Explainer

Change

Monastic life

13 November 2023

8 min read

There’s much more to ‘monk mode’ than productivity hacks

In the heart of London Lianne Howard-Dace spent a year trying to live a simpler, slower life with others.

Lianne Howard-Dace

Lianne Howard-Dace is a writer and trainer, with a background in church and community fundraising.

A group of young people wearing white habits stand and laugh with each other.

Community of St Anselm members and the Archbishop of Canterbury.

CoSA.

Six years ago, I stood in white, full of nervous excitement, in front of a priest to make a vow. But it was a prayer robe, not a dress, and the priest happened to be the Archbishop of Canterbury. I was not getting married but joining a religious community.

The Community of St Anselm (CoSA) was founded by Archbishop Justin Welby in 2015, and I was amongst the third cohort of young Christians, aged 20-35, committing to spending a year together. Some of my fellow community members came from across the globe, entirely stepping away from their everyday lives. They spent the year living in Lambeth Palace, devoting their time to prayer, study and service. Others, like me, remained in our homes and jobs, whilst also trying to reorientate our lives around those three worthy pastimes.

By committing to a pattern of living, giving up on the idea that I was in control and limiting my choices I found much liberation.

In my experience, much of life - and the Christian faith in particular - is counter-intuitive. It would be a logical hypothesis to suppose that restricting your life in this way – agreeing to reorientate towards living by a set of rules and to fall into a structured way of being – would be stifling. And yet, like thousands before me, I found the complete opposite to be true.

Our culture upholds choice; we are told that the ability to choose is the ultimate expression of freedom. And whilst this may be true with big choices – where to live, who to live with, what work to do - our brains don’t cope as well with a lot of day-to-day options as we might be led to believe. In a 2000 experiment, psychologists observed that a supermarket display with 24 different types of jam generated a lot of interest but not many sales. In contrast, a display with just six different types of jam meant people were nearly ten times more likely to go on to make a purchase. If, like me, you’re prone to spending inordinate amounts of time deciding what to have for dinner, I’m sure you can relate.

Monks and nuns have understood this human tendency to get overwhelmed and expend energy on small decisions - suffering from what we now call decision fatigue - for many centuries. Whilst we may find the idea of a rigid schedule and a limited menu and wardrobe austere, not having to make those decisions every day can free up mental energy for other things. It’s the same reason why some tech entrepreneurs espouse the idea of wearing the same black turtleneck or grey t-shirt every day.

Whilst my own experience of religious life was not as extreme as those who make a life-long vow, I did find that in committing to a pattern of living, giving up on the idea that I was in control and limiting my choices I found much liberation. The chatter in my mind quietened a little. I became more comfortable in my own skin. I felt more and more like my truest self.

Attempting Cal Newport’s monk mode productivity hack by turning off our digital devices for the morning - or listening to a podcast from former Hindu monk, Jay Shetty - is as close to encountering monasticism as many of us get. CoSA draws on wisdom from several saints who themselves founded religious communities: St Benedict, St Francis and St Ignatius of Loyola. Whilst trying to emulate their way of life wasn’t always easy, I seized the opportunity to go deeper and threw myself into the intensity of the year.

As a teenager I was always late to morning tutorial, despite being able to see my secondary school from my house. During my time in the community, I struggled to shake this habit and would usually be rushing to Lambeth Palace each Monday evening, arriving after those who had travelled from as far as Oxford, Poole and Canterbury, despite only working 10 minutes down the road.

Those evenings were spent eating, talking and praying together and quickly became the highlight of each week for me. A time to put aside the day-to-day stresses and just try to be present with the other members of the community. We finished each gathering by praying compline, or night prayer, in the crypt at Lambeth Palace. In Celtic Christianity there is a concept of ‘thin spaces’, places where the boundary between heaven and earth seems a little more permeable. The cool, silver-lit crypt at Lambeth is one of those places for me; it seems to crackle with sacred potential.

