Christian Life Community
international association of lay Christians
The Christian Life Community (CLC) is an international association of lay Christians who have adopted an Ignatian model of spiritual life. The Community is present in almost 60 countries.
History
The CLC traces its foundation to 1563, when the Jesuit John Leunis gathered a group of lay students at the Roman College to form the Sodality of Our Lady. The Sodality grew and was confirmed by Pope Gregory XIII in 1584. When the Second Vatican Council urged groups like the Sodality to rediscover their original roots, some sodalities continued as before, while others became Christian Life Communities. The main difference is in the size (6 to 12) and the regularity of meeting (weekly or biweekly).
The CLC adopted its current name in 1967. Its General Principles were approved in 1971 and revised in 1990.
Description
The CLC draws its inspiration from the teachings of St. Ignatius of Loyola, and receives spiritual guidance from the Jesuits.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Christian Life Community” is international association of lay Christians. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Christian, Life and Community, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “international association of lay Christians” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q655606. VIAF identifies the subject as 150903447. The Library of Congress control number is no2005110264. 3 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1563, 1584, 1967 and 1971.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Christian Life Community”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Christian Life Community primary sources, Christian Life Community archive and Christian research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Christian Life Community”?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Christian Life Community” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.