A New Kind of Monasticism: The Power of Community to Shape the Soul

Bonhoeffer’s blueprint for life together

In 1935, the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer started an underground seminary that aimed to train pastors who could remain vigorously committed to discipleship and the integrity of the gospel even amidst the pressures of living and laboring under a Nazi-controlled regime.

As discussed last month, the Finkelwalde seminary sought to combine the independent lifestyle enjoyed by average "civilians" with the daily practices embraced by monks. It was an experiment in what Bonhoeffer termed “a new kind of monasticism" — a way of life that eschewed cloistered isolation for the freedoms, joys, and interests of the world, but grounded day-to-day life in a rigorous routine of spiritual disciplines.

While Finklewalde only operated for two years before being closed by the Gestapo, Bonhoeffer drew on his experiences there in writing Life Together, a treatise on how the principles of his illegal seminary could be used by anyone who wished to pursue a monastic-inspired lifestyle in the modern world.

While the book is aimed at Christians, I’ll be using it as a kind of existential survival manual, discussing how its principles, and those from Bonhoeffer's life as a whole, can be applied more broadly to sustaining one’s values, staying sane, and developing depth and excellence of character in an age that pushes individuals towards shallowness and mediocrity.

At the heart of Bonhoeffer’s modern monasticism is the idea of structuring your day with liturgical rhythms — set times for study, music, silence, prayer, and meditation. This is certainly the most compelling part of his vision — and the thing that makes monastic life intriguing in general; after all, who isn’t interested in tinkering with and enhancing their daily routine?

And we’ll get there, I promise.

But first, we have to talk about something that people don’t find very “sexy” and yet constitutes the crucial context in which a new kind of monasticism can take place: community.