“Church is not something we attend,” says Jake Neufeld, part of a “new monastic” movement in evangelicalism, “it’s something we are.” That’s a pretty idea, but in practice, Neufeld and his fellow Christian communalists in Billings, Montana are a prickly, confused crew, torn between a radical, anti-materialist theology and the pragmatic, consumerist customs of American evangelicalism. The L.A. Times’ Stephanie Simon’s report is exceptionally well-observed, though it suffers a bit from lack of context — the “new monastic” movement in American evangelicalism has roots in the “Jesus People” movement of the 1960s and ’70s, the Catholic Worker tradition, and the ideas of Stanley Hauerwas.