Introduction

This paper is an exercise in praxis—the philosophical, sociological and theological reflection on practice. I  will demonstrate a theoretical link between: a) human thriving (eudaimonia). b) a sociological ideal type which I call the monastic spirit and  c) the practice of primitive methodism. My suggestion is that human well-being  is equally well served through small-group relationships with links to a common religious tradition and practice (as demonstrated, for example, in early methodism) as through the now more normal route of individual, professional therapy. 

Eudaimonia, Therapy  and Community

It is, perhaps, a truism to state that in twentieth century philosophy it is by no means certain that there is any discernible purpose to human life. From Nietzsche’s mere “will to power”[i]  to Lyotard’s “incredulity toward metanarratives,”[ii] with much in between, there has been a reluctance to find meaning.[iii]  Mass, technological society, supported by and large by philosophical positivism, has provided humanity with ample answers to the “how” with little guidance for the “who,” the “what,” or the “why.”

Yet, following the lead given by philosopher Alasdair Macintyre, it has become fashionable for some to utilize again the age-old  Aristotelian perspective about human life as having a telos, a purpose.[iv]  If, following Aristotle, we agree that life is lived toward a telos—that human life is at its best in the light of that telos—then we might suggest, again with Aristotle, that the aim of human life is eudaimonia; well-being.  The word is rich, yet problematic. Though often translated “happiness,” the word is far more full than mere “feelings of being happy” and like the notion of Hebrew shalom, or perhaps the English “flourishing.”[v]  According to MacIntyre it is “the state of being well and doing well in being well, of a man’s [sic] being well favored himself and in relation to the divine.”[vi]  If we steer eudaimonia away from a shallow hedonism—there are, of course, philosophically sophisticated versions of hedonism which cannot be dismissed lightly— and toward the richer meaning, then it is arguable that the human telos, for both pastoral theologians and psychologists would be to help their parishioners/clients move toward this state of eudaimonia. That is, the direction of human life is toward an overall state of well-being thought of both temporally and eternally; immanently and transcendently. In the title of this paper I have termed it “mental well-being” more for alliterative purposes than because of a focus only on the mind. Aristotle’s eudaimonia is well-being in the most rounded sense: body and soul; feeling, thinking, sensing; the entirety of human personality, in whatever way we might perceive its complexity. Human telos as eudaimonia is useful in that it is universalistic rather than particularistic; it is a categorization which might have both religious and non-religious understandings. It is not limited to any one cultural interpretation and so might prove useful as common ground in the quest for a moral understanding.[vii]  

Some years ago I was intrigued by the seeming about-turn made by psychotherapist and popular writer on counseling Larry Crabb. In his book Connecting Crabb suggests that perhaps the best way for people to enjoy lives of wholeness and well-being would be through the experience of community rather than through the now traditional route of therapy.[viii] 

Crabb argues that it may be the loss of traditional community—extended family, friendships, a fairly static community, either rural or urban in nature—which has led us inexorably toward the “therapeutic society” in which people turn to professionals to talk to about their problems. Given the psychological ills which derive from of our consumerist, anomic, alienated society, people have flocked to professional therapists to ease their burdens and heal their wounds.

Of course, as a psychotherapist, Crabb is not wholly opposed to therapy and presents evidence to suggest that meaningful conversation with a professional is, more often than not, beneficial. At the same time, he asserts that it does not really matter which school of psychology or psychotherapy is followed; the results remain by and large the same. The upshot of the argument is that people are helped when others, whom they trust, engage in meaningful conversation about their personal problems.

So, whence the continued burdens of modern, perhaps postmodern, society? Why the continual psychological wounds?

According to Crabb the cause may be found in a fundamental loss of human connection. Post-Enlightenment individualism, come of age in the latter part of the twentieth century—the normlessness of anomic culture, the breakdown of extended and nuclear family life, social and geographical mobility—all leave people disconnected to others in any meaningful way.[ix]  It follows that if we are able to recover the function of true community, this reconnection of people might make us both psychologically healthier and less dependent on professional counseling.

