First Disciple

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About Us

New Covenant House is an Intentional Christian Community, a sort of modern monastery, being formed in the Catskills region of New York. As a beginning, the physical framework is a single-family ranch style home on a residential street in a small village. A vision document has been developed, but it needs further refinement. So far, "we" are just myself, a 70-year old male, looking for one other person to take the next step.

Statement of Faith

Pre-historic humans created God. God is the collective goodness within us. The Kingdom of Heaven will be the result of a slow revolution by the transforming of our collective minds one disciple at a time. The Bible is a collection of fictional, historic and poetic stories about who God is as seen through the life and work of Jesus Christ. God is love and our purpose in life is to personify that love by being a blessing for everyone around us. Eternal life is the impression on society we leave behind.

Vision

The ambition is to establish a new network of moneyless, egalitarian Christian communities within but apart from the world, a transformation one community, one person at a time.

For now, moneyless means just expense sharing. Income sharing will come later as we grow and develop ways to reduce and eventually eliminate earned wages and substitute outside products and services with our own labor.

At this stage, egalitarian means all decisions need to be unanimous. Dissenters are encouraged to form their own separate, but federated communities. We will do our best to help them develop the leadership it takes to do that. Later, a self-selecting council of Elders with representation from all the networked communities will be established. Their primary role is to be guardians of the vision and to facilitate periodic review and revision.

Membership
Membership is voluntary and open to anyone who will support the vision for New Covenant House. Prospects will be assigned a membership coordinator who will ensure that there is alignment of expectations and assist with role assignment, education and placement into a New Covenant House community. The prospect will go through a series of developmental stages before final acceptance into a community as a full member. 

Administration
Counselors with special skills or training will be appointed to manage and assist with meeting facilitation, conflict resolution, general and specific education and leadership development.

About You
At this time, we expect the ideal candidate to have means to initially cover their own share of food, clothing, insurance and utilities. Christian faith or community experience is helpful but not required. Excellent written and verbal communication skills are also helpful. Above all, an open mind and a willingness to learn is essential.

Monastery or Intentional Community?

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What is the difference between an intentional community and a monastery? Some questions are easy to answer. This one will send most people grasping for the nearest search engine. It matters a lot for people who are looking for alternatives to traditional living arrangements. It also matters a lot for people like me who have to describe what it is like to live in a place like New Covenant House. It matters to people who already live here and who want it to stay more or less the same tomorrow as it was yesterday, only just a little bit better. Language matters. It matters because it creates expectations. Scientists say that we humans are pattern seeking animals. Whenever we hear something our brains immediately go into overdrive and automatically conjures up all kinds of images associated with whatever it is we thought we heard. Few things have absolute meaning. I may say one thing, but you hear something completely different. It is easy to see how even a minor misunderstanding can lead to conflicts, even wars. Language matters. Intentional communities in some form or another have been around for thousands of years, but under various labels. The term seems to have gained traction in the late 20th century when people began to experiment with alternatives to traditional nuclear families living in urban and suburban environments. A monastery is just one of many kinds and implementations of intentional communities. The particular kind of intentional communities we now know as Christian monasteries began to emerge within the first few hundred years following the execution of Jesus of Nazareth. What is special about monastic communities is that they are rooted in a religion such as Christianity, Buddhism or some other religion. Christian monasteries were typically founded by followers of a particularly visionary person, e.g. Franciscans or Benedictines. The purpose was to be able to more perfectly follow the teachings of Jesus. Many saw separation from the corruption of the world as an important ingredient in doing that. Monasteries have proven to be very resilient. They have been around for centuries while other forms of community have lasted a few decades at best. Their persistence can most likely be attributed to their stubborn pursuit of one purpose only, the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven. While their purpose has not changed, some monasteries have started to adopt new and more modern forms. Modern monasteries often reflect the make-up of the surrounding society by including males and females as well as families. The ways they anticipate the Kingdom of God is also changing as they adopt modern interpretations of the ancient scriptures to replace old traditions. Because the term monastery seems antiquated, some modern monasteries have adopted the label Intentional Christian Communities. For others that gets a little too close to the myriad of other intentional communities such as co-housing, ecovillages, tiny villages or kibbutz, etc. The confusion may persist for some time to come. Generally, labels simply fail to adequately describe the full nature of the community. Like with personal relationships, the best way to get to know one another is to slow it down and spend time together over meals, go for a walk or sit around a campfire and dive into deep discussions about life. Modern technology makes that possible even on a worldwide basis.

