Rob Blackhurst

FT Magazine September 15 2007:

After 1,800 years, are Christian religious communities dying out in Britain?

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The vista from Worth Abbey is so harmonious it could have come straight from a Constable painting. Five hundred acres of ripening corn, grazing sheep pasture and ancient woodland stretch to the horizon. In the gardens, a solitary duck glides around the ornamental pond. On the walk past the boys boarding school established by Benedictine monks in the 1930s, there is the distant ebb and flow of plainsong seeping from the chapel beyond.

Like much about religious life in Britain, this arcadia is deceptive. On closer inspection, the singing is coming not from a medieval hammer-beamed chapel but a brutally modernist circular dome. The adjoining priory building looks as though it has been rooted in the Sussex earth for several centuries, but it has only been there since the Great Storm of 1987 ripped the roof off Worth's previous monastery while the Benedictine monks were sleeping.

The sense of timelessness is also far more precarious than it seems. Over the past 20 years, the "melancholy, long, withdrawing roar" of the "sea of faith" described in Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" has been particularly cruel to religious orders. The Conference of Religious, a Catholic body representing the leadership of all but 35 Christian religious orders in England and Wales, estimates that in these countries, just 9,000 monks and nuns remain.

There are still far more women than men in monastic life, with around 7,000 sisters and 2,000 brothers. But statistics from the Catholic Church's National Office for Vocation confirm that the free fall in recruitment in England and Wales during the past two decades has been equally dramatic across both sexes. The number of women entering religious life has dropped from 79 in 1986 to 14 in 2006; among men there were 54 new recruits in 1986, and 14 in 2006. Once mighty orders such as the Jesuits are ordaining between two and four men a year in England. Meanwhile, the average age of entrants has risen from 30 in 1986 to 38 last year. Outside the Catholic Church, the situation is even more fragile: there are fewer than 500 Anglican monks practising today in Britain.

Much of the traditional work of these orders - feeding the poor, educating the young and healing the sick - has been made redundant by the modern welfare state. And as numbers have dwindled, religious orders have had to sell their dilapidated fortresses to hotel chains, auction off their art treasures, or, as with the spectacular Fort Augustus Benedictine Abbey on the banks of Loch Ness, leave them empty for the elements to do their work.

The social forces that once fed religious life in Britain have also dried up. Throughout much of the 20th century, English orders were replenished by Celtic migration. But with Ireland's recent economic boom, this influx has all but disappeared. Attempts were made to recruit in Africa, Asia and South America, but, in these post- colonial times, there is a certain queasiness at importing novices in bulk from poverty-stricken parts of the world.

Meanwhile, the simple economic activities with which religious orders once paid the bills - from making communion wafers to renting their land out to tenant farmers - no longer offer the financial returns they once did. But perhaps even closer to the heart of the problem is the fact that young people now have choice in abundance. As Connie Burke, general secretary of the Conference of Religious, says: "A lot of young people today want to give something back and save the world - they go on gap years. They don't necessarily want to make a life-time commitment and take a vow to lead that sort of life."

After 1,800 years, are Christian religious orders on the verge of disappearing from these islands? And who are those young people who, in a secular age, are willing to renounce a cushioned life of material comfort for the monastic vows of poverty, chastity and obedience?

At the chapel door I meet the two most recent arrivals to Worth's community of 25: Brother Anthony, a 44-year-old former occupational therapist, and Brother Gabriel, a 26-year-old computer studies graduate. If it wasn't for their habits, one could easily mistake them for a couple of young academics - all spectacles, wry asides and reflective good humour.

Benedictine monks do not endure the eye-watering privations of other orders. They do not have to swear a vow of poverty and - apart from Lent or other fasting days - are able to eat whatever they like. The tables set for lunch in the refectory are laden with bread, cheese and piles of fruit. In the adjacent monks' sitting room - with deep-cushioned armchairs - copies of the day's broadsheets are laid out. As the sunlight streams in, it feels like the sitting room of a provincial hotel. "We don't live like Trappists," admits Anthony, smiling.