Of course, he adds that in those instances of personal need rooted in a physical disorder (e.g. ADD, some sexual dysfunctions) or which relate to technical or learning functions (e.g. marital communication patterns), there would still be the need of professional help. Yet for most part, the connectedness of true community would be the pathway of wholeness and healing. I am, perhaps, oversimplifying Crabb, but I think this is the gist of his argument.

In the terms of this paper, glancing in the direction of  both Aristotle and Crabb, the road to eudaimonia lies through meaningful constitutive community.

When Connecting was published, in 1997, it piqued my interest because for some time I had begun to approach the same ideas, but from sociology, social theory and pastoral practice. My question was that, given the breakdown of traditional community, for those who are confessionally Christian, might local church communities be able in part to fill the gap  and provide people with a healthy connectedness?

The quest led me, from the early 1990s onward, to involvement with experiments in what our Latin American friends had termed the Comunidades Eclesiales De Base, “base ecclesial community”—the Christian community as small, face-to-face, friendship-discipleship groups.[x]  These small-scale experiments have become a diverse and widespread movement across denominational barriers as people have returned to the notion of small, less structured, less bureaucratic more informal church structures. Already, This way of “being church” is proving to be a valid alternative to the Victorian congregation/denomination model.

Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow has suggested as much in his work on small groups in recent American experience.[xi]  He has demonstrated that forty percent of adult Americans are involved in, more or less, frequent small group experiences; from informal support groups to church Bible studies, to book discussion groups to prayer groups to twelve-step recovery programs.

In the quest for well-being, it seems new forms of community are emerging. Of course, it is probably too soon to see whether this will have any long-term effect on the psychological health of people generally; but sociologically, the data is fascinating.

The “Ideal Type” of the Monastic Spirit

Before getting to Wesley (for this new small community group phenomena has strong similarities with primitive methodism) I want to look briefly at the notion of sociological ideal types and, in the process, to introduce my second strand: monasticism.

In sociology, ideal types (suggested firstly by Max Weber)[xii]  are mental constructs used to understand complex social institutions and to provide for comparative analyses.[xiii]  An ideal type is a term applied to an agglomeration of characteristics to which social institutions may be compared. No individuals or groups perfectly conform to an ideal type—the type only exists in the abstract—but the device serves as a useful tool in sociological analysis. According to Weber:

 

An ideal type is formed by the one-sided accentuation of one of more points of view and by the synthesis of a great many diffuse, discrete, more or less present and occasionally absent concrete individual phenomena, which are arranged according to those one-sidedly absent emphasized viewpoints into a unified analytical construct (Gedankenbild). In its conceptual purity, this mental construct (Gedankenbild) cannot be found empirically anywhere in reality.[xiv] 

 

Unlike the Platonic Forms, ideal types are rooted in empirical phenomena as observed in human history and social development

Ernst Troeltsch classically defined two ideal types derived from the social phenomena of religion: “the church” and “the sect.”[xv]  The church was the ideal type referring to those ecclesial institutions which tended to be large, in some way conjoined with society and hierarchical. The sect  is the ideal type of the small church: independent, separatist, often pacifistic etc. These two archetypes have proved useful in social analysis, but with limitations. Those who are characterized as “sect” are opposed to the notions of “church,” and vice versa, ignoring the historic and social fact that there have been those committed to the notion of “church” who have the characteristics of the sect. I am thinking particularly of historical monastic movements who, in contradistinction to the post-Reformation sects, perceived themselves to be very much part of the one great church. The two need not be mutually exclusive.[xvi] 

To help overcome this limitation, I want to suggest another ideal type which is hinted at in both Weber and Troeltsch, but not fully developed in either.[xvii]  I will call it the “monastic type” or perhaps “the monastic spirit.”[xviii]

The characteristics of the monastic spirit I would suggest are:

a) The desire for “holiness.” I do not think it necessary to bring any precise definition to the term. The caricature of holiness—its most common depiction—is of a “list of dos and don’ts.” Laying to one side the parody, “holiness” might be thought of as the deep human desire for transcendence found in all the great religious traditions at their best (and often in non-religious ideologies); what Merton termed “the deepest and most authentic fruit of . . . religion itself.”[xix] It is Buber’s “I-Thou” encounter;[xx] as Kaufmann comments on Buber, “the central commandment to make the secular sacred”[xxi]  in relating to the other, the discovery of the noumenal in the phenomenal.

