In a recent Covenant essay, Bishop Poulson Reed suggested that one possible path to renewal in the Episcopal Church, perhaps in the Christian West more generally, is a revival of interest in the religious life, that is, Christians who live according to a rule.
With Ezekiel’s image of God replacing hearts of stone with hearts of flesh in mind, one cannot help but agree that renewal will not come primarily through strategy, branding, or messaging, but through the recovery of disciplined Christian life rooted in prayer, repentance, and costly life in community.
Covenant has featured other essays along similar lines – Andrew Buchanan’s discussion of the priority of discipleship in congregational life and Zachary Guiliano’s engagement with Christian Smith and congregational vitality. But Reed raises up the issue of a rule of life and that discipline is at the heart of discipleship.
This interest in monasticism cannot be borne from romanticism or a yearning for the middle ages, but rather ordinary Christians, lay and ordained alike, seeking to order their lives according to prayer, sacrament, accountability, and service.
This recovery of disciplined Christian life may be especially critical for one group the Episcopal Church has quietly failed to form well: men, particularly younger men.
What Men Want from Their Church
There is a growing absence of men from mainline Protestantism and the Episcopal Church specifically. But this is not because men are hostile to faith. Rather, not much is asked of them. There is little challenge offered.
Many are quietly searching for discipline, purpose, brotherhood, and challenge, but so many leaders of our church simply emphasize instead cultural reaction and social causes instead of sustained spiritual formation. This is not to dismiss the church’s concern for justice or compassion, but to suggest that these commitments are most compelling when they flow from a deeper well.
Increasingly, younger men are drawn toward Orthodox Christianity and more traditional expressions of Roman Catholicism. Surely some of this is because of theology and doctrine, but one suspects that it is also because these traditions offer something recognizably ancient and demanding: ancient liturgy, sacramental depth, contemplative currents, and a disciplined way of life ordered toward the divine.
In my Episcopal parish, the Church of the Holy Comforter in Vienna, Virginia, we have begun exploring the revival of the Brotherhood of St. Andrew, not as a social group, but as a demanding fellowship with a clear Rule of Life developed specifically for men. Prayer, accountability, service, and mutual commitment would be non-negotiable. These would live alongside a more general Rule of Life for the congregation as a whole.
This is not about excluding women or diminishing their leadership. It is about recognizing that formation is not one size fits all, and that men, in particular, often respond to clarity, expectation, and embodied practice. Community alone is not enough; community must be ordered toward transformation.
Bishop Reed’s discussion of repentance is crucial. The under-use of the Reconciliation of a Penitent is not simply a liturgical oversight; it reflects a broader discomfort with honest moral reckoning and change. A church serious about renewal must recover practices that take sin, grace, and growth seriously, and I think men can lead this charge.
The bishop’s reflections also recalled an earlier experiment in renewal that continues to bear fruit. In 2009, alongside Bishop Reed (then subdean) and Kate Eaton, I helped propose a new Sunday evening Eucharist at St. John’s Cathedral in Denver, one rooted in ancient liturgy but deliberately more contemplative and prayerful.
Dean Peter Eaton (now bishop of southeast Florida) embraced the vision, and nearly two decades later “The Wilderness” still flourishes — not because it chased novelty, but because it offered something ancient, real, and immersive.
Perhaps, in broader terms, what the Episcopal Church needs is balance, a Benedictine charism. Over time, the Episcopal Church has poured enormous energy into causes and internal debates, often at the expense of doctrinal confidence and spiritual formation. The result has not been renewal, but thinning commitment and quiet drift.
My message here is not so much that the church needs to become “conservative” (whatever that may mean), but rather intentional. A post-secular world is no longer asking whether the Church can keep pace with culture, but whether it still knows how to pray, how to form souls, and how to offer a vision of meaning that is not endlessly self-constructed and centered on “me,” but rooted in God and ordered toward “us.”
To echo Bishop Reed, Episcopalians can handle more, not less: more prayer, more structure, more accountability. Renewal will come neither from retreat nor accommodation, but when congregations once again become schools of prayer, courage, and love—places where hearts are formed through discipline, beauty, repentance, and friendship.
If parish-based Rules of Life can help us recover that confidence, then the Holy Spirit may indeed be leading us somewhere new, by leading us somewhere very old.
James Wall is a Guest Writer. He is the founder/CEO of Moxie (moxieforkids.com), an education-focused social enterprise supporting the social and emotional formation of children and families. A member of Church of the Holy Comforter in Vienna, VA, previously he was Contemplative-in-Residence at House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver.
