The Benedict Option Book Review (Part 3): Secularism and the Gay Marriage/LGBTQ Debate

The Benedict Option by Rod Dreher has certainly garnered a lot of attention over the past month. As I mentioned in Part 1 of my overview of Dreher’s book, it has been rather lambasted by progressive Christians, and if you google the book’s title, you’ll see it has gotten support from more conservative Christian circles. These days, in as such a polarizing culture we live in, Christians included, you can practically predict how certain groups and individuals are going to react to anything that makes news: if a conservative says something, progressives will hate it; if a progressive says something, conservatives will hate it.

Such is the time we live in, and that is unfortunate. For although the book is crystal clear that Dreher is a conservative, an honest and humble reading of The Benedict Option should challenge every Christian, Left or Right, in one way or another.

In Part 2, I provided a brief overview of the entire book, chapter by chapter. In this post, as well as the next, I am going to focus on a few parts of the book that I think deserve more attention and discussion. And let me say up front, that since this book deals with current, controversial issues in today’s culture, I realize how potentially touchy these topics can be. All I wish to do is enter into a discussion with Dreher and offer my thoughts, as best I can.

Now, I’m not God, and I’m certainly not infallible. But I do feel that one of the biggest challenges for Christians in this polarized culture is to somehow find a way to share their thoughts and views on the challenging issues that face us in a truly Christ-like way, without “getting out the knives” as soon as someone gives an opinion that conflicts with our own. I think perhaps one of the most powerful witnesses Christians can have these days should be in the way we discuss and tackle difficult issues. Even if we don’t agree with each other, we must find a way to tearing down walls of hostility, so we can truly be one people of God.

The Heart of Dreher’s Argument
Now, if you wish to know in a nutshell what The Benedict Option is really about, I believe this excerpt from the book flap sums it up nicely:

“Today, a new, post-Christian barbarism reigns. Many believers are blind to it, and their churches are too weak to resist. Politics offers little help in this spiritual crisis. What is needed is the Benedict Option, a strategy that draws on the authority of Scripture and the wisdom of the ancient church. The goal: to embrace exile from mainstream culture and construct a resilient counterculture.”

What that quote really can be boiled down to is two things: (A) Defining the problem, and (B) offering a solution. So let’s see how he goes about addressing the problem and the solution throughout his book.

The Problem: The Symptoms of a Post-Christian Society
So, Dreher makes the case that we are living in a post-Christian culture, and that we are witnessing before our very eyes the breakdown of the natural family, the loss of traditional moral values, and the fragmenting of communities. Simply put, he argues that our culture is becoming more secular, more hyper-individualized, more morally relative, and more hostile to Christianity. Even within church communities, he argues, materialism and consumerism seem to reign. Instead of the historical faith of Christianity being taught and lived out, many churches are essentially preaching Moral Therapeutic Deism—what I call the Joel Osteen brand of Christianity.

Now, the fact is, as long as you keep it at that general level, chances are most people will agree with all, or most, of that assessment. The problem and controversy comes whenever you try to get specific. And since Dreher begins is critique of our post-Christian culture with reference to the issue of gay marriage and the LGBTQ movements, well, it should become clear why progressives have gone out of their way to criticize the book. If you start with those two hot button issues, they are not going to pay attention to anything else you have to say, especially if you throw those two issues out there, say that the Obergefell decision (the one in which the Supreme Court declared same-sex marriage a constitutional right) was “the Waterloo of religious conservatism” (9), and then never really unpack the nuances of the issue.

And that is perhaps my main criticism of the book. Given the emotional fervor surrounding the issues of gay marriage and LGBTQ rights, I felt that Dreher did himself and the book a disservice by not taking the time to articulate those controversial issues. Yes, he does touch upon them from time to time throughout the book, and does get around to alluding to the more fundamental issues regarding how our society views sex, sexuality, and personhood as a whole, but I think there could have been a better and more direct way to spell out the nuances regarding these issues.