On Voting

 

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In the days of Samuel, the Israelites wanted a king “such as all the other nations have.” That's a bad idea, he said. Here's why and then he gives them a long list of calamities that will happen to them if they go ahead with that plan. But the Israelites insisted, so God gave them Saul, young, tall and handsome; nothing about  his character, just his appearance. Of course it was a disaster and to this day we still suffer from that terrible mistake.

In time, almost everyone could see that one, or even a few, ruling the many wasn't so great after all. Some very smart people thought they could fix it, so they gave us democracy. But alas, the rich and powerful could still manipulate the vote through the deception that 51 ruling the 49 would somehow be an actual step up. Moreover, by participating in the voting process, the losers become accomplices in the tyranny of the majority. 

In a few months, many Americans will go to vote, but not I. The state is inherently corrupt and it is for this reason I do not vote, but there is hope. There is a solution.

Stop worshiping power, wealth and possessions. Those things only ruin the relationships we have with one another. It turns us into enemies. Instead, turn to the well being of all of humanity as our collective reason for being here. Make it your job to be a blessing for everyone else. If everyone did that, there would be no one left to suffer.

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What is Religion?

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What is religion? Well, that depends on who you ask. It also depends on when or where you ask. The one thing almost everyone can agree on, though, is that some form of religion is practically universal. There are very few, if any, places on Earth that have never seen any kind of religion. 

Some say that religion is part of human nature. Others say that curiosity is part of human nature and that religion is the result of curiosity as finding comfort in things beyond the basics of food and shelter. Human nature is itself an equally elusive concept. Smart people have tried to figure out what exactly constitutes human nature for centuries. To this day, it is a subject of great debate.

The dictionary defines religion as “belief in and worship of “ something “superhuman,” something  with unlimited power, something of “supreme importance,” something above all else. Religion manifests itself in numerous ways, commonly in complex systems of practices such as offering explanations for unknowns like creation or natural phenomena or guidance for behavior and relationships in society. Sometimes, religion is used as a way to exert power over people.

Christianity is just one of many thousands distinct religions in existence around the world, most of which only have small numbers of followers. The vast majority belong to one of a handful of religions with near global reach. Christianity is one of them. Christianity itself has thousands of variations worldwide, several hundred in the U.S. alone.

On Church and State - a Timeline

Alexandre Christoyannopoulos published his doctoral thesis that anarchism is inherent in Christianity in bookform in 2011 as Christian Anarchism: A Political Commentary on the Gospel. It was an attempt to paint a coherent picture of Christian anarchism by bringing together in one place the writings of multiple writers.

Leo Tolstoy (1828 - 1910) who became well known for his opposition to both the church and the state was the most prolific of these anarchist writers. In 1886 he published an article titled Church and State. In his main non-literary work, The Kingdom of God is Within You, he refers to Petr Chelcicky.

Petr Chelcicky published his main work, The Net of Faith, in 1443, almost a hundred years before the Reformation. He uses the image of two whales (church and state) thrashing around in the net cast by fishers of men to the point of breaking it so all the fish spill out.

Jesus of Nazareth did not write anything himself, but the gospel writers, Matthew (4:19) and Mark (1:17), both quote him for appointing disciples as fishers of men. Jesus is well known for opposition to not only the oppressive Roman occupation but also to the heavy handed rule of their own religious leaders, but most of all for his radical and revolutionary approach of non-resistance.

Easter

 

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Easter is the Christian holiday when Christians the world over commemorate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. For a lot of people, the holiday is associated with the easter bunny, easter lambs, easter eggs and not much else. For them, it has little or nothing to do with Jesus. That is why some fundamentalists now refer to the day as Resurrection Day instead of Easter.