b) The serious use of classic religious disciplines. These would include prayer, scripture reading, fasting, contemplation etc. This might be best termed “ascetic” thought the idea needs careful handling. Certainly, a parody of monasticism is that it has been unconcerned with life in general, content rather with am ascetic withdrawal and world denial. A more balanced understanding, and the self-perception of many in the monastic tradition, would be to see the classic disciplines as helps to “see the world aright.”[xxii] It is through the disciplines that the monastic is equipped to engage the world in a meaningful sense.

c) A Rule of Life.  This is not so much rules as a “way of living”; a certain set of understandings which frame the corporate life of a community—its norms and expectations.[xxiii]  The Rule provides a certain regularity for those committed to the monastic way.

d) Small face-to-face community. In the history of religions many movements have arisen which suggest that the ideal group is now larger than twelve or so (more often than not with a glance toward Jesus and the twelve apostles, in the Christian context, the early Benedictines being a good example).

e) Concern for the poor and marginalized in society. Primitive and reformed monasticism had a close identity with the poor; archetypically expressed through the work of Francis and Clare (late twelfth, early thirteenth century).[xxiv]   The high Cluniac period (tenth and eleventh centuries), though giving to the world great abbeys and architecture, in purely monastic terms might be seen as an aberration as there was a movement from the small and simple to the bureaucratic complexity of monastic empire;[xxv] the monastic spirit was absorbed into the ideal type of the church.

f) The “catholic or ecumenical spirit.” The monastic spirit has more often than not perceived itself to be part of a greater whole—in a Christian creedal sense, the one holy catholic apostolic church; in contemporary terms, the interreligious dialogue of monastics in different traditions.[xxvi]  It is for this reason than the monastic spirit does not fit easily into Troeltsch’s sect or Niebuhr’s “Christ Against Culture.”

g) Monastic Friendship. This aspect of the spirit of monasticism is, perhaps, the most disputable. In some very clear versions of monasticism, e.g. the Benedictines, friendship between members of a monastic community is frowned upon.[xxvii]   However, there is another strand of monasticism, the clearest exposition being that of Aelred of Riveaux in the twelfth century. He borrowed from Aristotle and, most particularly, Cicero and suggests that friendship is the highest form of love. For Aelred monastic communities were to be communities of many friendships.[xxviii]  Some have suggested that the idea of “soul-friendship” is close to the heart of the monastic spirit.[xxix] 

h) Ritualism. A focus on the centrality of the central religious rites of a particular tradition. It Christian contexts it would be the Eucharist which forms the primary focus of community gathered in the stylized ritual of eating and drinking.

Historically, it is easy to see this monastic type in the lives of the desert mothers and fathers from the middle of the third century. It is also clearly so for the cenobitic monasticism of Benedict and the monastic reform movements of the thirteenth century with Francis and Dominic.[xxx]  Besides the clearly catholic orders many early and radical reform movements, which we more clearly identify as “protestant,” also fit within this ideal type. For example, scholars have argued that the anabaptists sects of the early sixteenth century were more closely in spirit with the monastic movements that with either the state-Protestantism of the Reformers or with the Roman Catholicism of the Counter-Reformation.[xxxi]  In other contexts it is clear that Buddhist monasticism approximates to the monastic spirit.

John Wesley, Early Methodist Practice and the Monastic Spirit

My suggestion, and here the argument turns to Wesley, is that early methodism, too, seems to share these same elements and so would be included within the ideal type of monasticism.

Of course, there is the valid question of whether there was any direct borrowing from the historic monastic tradition or whether Wesley derived his ideas from his contemporary context and a direct appeal to the Bible?

With regard to the former, Wesley’s father Samuel was clearly influenced to some degree by monastic ideas and wondered if the dissolution of the monasteries in the English reformation was a wholly good thing.[xxxii] John Wesley was, himself, widely read in the church fathers and it is quite likely that he imbibed the monastic spirit from that source. Also, whilst the Church of England, though for many centuries after the Reformation suspicious of monasteries, retained the monastic ideal of morning and evening prayer in its prayer book. That practice clearly affected Wesley’s rules for his converts. With regard to a direct appeal to the Bible, I think it is clear that most primitivist renewal movements (including historic monasticism and early Methodism) do take such an approach.

