Sunday, 21 October 2012

Protestant monks? Christian communal living

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While early marriage and the family are properly the Christian ideal for most people, there are some called to chastity and many others who have a more or less long period of adult life living outside of their birth family but not yet married.

This is an extremely  hazardous time for young Christians in the modern world; that period of early adulthood, living alone or among groups of non-Christians; their time filled by studies, work and leaisure activities almost all of which are anti-Christian.

The temptations are severe, and the alternative to yielding to temptation may be extreme loneliness, boredom, isolation. Most churches do not fill a person's life.

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For such people it would be desirable, I think, for there to be an option for Christian communal living.

I envisage single-sex residential houses in which the young adults took vows of chastity (until marriage), and lived a semi-monastic existence of regular and compulsory (twice a day, early morning and evening) group worship (equivalent to the daily office); communal eating; frugal living and generous tithing; and obedience to the Church elder who was in charge of the house.

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Yet this semi-monastic state would explicitly be intended as temporary, a phase - rather like attending college (and indeed might be while attending college, and afterwards), and would be directed towards establishing and supporting the ideal of Christian marriage and family.

I envisage that Evangelicals might do this best; and might have the energy and desire to do it - if their aversion to monasticism could be overcome. 

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