The thing is, the resurrection did not happen; at least not in a literal sense. Saying things like that is not going to make you popular among your Christians friends, but it is the truth. The resurrection story and, indeed, the creation story are myths that have been debunked long ago, yet, they continue to persist. People do not come back from the dead, at least not physically. 

There is evidence that out of body experiences and near death experiences are real, but only in the sense that they are caused by brains under severe stress conditions. The process of dying is no longer considered an instantaneous event, but takes place over a period of time varying depending on the individual. A small number of people have woken up after having been declared dead. They were not really dead. The criteria we normally associate with life just could not be detected. This is unlikely to have been what happened to Jesus, though. The medical expertise to care for such a person is not likely to have been developed yet, but we will never know for sure.

Most of us of any kind of advanced age have lost someone(s) who was close to us, perhaps a family member or someone who we considered an important influence in our lives. The memory of these people tends to stay in our minds for a long time and may even never really go away completely. Sometimes the influence of such people transcends generations, even millennia. History books are full of important people like that. For a small group of people, Jesus was such a person.

Humans are story telling animals. We are pretty sure all animals have ways to communicate with each other to some degree or another, but humans seem to have taken the art to a whole different level with the invention of written language that can be preserved for a long time.

It took several decades before the gospel writers picked up on the significance of what had happened to one of the insurrectionists who opposed the brutal oppression of not only the Roman occupation, but also of the rich and powerful among their own people. He seemed to be living on in the memories of his followers more than usual to the point that perhaps some began to develop a sense of a physical presence. By the time the writers started to write any of it down, myths had already begun to develop about him, one of which is the resurrection.

Despite claims to the contrary, the gospel writers were not historians. Their purpose was not to record historical facts, but to paint a literary picture of the character of an extraordinary person in history. To this day, we admire these literary masterpieces. We would not want to spend another Christmas without angels, lambs, shepherds and wise men, would we?

The significance of these stories for us today is that we can know the heart of God through what they say about Jesus. We can know that the God prehistoric humans developed long ago is a God who wants nothing less than the Garden of Eden to be restored, a heavenly kingdom where love reigns supreme, a world where humans recognize that our very purpose in life is to be a blessing for others. This is the hope we have in Jesus, the promise that if we follow him and his message, a world without suffering, a world without violence will be the result. 

So far, no one has adopted a lifestyle as radical as that, but thanks to the gospel writers we have faith that a world like that can exist. Faith is believing without proof. Let us be the proof. Let us get together and create a life like that.

 

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Non-Resistance - Response to Evil

 

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The second anniversary of the Russian attempt to invade Ukraine happened earlier this month. News reporters say that some sort of agreement to end months of  hostilities in the Gaza area is imminent. These two conflicts dominate the news feed these days, but I am sure countless others around the world deserve our attention no less. I am sure I am not the only one who is wondering why this is happening and what we can do about it.

The question of why people believe weird things like God, religion and where good and evil come from came up some time ago. These questions, in turn, were rooted in still other even more fundamental questions such as where does religion come from and what is human nature. 

Those are big questions indeed and smart people have been trying to find answers for millennia, but no one has been able to so far. Some have been the subject of heated debates, but scientists are generally good natured people who have been able to keep the conversations civil only getting out of hand when crackpots and pseudoscientists have come onto the scene. That is because scientists know that science is rarely an exact science. They know that few things in the universe have yes or no or black or white answers. Almost everything is in some sort of gray zone between unknowable and ironclad. Actual scientists are constantly looking for more answers and more questions to ask. In contrast, pseudoscientists and other cult leaders have already determined what the answers are and try to impose them on everyone else.

One headline said that 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed in the war so far without mention of how many civilians were also killed or injured. Other headlines report a similar number of dead in Gaza also without breaking it down in military or civilian deaths or injuries. Even without those details, those are still huge numbers. The thing is that all of them were unnecessary. Not one of them had a legitimate purpose. All of them have been rooted in evil. All of them are caused by the power of the decisions made by a very small group of people who have nothing invested in the conflict themselves. 

