It has taken sometime to retrieve the letter that was sent to Archbishop Rowan…this is it….it speaks for itself……

Fr. John T. Skinner
St. John’s Place
Langton Hill
Hamilton HM13
Bermuda
441 292 6802
johntskinner@fkbnet.bm

Lent 2004

Dear ++Rowan

We almost met over two years ago when John Lee introduced us via my CV and you offered me a job in Wales. I ended up in Bermuda, and will end my contract here in May.

In another life, I am the founder of the Northumbria Community, joint editor and complier of Celtic Daily Prayer and Celtic Night Prayer. For my sins, I introduced Bonhoeffer’s “new monasticism” back into mainstream thinking, and have spent the last twenty years creating images, metaphors and ideas that give meaning and substance to this alternative way of living as a Christian in our ever changing world.

In 1998 I left Northumbria, and the Community, for Europe, specifically Turkey. Since then I have been developing the Émigré Communion, a body of individuals, churches, communities and associations who share a common vision to contribute to the

“renewal of the Church through a new type of monasticism”.

In July of this year we open our first Centre, in Selçuk (Ephesus) Turkey.
Several others are planned in Europe and the Turkic World.

For the last two years we have been having informal discussions with Dr. Wooding of Lampeter University under the banner of our daughter charity Monos- a society for the continuation of monastic culture.
In 2005, Monos in partnership with Lampeter will host a conference on New Monasticism. We are also seeking to develop an accredited Certificate/Diploma Course with a curriculum that has at its heart, monastic themes, but also covers emerging paradigms.
Our concern is that New Monasticism is rooted in the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church and a genuine expression the ‘first fruits of the kingdom’ and not become a ‘post-modern theatrical company!’

Émigré and myself are currently facing a dilemma
and this is the reason I am writing to you.

2.

Autocephalous Movement

Last Year, I was approached by Bishop’s from the autocephalous movement. They were familiar with Celtic Daily Prayer and my work on New Monasticism.
I was asked to consider if Émigré would become an Independent Jurisdiction within the movement, and myself a Bishop.
I dismissed this suggestion immediately, having always maintained both in the Northumbria Community and Émigré that members stayed true to their Church affiliations and that New Monasticism was not an alternative Church.
I firmly believe that alternative movements must run parallel with the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.
(This has not been easy. Only 20 years ago I was censored by an Archdeacon in Northumbria, asked not to attend the local church, and warned of arrest if I impersonated an Anglican Clergyman. It was only the humility and courage of Bishop Alec Graham who apologized to me several years later, authorized Eucharist ministry at the Community house, that brought me home.)

However, recent events within Émigré have led to a serious discussion with the Covenant Community that affiliation with the autocephalous movement may be a step that we need to take.

First: In recent months I have been approached by two leaders within the House Church Movement, asking about ordination and affiliation within Émigré. They are seeking association with the Ancient Church and Her Creeds. Such an affiliation would mean entry of several interconnected churches.

Second: Central to my own understanding of monasticism, the Church and Her Mission is the Eucharist. New Monastic communities need Priests, men and women who are authorized to hold the ancient truth in their hands that “God is with us”, connecting us with the past and the future.

Third… Some time ago you kindly saw Chris Haggerstone who was seeking guidance, with regard his vocation. Chris has been my “deacon” for over twenty years! He was an early pioneer of the Northumbria Community, and is a Trustee of Émigré. Chris’s DDO has just suggested he meet his Bishop, for recommendation to ABBM. He has a dilemma. He feels very clearly he has a vocation to Priesthood, but feels the context of his vocation is within a Monastic Community. His DDO has the same discernment. However, Chris would like to work that out within Émigré, and after a visit to Turkey, in our new house.
Disclosure of that to his DDO will no doubt end his current journey to his vocation.
We need Priests.

3.

