Abstract
This article analyzes new monastic efforts to engage with systemic inequality in the United States and South Africa, arguing for the importance of the concept of friendship to new monastic social justice efforts. Growing in popularity during the 2000s, new monasticism is a term used to describe Christians who are experimenting with forms of community and subject formation that take as their inspiration earlier monastic or other Christian socialist/communitarian movements. Drawing on qualitative research conducted with two South African groups inspired by new monasticism, I show how building relationships with economic and racial others is central to new monastic visions of social change. New monastics emphasize the importance of deep, committed, authentic, relationships—friendships—as the primary means of surmounting race and class divides. Building on the insights of Michael Emerson and Christian Smith in Divided by Faith, I argue that how new monastics conceptualize friendship simultaneously draws on and subverts traditional evangelical approaches to social engagement. Although new monastics are similar to evangelicals in that they attach central importance to interpersonal relationships, new monastics are distinct in that they explicitly connect the value of relationship building to practices of self-transformation and social critique.
Highlights
Growing in popularity during the 2000s, new monasticism is a term used to describe Christians who are experimenting with forms of community and subject formation that take as their inspiration earlier monastic or other Christian socialist/communitarian movements
Emphasis on authentic community is something most scholars have noted about both the Emerging Church Movement and new monasticism, which they link to the initial influence of American evangelicalism on the movement
Friendships—deep, committed, personal, authentic relationships—are considered by new monastics to be central to the creation of alternate social and spiritual communities that bridge race and class divides
Summary
Growing in popularity during the 2000s, new monasticism is a term used to describe Christians who are experimenting with forms of community and subject formation that take as their inspiration earlier monastic or other Christian socialist/communitarian movements. In the United States, new monastic leaders such as Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove are engaged with questions of economic justice and racial inequality as part of a broader critique of American politics in a post-9/11 world (Dalrymple 2010). They are especially critical of American ideals of upward mobility and theologies of personal prosperity. South Africa, this article builds on previous qualitative research that highlights the importance of authentic relationships to new monasticism and the broader Emerging Church Movement (Bielo 2011a; Markofski 2015; Marti and Ganiel 2014). Building relationships in contexts of extreme inequality can be precarious, raising questions about the unintended consequences of relational engagement with poverty and racial inequality
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