Comments on: When will they update the 12 marks?

By: SteveK

SteveK — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 16:52:06 +0000

I found this article really helpful on the subject of racism and new monasticism:

http://www.sojo.net/blog/godspolitics/?p=2198

(Was this posted already here? I can’t remember where I found it originally)

Steve K

By: Tim Baer

Tim Baer — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 20:04:46 +0000

I don’t think the 12 marks are set up as a sort of rule among all monastic communities. They are, or at least appear to be, the way some groups see their own groups, and others they choose to work with, living out the message of the Gospel. Most of the marks do not even begin to preach a clear doctrinal message.

Number seems to be saying: We we not hide away in rural communities. We will go to the places society has forgotten.

(I tend to dislike the word “Empire” because it’s used, more often than not, to be a way to point fingers and as some sort of put down…)

2, 3, & 4 are generic ways of living that most Christians would probably agree with.

5 is too vague to really discuss.

6, 7, & 9 map out the way they see their communities looking logistically.

8 is clearly an issue they see in moral terms. But perhaps rightly so, in the 60s intential christian communities had of problems with the sexual revolution, people using sex to control others, etc, etc.

10 is perhaps a little too focused on the new liberalism, anti-global capitalism, sorta stuff you read about in local rags.

11, 12 sort of sum up why monastic communities have ever needed to exist.

I like the marks, for the most part. They are specific enough without being too specific, while not being too vague.

By: ST

ST — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 00:47:20 +0000

Yeah. 8. thanks.

By: Danny

Danny — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:28:03 +0000

Did you mean number 8 when you said number 9 in your article?

By: ST

ST — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 02:14:42 +0000

Awesome. Thanks. Yeah, I appreciate your summary of the intent of these marks. But do you know when people are getting together to look at them again? Even the East Coast communities have probably adjusted somewhat since these were written–faced new challenges, etc. Even if a community I am in does not “agree” with a point or two (though that is too simplistic of a way to conceptualize conversations surrounding life and these marks) if I do something that is different then them perhaps I am giving the marks an authority that they never wanted to have… I was just wondering if the people who made these wanted to (and how to) be in conversation with others who are learning of these marks and were not in the original conversation.

Again, I find your succinct summary helpful.

By: Mark Van Steenwyk

Mark Van Steenwyk — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 01:40:41 +0000

I don’t see the 12 Marks as definitive, but as a helpful set of convictions. After all, it wasn’t as though the book represents a full consensus of younger intentional communities that drew from the monastic tradition. The 12 Marks draws from a network of communities that is mostly concentrated around the East Coast. It is, in my mind, not helpful for people to treat it as a sort of prescription for doing new monasticism. Rather, it should be seen as a faithful attempt by a handful of communities to discern a faithful trajectory in 21st Century USA.