It has been waggishly suggested that EBC - the acronym for the English Benedictine Congregation - should in fact stand for "every bodily comfort". But even if Benedictines don't take a vow of poverty, life is still Spartan. Every Lent the Worth monks write a "poverty bill" in which they list the contents of their cells. The Abbot checks the inventory to ensure that they are not stowing away any unnecessary luxuries. This abandonment of consumerism is part of the draw of monkhood, according to Brother Gabriel: "We joke that monastic life is great. You don't have to worry about your pension. You don't have to worry about presents at Christmas or birthdays any more. I might be able to send a card, but it's not the normal presents for the whole family. It can be quite attractive if you look at it like that."

Gabriel was one of seven children from a Catholic family, each of whom was taught by monks in a Catholic boarding school. He was baptised and confirmed at Worth. After a computer-programming course at Aberdeen University, he got a job "staring at a screen all day - which encouraged me to go elsewhere". While clearing his student debts, he made monthly visits to Worth to see if the calling he felt "was more than just a flash-in-the-pan emotional high". After 10 months, he quit his job. "When I told the people I was working with what I was planning to do, they said: 'You're kidding, right? Cars? Girls? Drink? Why?'"

His parents have been supportive: "They're a churchgoing family. They didn't think I was joining some odd cult." But Gabriel has experienced conflict between monastic life and family ties: "There is this strange tension between keeping those links to your family and actually being involved in this life. They'd be saying, 'when can we next come and visit?' And I'd say, 'firstly, my novice master isn't keen on you coming too often and, secondly, I need some space.'"

He admits that it was a leap of faith entering Worth, particularly as no one else had joined for 10 years. "Our oldest monk is 80 and a lot are in their seventies. I was 20 years younger than the youngest. I thought there was a very real possibility that I could be the last person to enter, looking after them and watching the community die off. But ultimately I had to set that aside. If that was God's calling to me, for whatever reason, that's what I'm going to experience."

And how does it feel to pledge yourself to chastity for life in your mid-twenties? "It is a loss. You have to grieve for that - at the same time as rejoicing in the calling you have to this life. My novice master keeps saying that chastity and celibacy is more about yes than no - it's a freeing thing." Anthony, almost 20 years older, had "lived a bit more - but it never proceeded to marriage so I didn't necessarily see myself as meeting the woman of my dreams tomorrow".

Monastic life is not all brotherly love and transcendence, Gabriel admits: "You realise that monks are like any other group of people - they can have their gripes that irritate you." And, psychologically, the rhythm of morning, midday and evening prayer is not an easy one: "The stillness and silence throw up things about yourself which are not necessarily that comfortable, that you manage to push aside when you weren't living in that way."

Papers are piled high in Christopher Jamison's office. The Abbot of Worth is light-footedly feline as he darts around the room in his black habit and silver crucifix, searching for a research paper on religious life in the US. He retains the easy pedagogic manner of an experienced teacher (for years he was headmaster of Worth school), but with his slick side parting, angular bone structure and school-assembly voice, he could easily pass for an English character actor.

Under Jamison's leadership, the Abbey has been made famous by the BBC's Monastery documentary that followed a small group of men as they left their stress-fuelled urban lives to live under Benedict's rule. In the wake of its success (it attracted three million viewers - twice as many as Celebrity Love Island), Abbot Christopher wrote a self-help book, Finding Sanctuary - Monastic Steps for Everyday Life. It preaches the unfashionable advice that happiness is to be found in obedience rather than in emotional whim, and applies Benedictine principles to child rearing, the value of silence in families and the "extreme personal humility and intense professional will" needed to be a good CEO.

Now the stressed-out are heading to Worth to imbibe a bottled, working week version of the Benedictine spiritual brew. The Abbey has recently started a programme called The Soul Gym to cater for the growing corporate market. Recently, it hosted the European marketing managerial group of Royal Caribbean Lines ("Because we are near Gatwick, they realised it was quite convenient") and "ethos seminars" for financial services managers.

But for all the over-subscribed retreat courses, the Benedictine method is being treated as simply another product in the spiritual supermarket. A weekend break at a monastery - beautiful gardens, silence, reflection - could not be further from the steely lifetime vows of Benedictine monks. So, in spite of the huge publicity, Abbot Christopher says: "There was no rush of people wanting to become monks after The Monastery - which was a surprise to us."