We also took three retreats in an Abbey during the year, near a stretch of wild Cornish coastline. Precious time away from the bustle of the city. Away from the demands of life admin and meetings and untameable inboxes. The strapline - for want of a better word – of the Community of St Anselm is “A year in God’s time”, and I think that actually sums it up pretty well. We spent a year trying to live a simpler, slower life. A life marked by prayerfulness and the sufficiency of God, rather than the bigger, better, hustle culture pressures of modern living.

We went into these new relationships acknowledging that we wouldn’t agree on everything, but actively deciding to love each other anyway.

Only the most disciplined of us can maintain healthy habits, like daily prayer and reflection, on our own. It’s easier to go to the gym with a buddy. The upcoming book club meeting nudges us to keep reading. I think that’s what drew me to join CoSA; I knew I needed mutual accountability and support to sustain the spiritual disciplines I craved in my life.

In the community’s Rule of Life – the guidelines we each agreed to follow during the year – there is a line “We choose on another” and this has had a profound effect on me. The idea that we chose to put our shared life in the community ahead of everything else for that year has shaped me deeply. I have forged some amazing friendships through the community, but before we had even met each other, or learned to like each other, we chose to love each other in all our diversity and difference.

I do find that church is one of the places I am most likely to encounter people who are different to me – particularly intergenerationally – but even in finding a place of worship, there can be a tendency to seek out one that ticks as many of one’s personal preferences as possible. In the weeks leading up to joining the community I had been unsure what to expect. Having not grown up in a Christian family, would I feel left behind? Coming from a less-wordy type of church, would I get lost in the orders of service? Would everyone think I was too socially liberal? Would I find them too conversative?

The act of choosing one another put all of that aside. In stepping out of our everyday lives, we also stepped out of our respective echo chambers. We went into these new relationships acknowledging that we wouldn’t agree on everything, but actively deciding to love each other anyway. It was hard at times, but I came to see that whilst people had come to different conclusions on issues to me, they had done so no less thoughtfully. I came to see that we had much more in common than the things which society would say should separate us.

In smaller ways too, I believe it is possible to choose to love others around us. We can choose to recognise the humanity of the person who is rude to us on the bus.

I usually hate household chores, but some of my fondest memories from the year are chatting in the Lambeth Palace kitchen whilst putting away cutlery or singing together whilst washing up on retreat. By sharing the load, we learned ways to find joy in the smallest of things. And, by getting stuck into the mundane tasks of living and being together, we learned to see the humanity in each other.

It’s no coincidence that those in long-term religious life call each other sister and brother; it’s certainly the best analogy for community life I can think of. As a child I was excited for the arrival of my siblings before I had even met them; I knew that it was my role as big sister to love them unconditionally. I’m not sure, if we weren’t related, whether my path would have crossed with my sister and brother as adults. Yet, they are some of the most important people in my life.

In smaller ways too, I believe it is possible to choose to love others around us. We can choose to recognise the humanity of the person who is rude to us on the bus. We can choose not to assume the worst about someone’s post on social media. We can choose to share a kind word with a colleague, even if we don’t think they’ll ever return the favour. I’m not saying that it’s easy, or that I always manage it myself, but it can be done.

In community, on the days you have doubts about the things you are saying in morning or evening prayer, you know that your fellow members are lifting you up with their words, they are lending you a little of their belief. Learning to be held by others in that way is just one of the many gifts I took from my year in God’s time. I also learned that I do not need to be or do anything in particular to be loved by God or by others. That working out faith and belief with other people can reveal things you never would’ve found alone.

In September, the Archbishop of Canterbury welcomed the ninth cohort of CoSA in a commitment service at Lambeth Palace. Young people from as far away as Sri Lanka, Australia and Zimbabwe made the decision to spend the next year living differently, making time for God and each other in new ways. And I, along with 23 others from around the world, Zoomed into the service and made a new commitment too.

This year, for the first time, there is an opportunity for alumni of CoSA to become members of a dispersed community, the Chapter. Like third order Franciscans or Benedictine oblates, we will attempt to stay linked to the life of our community, alongside our everyday routines. I’m looking forward to being more intentional about re-engaging with the daily rhythms and lessons I learned in my year in community. We will have a less intensive programme of events to help us feel connected and will follow a simplified Rule of Life that focuses on learning from Jesus, seeking reconciliation and unity in the Church, serving with compassion and, of course, choosing one another. I’m excited to see what the year holds.

