A Change of Habit
Leaving Behind My Husband, Career, and Everything I Owned to Become a Nun
By Sister Monica Clare
Crown, 336 pages, $30
Sister Monica Clare, formerly Claudette Monica Powell, entered the Community of St. John Baptist (CSJB), an Episcopal convent in rural New Jersey, in 2012 and was elected the sister superior there in 2019. She has become a popular figure on social media. This book, her autobiography, appeared in 2025.
Claudette grew up in chaotic and impoverished circumstances that are painful to read about. Her sense of vocation to the religious life first manifested itself in early childhood, when she kissed the television screen while watching The Nun’s Story.
She grew up in a world influenced by Methodist and Southern Baptist piety and by demands that girls limit themselves to looking pretty, marrying early, and producing babies. Church offered Claudette a safe place to be, a welcome alternative to what prevailed at home.
Claudette later took a different road about what it meant to be a woman. Her one marriage was short and loveless and produced no children. She worked as a photo editor in Los Angeles and performed in an acoustic rock duo and an improv comedy troupe. Only later came the religious life.
Her experiences echo the way many women converts in early Christianity courageously moved away from the demands of their families of origin and their society to follow Christ, come what may. In those days she might have become a martyr.
As Claudette slowly moved through the stages leading to life profession, she was repeatedly preoccupied with fears that she would not be accepted for the next stage, that the sisters would reject her. This no doubt reflected the radical insecurities she experienced growing up, as well as the emotional reserve that characterized her community, or at least did so from her perspective at that time.
But love conquered all. Claudette persisted despite her recurrent fears, while the sisters gradually made clear their affection for her and acceptance of her. Everyone seems to have been blessed by this chapter in their common life.
Sister Monica Clare writes about her experiences and the life of her community in a lucid and attractive way. There is nothing opaque in her account of the Community of St. John Baptist. At times austere, theirs is an austerity that reflects their choice of prayer as their prime activity.
A.M. Allchin once published The Silent Rebellion, a study of Anglican religious life. Monica Clare and her sisters prove themselves to be participants in this rebellion, resisting mistaken commitments that scarred human flourishing in times past and that continue to do so today.
The sisters’ way of life, while alien to many, often shines forth in this book as sanctified common sense, a realistic way to live in the presence of God. For Sister Monica Clare, it has become a welcome home and a foundation for her current work as a spiritual counselor specializing in religious trauma, mental illness, and addiction.
Near the end of A Change of Habit, the author summarizes her story to date: “I spent the first forty-six years of my life convinced I was on the wrong path. Everywhere I went I felt like a fish climbing a tree. But the truth is God was paving my way.”
The Rev. Charles Hoffacker is an Episcopal priest who lives in Greenbelt, Maryland.
