Religious communities are seeing a revival

He said young people are both joining established and new religious communities.
 
 “We are witnessing a revival of interest in community life in its different forms: celibate and non-celibate, communal and dispersed, traditional and experimental,” Most Rev Justin Welby wrote in the Church Times.

 
 The archbishop said this revival comes after a report published a decade ago gave a very bleak outlook on the growth of religious communities. Declining membership and rising average ages were a few factors that predicted a “meltdown”. 

 “That is why, as we take stock at this moment, we can rejoice that God has had very different ideas,” Archbishop Justin added.

Speaking on Premier Christian Radio’s News Hour, Simon Lewis – the Dean of St Anselm’s Community at Lambeth Palace – explained what it’s like having a religious community of young people: “I’ve just been sat…with the nearly 20 young people we have with us, talking about our rule of life, talking about unity…and I’m just absolutely bowled over by that call to come together – even though they disagree, even though we’ve got 10 or 11 different nationalities, different church confessions of all different persuasions. 

“I think something that we see is this sense for young people, I suppose particularly maybe people in that millennial generation who have felt dislocated, they’ve grown up in a…