Intentionally Catholic

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This is in response to a post by Erich on Notes from Underground. He notes the isolationism of many intentional communities — born of the natural need for defining the community against the surrounding society — and quotes Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann of blessed memory as an opinion that possibly contrasts with the impulse to form intentional community.

I have to agree with Karl’s comment. The one Orthodox intentional community that I’ve been affiliated with, the one which forms my vision for what Orthodox intentional community should look like, was actually formed more by Schmemann than any other thinker. We wanted to eschew any form of ethnicism, and in so doing we ended up creating something that was sectarian in the opposite way. Yet, that was not because we were pursuing intentional community in an Orthodox context, but because we were evangelicals imitating Orthodoxy instead of newly-illumined Orthodox Christians being formed by the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. (This community was the original mother church for Christ the Life-giver/St. Athanasius. Christ the Life-giver never quite acheived intentional community, but there were very strong signs that it was gestating and about to be born.)

In the transition from being “evangelical Orthodox” to being “canonical Orthodox,” our vision for intentional community has naturally taken a backseat. I am praying that it will not be lost entirely (perhaps my desire for it will be utilized?).

In any case the isolationist tendency Erich notes is certainly there, but it does not find its origins in a sectarian impulse. Rather, it is precisely catholic in its intention. The “radical monasticization” of Russia that was the seedbed of Russian Christianity is not, in our present Orthodox context, taking root. The impulse to form Orthodox intentional community is born from the need to recontextualize monasticism in an American context — a lay monasticism, if you will.

Perhaps, once a uniquely American form of intentional community has taken hold, subsequent generations will be able to dot the landscapes with monasteries.

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