Digital Monasticism
Some call it digital minimalism. I call it digital monasticism. What started as an annual Lenten fast from social media slowly shaped my desires and called me to the desert. After Covid, I finally deleted my social media accounts. My wife and I ditched the smartphones. The Wi-Fi is gone. As St. Basil says in the Longer Rule:
that we may not receive incitements to sin through our eyes and ears and become imperceptibly habituated to it, and that the impress and form, so to speak, of what is seen and heard may not remain in the soul unto its ruin, and that we may be able to be constant in prayer, we should before all things else seek to dwell in a retired place.
For Basil and his monks, this retired place meant the desert or mountains away from the city. For the contemporary Christian, one must make the home such a domestic monastery, secluded from the “incitements to sin” of the digital world.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
Seth Hedman is Pastor of Garwin Valley Community Church in rural Iowa and a member of the Society of St. Bede. In his life, family, and church, he is pursuing a Benedictine lifestyle of daily prayer, study, and work.
A Journal of Mere Christianity—Delivered to Your Door with Full Online Access
- Essays on theology, culture, and the Church
- Contributors from across the Christian traditions
- Six print issues per year
- Full digital archive access
Subscribe (Print + Online)
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95.
Subscribe (Online Only)
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on christianity from the online archives
30.2—March/April 2017
Our Path to Holiness Runs Straight Through Calvary by Robin Phillips
22.6—July/August 2009
on the Integration of Anger into the Virtuous Life by Leon J. Podles
30.6—Nov/Dec 2017
on Benedict XVI on the Fairest of the Sons of Men by Michael Martin De Sapio
more from the online archives
31.6—November/December 2018
Victimhood Culture Scapegoats Its Very Source by Michael P. Foley
31.1—January/February 2018
on Taking the Measure of the Deserving & the Undeserving Poor by Martin Bordelon
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