He looks momentarily world-weary as he considers why monastic orders are struggling to survive: "The traditional structures of Catholic life have all but collapsed for most young people - the religious sister who taught them in primary school, the parish priest who knew them in secondary school, an aunt who was a nun. And it simply never occurs to the small numbers of young people active in the church that the traditional religious life is for them."

The monastic life led by Gabriel, Anthony and their brethren conforms to most people's expectations of spiritual servitude: quiet, contemplative and confined to monastery walls. But not all monks live this way. The Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, a religious import from the Bronx, established themselves in east London seven years ago to live out a life of "radical poverty". The average age of the brothers is 31, and each year the order gains about 10 to 15 new recruits worldwide.

I visit them in their rickety wooden Friary surrounded by a high- security fence on a council estate in Canning Town. In the kitchen the brothers are blending vegetable soup for the 20 or 30 they feed everyday. Sitting at tables inside, an Iranian heroin addict is frightening an elderly schizophrenic Irish woman with a rumour he has heard on the street that Gordon Brown is going to abolish welfare benefits.

The Franciscan Friars of the Renewal have made lurid headlines in the US for their modern techniques of evangelisation - from preaching from a skateboard to applying the theology of John Paul II to rap music. But their vow of poverty could not be more medieval. They sleep on the floor of their tiny cells with only a mat and a sleeping bag. They have long, unkempt beards. And they live "by the provision of the Lord", which means that they are dependent on donations of money and food. ("We didn't have milk this morning," Brother Augustine tells me.) When a brother makes his final vows to join the community he executes his will at the same time, giving away his property, his savings and all his personal possessions.

Father Bernard, the order's superior (actually called "the servant", in the egalitarian spirit of the Franciscans) is over from New York. He's a middle-aged, towering man-mountain from a wealthy background, so affable that within seconds he's explaining the significance of his beard: "It's Christ-like and some people say it helps keep the girls away. Our vocations director is a dead ringer for ZZ Top." Like many Franciscan Friars, he is from a prosperous background: "I went to school with the Bloomingdales. I travelled with the hoity-toity. I'm the oldest of seven brothers - and most of my brothers work on Wall Street."

The Franciscan Friars pride themselves on evangelising in territory that other orders wouldn't dare touch. They have just returned from a trip to Germany and are full of tales about praying with kids who were on their way home from a punk concert. "When our friars initiate a conversation all of a sudden people will open up," he says in his gentle Connecticut accent. "They can be curious to see people from The Canterbury Tales wandering around the Tube."

So, why, when other monasteries are closing, does the Franciscan path to poverty attract 300 membership inquiries each year? "Young people want the real thing, and they know when people are faking it," he says. "We live an authentic life. We say we want to live with the poor, and we live with the poor. We are making a statement."

Brother Emmanuel, a 34-year-old from Hertfordshire, confirms this. He joined in his mid-twenties because "there wasn't any compromise". Many of the Friars seem to have flirted with teenage hedonism before returning to the shelter of Christianity: "Up until the past 20 years most guys joining religious orders were good guys from good solid Catholic homes. Whereas now most of us have had a point of conversion."

Even if the 19th-century orders are crumbling, a form of monastic life harking back to ancient traditions is, in small pockets, flourishing. There is a thirst among younger generations for the orthodox Catholic tradition. As Father Paul Embery from the National Office for Vocation observes: "Communities haven't got to be hip and trendy. People want to know when they join that it's got purpose and clear rules."

Monks and nuns - from a new order to an ancient institution - have a sense of ease with the world that shines through. Far from being an unnatural, tragic life choice, monastic life still seems to give a deep sense of belonging to the few who follow its path. And it is this anthropological urge that in the end, will save religious orders, according to Abbot Christopher Jamison: "Just as all humans have an urge to be a parent - so everyone has a monastic urge even though not everybody has to be a monk. Religious life isn't going to die out because the monastic urge is hardwired into the human psyche."