Sociologically so much is clear. Philosophically, how valid the appeal to primitivism is remains a question to be answered and is beyond the scope of of this paper. Suffice it to say that a common appeal to scripture does seem to produce surprisingly similar sociologies given the variety of social contexts.

Looking at the characteristics of the monastic spirit, holiness is, perhaps, too obviously a part of early methodism to need any comment.

The classic disciplines are very close to Wesley’s heart as are his various Rules which have amazing similarities with traditional monastic Rules. His Plain Account written in 1748 we have all the elements of a monastic rule.[xxxiii]  In the Plain Account  Wesley explains how his societies, classes and bands were established and what was expected of each member as a weekly commitment. The following extract gives the flavor of Wesley’s Rule.

I saw it might be useful to give some advices to all those who continued in the light of God’s countenance, which the rest of their brethren did not want, and probably could not receive. So I desired a small number of such as appeared to be in this state, to spend an hour with me every Monday morning. My design was, not only to direct them how to press after perfection; to exercise their every grace, and improve every talent they had received; and to incite them to love one another more, and to watch more carefully over each other; but also to have a select company, to whom I might unbosom myself on all occasions, without reserve; and whom I could propose to all their brethren as a pattern of love, of holiness, and of good works.

 

They had no need of being incumbered with many rules; having the best rule of all in their hearts. No peculiar directions were therefore given to them, excepting only these three: —

 

First. Let nothing spoken in this society be spoken again. Hereby we had the more full confidence in each other.

 

Secondly. Every member agrees to submit to his Minister in all indifferent things.

 

Thirdly. Every member will bring, once a week, all he can spare toward a common stock.

 

Every one here has an equal liberty of speaking, there being none greater or less than another. I could say freely to these, when they were met together, "Ye may all prophesy one by one," (taking that word in its lowest sense,) "that all may learn, and all may be comforted." And I often found the advantage of such a free conversation, and that "in the multitude of counselors there is safety." Any who is inclined so to do is likewise encouraged to pour out his soul to God. And here especially we have found, that "the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much."

 

This is the plainest and clearest account I can give of the people commonly called Methodists. It remains only to give you a short account of those who serve their brethren in love. These are Leaders of classes and bands, (spoken of before,) Assistants, Stewards, Visitors of the sick, and Schoolmasters.

 

In the third part of the "Appeal," I have mentioned how we were led to accept of Lay-Assistants. Their office is, in the absence of the Minister,

 

(1.) To expound every morning and evening.

 

(2.) To meet the united society, the bands, the select society, and the penitents, once a week.

 

(3.) To visit the classes once a quarter.

 

(4.) To hear and decide all differences.

 

(5.) To put the disorderly back on trial, and to receive on trial for the bands or society.

 

(6.) To see that the Stewards, the Leaders, and the Schoolmasters faithfully discharge their several offices.

 

(7.) To meet the Leaders of the bands and classes weekly, and the Stewards, and to overlook their accounts.

 

Wesley's’ genius in the organization of his converts produced small face-to-face groups in the classes and bands from which the contemporary church is still seeking to learn.[xxxiv] It can be argued that the reasons the Wesleyan movement had such success over other eighteenth century revivalist movements (for example, Edwards in New England) was that Wesley organized his converts into small groups.

There is clearly, in early Methodism, a concern for the poor and marginalized in society. Those to whom Wesley preached, the miners and the new urban-dwellers of British society, were clearly the lowest. Yet, I have to admit to some ambivalence on this point. It has been said, on occasion, that it was Wesley’s revivalism which saved Britain from radical revolution in the eighteenth century. A downtrodden people in the brutal social conditions of early industrialization were given religion rather than revolution. This is often seen as a good thing. A Marxist might point out that the opium of religion had its desired effect—it made the people at the bottom of society feel better about their condition, but did not change the condition itself. Social change on behalf of the poor in Britain would wait for almost another century. By contrast, those who favored a “preferential option for the poor” in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s sought to conscientize the poor to their true condition rather than merely dulling their pain.[xxxv] 

Returning to the characteristics of the ideal type of monasticism, Wesley was clearly a sacramentalist both in terms of his frequent attendance at the Eucharist and in the insistence on confession—a practice which I do not think has been equaled in Protestant history. Psychologically, the weekly unburdening of the soul in confession to the group is not too far removed from the weekly therapy session.

