Abbeys

The pillars of our Western Christian Civilization are Faith, Family and Culture. The Abbey uniquely nurtures each and all. The Abbey is a Christian Community for faith, family and our future, an exemplary model for a unified family durable across generations. From their beginnings in the first century, Christian Abbeys were typically organized and administered by lay Abbotts and supported by significant local families. Especially in Scotland, individual Clans and their Chiefs sponsored and were associated with specific Abbeys for centuries. Iona, for example, was the center of faith and worship of the Lords of the Isles and great West Highland Clans Macdonald, MacLean, MacLeod and MacKinnon for near 1,000 years. At its most effective, the Abbey was the center of a community of faith, family and culture, a fountainhead and catalyst for a widening civilization.

A Family needs unity around meaning and purpose, yet must also offer avenues for individual members’ investigation, discovery and growth. The Abbey is the community center for the development of every type of personal interest and charitable ministry imaginable. At once, it serves individuals, the family and the wider community. Programs may include faith, labor, study, libraries, publishing, farming, fishing, herds, vineyards, orchards, manufacturing, art, music, language, communications, networking, ministries to the community and wider world and missions to spread the good news and inspire people to “care for their souls.” Essential ministries of literacy, education, health, nutrition, independent water, food, shelter, energy and communications are as worthwhile today as ever before. Similar with the Abbeys of old, sound reason, practicality and diligence applied toward labors will produce surplus and over time accumulated abundance, expansion of wealth and resources for increasing charity. Also in similar ways, the goodness, piety, resulting progress and charity of the Abbey may move others to donate their time, talent or treasure.  The successful Abbey is in many ways a perpetual motion machine for civilizational advance.

Abbeys were innovators, developers of many of the elements of modern capitalist organizations, including respect for work, specialization, division of labor, surplus or profit motive, accounting, management, trade, currency, deposit banking, lending and investment. Abbeys can lead innovation again, solving many of the world’s seemingly intransigent problems with novel approaches using advances in technology developed or harnessed to progress.  Solutions can be directly applicable locally for discreet self-reliance and self-sufficiency, and extensible from the First through the Third World, scalable through association.

Historically, as the good works of the Abbeys became known, more people lived and worked in or near Abbeys, settlements grew, marketplaces formed, trade and investment expanded along with population growth and quality of life. Eventually towns formed and grew into cities. In the most vibrant, Abbey schools became cathedral schools and ultimately the great ancient universities, the model of education and progress utterly unique to our Wester Christian Civilization. Today we promote new Christian Family Abbeys as incubators and crucibles for our faith, families, culture and future.

photo credit:  John Davidson Photos, The Abbey Cloisters on the Island of Iona, Argyle, Scotland,  Alamy