In Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christianity (less frequently in Anglican/Episcopal Christianity), a community of men or women bound together by the common profession, through “religious” vows, of “chastity [meaning “virginity” or “celibacy”], poverty,and obedience.” As a way of trying to follow Jesus’ example, the vows involve voluntary renunciation of things potentially good: marriage and sexual relations in the case of “virginity” or “celibacy,” personal ownership and possessions in the case of “poverty,” and one’s own will and plans in the case of “obedience.”This renunciation is made “for the sake of [God’s] kingdom” (Matthew 19:12), and for the sake of a more available and universal love beyond family ties, personal possessions, and self-determination. As a concrete form of Christian faith, it emphasizes the relativity of all the goods of this earth in the face of the only absolute, God, and a life lived definitively with God beyond this world.After Constantine’s conversion to Christianity (313 C.E.) and the establishment of Christianity as the state religion, “religious life” came into existence as a movement away from the “world” and the worldliness of the church. The monastic life of monks and nuns is a variation on this tradition. At the beginning of the modern western world, various new religious orders sprang up (the largest being theJesuits*) that saw themselves not as fleeing from the world but as “apostles”* sent out into the world in service. In more recent centuries, many communities of religious women were founded with a similar goal of apostolic* service, often with Jesuit-inspired constitutions.
