A Book Review/Analysis of Rod Dreher’s “The Benedict Option” (Part 1)–Hold on Tight, the Ride Might Get a Little Bumpy!

Last month, conservative writer Rod Dreher came out with a book entitled, The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation. Now, I had no idea who Rod Dreher was or what the book was about. I stumbled across it while thumbing through my twitterfeed one day.

While flipping through Twitter, I happened to notice a whole mess of tweets from progressive Christian writer, Rachel Held Evans, about this new book, The Benedict Option. Now, years ago, I read her book, Evolving in Monkey Town, and thought it was pretty good. At some point, she became one of the people I follow on Twitter. Overall, she is probably a bit too progressive for my personal taste, but I like to read a wide range of views. Besides, she went to, and survived, Bryan College–kudos to her!

In any case, the string of tweets she put out that day about Dreher’s book caught my attention:

• Dreher and others have been advancing persecution narratives like these for so long, Christians believe them
• White evangelicals believe they are more discriminated against than blacks, Muslims, and Jews
• An industry of books, films, and organizations reinforce this narrative—I call it the White Christian Industrial Persecution Complex
• The White Christian Industrial Persecution Complex is not harmless—it’s a big reason why Trump won the election
• So focused on themselves and their ‘persecution,’ white Christians = oblivious/indifferent to suffering of actual religious/ethnic minorities
• In summary, the Benedict Option fails from the start because the entire premise is based on fantasy

“Wow,” I thought. “Who is this Dreher? He sounds like another Ken Ham/”God’s Not Dead 2″ kind of over-reactionary nut!” And so I went on Amazon, looked up his book, read the description of it, and thought, “Hmmm, it sort of sounds something like what I’ve been writing about in my ‘Ways of the Worldviews’ series. He doesn’t sound like a nut at all. I might have to get it, just to see what the fuss is about.”

The next day, Dreher wrote a response Evans’ tweetstorm, and a minor twitter-battle ensued between the two.

A few days after that, the writer and philosopher James K.A. Smith, who teaches at Calvin College, wrote an article for the Washington Post entitled, “The New Alarmism: How Some Christians are Stoking Fear Rather than Hope,” in which he pretty much lambasted Dreher’s book, as well as a few others. And, right on cue, Dreher penned a response entitled, “The Benedict Arnold Option,” in which he fired back at Smith who had supported Dreher’s writing of the book (Dreher actually quotes Smith quite approvingly in his book), but who all of a sudden, out of the blue decided to decry it. Dreher went so far as to call some of Smith’s comments in the Washington Post article, “asinine progressive trolling.”

And then a few days after that article, Smith wrote a specific book review of The Benedict Option, in which he further accused Dreher of “fanning the flames” of alarmism.

Needless to say, I had to get the book. Unfortunately, as too often is the case in our modern culture, childish spats that spill out on Twitter and newspapers these do, in fact, pique interest. Reading Evans’ tweetstorm, then Dreher’s response; and then Smith’s scathing review, and Dreher’s response—while it no doubt made me think a little less of all three of them (heck, Evans hadn’t even read the book!)—it did make me want to see what all the fuss was about.

And so, once I got the book, I took a week to read it, and I underlined what I felt were the “comment-worthy” parts to it. After that, I just put it on my shelf for a week, and often stared at it and thought, “Dang it, I’m going to have to write about this on my blog.”

Why? Because it deals with the question of how Christians are to respond to and live in our current culture, and that’s pretty much the “end game” that I’ve been leading up to in my entire The Ways of the Worldviews series.

To be honest, I’ve been rather hesitant to write about Western culture in the 20^th and 21^st centuries. It’s pretty easy to write about what happened way back when—not too many people are going to get bent out of shape if I criticize Feuerbach or Kant. If I point out that Luther and Calvin both got a few things wrong, most people, even Lutherans and Calvinists, will probably say, “Sure, they were only human,” and move on. The reason why is obvious: we are pretty far removed from those times, and are thus not so emotionally invested.

But as we get to the issues and challenges of the 20^th and 21^st centuries, well things hit a little closer to home. Specifically, I dread writing about the past 50 years, especially the current climate and culture of “progressives vs. conservatives,” “Trump vs. Clinton,” and about current hot button topics like abortion, gay marriage, LGBTQ rights, etc. Just do a google search on reactions to The Benedict Option, or just read Facebook political debates these days—and then duck and cover, because the slightest comment will invite vitriol and toxicity coming from somewhere.

But hey, I’ve come this far, I have to finish what I started. But as a way of dipping my toes in the water, so to speak, I want to take this week to write sort of a book review/analysis of The Benedict Option, as a way of providing a “survey of the landscape” that I will be traipsing into over the course of my last few Ways of the Worldviews posts this month.

I envision writing 4-5 posts about The Benedict Option. Hopefully, the posts can start a dialogue about some of the most controversial and polarizing issues of our day.

As of now, let me just say this: overall, I rather liked The Benedict Option. I may not agree on every single point Dreher makes, but overall, I think his basic assessment of the state of modern American western culture in the 21^st century is largely correct. And although you’d never know it by reading Rachel Held Evans tweets, but Dreher is clearly not a Trump fan, he isn’t an Evangelical, and the book is not xenophobic in any way. Simply put, Evans’ tweets really do completely misrepresent the book—how could they not? She didn’t bother to read the book in the first place.

And as far as Smith’s criticisms were concerned, while he did point to a few things Dreher wrote in the book, those things constituted a very small part of the book. I felt Smith purposely ignored upwards of 90% of it. If you read the book, while you’ll clearly see that Dreher is no fan of progressivism and liberalism, you’ll also see that he is no fan of either the current GOP party or modern American Evangelicalism. He’s actually Eastern Orthodox, like me (the only difference he that he obviously is able to attend an Orthodox Church…I’m 70 miles away from the closest one, but I digress).

He might not be right about everything in the book (and as you can tell from the picture, he might need to re-think his taste in eyewear–but at the same time, I applaud the bold choice), but he is right about quite a few things. It is well worth the read. Therefore, I hope over the course of the week to be able to provide an adequate overview of his book. So hold on tight. We’re venturing into today’s American culture—the ride might get a little bumpy.

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