375 - The Monastic Impulse

The Monastic Impulse
By Walter Capps
New York. Crossroad, 1983. 163 pp. $10.95.

In this book, Walter Capps, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, shares his personal journey through five different monasteries: Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky, the home of Thomas Merton; Taize in France; Saint Joseph's Abbey near Spencer, Massachusetts; the Abbey of Mon-de-Cats in northern France; the Redwoods in California; and the Abbey of Our Lady of Guadalupe, near Lafayette, Oregon.

The book is written in a popular and journalistic style. At one level, it is an unfolding of Capps' own fascination with Thomas Merton and the contemporary phenomenon of monasticism. It is not a scholarly work. although the author regularly attempts to place the revival of interest in monasticism within a sociological perspective.

Most of the chapters are built around a single visit to a monastic setting, with Capps rehearsing elements from interviews with persons at these monasteries as well as reflections based on his own limited involvement in their worship. The book provides good armchair reading and may persuade a few readers to spend a weekend at their local retreat center. But the volume lacks any real in-depth reporting of the monasteries surveyed.

Donald E. Miller
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, Calif.