I say, “Amen,” because he articulates well implications of the Gospel to which I have been persuaded, e.g. pro-life, non-violence, the gift economy, visible unity and the discipline of regular prayer. But more than articulating them, Wilson-Hartgrove is living them with others in the city in which I live. This is what is so convicting about New Monasticism. The book less explains Christianity and more says to anyone who bends its pages: “Come, let’s be Christians, you and I.”
And to think this book could have been bad. It could have been schismatic, but instead cites Benedict and Antony, and privileges the local congregation over the para-church organization. It could have drifted into Utopia and yet it centers the Christian economic revolution in the household (note to self: post on God’s Economy). It could have waxed poetic without prophetic bite but that Jonathan and his wife Leah risked their lives as Christian peacemakers in Iraq during the war. And, there’s the story about how he kept getting arrested protesting the execution of criminals in Raleigh until he got his day in court and made a theological defense of actions that included testimony from Stanley Hauerwas.
Those stories stick in my mind as does this gem of a parable quoted from a man named John Alexander.
He asked people to imagine a gang member. Call him Jimmy. Say Jimmy has been running drugs for ten years and is headed straight for prison or the grave. What does he need? The fundamentalists John grew up with would say that Jimmy needs a personal relationship with Jesus. And they would be right. Jimmy needs a conversion experience and a personal transformation to become the person God wants him to be. But if all Jimmy gets is a sinner’s prayer and a church to go to on Sunday mornings, he’ll take his personal relationship with Jesus right back with him to the gang. And he’ll go on living the same way he has been. So what do the liberals say Jimmy needs? John said they may note that Jimmy is a victim of racism along with his neighbors and they may work hard to build a health clinic in his underserved community. And they would be right. Because if Jimmy stays in the gang, he’ll get shot and need someone to sew him up. But after the doctor saves his life, he’ll send Jimmy home to the same gang. The doctor doesn’t have anything more to offer Jimmy.
“What Jimmy really needs,” John would say at the end of this thought experiment, “is a new gang.”
This is the image I will take away from New Monasticism: Christian congregations as good gangs – fierce, localized, protective of their own, a subculture concerning to the powers that be.
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