Archbishop backs guerrilla tactics in war on secularism

I wept when I read this report in the Times in January. Twenty one Years ago I sat with Bishop David Jenkins and I discussed with him Jacques Ellul and the Post Christian Society. I outlined a new movement, Secular Monasticism, running parallel alongside the Church, looking at alternative ways of Christian living, ministry and mission. We talked about new religious movements that would fill the void caused by the privatization of Christianity. I was full of hope, anticipating his support. He said to me, that the Church was not ready for this, and the only way he could help was to encourage me to stay in the desert until the time was right.

there are words that slip into the vocabulary of popular culture almost unnoticed: secularisation.. new age.. new physics.. postmodernity..
long before they reach our lips they have made a journey through the recesses of human understanding the power and force of their meaning
has already transformed or swept away former perceptions.
We imagine we can dialogue, find common ground; only then
do we awaken and find the ground has moved from beneath our feet..
our house has fallen…we are internal émigrés John Skinner

My concern in the Christian community, is the misconception, that having caught up with the cultural changes created by previous paradigms we now have a “handle” on the whole thing. This creates an inertia in our true need for metanoia, to have the courage to take steps that initiate the profound reconstruction of the Church in all its forms to participate confessionaly in the emerging culture.

I confided in a former Church Warden that I planned to contact you, and what I would say. He is a very traditional, middle church communicant. I wanted to test his reaction.

He said he was once the Chairman of a substantial insurance company. The natural disasters in the ‘80s coupled by paradigm shifts in the insurance business left his corporation reeling and in need of significant reconstruction. An evaluation of corporate culture suggested that significant change would take a considerable period of time. Long established policies, procedures and executive resistance to change left the corporation too slow to respond to new market forces. Without change the company would breakdown.

He decided a different tactic. He created a Treaty Partnership with small companies, whose small infrastructure left them able to move quickly in the new market. In return for sharing the risks, the smaller companies benefited from the corporate connection with the bigger company. Eventually the corporate culture of the bigger company due to the interaction with the federation of smaller

4.
companies began to evolve and grow, and eventually emerged in the market with a new identity.

“It seems to me” He said “that the church has to make a similar journey”

He suggested I speak to you, something I was already planning to do.

In the Émigré Community we are now in a very painful dialogue trying to find away forward.

The autocephalous connection would give a link, no matter how fragile or enigmatic, to the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. It would provide an answer to some of the challenges we are currently facing. Without that link to the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, the alternative movement will position itself in privatized religion, taking part in a conversation that has already ended, and more alarming, not even be aware of it.

I am an Anglican. You are my Father Bishop. I have maintained throughout my ministry that we must maintain Canonical Obedience to those the Lord has placed over us, no matter how painful or difficult our journey together, or it all just falls down.

In the dialogue within my community, I have expressed my concern in damaging that relationship.
It has been suggested that we put forward one of our senior people for entry into the autocephalous movement. This would mean we remain a communion who has within its ranks a bishop in the Autocephalous Communion, as well as other types of Christian leaders.

Is there no small step the Anglican Communion can take that would help us to reconcile some of these difficulties? Can we not show leadership and initiative in helping Émigré and those like us to walk closely with the Church, while sharing the risks in our new culture?
Is there no way we can help people like Chris, or the house church ministers who very clearly have vocations, but who just can’t translate them into the traditional mould?
Is there no way we can form alliances with smaller communities and communions who are awake to the present crisis, and are sincerely seeking alternative ways of Christian living that will contribute to the renewal and reconstruction of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. Not unlike my Church Warden’s Treaty Partnership.

5.

Forgive me ++ Rowan. Your time is precious. Thank you if you got this far.
I am back in the same place I was twenty years ago speaking to Bishop David.
This time, I hope I am a little more articulate, and in the Northumbria Community, and the Émigré Communion I have something to point too to give a little glimpse of what I meant.

I am afraid you will say “Back to the Desert”, or worse dismiss me as a post- modern wacko. I have taken the risk.

