More monks and nuns as young people feed spiritual hunger

Archbishop hails generation resisting ‘commitment phobia’ in search of monastic life

IN THE popular imagination, monks and nuns probably belong in medieval times. But the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, says religious communities are enjoying an unexpected revival.

The Archbishop said that despite society’s “commitment-phobia” they have been resurrected, with young Christians increasingly joining for a year, or juggling a religious order with a full-time job. Religious communities offer an “ancient and powerful answer” to loneliness and isolation, he argued.

“With endless options and opportunities for pleasure, distraction, and personal advancement, fewer and fewer of us are willing to commit ourselves to something. Coupled with that, we have seen, in the West, more generally a trend towards people being more isolated, and communities more atomised,” he wrote in the Church Times.

The Archbishop launched a push to revive the communities in the Church of England in 2013. In February its General Synod heard that they were being modernised, with new-style orders removing many of the strictest rules.

The Archbishop also contrasted the movement with the grand ambition of social media giants to link up millions of people all over the world.

“Last year, the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, announced the social media company’s vision for “building global community” – no mean feat, with two billion users worldwide.

“Religious communities come at things from the exact opposite direction: small numbers of people living together and learning to accept each other, in real life, without the possibility of “blocking” those they do not like, or whose ideas they find challenging. Their impact can be enormous,” he said.

Traditional communities have declined but more than 5,000 people are thought to be members of “acknowledged communities”, which do not require members to take a vow of celibacy and allow them to work and live outside of conventional monasteries and nunneries.

New communities have particularly targeted young people between 20 and 35, including the Archbishop’s Community of St Anselm, launched in 2015, and the Community of St Frideswide, in Oxford, which launched on Sunday.

The Rev Kate Seagrave, mission priest to the community, said she was “astonished” by the level of interest from young people. “There’s a real hunger for proper community in a society that is fractured. People feel disconnected from each other.

“There’s a deep, deep hunger for spiritual things.”

‘Small numbers of people living together and learning to accept each other without the possibility of blocking those they do not like’