The Benedict Option

Written in 2017, the author of The Benedict Option is Rod Dreher, a Catholic and founder of a conservative organization. I heard about the book last year and finally got around to buying a copy. I can understand how some people can skim through it and feel that it gives them permission to withdraw from society, much like the monks in monasteries did during the Dark Ages.
These "contemporary monks" want to throw up walls and wait for the culture to burn itself out, and then emerge to pick up the pieces. But there's so much more than that.

The book's introduction is called The Awakening, and you may agree with a lot of what he says. Some things I underlined:
- Nothing changes a man's outlook on life like having to think about the kind of world his children will inherit.
- I began to wonder what, exactly, mainstream conservatism was conserving.
- I came to see the churches, including my own, as largely ineffective in combating the forces of cultural decline.
- We have to choose to make a decisive leap into a truly counter-cultural way of living Christianity, or we would doom our children and our children's children to assimilation.
- Young adults are almost entirely ignorant of the teachings and practices of the historical Christian faith.
- The upset presidential victory of Donald Trump has at best given us a bit more time to prepare for the inevitable.
- Jesus Christ promised that the gates of Hell would not prevail against His church, but He did not promise that Hell would not prevail against His church in the West.

(More to follow.)

Chapter 1: The Great Flood

The author highlights how we got into our present mess...

- Our religious leaders told us that strengthening the levees of law and politics would keep the flood of secularism at bay.
- We've lost on every front of the culture war. The Obergefell decision (same-sex marriage) was the Waterloo of religious conservatism.
- Most Christian teenagers adhere to something termed Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (God exists and he wants people to be good. The central goal of life is to be happy and have high self-esteem. God can help us in the rough times, but otherwise, we've got this. Good people go to heaven when they die.)
- America has lived a long time off its thin Christian veneer.
- Conservative Christian political activists are largely ineffective and not our future.
- The culture cannot hear us or finds us offensive. Could it be the best way to fight the flood is to stop fighting it...and build an ark?

Seems the world has been here before. Benedict was a young Roman who went to the big city to complete his education. He was disgusted at what he saw and turned away, spending the next 3 years in prayer as a hermit.

(What was the result of his prayer? Coming up next.)

Chapter 1 (continued)

Benedict founded a monastery, guiding his fellow monks with a small book he wrote, now called the Rule of Saint Benedict. He originally wrote it for laymen, not the clergy, in the hope that they would become disciplined and spiritually obedient to the Father. Eventually, there was a chain of linked monasteries that prepared Europe for the rebirth of civilization.

Thoughts from the author:
- Benedict's example reveals what a small cohort of believers who respond creatively to the challenges of their own time and place can accomplish.
- Just like in Benedict's time, the modern West emphasizes the liberation of the individual's will (and deeds). Society became a collection of strangers, each pursuing his or her own interests under minimal constraints.
- Our barbarians have exchanged the animal pelts and spears of the past for designer suits and smartphones.
- The post-Roman system was too far gone to be saved. If today's believers don't come out of Babylon and be separate, their faith will not survive for another generation or two in this culture of death.
- The coming storm may be the means through which God delivers us.

Coming up, The Roots of the Crisis.

Chapter 2 The Roots of the Crisis (below comments are all from the author)

There were 5 landmark events over 7 centuries that rocked Western civilization and stripped it of its ancestral faith:
- In the 14th century, the loss of belief in the connection between God and Creation.
- The collapse of religious unity (Martin Luther breaking away).
- The Enlightenment, which displaced Christianity with the cult of Reason.
- The Industrial Revolution, which packed people into the cities.
- The Sexual Revolution, which continues unabated.

In the America order, the state's role is simply to act as a referee among individuals and factions. The government has no ultimate conception of the good, and it regards its own role as limited to protecting the rights of individuals.

Democracies will succeed only if "moderating institutions," including the churches, thrive.

The progressive movement began the long liberalization of mainline Protestantism by infusing it with a passion for social reform.

Religious man was born to be saved. Psychological man is born to be pleased. The latter won decisively and now owns the culture.

A culture begins to die when its normative institutions fail to communicate ideals in ways that remain inwardly compelling, first of all to the cultural elites themselves.

The West has lost the golden thread that binds us to God, Creation and each other. Unless we find it again, there is no hope of halting our dissolution. We who still hold the golden thread loosely in our hands must seize it more tightly and cling to it for future generations.

Next: A Rule for Living

Chapter 3: A Rule For Living (comments from the author)

- The forces of dissolution from popular culture are too great for individuals or families to resist on their own. We need to embed ourselves in stable communities of faith.
- People are looking for that "killer app" that will make everything right again. You can achieve the peace and order you seek only by making a place within your heart and within your daily life for the grace of God to take root.
- When one advances in prayer, one comes to understand that prayer is not so much about asking God for things as about simply being in His presence.
- Everyone I know who lost their faith began by ceasing to pray.
- We have become a people oriented around comfort. Suffering doesn't make sense to us. We have lost the ability to tell ourselves no to things our hearts desire.
- We are called to be in the world but not of the world. That paradox was lived out in the early church. Until we return to that model, nothing we do will ever bear fruit.
- When the light in most people's faces comes from the glow of their smartphone, we are living in a Dark Age.
- If people don't live an authentic Christian life now, they're not going to make it through what's coming.