Any response at all you can give would be sincerely and greatly appreciated.

The Lord Bless You Dear Archbishop Rowan.
We pray for you daily in my Parish in Bermuda.
These are difficult yet exciting days.
May God give you courage to follow your heart.

Fr. John Skinner

Comment The Archbishop sent me an informal reply through one of his aids. He said he was sympathetic to the comments made in my letter but felt he was unable to support an initiative like this at this particular moment. However, and it may be coincidental, the following year saw the launch of Fresh Expressions, a movement within the Anglican Communion whose aims and objectives seem rather close to those I first proposed to Bishop Jenkins in 1985..and in this letter to Archbishop Rowan:
‘Twenty one Years ago I sat with Bishop David Jenkins and I discussed with him Jacques Ellul and the Post Christian Society. I outlined a new movement, Secular Monasticism, running parallel alongside the Church, looking at alternative ways of Christian living, ministry and mission.’

Coincidence or not…there was one significant difference between my proposal and what has become Fresh Expressions…location. I suggested a movement that was located ‘parallel’ to the Church… autonomous but interdependent….rather than authorized and therefore supervised by the Church. As one Anglican Priest commented in a recent email to me: ‘In Fresh Expressions there is a real danger that new monasticism will be domesticated by the very institution it may well be meant to rescue.’

This leads to the next question: is NM predicated on a conviction that we are in a post-Christian age? I am of that conviction, but many within the Anglican Church would query whether post-Christendom has really arrived. If it has, is NM really necessary – or is it really a question of the church waking up to where it now is and becoming ‘more fully the church’ (as Stanley Hauerwas argues)?

John Skinner…

In 1977 when Jacques Ellul proposed we were living in a Post-Christian Society (Era) he was reflecting on the place of the Church in a society undergoing a major cultural transformation. In his mind, the source of this transformation was a period in history called The Age of Enlightenment, which from the middle of the 18C had proposed that human reason should be the primary frame of reference in all aspects of human society. This began a critical questioning of all traditional institutions, including the church, and the result, many decades later was what Ellul described as a Post-Christian Society:

“The last and most important fact about
the Post-Christian Society, is that it feels as if it has
experienced Christianity, and left it behind.” Ellul

Ellul, like many other Christians at that time was trying to understand the place of the Church in a modern world created by enlightenment thinking. I started my theological education in 1979, and the focus of our attention was the role of the Church, and therefore the Priest, in the Modern world. However, there was a major problem: The Age of Enlightenment and the Modern World it had created was itself being called into question, and was ‘colliding’ with another world view, the result of discoveries in Physics in the 1920’s.

Fritjof Capra in his book The Turning Point 1984 presents a convincing argument that we are at a turning point in western culture as we move from a world view associated with the Modern World (Mechanistic) to a world view he describes as the Solar Age (Holistic) It is this ‘colliding’ of two major ways of understanding the world that explains the ‘tremors’ in the human psyche. An earthquake in the material world lasts a few minutes and depending on its size wreaks destruction in minutes, with tremors felt for days after the event. An ‘earthquake’ in the human psyche usually last a considerable time longer and we may only begin to recognise the dramatic changes that have been caused long after the event though we will ‘feel the tremors’.
We felt the first major ‘tremor’ as a result of the collision between the two world views in the 1960’s which caused major social upheaval and dramatic changes in human self understanding. The Hippy movement, though parodied today, started a series of dramatic social conversations about the nature of human sexuality, religious consciousness, ecological awareness, social justice and the abuse of political power.
These social conversations continued through the 70’s 80’s 90’s to the present day, and vast social networks have emerged, supported by new technologies, that have been able to translate the results of many of these conversations into main stream thinking and being.

