A Living Protest on the Boundary of the Church

High-commitment faith communities are springing up all over the country, mostly in urban areas. The communities are connected, sometimes through overt association and sometimes only through a shared vision. It is a bona fide movement in contemporary Christianity, calling itself the new monasticism.

These communal expressions of the faith often refer on their web sites to a few lines from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a radical Lutheran pastor who resisted the encroachments of Nazi ideology into the German church. In The Cost of Discipleship, which was his insistent call to a deeper Christian commitment, Bonhoeffer writes,

“The expansion of Christianity and the increasing secularization of the church caused the awareness of costly grace to be gradually lost…. But the Roman church did keep a remnant of that original awareness.  It was decisive that monasticism did not separate from the church and that the church had the good sense to tolerate monasticism.  Here, on the boundary of the church, was the place where the awareness that grace is costly and that grace includes discipleship was preserved…. Monastic life thus became a living protest against the secularization of Christianity, against the cheapening of grace.”

I can’t help but compare Bonhoeffer’s stirring vision, which is now being embedded in the new monastic communities, with the vision of the Fellowship of Presbyterians, who have sounded the call for mainline Presbyterians to commit to a set of values and beliefs that surpass what is required of members of the Presbyterian Church (USA).

The Fellowship of Presbyterians uses language similar to Bonhoeffer’s: living together on the boundary of the denomination, within the church yet distinct. It is a mainline version of “a living protest on the boundary of the church.” What would Bonhoeffer think of the Fellowship of Presbyterians? And what would these new monastic communities think?

Actually, I think they would approve. For instance, I found a new monastic community in Ithaca, New York, which carefully links its ordained leadership with the apostolic succession that all Catholic and Anglican believers prize. In this sense this monastic community finds it essential to name their continuing relationship with the historic church. Further, as a monastic order, they approve of those who hold to the monastic commitments while also living elsewhere and holding membership in a local church.

While approving of the vision of the Fellowship of Presbyterians, I think the new monastic communities would also challenge Presbyterians not to settle for mild differentiation. Living in a monastic community is all-encompassing. Adopting the values of the Fellowship may not be radical enough to serve as a living protest on the boundary of the Presbyterian Church (USA). Do those who are joining the Fellowship really know the cost of discipleship?