Next Up: A New Kind of Christian Politics

Chapter 4: A New Kind of Christian Politics (authors comments)

- As recently as the 1960s, Americans voted largely on economics. There was sufficient moral consensus in the culture to keep sex and sexuality apolitical. That changed in 1973 (Roe v Wade)
- The culture war as we knew it is now over. The so-called values voters have been defeated and swept to the political margins.
- No administration in Washington, no matter how pro-Christian, is capable of stopping cultural trends. To expect anything different is make a false idol of politics.
- Politics is no substitute for personal holiness.
- Given the reality of the cultural moment, it is more important to shore up the local church community. That needs to happen before we can think about much longer-term goals.
- Pastors and lay Christian leaders need to prepare their congregations for hard times.
- What can be done right now?
* Engage lawmakers with personal letters
* Focus on prudent, achievable goals
* Guard the freedom of Christian institutions
* Invite media coverage of the Christian side of issues
* Stay polite and respectful
* Form partnerships with leaders across denominations

Next Up: Anti-political Politics
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Chapter 4 (cont'd) Author's thoughts:

- Western society is post-Christian and that absent a miracle, there is no hope of reversing this condition in the foreseeable future.
- In a nation where "God and Country" are so entwined, the idea that one's citizenship might be at radical odds with one's faith is a new one.
- Communism maintained its iron grip on the people by isolating them, fragmenting their natural social bonds. (Can you say COVID and the Democrats?)
- If we hope for our faith to change the world one day, we have to start locally.
- Conventional American politics cannot fix what is wrong with our society and culture. They are inadequate because in both their left and right-wing forms, they operate from the position that facilitating and expanding human choice is the proper end of our politics. The left and the right just disagree over where to draw the lines.
- Disorder in American public life derives from disorder within the American soul. When we are truly ordered toward God, we won't have to worry about immediate results.
- Secede culturally from the mainstream. It is not enough to avoid what is bad; you must also embrace what is good. We can no longer rely on politicians and activists to fight the culture war on our behalf.
- We faithful orthodox Christians didn't ask for internal exile from a country we thought was our own, but that's where we find ourselves. We are a minority now, so let's be a creative one, offering warm, living, light-filled alternatives to a world growing cold, dead and dark.
- Losing political power might just be the thing that saves the church's soul. (Amen!)

Next: A Church For All Seasons
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Chapter 5: A Church For All Seasons (author's comments)

- We will need to engage the culture less like the chaplains of some idyllic Mayberry and more like the apostles in the book of Acts.
- Christians often talk about "reaching the culture" without realizing that, having no distinct Christian culture of their own, they have been co-opted by the secular culture they wish to evangelize.
- As times get uglier, the church will become brighter and brighter, drawing people to its light.
- Apologetics has a limited role. We must speak what is true, but finally the appeal must be made to the heart, not the mind. (Dr. Tackett says that The Truth Project of a decade ago was for the mind. His new The Engagement is for the heart.)
- Rarely do American Christians think of the martyrs of church history. It doesn't fit easily into the upbeat vibe in many American churches.
- A church that is church only on Sunday is not going to be a church with the strength and the focus to endure the trials ahead.

Next Up: The Idea of a Christian Village

Chapter 6: The Idea of a Christian Village (from the author...)

- All it takes is the failure of a single generation to hand down a tradition for that tradition to disappear from the life of a family and, in turn, of a community.
- Christians have behaved as if the primary threats to the integrity of families and communities could be effectively addressed through politics. That illusion is now destroyed.
- If we are the abbot and abbess of our domestic monastery, we will see to it that our family's life is structured in such a way as to make the mission of knowing and serving God clear to all its members. (How do we do this?) 1) Maintain regular times of family prayer, 2) regular readings of Scripture and stories from the lives of saints, 3) put the life of the church first, over extracurricular activities, 4) make sure your kids see that you are serious about the spiritual life.
- Raise your kids to know that your family is different - and don't apologize for it. It's fine to be a nonconformist.

(Next up: your kids' friends)

Chapter 6 (cont'd)...author's comments

- It's important your kids have a good peer group...it's members must share the same strong moral beliefs.
- The church can't just be the place you go on Sundays - it must become the center of your life. As much as possible, erase the false distinction between church and life.
- Mormons are assigned their ward based on where they live. This compels them to work together to build a unified community of believers, not to wander in search of one.
- Reach across boundaries. Conservative Evangelicals and orthodox Catholics can have an "ecumenism of the trenches."

(Next up: Education as Christian Formation)

Chapter 7: Education as Christian Formation (author's comments)

- Education has to be at the core of Christian survival - as it always was...But at the heart of it was a quest for God.
- The mainstream model is geared toward equipping students to succeed in the workforce. The standard Christian educational model today takes that model and adds religion classes and prayer services. But from a traditional Christian perspective, the model is based on a flawed anthropology. It doesn't go nearly far enough.
- The separation of virtue from learning creates a society that esteems people for their success in manipulating science, law, money, images and words.
- People have to learn how to translate the conversion experience and intellectual knowledge of the faith into a Christian way of living - or their faith will remain fragile.
- Education is key to the recovery of cultural memory. The deeper our roots in the past, the more secure our anchor is today.
- We have ceased caring about the past because it inhibits our ability to seek pleasure in the present.
- People rear their children the way their friends and neighbors are doing it, not the way their parents and grandparents did it.
- A dead thing goes with the stream, but only a living thing goes against it

(Next up: Work)

Although I finished this book several months ago, I never finished posting a summary of the rest of it. But especially after the alarming first 100 days of Biden's administration, my thoughts have continually wandered back to it, wondering when might be the time to execute the Benedict Option.

Like the Benedictine monks did, when do we pull back inside our walls and keep truth alive until the world's madness burns out? I think it's only when God specifically tells us to shake the dust off our feet. And seeing as how the verse in Matthew only refers to houses and towns, I don't think we completely withdraw. Like the old commercial says, "We'll keep the light on."