All Christians Are Monks
The Monastery, the Parish, and the Renewal of the Church
By George Guiver
Sacristy Press, 165 pages, $22.95
As a scholar of monasticism, I was excited when I saw a flier at St. Anthony’s Priory in Durham, U.K., announcing that George Guiver would give a talk on All Christians Are Monks. I was not still in Durham when he gave the talk, but my interest was piqued.
I knew of Guiver from his book Company of Voices: Daily Prayer and the People of God and I knew that he was a longtime monk of the Community of the Resurrection in Mirfield, U.K. He seemed like the ideal person to write a book about all Christians being monks. (I too have written a book on the monkhood of all believers, but as a non-traditional monastic I was excited about what an actual monk, like Guiver, would have to say on the topic.) The book was not a disappointment, but it did not do exactly what I thought it might do.
Guiver summarizes his work this way: “We have made a journey through a variety of topics, all of them interlocking, and have repeatedly found, as we have gone along, ways in which the parish and religious communities share the same territory.” First, the book looks at a variety of topics in its ten chapters. It examines the history and structure of monasticism, and reflects on the nature of Christian community and shared Christian practices, like prayer.
Guiver does this through reflection, storytelling, and theologizing. This journey is pleasant, given Guiver’s clear prose, insightful illustrations and leisurely pace for the novice reader or even for someone more advanced on the journey. And Guiver does show how all of these topics interlock with one another, showing how monastic practices are often non-monastic practices too, though they tend to look a bit different in the monastery.
This demonstration of interlocking topics is what makes the title appropriate, for all Christians are monks, or at least monk-like with the parish as their monastery. Of course, only the worst of the Christian monastic tradition ever suggested that monasticism was superior to the non-monastic life. The best of the tradition has always valued obedience to one’s God-given vocation (whether monk, mother, or non-monastic celibate) over any particular form of life.
Martin Luther railed against those monks in the monastery who did not have a calling to the monastic life, and we should do the same. Christian living is about Christian vocation in that each baptized follower of Jesus needs to do what she has been called to do.
Guiver has given us a wonderful book full of wisdom about living the Christian life, showing how that every life has a monastic-like quality to it, and the way that monks are the heartbeat, the soul of the monastery, so it should be in the parish. In a world in which “I” (the individual) am the most important thing, Guiver shows us that there is another way, a way to root ourselves fully into Christian community, thriving in our parishes as God’s “other” monks and nuns.
I trust that God is still in the business of calling people into traditional forms of monasticism, but Guiver is right in his assessment that we can all be monks of another kind—parish-based monastics performing the liturgies and enacting the practices that were historically hallmarks of the monastery alone. Though I wanted a thicker theological account of how each Christian is a monk, I still appreciate Guiver’s reminder that we are monks and should live accordingly.
The Rev. Greg Peters, Ph.D., SMD, is Servants of Christ Research Professor of Monastic Studies and Ascetical Theology at Nashotah House Theological Seminary.
