Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 84Plough Quarterly • Autumn 2016 33 monasticism” is not language that I use in my neighborhood necessarily. But what is helpful about language is that it connects us to history and it gives us the humility to realize that what we’re doing has been done before. The spirit of the desert monastics in the third and fourth centuries can help us. Sister Margaret, one of my mentors and an eighty-year-old Medical Mission sister, says that the inner city is the contemporary desert. It’s where we go to find God and where demons and angels are at war. The Desert Fathers and Mothers loved God with a single-mindedness – that’s where the mono of monasticism comes from. Through the centuries, the purity of the gospel has often become so watered down by the narcissistic gospel of prosperity and by the war gospel. We who want the gospel of Jesus need examples from the past, and the monastic tradition is one of them. We have so much to learn from communities, like the Bruderhof, that have been around for generations and are still full of vitality. We can learn from the historic black church in this country, from Oscar Romero and the Jesuits in El Salvador, from the civil rights movement, from John and Vera Mae Perkins. The more diverse our cloud of witnesses, the better off we are. We’ve spoken about history, but what about the future? Many Christians are worried about “the rise of the nones” – the growing number of young people who say they have no religious affiliation. I’m convinced that a lot of young people aren’t leaving the church because we’ve made the gospel too hard but because we’ve made it too easy. We’ve thought that young people want to be entertained with louder worship music and fun youth nights with blow-up sumo dolls. Now, young people might come for that, but they’re not going to stay because of that. They’ll stay because we’ve given them a vision for God’s kingdom coming on earth. They’ll stay because of a gospel that challenges them to dive into the deep darkness of our world where people have been forsaken. They’ll stay because Jesus dares us to be as courageous for the cross as we’ve been for the sword.  Interview by Peter Mommsen on June 30, 2016. Watch the interview at plough.com/ claiborne. Mentoring neighborhood children is one of the Simple Way’s main ministries. Photograph by Noir Guy