic ideal as the proper character for local Christian gatherings. The continental "Anabaptists" engaged in laicization: while medieval Catholics had distinguished between the requirements demanded of the "laity" and of the "religious," these radical reformers universalized the rigor of the latter as the high calling of all Christians. The church was not primarily the place where one went to receive the sacraments (although the dominical sacraments remained important for the Anabaptists, and they even elevated a few of their own practices to a central role) but where Christians covenanted together in a community of equal disciples who would share common work and leadership.

Other renewal movements have risen in the Church since that time. John Wesley preached the practice of social holiness and gave it a mechanism through his methodist class meetings. Lay monasticism in the Roman Catholic Church appeared in the last century when Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin chose to live in community with the poor and founded the Catholic Worker Movement. Clarence Jordan, a Baptist minister, founded Koinonia Farm so that one community of Christians could demonstrate the vision laid out in the Book of Acts.

Although Baptists themselves emerged in the religious turmoil of 17th-century England as a movement centered upon radical discipleship forged in community covenants, we are more generally known throughout contemporary Christianity as radical individualists who divide over competing claims to spiritual competence. Many among our number even celebrate this reality. Only in very few contexts would anyone consider that to be Baptist and also to be communitarian, even monastic, is not a contradiction in terms.

But the ecumenical New Monastic Movement of our time possesses deep similarities to the vision of the early English Baptists and continental Anabaptists, who themselves echoed the Desert Fathers and Mothers that fled the growing cosmopolitan Christianity of the fourth century. Absent the neo-Platonic prejudice against human sexuality and the medieval hierarchy of superior and ordinary piety, these modern intentional Christian communities exhibit a devoted way of life that no Baptist should find objectionable on the grounds of Scripture or traditional Baptist commitments. Baptists should make good monastics!

And some of them have in fact done so as individuals. Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, a New Monastic leader and founder of Rutba House here in Durham, is a member of a local Baptist church. Other Baptists have been a part of Rutba House and Iredell House while also worshiping with Baptist congregations. Yet each house is openly ecumenical and specifically non-denominational in its inception and structure. I do not in any way cast aspersions on these communities because of their broad identity. But any participation by self-identified Baptists can be easily dismissed as incidental to their formative tradition; that is, some may say these Baptists are living in intentional community in spite of the fact that they're Baptist and not because their own theological heritage has provided the resources to envision this way of discipleship.

But what if, in fact, the Baptist tradition has done just that? During the New Baptist Covenant meeting in Atlanta I attended a breakout session on peacemaking directed by Glen Stassen, a professor of ethics at Fuller Seminary, and Paul Dekar, a professor of evangelism and missions at Memphis Seminary. Paul Dekar is a Baptist who has been practicing intentional community for some time. I learned that although he is an American, he has participated in the creation and ongoing work of Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Australia. Are you ready for this? Holy Transfiguration - believe it or not - is an active and tithing member body of the Baptist Union of Victoria. The community fully embraces and remains grounded in its Baptist origins. At the same time, it is also vigorously ecumenical, attracting members from various Christian traditions who, once they join, do not feel compelled to consider themselves Baptist. The community's ecumenism extends to its embrace of traditional monastic and liturgical forms, such as the Christian year, the daily offices, and even religious habits.

After attending the session, I purchased Paul Dekar's brand-new book about the monastery, entitled Community of the Transfiguration: The Journey of a New Monastic Community. I look forward to reading their story in what little free time I may have for this book. My prayers go out to HTM for their witness in Australia, and I hope that their example may be an inspiration for Baptists and for all Christians who are discerning how to live more faithfully.

P.S. - According to this blog, HTM is one of two Baptist monasteries in the world. I wonder what the other one may be...

Labels: Baptist Catholicity, Baptists, Discipleship, Ecumenism

Posted by Chris Schelin on Sunday, February 03, 2008 at Sunday, February 03, 2008 | Permalink