Interested in Intentional Community in Britain?

This is a new googlegroup set up for people in Britain genuinely interested in being part of Christian Inentional Community.

It came out of a facebook conversation but was set up outside of fb so that it could include more people.

It's not expected that if you join you want to be in community with those people necessarily but you may find that it allows you to form a smaller group that want to take things further.

Anway.... here it is.

Silent Disorder

SPEAK Monastic Weekend: The Silent Disorder

Dates: 29^th April- 2^nd May

All welcome.

Where?Catholic Worker Farm, nr London.

How?We will be camping, so bring a tent if you have one. The weekend will be handmade by those who come along, so bring yourself, stories, musical instruments and please bring food to share. 

RSVP to speak@speak.org.uk

Windsor Hill Wood

I was pointed towards this example by Simon Cross, author of 'Totally Devoted' a book about New Monasticism in Britain.

Windsor Hill Wood seems Tolstoyan to me: they found a woodland in an abandoned quarry which they have bought and now live in. They are inspired by the Pilsdon Community and use permaculture and woodcraft. They have chosen the Sermon on the Mount as their inspiration and labour and rest as their means.

From here they live, partly sustained in mutuality with the ecosystem. From here they offer hospitality to those who come and a taste of stability to those still travelling. They offer a place of choices have been made instead of fawned over; or as they put it:

"Choice – that once seemed empowering – has made us powerless. It has made us sad and rootless, prone always to want to keep our options open."

The setting is stunning but behind the romanticism their must be a harsh reality in the isolation and precacity of living. They're a conventionally shaped family in an unconventional life: Tobias Jones, who writes on behalf of the community has written a series of articles for the Observer.

Conspire

Conspire, a magazine by and for intentional communities (new monastics) in the USA - beaming out hopewith a slightly evangelical flavour. Try it yourself.
As ever, I find the introductory words by Shane Claiborne inspiring.

Irresistible revolution

I read The irresistible revolution - living as an ordinary radical directly after Shane Claiborne's Jesus for president! and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove's New monasticism, about five months ago.
I was very much enthused by this threesome of books so I got in touch with the publishing company - they specifically ask for response via email - to propose to translate relevant parts of it into my mother tongue. Alas, I got no reaction of any kind at the two mails I sent. "We want to hear from you" apparently does not mean that you may expect a reply.
Then there was the conference of the Anarchist Studies Network, at which I found that Alexandre Christoyannopoulos had become as enthusiastic about it as I (I had told him about Claiborne through email - a medium that defintiely works sometimes). Keith however was skeptical, he called the theology of the book of the copy/paste-type. So my original enthusiasm got another hitting. What does it mean when the two political scientists attached to this weblog are enthusiastic, but the theologian is not?

After some time I asked Keith timidly what he meant with his objection of copy/paste-theology and he replied that he may have been too harsh in his judgement. But he definitely did not like phrases like Mom Theresa. Neither do I, but I am afraid that's the way it goes with people from the US of A...
But it is yet another objection than saying its theology is copy/paste. And after all, is not the stressing of the importance of the Sermon on the Mount, common to christian anarchism, copy/paste-theology too? Why not choose - provided you accept the so-called Old Testament - some loci where gays or adulterers and other folks are properly stoned to death, or some places where JHWH calls for the extermination of whole lists of enemy tribes? (Maybe they take those as a motto in Tzahal?)

When Dutch christian anarchist Felix Ortt wrote his books with bible stories for children and the young he completely left out the so-called Old Testament. "There is nothing edifying of any importance in it," was his judgement. That seems to be going too far again, and anyway, you can call that copy/paste-theology too. Shane Claiborne relies heavily on the OT but he treats the unedifying, indigestible parts ironically and lightly.

To my surprise it appears you can read theology in the USA, like Claiborne, and still have no knowledge of Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek. He went to Iraq with the best possible intentions, prior to the invasion by "his country", to act as a human shield, amd he writes about his surprise at finding Christian communities in that country. About the oldest branches of christendom can be found there, so it turned out christianity is not Made in USA. Does he really mean that?

Claiborne was originally an evangelical Republican activist, and I cannot avoid to conclude you really got to have a diminished mind to be such a person. Mind diminishing is generally prescribed by Capital but a bit more in the USA than in Europe. The book is more or less the autobiographical story of the change he has gone through - from being a "christian" to being a follower of Jesus.

And he is honest about it. He describes his change from right wing evangelical to a follower of Jesus - to what I would call christian anarchism, a qualification he must be familiar with, quoting Hennacy, Eller and others. Presumably choosing for this stamp is going too far for him - admittedly, it takes explaining, and it does not really matter because the Spirit is there anyway.

Glancing through the book again for this description I get caught anew by my original enthusiasm. I can live with the simplisms regularly popping up with Claiborne, and after all: he lives in a community called the Simple Way.
Summing up: it is a book to be recommended, perhaps it is even unmissable as a manifesto for present day christian anarchism, certainly more so than Dave Andrews' Christi-anarchy.

- Shane Claiborne, The irresistible revolution - living as an ordinary radical. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006. Foreword by Jim Wallis.

New monasticism

We are not tolstoyans, we are christians, was the objection of Dutch christian anarchists a century ago against a way of labelling which is still common nowadays. They however used the label of christian anarchists for themselves. In the USA these days there is a current manifesting itself, rejecting any other description but christian, which fits completely to the paradigm of christian anarchism. So much even that I have to conclude they are wilfully avoiding the term. People quoting - amongst others - Jacques Ellul, Peter Maurin and the Jesusradicals must be familiar with the expression.

It takes some swallowing when you follow this current with attention and sympathy - they are so-called evangelicals, christians calling themselves reborn, a brand (!) of christianity which does not give the USA a good reputation at the moment. They themselves write that it is difficult to be christian in the US these days. And this they say referring to their actions against imperialist warfare, discrimination, death penalty and other things furthered by a government which likes to call itself christian. Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw reject identification with worldly politics in Jesus for president! (a title based on a song of Woody Guthrie's).

It is a catching manifesto, a kind of Christian anarchism for reborn, against which nothing can be objected viewed from the commonly held standpoint of older christian anarchist currents, quite the contrary. To quote Maurin: these ideas are so old they look new.

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove in New Monasticismdescribes a tendency in the US – we apparently should not call it a movement – toward communal living in the spirit of the early christians. This tendency he places in the perspective of older communal strivings such as the (Anabaptist) Bruderhöfe and the Catholic Worker, a spirit which is also moving the reborn – Claiborne is a prominent example of someone living in such a community. It is called new monasticism, and to be part of it you may be married, you do not have to vow to keep silent - above all it is about the idea of living together in the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount and having property in common. Christian anarchism is well and truly alive, even if it does not call itself that way. Signs of hope from the heart of Empire.

- Shane Claiborne & Chris Haw, Jesus for president! – politics for ordinary radicals. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008. 335 p.
- Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, New monasticism – what it has to say to today’s church. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2008. 147 p.