Article

Change

Freedom of Belief

14 March 2023

7 min read

How an oppressed people are finding a home in Britain

While repression continues in their homeland, Iranian converts to Christianity are building communities in the UK. Robert Wright meets with them.

Robert Wright

Robert is a journalist at the Financial Times.

Community members celebrate at lunch.

Jonathan Samadi.

On the first Saturday each month, in the basement of St Luke’s, an Anglican church in Earl’s Court, west London, a group of around 20 people gathers to go through the familiar rituals of the church’s Eucharist – or holy communion – worship service. Led by a priest, the group sing praise songs before preparing for communion. The pattern has been honed by millennia of Christian tradition.

Yet, while the service’s structure and rhythms would be familiar to any regular Church of England worshipper, the liturgy is entirely in Farsi, the language of most of the 88mn people of Iran. The organisers of such a service would risk imprisonment if they mounted such a service in Iran for people who, like most of those at the Earl’s Court service, were born in that country as Muslims and converted to Christianity.

The group is one of a growing number in Iran as well as the UK and other countries catering to Iranian Christian converts. While the exact number who have changed religion is unclear, an estimate used by the British government says there are at least hundreds of thousands in Iran and possibly more than 1mn. The number compares with an estimate of just 500 Christians in the country in 1979, when a revolution led by Shia Muslim clerics installed a government determined to rule the country according to a highly conservative interpretation of Islam.

The rapid growth is partly a reflection of the growing, widespread discontent within Iran with the clerical regime’s hard-line rule and its strict interpretation of Islam, according to Margaret Walsh, a Roman Catholic nun based in Birmingham. Walsh, who for many years worked with Iranian converts and other people seeking asylum, founded St Chad’s Sanctuary, a church group that works with people in Birmingham seeking asylum.

Iranians’ unhappiness has been highlighted by the outbreak of widespread, large anti-government protests following the death in September last year of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman arrested by morality police for breaching religious rules by covering her head inadequately.

'She subsequently sought asylum after Iranian security forces raided her parents’ home seeking information about her.'

Walsh says Christianity provided some of those she met with “an alternative to the regime”.

“This was a way that they could protest by embracing Christianity and rejecting Islam,” she says.

In the UK, however, converts have faced scepticism, especially after Emad Al Swealmeen, an Iraqi man who converted to Anglicanism in 2015, died in a botched, Islamist-style bombing attempt outside Liverpool women’s hospital in November 2021. The incident prompted a Home Office official to tell the Times that many would-be refugees from Muslim countries sought to “game” the asylum system by converting to Christianity.

Jonathan Samadi, an Iranian-born Church of England priest who is leader of the Persian Anglican Community in the Church of England’s London diocese, acknowledges some converts are insincere. Samadi, who oversees the Earl’s Court congregation as well as serving as a vicar in Staines, in Surrey, says some people disappear from church once they have been granted refugee status.

Nevertheless, while he hesitates to give precise numbers, he insists that there is also a significant, large-scale spiritual movement under way.

“I’ve seen hundreds and hundreds of migrants converting to Christianity over the years and remain faithful disciples and Christians,” Samadi says.

The converts and those who work with them, meanwhile, tend to stress the vividness of the spiritual experiences that prompted them to become Christians. Many testify that helped them to withstand sometimes harsh treatment at the hands of the Iranian authorities.

One member of the Earl’s Court congregation, who gives her name only as Marta, describes how she faced academic sanctions after becoming a Christian while studying medicine in Isfahan, one of Iran’s centres of clerical conservatism. She left to study in the UK after her parents grew worried about her safety. She subsequently sought asylum after Iranian security forces raided her parents’ home, in the city of Shiraz, seeking information about her.

Other converts tell stories of fleeing police raids on house churches or even periods of imprisonment for converting to Christianity or proselytising – both regarded as serious crimes under Iran’s Islamic legal code for people born Muslim.

Marta insists the difficulties only deepened her commitment.