So Let’s Get Specific about Gay Marriage…Just Briefly
With some fear and trepidation, allow me to provide my two cents on gay marriage and LGBTQ rights. These really are some thoughts and observations I’ve had that I probably will seek to elaborate on in later posts on my The Ways of the Worldviews series. I think it might be best to just offer bullet-points:

• Regardless of your view about the political issue of legalized gay-marriage, as a Christian you are commanded to love everyone, period. A big part of the problem why there has been so much anger and hostility toward Christianity in general regarding homosexuality is because homosexuals have been absolutely reviled by far too many Christians for far too long.
• The way people have used passages in the Bible as justification to condemn homosexuality is misleading. Simply put, pretty much all those passages are in the context of pagan idolatrous worship, not what we in the modern world consider “monogamous gay relationships.”
• At the same time, it is quite clear that the Bible does condemn same-sex sexual behavior. That being said, it doesn’t “condemn homosexuals” because the term “homosexual” was invented in the 19^th century. Simply put, those biblical passage are condemning specific behavior, no matter who does it; they’re not condemning people simply because they have a certain attraction.
• On the strict legal issue, I personally have gotten to the point where I don’t object to the State legalizing gay marriage. The State offers legal and tax benefits for families, so the case that a gay couple who has adopted a child deserves the same legal and tax benefits is a valid one. Simply put, the Bible doesn’t condemn the bestowment of certain legal privileges on certain groups of people.
• The problem I had with the Obergefell decision was that the Supreme Court essentially created a new law, and constitutionally it can’t do that. The issuing of marriage licenses had always been up to the states, and at the time of the Obergefell decision, I believe the number of states that had legalized gay marriage was something like 37 and rising. Simply put, the constitutional process was already working, and the Supreme Court acted unconstitutionally.
• The fear many Christians have on this issue, and I do think it is legitimate to a degree, is that the State will now use its political power to force into compliance any Christian or church who objects to gay marriage or refuses to say that being LGBTQ is natural and normal. Indeed, many Christians feel that there is a concentrated push in our society, if not to “persecute” Christians because of their stance on these issues, but to certainly silence, shame, and marginalize them for it.
• Finally, I have come to wonder this: if society in general, and Christians specifically, had not been so hateful towards homosexuals over the past 50-60 years; if instead they actually reached out to and loved and accepted them; if so-called Christian parents did not throw their kids on the streets and disown them; if so-called Christian leaders did not preach abominable hatred from the pulpit—I wonder if there would have been a push for gay marriage in the first place? And that leads me to pondering this…
• Since when did we come to see issuing marriage licenses as the way of conferring acceptance of people? This actually goes way beyond the issue of gay marriage. If you are a single Christian, you no doubt feel “left out” of your church, like you don’t really fit in and aren’t really accepted. You feel that if you can just get married, then you’ll be accepted, then you’ll feel like God really loves you, etc.
• What I’m trying to say is that perhaps churches need to rethink how they present and talk about marriage. Should it be presented as the “ultimate goal” for everyone? Should singles be made to feel incomplete and slightly ostracized? Why have “singles” groups, where singles feel they are being put off into a corner until they can find someone to marry—then they can be part of the real church?

As you can no doubt see, those bullet-points probably evoke a whole lot more questions that take us far beyond and far deeper than the simple, “Should gay marriage be legal?” Unfortunately, it’s hard to think through and talk about all those nuances, precisely because our society has reduced it to a political issue. And that itself—our tendency to look to political decisions to solve all of society’s moral challenges and dilemmas—is yet another issue to consider.

It will take a lot of time, thought, and prayer, and grace to really work through all these things. I’ll try to do so in later posts, but I feel it must be said that I think it is something that Dreher could have been a little more deliberate about.

To Conclude…For Now
That being said, The Benedict Option does, in fact, get around to making the point that the issue goes much deeper than just “Should gays get married?” In fact, the issue of LGBTQ really does cover only a smaller portion of the book as a whole—Dreher’s focus in on much more fundamental issues of spirituality and what it means to be a church that truly lives out Christ’s teachings and reflects the traditional Christian faith of the historical Church. And in that respect, even if you disagree with Dreher’s specific take on the issue of gay marriage and LGBTQ rights, and are able to put that to the side for a bit, I believe you will find yourself agreeing with much of what he says about the deeper issues of what it means to be a Christian.

The book certainly does challenge people to realize that at that deeper level there are more fundamental failings that Christians and churches need to own up to and address, namely our addiction to materialism, consumerism, and as far as many Evangelicals are concerned, our inability to distinguish between the politics of the Kingdom of God and the GOP party platform. For that matter, I think it is also becoming more and more obvious that many progressive Christians share that same inability to distinguish between the politics of the Kingdom and the politics of the Left.

Since I see that I am approaching 2000 words, and I want to keep my posts short enough to read fairly easily, I realize that my plan to address Dreher’s book in four posts will have to be expanded to probably five. In Post #4, I will address what Dreher says in regard to the challenge Christians face in the realm of politics and education. And then, in Post #5, I will focus on what he says about sexuality and technology.

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