I would suggest that New Monasticism is in the ‘liminal space’ between these ‘colliding’ world views which basically means we are ‘in an in between place’ or ‘on the threshold’ of significant transforming moments that are emerging all the time, to a greater or lesser extent. It is also in this liminal space that a major dialogue has been going on as to ‘How then shall we live’ in the age that is coming: Ecologically, Economically, Politically, Spiritually, Socially, and Relationally …. every aspect of life is not being left unturned. It is in this dialogue that you become very aware of how faint the Christian contribution has been, although there have been some seriously brave hearts out there! As mentioned before: We have to stay true to our vocation: to respond to the call of Christ: ‘Who is it that you Seek’ and ‘How then shall we live,’ To embrace a way for living that will encourage the Church to have a voice, a vocation, a location in this new age, that has come and is coming. To embrace a way for living that makes us available, authentic and shares the vulnerability of a Society going through a profound cultural transition. It is in this liminal space that new monasticism is posited.

You made a comment that there are folk in the Church who still would question the notion of a Post-Christian Society. That I believe is both true and tragic so I think it may be worth exploring .

Os Guinness in his book: The Gravedigger File uses the work Sociologist Peter Berger to illustrate, in a story, the effects of modernisation on the Christian Faith. One such effect is called Privatisation. (I will try and keep this brief and to the point using old lecture notes)

PRIVATIZATION
This is the process through which modernisation produces a
cleavage between the public and the private spheres of life
and focuses the private sphere as the special arena for the
expression of individual freedom and fulfilment.

Public Life:
This is defined as the rise of major institutions, i.e. multinational
corporations, government departments, social security departments etc. The
public world is largely an impersonal one, anonymous in character and
incomprehensible in its workings.

Private Life:
This is the micro world of the family and private associations, the world of the
personal tastes, sports, hobbies and leisure pursuits.
The private sphere in general, and the family in particular, has one over riding
concern: the personal needs, expectations and fulfilment of the individual,

The Results of Privatisation:
i) It does not represent authentic freedom, freedom in our
private lives does not necessarily effect the public
world. It is only real when the private effects the
public.

ii) It serves as a form of compensation. It makes for
ineffectiveness in public, only to be made tolerable by
the private. For Christians it means that they become
‘privately engaging but socially irrelevant,’ Guinness

Most Churches have there feet still firmly planted in the Modern World, and are still, as Jacques Ellul once commented: “beating the dead horse of the last century’s understanding of the universe, or else is pinned under it.”
As a result most Churches are still located in the Private sphere of life, as was stated earlier: This is the micro world of the family and private associations, the world of the personal tastes, sports, hobbies and leisure pursuits.
The private sphere in general, and the family in particular, has one over riding
concern: the personal needs, expectations and fulfilment of the individual.

As a result, talk of a Post Christian Society may seem absurd, as it did to most Christians I used to share this with 25 years ago. The same applies to talking about ‘Society going through a profound cultural transition.’ when it appears not much has changed in the private world.
My fear, is that the Church will only ‘wake up to being the Church’ when the ‘tremors in our public life’ begin to shake the doors and windows of homes and Church buildings:

“There are words that slip into the vocabulary of popular culture almost unnoticed: secularization, post Christian society, post modernity, new paradigms, new physics, new age. Long before they reach our lips they have made a journey through the recesses of human understanding the power and force of their meaning has already transformed or swept away former perceptions We imagine we can dialogue, find common ground. Only then do we awaken and find the ground has moved from beneath our feet, our house has fallen,
we are internal émigrés.” Skinner 1986

• In the meantime, I am off back down the desert, we are still getting provisions ready for the arrival of a new generation of young people ready to take a new type of monasticism to the next level!

This raises a fundamental question for me. Bonhoeffer talks about finding a new monasticism that would lead to ‘the restoration of the church’. The relationship between monasticism and the church in any age is fascinating. You say that you originally intended to locate new monasticism within the church, but instead chose the desert. I have been drawn towards NM for personal reasons but also because I see the need to provide young people with a means of living an alternative lifestyle while immersed in contemporary urban culture. So my question is whether this is possible within a church context, or whether NM always requires a prophetic distancing from a church that has compromised with the pervading culture. Bonhoeffer, in a sense, did this through identifying with a confessional church that was withdrawing from the compromised state church.

