New Jersey convent welcomes its first new postulants in over a dozen years; TikTok played a role

[Episcopal News Service] The Community of St. John Baptist in Mendham, New Jersey, matches in many ways the traditional conception of a convent, following the ancient rhythms of monastic life.

The Episcopal sisters dress in collared habits and have taken lifetime vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. They gather in the chapel for worship six times on most days: Lauds, Mass, Terce, Noonday, Vespers and Compline.

Five minutes before each meal and service, a bell sounds throughout the century-old complex, summoning the sisters. Aside from giving thanks before and after the meal, they eat together in silence.

The convent’s 85-acre wooded grounds, 50 miles west of New York City, are large enough to offer a sense of seclusion from secular society.

The Community of St. John Baptist in Mendham.
Photo: Cynthia L. Black

Amid all this, it may seem anachronistic to learn that the sister superior regularly films quirky videos for TikTok. But that injection of modernity helped the convent recruit its first new postulants in over a decade.

The 22-bedroom convent once housed as many as 33 sisters, but the number dwindled as society became more secular. Currently, there are 11 life-professed sisters, nine living at the convent and one each in a nursing home and an assisted-living facility. At 58, Sister Superior Monica Clare is the youngest of the sisters. But the day before ENS visited the convent in mid-November, the community welcomed two young postulants who can carry on the traditions for decades to come. They are the first new postulants since Sister Monica Clare joined in 2012.

Niambi Mercado, Sister Superior Monica Clare, and Diana Baudelaire.
Photo: Kirk Petersen/Episcopal News Service

Niambi Mercado, 32, had long felt a call to religious life but didn’t know Episcopal orders existed. She was in graduate school, and working toward a nonprofit career focused on environmental issues.

“When I was finishing up my degree, I found out about religious life in The Episcopal Church, and I changed my trajectory. I ended up in the Episcopal Service Corps instead,” she said.

A succession of lay church jobs followed. Eventually, she worked as a parish administrator at the Cathedral of St. Paul in Erie, Pennsylvania, where Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe then served as bishop. He became her sponsor.

“He’s a big reason why I’m here today. He saw the spark in me as well, and worked really hard with the sisters to get me here,” said Mercado, who as a postulant does not yet have a religious name and is not yet considered a sister.

The other postulant is Diana Baudelaire, 29. She grew up in a secular household but describes “the call I felt in my heart when I was 18 to devote myself to a life of prayer and service.” She had been attending Catholic services for several years when she discovered The Episcopal Church at the age of 24, “and something just clicked.”

She misses her family of origin in Washington state but said, “It’s very fulfilling just to know every day you’re waking up and you’re praying for the world and for people that you love dearly and praying that you can, with God’s help, conform yourself to Christ.” She said postulants hope to be “a spiritual mother to many people, rather than having our own biological children and our own husbands.”

One does not join a convent on a whim. Mercado and Baudelaire relocated to New Jersey only after years of discerning a call to religious life. Mercado worked toward postulancy for six or seven years while she paid off her school loans, as a postulant must be free of debt. They both learned of the Community of St. John Baptist via the convent’s website, and said they became comfortable with the idea in part through Facebook, Instagram and most recently, TikTok.

Sister Monica Clare’s “nunsenseforthepeople” TikTok channel has more than 200,000 followers and has racked up more than 2.5 million likes. Many of the more than 200 videos focus on religious or spiritual topics, but they also feature the antics of Clara the Convent Kitty and Jennie the Convent Dog, Sister Monica Clare’s experiences growing up in the South, and reflections about social media. She delivers many of her messages with an impish sense of humor, a holdover from a previous incarnation as a member of an improv comedy troupe. Early on, some of her followers commented on her youthful appearance and demanded to know her skin-care routine. (She washes her face every day and stays out of the sun.)

Sister Monica Clare is conscious of the incongruity of her TikTok evangelism. People in religious orders historically have believed they should live “a hidden life, meaning you have no publicity, you don’t talk about your life before you came here, and you should just remain separate from the outside world,” she said.

She spent 20 years in motion picture advertising before entering the convent in 2012 and understands both the power and the perils of marketing and social media. She has felt that power in her own life: “In the mid-2000s I noticed that Roman Catholic monks and nuns were getting on YouTube, and they were talking about their life. And as a seeker, I learned so much from them, and it helped me to follow my call to the convent. If I hadn’t seen those videos of actual people talking about their lives, I think I would have been too scared to take this step,” she said.

In April 2025, Random House will publish Sister Monica Clare’s memoir, “A Change of Habit: Leaving Behind My Husband, Career, and Everything I Owned to Become a Nun.”

Most people “think that poverty means deprivation, that we walk around with holes in our clothes and all that,” she added. “I try to teach people that poverty is actually simplicity, just boiling your life down to what you actually need.” Having been freed from their relationship with a consumer society, the sisters focus on their relationships with each other and with God.

None of the sisters have bank accounts. Each sister receives a monthly $50 cash allowance, “if you want to go to Starbucks, if you want to get some gum, or whatever,” Sister Monica Clare said. A central fund provides food, shelter and medical care. The community makes money through fundraising, individual donations, sponsoring retreats and pilgrimages, and interest on an endowment. Most of the sisters are trained spiritual directors who serve clients in person or online.

Of course, the convent cannot escape completely from concerns about money. “During the pandemic, we really wondered if we were going to survive” because many of their activities had to be shut down, she said. “So I reached out to our associates and friends and said, ‘I know times are tough, but our general fund is really depleted. And if you have any inclination, help us, please do.’ And they donated twice as much as they used to per year.”

The Community of St. John Baptist was founded in England in 1852 as a home where “fallen women” could develop skills to earn a living. In 1874, a wealthy family donated a stately home in Lower Manhattan, which became America’s first St. John Baptist House. Seeking a measure of solitude, the community later decamped to Mendham, building an orphanage in 1908 and a new convent in 1915. The former orphanage is now a retreat center, and while the center’s revenue does not cover its expenses, it fosters community relationships.

The two postulants and the community will have several years to discern whether they are right for each other. After six months of living in the convent, the postulants will be eligible to become novices and to receive habits and religious names. After a novitiate of at least two years, they will take temporary vows that are renewed annually for at least three years. Only then are they eligible to be elected to a life profession.

Sister Monica Clare will continue her TikTok ministry, hoping to raise awareness of the convent. She has met Episcopal priests who did not know of the existence of Episcopal orders, even though there are about 20 convents and monasteries in the Conference of Anglican Religious Orders in the Americas.

More broadly, she wants to raise awareness of The Episcopal Church. Most people “think that religion is either Roman Catholic or fundamentalist. They have no idea that progressive Christianity exists,” she said. While the mainstream media “promotes the idea that religious beliefs are extreme and oppressive… we have a more scholarly, historical, logical approach to religion.”

Kirk Petersen, a member of St. George’s, Maplewood, is a freelancer who has written extensively about The Episcopal Church.

Originally published by Episcopal News Service. Reprinted with permission.