Toronto Star Article

An experiment in `new monasticism'
SHARING | Two young families pool their resources to live in the style of early Christians, writes Leslie Scrivener


Jan. 8, 2006. 01:00 AM


In the little Parkdale house they share, two young families sit down to dinner — a scene that would be completely ordinary were it not for the reasons they live together.

There's a comfortable feeling as the parents and children link hands and begin their meal with a prayer. Books on the side table reveal a bit about their interests: Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's book on living in a community, and The Political Theology of Paul. That's St. Paul.

Though it doesn't look like it, these two married couples — with their babies, donated furniture and Holly the dog — are living what they call the "new monasticism."

It's a movement that started about a decade ago in the United States and has been slowly spreading there and now in Canada.

The two families, which are in their third month of communal living, share their beliefs in the same way they share the cooking, cleaning, child-care — and all the money they earn.

When Ben ElzingaCheng was offered a job as a research technician at Mount Sinai Hospital, after his arrival in Toronto in November from British Columbia, he and wife Angela sat down with the other couple to discuss whether he should take the job.

Angela, a community organizer had just given birth to their first child, Jacob. The other couple — Jodie Boyer Hatlem, who's working on her PhD at the University of Toronto, and street pastor Doug Johnson Hatlem have two children: Johanna, 2, and Simeon, 11 months.

How would Ben's working full-time affect their little community? In the end, they decided he should take the position.

Doug and Jodie, who are Americans, are pacifists deeply opposed to the war in Iraq.

Ben and Angela are Canadians who feel the same way.

These four monastics are all Christians who grew up in middle-class, evangelical families.

They reject the consumerism of North American culture and they are dedicated to living simply, offering hospitality to those in need, sharing what they earn and practising peace-making.

In a way, each of them has gone beyond the traditional Christianity in which they were raised.

"I go back to my faith community — my church — and tell them we're pacifists and it's almost like it's heretical," says Jodie.

Doug grew up in a fundamentalist Baptist congregation, but his life was changed when one of his university professors, a Mennonite, introduced him to the concept of pacifism.

"I couldn't shake the idea that you can't take the gospel seriously if you don't take seriously the pacifist spirit of early Christianity," he says.


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They share their beliefs as they share the cooking, cleaning, child-care — and all the money they earn

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"With all the Bible-thumping I'd been raised on, I fought hard against it, but ultimately I changed."

Says Ben: "When I was growing up, my family's church focused on personal salvation. The most important thing was evangelism and reaching non-believers. And if you worked hard, God would reward you.

"But I wanted my faith to be a bit more real. I always felt a disconnect between what my faith commanded and how I was living my life, about actually putting faith into action.

"If I had a career and a house and family and went to church on Sunday, it wouldn't feel real."

Angela's family was committed to Christian education and she later worked organizing communities — one was to help families in Grand Rapids, Mich., have more influence in their children's education.

"I've been pushed beyond how I grew up," she says. "Here I can offer hospitality in ways I wouldn't do myself. I grew up middle-class, my education is high but I want to live differently."

They model their lives on the first Christian communities. Those early Christians, as described in The Acts of the Apostles, rejected private ownership and shared their possessions communally. Those who owned property sold it and gave the money to the apostles to be distributed to those in need.

According to Stanley Hauerwas, a theology professor at Duke University in Durham, N.C., new monasticism is exactly what Christianity needs now.

"We are watching the death of Christianity, particularly Protestantism," Hauerwas says. "It's become so deeply accommodating to the world, people are thinking: `Why you would bother with it?'"

How accommodating?

"The war. Christians don't have a problem with the war .... The other accommodation of the church is money. Christians think we need a lot of it. They want to be upper middle-class and believe in Jesus, too.

"They worry about how gays are destroying the family and don't get the fact that what's destroying the family is money — not gays."

A block from Duke University, in a poor black neighbourhood, is another new monastic community.

Ten people, blacks and whites, share meals and open their doors to neighbours in need. Recently released prisoners and people who have lost their apartments because they couldn't pay the rent have been invited to stay.

The Durham monastics have been inspired in part by the Catholic Worker Movement, which also has a community in Toronto that includes James Loney, one of the four Christian peacemakers who were taken hostage in Baghdad on Nov. 26.

Catholic Worker groups stress hospitality, voluntary poverty, prayer and community living.

Back in Parkdale, where life together is only a few months old, the two couples are still sorting out exactly how they will practise their new monasticism as they get to know their neighbourhood, find work and welcome a new baby into their midst.

"But we have prayed about this a lot," says Ben ElzingaCheng. "This is the right thing to do."