John Skinner

• I firmly believe that the ‘mission’ of new monasticism is intimately bound up with the restoration of the Church. By the Church, I mean The One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, in her multiple expressions. I was keen from the beginning to locate new monasticism in the Church. However, the Church at that time did not share the same enthusiasm. In the early days I found myself in constant tension with Church Authorities even though I had given up my Licence. This took the shape of being asked NOT to attend our Local Parish Church: Being asked to leave a Church building in the middle of a conference: Being heckled at a Baptist Ministers Retreat: The list goes on. For nearly ten years our small community (before Northumbria Community) was treated with suspicion and hostility by most denominations. It was the traditional monastic community that came to our rescue. First SSF at Alnmouth, with Br. Jonathan, Br. Colin Wilfred and Br. Ramon. Then Br. Roland Walls of the Community of the Transfiguration who became our long term mentor. I believe the Church was right to test our motives, challenge our position, and discern our intentions. It is the responsibility to the Bishops to guard the flock and maintain the ‘Household of Christ.’ I also discovered that the Monastic Communities who supported us, stood up for us, do not have that responsibility so they could be creatively subversive! When the Northumbria Community came into being I insisted that we maintain our unity with the Church. To assist that, we would not hold services in our Chapel on Sundays, encouraging all believers to go to a near by church. We would encourage people to honour their giving to the Church before the community. We recognised all ministers properly appointed by their Church Authorities and respected them accordingly. As a result the suspicions and hostility diminished. Ministers began to both join and endorse the Community. My own Bishop invited me to resume ministry. Community is a gift of God. Sin has deeply distorted our personalities. What God did with us in Northumbria was to genuinely remove the labels, take down the barriers, open our hearts, until it was no longer possible to identify our Church backgrounds when we met as a community. In Church, I am Anglican, in Community I am. The Call to Community cannot be a conscious judgement of the Church. When the Desert Fathers were asked why they went to the desert their reply sums it all up: “Because I am a sinner.” We are the church, there is no them and us. Back to your question: So my question is whether this is possible within a church context, or whether NM always requires a prophetic distancing from a church that has compromised with the pervading culture.

I believe that if New Monasticism ever consciously attempts to be a ‘prophetic witness’ ‘teacher’ or any thing else to the Church or Society it then announces the failure of its own vocation.
We have to stay true to our vocation: to respond to the call of Christ: ‘Who is it that you Seek’ and ‘How then shall we live,’ To embrace a way for living that will encourage the Church to have a voice, a vocation, a location in this new age, that has come and is coming. To embrace a way for living that makes us available, authentic and shares the vulnerability of a Society going through a profound cultural transition.

In my heart and mind, despite the many bitter encounters with Church Authorities and members in the early days, New Monasticism should be intimately alongside the Church and actively alongside Society as each in our own way seeks to answer the question: ‘How then shall we live’ or ‘What kind of people to we want to be’ in this new era.

A continued and hopefully creative tension between the Church and a new type of monasticism seems inevitable in the future… especially when we start getting up close and personal!
As a Church leader, you could welcome and locate those who are struggling to workout their new monastic vocation alongside both Church and Society, in your own Church Community. As a Church leader, you could share with your colleagues and superiors the value of developing an intimate relationship with ‘a new type of monasticism’ and encourage their involvement. Finally…you could send off those who hang around your Church and communities heralding New Monasticism as the answer to everything….!
I am tempted to comment of Bonhoeffer, but will just leave this to ponder: The Stuttgart Declaration

http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/projects/niem/StuttgartDeclaration.htm

NB. Steve Silvester is an active bridge builder between the Church and a New Type of Monasticism. JS