Living Faithfully in a Fragmented World, 2nd ed.
Overview
The first edition of Living Faithfully in a Fragmented World became one of the founding and guiding texts for new monastic communities. In this revised edition, Jonathan Wilson focuses more directly on lessons for these communities from Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue. In the midst of the unsettling cultural shifts from modernity to postmodernity, a new monastic movement arises that strives to be a faithful witness to the gospel. These new monastic communities seek to participate in Christ’s life in the world and bear witness by learning to live intentionally as the church in Western culture. This movement is about finding the church’s center in Christ in the midst of a fragmented world, overcoming the failure of the Enlightenment project and our complicity with it, resisting the temptation to Nietzschean power, and building communities of disciples. This new edition is greatly enlarged from the original volume. It includes
- Responses to critics of the new monasticism such as D.A. Carson
- An entirely new chapter on the Nietzschean temptation
- An afterword on properly understanding the new monastic movement, the dangers it faces, and the work yet to be done
- An appendix on the supposed post-modern agenda of Jonathan Wilson and Brian McLaren
For those striving to understand the path the church should take in this fragmented world, this book is essential reading.
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- Argues that the church needs witness of new monastic communities to learn to live with its history
- Develops a vision for a new monasticism
- Responds to criticisms, and corrects misunderstandings
- Provides a resource for new monastic communities
- Living with Our History
- Fragmented Worlds
- The Failure of the Enlightenment Project
- Resisting the Nietzschean Temptation
- Recovering Tradition
- The New Monasticism
Top Highlights
“As a result of this disordering, we try to make worship serve other purposes. So, for example, if we accept another version of the human telos—that we are to be happy, well-adjusted people—then we expect worship to be a kind of mass therapy session that makes us feel better. Or, if we believe that the human telos is to be successful professionally, then we expect worship to be a kind of mass pep rally that energizes us for the week ahead. We can even distort the purpose of worship by believing that the human telos is a happy, healthy family. And so we expect that worship will be ordered to that end.” (Page 21)
“Since the conversion of the Emperor Constantine to Christianity and the subsequent rise of Christianity as the dominant religion of the empire in the early decades of the fourth century, the church has continually fallen into the error of thinking that the mission of the church was not to make disciples of Jesus Christ among all nations, but to rule the world by exercising power through political structures.” (Page 6)
“The first lesson that MacIntyre teaches us is that in order to live faithfully, the church must learn to live with its history.” (Page 12)
“However, the proper end of worship is to confront us with the vision of God and reorient our lives to this vision. If our worship is ordered by this end, then we will not merely feel better, we will be blessed, and our perception of the world, not just our perception of ourselves, will be changed.” (Page 22)
“Secondly, since this new monasticism will seek to heal the fragmentation of our culture, it will also be a monasticism for the whole people of God.” (Page 60)
- Title: Living Faithfully in a Fragmented World: From ‘After Virtue’ to a New Monasticism
- Author: Jonathan R. Wilson
- Edition: 2nd
- Series: New Monastic Library: Resources for Radical Discipleship
- Publisher: Wipf & Stock
- Publication Date: 2010
- Pages: 102
- Christian Group: Evangelical
- Resource Type: Topical
- Topic: Christian Living