Interview with Jonathan Wilson‐Hartgrove

Abstract

Interview with Jonathan Wilson‐Hartgrove Pamela D. Winfield Jonathan Wilson‐Hartgrove is a founding member of Rutba House, a New Monastic community in Durham, NC. He is author of Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals, The Awakening of Hope, The Wisdom of Stability, and The New Monasticism. As a leader in the New Monastic movement, he speaks often about emerging Christianity to churches and conferences across the denominational spectrum and has given lectures at dozens of universities, including Calvin College, Bethel University, Duke University, Swarthmore College, St. John's University, DePaul University, and Baylor University. When you say “New Monasticism,” please explain your terms. First, what does it mean to be “new?” Well, first of all, let me thank you for the chance to reflect on this. This is kind of a reflection after ten years for me, because it was ten years ago in 2004 when we invited representatives from about thirty different communities around the United States to gather in North Carolina for a time of reflection. Out of that, we came to name what our communities have in common as a New Monasticism. Why “new?” Because we knew, as we talked with one another, that we weren't overwhelmingly Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. We certainly had a few folks from those traditions with us, but we were lots of us Baptist and Methodist and Presbyterian and non‐denominational evangelical. This is a very ecumenical group, and so the established orders as they exist within those traditions—well, we didn't quite fit. And we knew that we were single people and married people, and while there's some of that in the monastic tradition, it certainly hasn't become the norm. So, we knew that that was something that was “new.” And I think the only thing I would say about the “new” in New Monasticism is that from the very beginning, we always said that this wasn't about being novel, because novelty seems to be one of the temptations of our kind of consumerist culture. We didn't want to do anything new because it would be novel, but we just wanted to acknowledge that we were at least experiencing a new expression of the monastic impulse. So when we started talking to Benedictines and Franciscans and folks like that, they said to us, “We would prefer not to be called ‘the old monastics.’ But maybe you could call us ‘the classic monastics.' ” What does it mean to be “monastic?” I think what we found hopeful in monasticism was this ancient, longstanding tradition in the church of small groups of people relocating to marginal places to experiment in a new way of being Christian, and to do that in relationship with the church. I grew up Baptist in North Carolina and one of the things—well, many of the things I was struggling with—were just the tensions around American individualism, the way materialism has shaped church culture, the way nationalism so defines identity for many Christians in America, [and] the way race has shaped identity for many folks in and outside of the church. All of those are really issues about identity and about what kind of practices shape us into who we understand ourselves to be. What we talked about that week here in Durham was how these little communities were experimenting in rhythms of life, and ways of being together, that allowed us to be challenged by the gospel, and to be essentially re‐formed personally by everyday practices and by our lives together. So that's why “monasticism.” How is this different from or similar to other Christian renewal movements? What we noted is that in American Christianity, so often, reform movements end up producing new denominations—a new kind of church. And so the great American idea is that whoever wants to reform is going to be the “true” church for the first time. And we thought that that was—well—we thought that that had happened enough times—and that we probably didn't need to, you know, start the “Real Real Christian Church of North America” or something like that. Monasticism gave us a pattern by...