Count Leo Tolstoy (1828 to 1910) was a Russian author and philosopher. He is best known for books like War and Peace and Anna Karenina, but devoted the latter part of his life to answering some of those same life questions I have had. He managed to get excommunicated from the Eastern Orthodox church and probably only escaped arrest and prison for his opposition to the Czarist regime because of his popularity and reputation. 

His most significant works for our purposes during this time are What I Believe (https://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/what-I-believe-tolstoy.pdf) and The Kingdom of God is Within You (https://arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/kingdom-god-tolstoy.pdf). He explains in What I Believe how he became a believer at age fifty (that would make it 1878) and that it changed his life. 

all that stood to the right now stands to the left, and all that was to the left is now to the right

he says.

the whole aim and purpose of my life has been changed

he continues, but he could not reconcile what he read in the Bible with what was being taught by the church. He stopped relying on interpretations and focused on the Bible itself. What helped his understanding more than anything was the Sermon on the Mount, particularly Matthew 5:39 (here NIV):

But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. 

To this day, Tolstoy is known for his radical pacifism. This is particularly significant in light of his service as an officer in the Czar’s army. Tolstoy corresponded with Gandhi. Even though Gandhi is also known for his non-violent approach, perhaps even more so, he was not nearly as radical as Tolstoy.

In any event, theologians, scientists of religion, have been and continue to be debating the meaning of this verse. What exactly is evil? Is it evil in general, Satan or an evil individual? I think I will go with Tolstoy’s conclusion that it turns left into right and right into left as mentioned above. 

For the purpose of this paper, the most pressing question is: What do we do about evil? The damage has already been done. The past is in the past. There is nothing we can do about that anymore. What remains is: What do we do about it going forward? What should our response be?

Alexandre Christoyannopoulos devotes space in several chapters to evil and a nonviolent response in his book Christian Anarchism based on his doctoral thesis that anarchism is inherent in Christianity. Christoyannopoulos considers Tolstoy to be the most influential of the anarchist writers. The thing is Tolstoy himself did not quite embrace the anarchist label mainly because other anarchists had become more violent during the latter part of the 19th century, a reputation that still haunts us to this day.

Christoyannopoulos concludes that the anarchist writers have vastly differing views on the subject of civil disobedience as a response to the violence of the state. The only thing they can basically agree on is this:

love of God and of one’s neighbour are the two most fundamental commandments on which the rest of the law subsequently hangs.

[Christoyannopoulos, Alexandre. Christian Anarchism . Imprint Academic. Kindle Edition.] 

In other words, it may become necessary to disobey the state to comply with these requirements. However, unless firmly anchored in this Christian belief, there is a danger that civil disobedience might itself lead to or inspire evil. Christian response to violence can never be violent.

The most powerful and profound response to evil comes from Adin Ballou, founder of the now defunct Hopedale Community in Massachusetts. He writes:

I cannot tell how I might act in such a dreadful emergency—how weak and frail I should prove. But I can tell how I ought to act—how I should wish to act.

[Christoyannopoulos, Alexandre. Christian Anarchism . Imprint Academic. Kindle Edition.] 

Then he goes on to describe how he would like to have the courage to respond to an assailant with such a Christ-like attitude that it would totally surprise and disarm him by offering him food, something to drink and a place to sleep.

Such a response might be possible with an individual, but what do you do when it’s another country attacking you? And how do we as by-standers respond to the violence of the day?

Perhaps we can begin to answer that by looking at Jesus’ own response to arrest and torture by local law enforcement of his time. Resistance would only lead to violence and bloodshed, so he healed the ear of the high priest’s servant when Peter had cut it off.

What would happen if Ukrainians had invited Russian soldiers into their homes for tea and cookies instead of showering them with bullets? No one knows for sure. It might still have been awful, but probably nothing like what actually did happen. What would happen if Israelis or Palestinians suddenly reversed course and began to obey the commandments of Jesus and respond to evil with good? For the vast majority of us that would be completely counterintuitive, but what are the chances the resulting suffering would have been far less? Most would not consider it worth the risk. Being a follower of Christ is risky business.