Gabriel McCreath | 2025 I.S. Symposium

Name: Gabriel McCreath
Title: The Human Person, Fully Alive: A Case Study of Identity and Purpose in Anglican Monasticism
Major: Religious Studies
Minor: Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Advisor: Mark Graham

This project illustrates an example of how contemporary Anglican monastic communities make sense of their identity and purpose. Anglican monastic communities are quite under-represented in existing literature on Christian monasticism; this project aims to address that gap in the literature. The case study for this project is Holy Cross Monastery in West Park, NY, USA. Using data from six individual interviews with monks at Holy Cross, this project demonstrates the importance of values such as seeking God, community, humility, and being one’s true self in monastic life. Additionally, this project examines the monastery environment and monastic practices as avenues through which monastic identity and purpose are made. One key takeaway from this project is that the monastery environment and monastic practices are constructed in a way to facilitate the monks being themselves to the fullest extent they can be—which, in their view, is not only the heart of the monastic vocation, but a calling to everybody. This project was exciting for me because I am very interested in monastic and contemplative traditions and practices within Christianity, and especially how those traditions/practices are expressed in the modern day.

Posted in Symposium 2025 on May 1, 2025.