The New Monasticism: Religionless Christianity

This week I had two opportunities to reflect on one of the foundational ideas of the Lindisfarne Community: the new monasticism as suggested by Ditriech Bongoeffer in a letter to his brother Karl-Friedrich in 1935. It is found in the Biography of Bonheoffer by Ebehard Bethge.

The quote can now be found in many places on the web. Here is a little story behind the quote. It was unearthed by Fr. John Skinner of the Émigré Community in Turkey. Fr. John was one of the founders of the Northumbria Community; I would say, the driving force behind it. He had lost the quote, but paraphrased it from memory. His paraphrase was the version placed in the Northumbria Community prayer book. Since then, it is that version that has appeared in many different places, often without reference to Fr. John or the Northumbria Community. When +Jane and I were researching the Way of Living we tracked down the original quote and found it to be slightly different. You will find this version in our Way of Living and on our web site. It, too, can now be found quoted in many places. So, when you see the quote, depending on the version, you will now know the source of it! Fr. John and I talked about this on the phone a couple of years ago and had a good chuckle.

The two opportunities to reflect on this came my way firstly in an interview I gave to a graduate student from an Ivy League University who is doing her dissertation on the new monasticism. The other occasion was my sitting on a panel to discus the play by Al Staggs. We saw Al perform his one-person play on Bonhoeffer’s reflections before his death and I was asked to dialogue with him at the end.

Both opportunities gave me time to reflect on what the new monasticism might be and the link it with another idea in Bonhoeffer, that of religionless Christianity. This idea is found in his letters from prison, a letter of April 30 1944. Bonhoeffer does not elaborate and he was executed before he could enlighten us. But he did raise interesting questions.

His view was that religion in the so-called civilized world had come to an end. The Nazi period, holocaust and World War demonstrated that religion in any real sense had come to an end. That was the way it seemed to him in his prison cell. In this religionless world, what would happen to Christianity? Well, it would need to be a religionless Christianity: something new, something that would fit into a religionless world.

Now whether his view of the end of religion was true or not is beside the point. I suspect it has proved very true of Western Europe and is somewhat true of North America.

The interesting issue is that of religionless Christianity.

I want to link it to his earlier view of the new kind of monasticism that is rooted in the Sermon on the Mount, but has nothing in common with earlier monasticism.

Religionless Christianity is a Christianity that has lost itself in the world. It is the “leaven in the lump.” It is a hidden way of following the Christ that does not trumpet its arrival. It does not seek to proselytize. It simply is. It is being and becoming. It is Christ in the midst of God’s world. It requires new expressions of faith and new ways of praying. It is willing to discard much of the clutter of the centuries. It dies to self that others may live. It is solitary and communal. But I suspect it is never big, never the crowd. The group psychology of the crowd (witness Nazi Germany) is a fearful thing.

In the Lindisfarne Community, we have tried to practice this. It is why, in the end, both +Jane and I chose to work “in the world.” It is to be among the people. It is to be “little Christs.” To lose ourselves. It is why we encourage our deacons and priests to do the same.

I do not think this is an easy way at all. The great danger is that you really do lose yourself. The old securities of religion fade. Religious language becomes a foreign language. When you meet the pious who speak the “language of Zion” there is a disconnect.

It is a different spirituality.

At this point it seems that not many want to join such a movement, though I early had hopes. Part of the reason, I suspect, is that religion provides security. The world is often uncertain. Religion, of any kind, tries to provide the certainties of life. That is how fundamentalisms grow quickly. However absurd the certainties may be, folk like to be sure. Religionless Christianity has no certainties. It provides. only uncertainties. It is not about saving yourself, but losing yourself. And who wants to be lost! The old question of religion: “Brother, are you saved?” becomes the new question of the religionless, “Sister, have you yet lost yourself amongst those who also are lost?” In losing self is salvation. In dying is life. In the loss of religion we find the Christ. In losing the church we gain the world.

+Ab. Andy