His Rule for Band-Societies drawn up December 25 1738, is his detailed practice of confession:

 

The design of our meeting is, to obey that command of God, “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed.”

 

To this end, we intend, —

 

   1. To meet once a week, at the least.

   2. To come punctually at the hour appointed, without some extraordinary reason.

   3. To begin (those of us who are present) exactly at the hour, with singing or prayer.

   4. To speak each of us in order, freely and plainly, the true state of our souls, with the faults we have committed in thought, word, or deed, and the temptations we have felt, since our last meeting.

   5. To end every meeting with prayer, suited to the state of each person present.

   6. To desire some person among us to speak his own state first, and then to ask the rest, in order, as many and as searching questions as may be, concerning their state, sins, and temptations.

 

Some of the questions proposed to every one before he is admitted among us may he to this effect: —

 

   1. Have you the forgiveness of your sins?

   2. Have you peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ?

   3. Have you the witness of God’s Spirit with your spirit, that you are a child of God?

   4. Is the love of God shed abroad in your heart?

   5. Has no sin, inward or outward, dominion over you?

   6. Do you desire to be told of your faults?

   7. Do you desire to be told of all your faults, and that plain and home?

   8. Do you desire that every one of us should tell you, from time to time, whatsoever is in his heart concerning you?

   9. Consider! Do you desire we should tell you whatsoever we think, whatsoever we fear, whatsoever we hear, concerning you?

  10. Do you desire that, in doing this, we should come as close as possible, that we should cut to the quick, and search your heart to the bottom?

  11. Is it your desire and design to be on this, and all other occasions, entirely open, so as to speak everything that is in your heart without exception, without disguise, and without reserve?

 

Any of the preceding questions may be asked as often as occasion others; the four following at every meeting: —

 

   1. What known sins have you committed since our last meeting?

   2. What temptations have you met with?

   3. How were you delivered?

   4. What have you thought, said, or done, of which you doubt whether it be sin or not?

 

Wesley’s catholic spirit[xxxvi]  was evidenced in that he did not want to be anything other than an Anglican priest, given liberty to preach the gospel to all; and in the eighteenth century to be Anglican was to be part of the state church, the status quo. Thus the Methodists was not separatist in the same way that the Baptists or Congregationalists were.

Taken together, I think that it is demonstrated that early Methodism was clearly ecclesiologically and sociologically within the monastic spirit.

 

The Monastic Spirit in Contemporary Expression

It remains to ask the question: would a recovery of this monastic spirit, in something akin to early methodism with its discipline and community sense, help us in our pastoral and psychological telos of leading people to eudaimonia? Would an approximation of the monastic spirit found in early methodism lead us toward mental health?

 Sociologically we would need to look at the data and, though Wuthnow has done excellent work in the regard, I think it is too early to make a judgment. Nonetheless, the return to the small group as the basic unit of church might well meet the need of Gemeinschaft,  in the sense that Tönnies used it — relationships which are good in their own right and not as a mere means to an end.[xxxvii]  This type of community experience provides for those who engage in it a counterbalance to the individualist, consumerist outlook of contemporary society.

Macintyre, toward the end of After Virtue  hints at similar departure, that small communities who nurture the virtues, in an Aristotelian sense, may well be the basis for  civil society. I have argued elsewhere that Macintyre is correct.[xxxviii] The regular habit of a monastic rule,  in the ebb and flow of reading, prayer and meditation, shared in small communities of friendship has the potential to give shape to life which would meet the need for close community and provide a vehicle for eudaimonia. It may be that such ritualistic habits may prove beneficial for only a segment of the population. At the very least, the monastic spirit rediscovered and enjoyed by face-to-face communities—ecclesiola in ecclesia—would furnish that ready supply of trusted others with whom to talk to relieve the pressure of our alienated selves.

 

 

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