“I relied more on Jesus,” she says.

At the heart of many of the converts’ accounts is a sense of disenchantment with Islam as practiced in Iran. They say they have found far greater satisfaction in Christianity.

Samadi, the priest, recalls how a conversation with a Christian friend while he was studying in Armenia prompted him to start reading the New Testament.

“After Chapter Six of the Gospel of Matthew – the sermon on the mount – I could really see how much God is on my side,” Samadi says. “The whole sermon on the mount, the values of God and his kingdom, were very refreshing for me.”

'She fainted after realising it looked exactly like the building in her dream.'

Marta, meanwhile, says that, after an ethnic Armenian friend suggested she try going to church, she had a dream in which Jesus spoke to her directly. When she followed His direction and went to her friend’s Armenian Orthodox Church, she says she fainted after realising it looked exactly like the building in her dream. Churches serving traditionally Christian communities, such as Armenians, are allowed to operate in Iran, while the authorities treat harshly anyone proselytising Muslims.

“When I woke up and opened up my eyes, I saw lots and lots of Armenian ladies around me and they tried to pray for me,” Marta says.

Marta says she subsequently started reading the Gospel of John and was immediately struck by the first verse – “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”.

“It was very, very amazing and I felt really, really moved by that verse,” Marta says.

'They were also disturbed by the harsh punishments, including executions, meted out to dissenters.'

A similar disillusionment with Iran’s state religion motivates many asylum-seekers who convert after leaving Iran for non-religious reasons, according to people who work with the group. Brother Benedict, a monk in the Anglican Society of St Francis, who accommodated some Muslim convert asylum-seekers when he lived in north-east Leeds, says that many were disillusioned by how women were treated in Iran. They were also disturbed by the harsh punishments, including executions, meted out to dissenters.

“This made them question their faith,” Benedict recalls. “Many of them were Muslim in name only. Many of them were recommended by a friend when they came to the UK, ‘You go to a church’.”

Benedict stresses that he sought to avoid rushing into steps like baptism, trying to ensure that converts were sincere and understood the step’s significance before they underwent it. Others working with converts say they take a similarly cautious approach.

Margaret Walsh introduced a ceremony of Christian initiation for converts, allowing them to make a public sign of commitment before they were ready for the more rigorous process of undergoing baptism.

Benedict would nevertheless sometimes go to asylum tribunals and other court hearings with converts to testify to their being regular church attenders.

“The important thing for us was that they had a relationship with Jesus Christ,” Benedict says. “That was the fundamental thing. Although I was going to the court with many of them, that wasn’t really the purpose of the church. The purpose was to give them a good foundation in the Christian faith.”

Yet, however robust their new faith, there remain considerable challenges for Iranian converts who have fled to the UK. Marta, who left Iran in 2008, has only just received her full qualification to serve as a doctor in the UK. Marta, who is 40, has resumed her medical career, working as a general practitioner in Oxfordshire. Her younger brother, Simon, 37, who converted separately and fled to the UK after a short period of imprisonment, is still learning English in the hope of resuming his medical career.

Samadi has a vision that Farsi-speaking believers will support each other as the community puts down deeper roots.

“I’d like to see a network operating and connecting them together,” Samadi says.

Brother Benedict says help from local, English-speaking congregations will be critical to supporting Iranian converts as the asylum process moves them to different parts of the UK.

“I’d like to say many more need support from English congregations but I think it needs a bit more encouragement,” he says.

'Life in the UK remains a second-best compared with an eventual return to Iran.'

Yet, for Samadi, life in the UK remains a second-best compared with an eventual return to Iran. Like many other converts, Samadi hopes that the current pro-democracy protests could eventually bring about the transformation in the country necessary to allow that.

“For those Christians I’ve served in the UK, I think their intention and their dream is to see people in Iran can worship God in freedom, without fear of persecution and being interrogated or deprived of their freedom and rights,” Samadi says.

The “dream”, Samadi goes on, is to be able to return to Iran to worship in freedom with the Christians who remain in the country.

“For all those Christians, the whole intention is one day they can share the gospel freely and worship freely with all those who are Christians,” he says.