Monastic

A person who devotes his or her life to religious vows and who lives in community (in or associated with a monastery) or as a solitary. Monastic communities lead a life devoted to God in a monastery, in relative isolation from the world. Although monastic vows differ from tradition to tradition, they normally include poverty, chastity, and obedience. A monastic’s schedule may be divided into prayer, study, and work. Eastern monks follow the rule of St. Basil, and most western monks follow the rule of St. Benedict. Monks are bound by solemn vows. They live in relatively independent abbeys ruled by an elected abbot, with the highest authority residing in a general chapter. The general chapter includes all the professed members of the order. Monastic and canonical orders were discontinued in England by Henry VIII but restored in the Anglican Communion during the nineteenth century.

A renewal of Anglican monasticism was encouraged by the Oxford Movement. In England, E. B. Pusey heard the vows of two women who started a religious community in 1845. Other religious communities formed in England in the mid-nineteenth century. Episcopal monasticism began with sisterhoods formed in the mid-nineteenth century and was strengthened when the Community of St. Mary (CSM) was founded by Mother Harriet and her companions in 1865 on Feb. 2, the Feast of the Presentation. The Rev. Charles C. Grafton, a native of Boston and later Bishop of Fond du Lac, was one of the founders of the first Anglican monastic orders for men after the Reformation, the Society of St. John the Evangelist (SSJE) in England in 1866. Grafton returned to the United States and the Episcopal Church in 1872 to serve as rector of the Church of the Advent, Boston, and to lead the work of the SSJE in the United States. The first indigenous monastic order for men in the Episcopal Church was the Order of the Holy Cross (OHC), founded by the Rev. James O. S. Huntington in New York in 1884. Today the Episcopal Church includes a variety of religious orders and other Christian communities. According to the canon on Religious Orders and Other Christian Communities, a religious order is a society of Christians in communion with the See of Canterbury who voluntarily commit themselves for life or a term of years to holding their possessions in common or in trust, to celibate life in community, and to obedience to their rule and constitution.