Rod Dreher’s book, The Benedict Option, has garnered quite a lot of attention over the past month. According to many progressives, it is alarmist tripe that is rooted in white bitterness over their loss of white privilege. According to many conservatives, it is a clarion call to get back to being the Church. Well, to be up front, I feel that the progressive take is simply wrong—in fact, the knee-jerk reactions I’ve read by some progressive Christians have been rather disturbing to me, for I believe the reactions themselves illustrate a deeper problem (of which I will discuss later).
At the same time, I’m not entirely sold on everything Dreher says or proposes. But my questions and misgivings probably aren’t where people might assume. Where I do like the book is in the fact that (a) if you’re a typical Evangelical Conservative, if you really understand what Dreher is saying, you should feel quite uncomfortable; and (b) if you’re a typical progressive Christian, that knee-jerk reaction you might have against the book should cause you to step back and think, “Why does this book make me feel uncomfortable?”
Yes, the book should make people in both stereotypical, ideological and political camps uncomfortable. Why? The name says it: it’s coming from the perspective of a counter-cultural movement that began in the 6th century—the Benedictine Monks. If your Christianity is solely defined and shaped by 21st century consumeristic American culture, this book is going to seem odd–and thus you’re going to focus on the shiny few objects your particular brand of American Christianity has trained you to obsess over, and you’ll disregard the rest. Yes, that will just show you’re a bit like Gollum! Conservative Christians will no doubt immediately notice references to a few modern day social issues they agree with, they’ll say, “Ohh, the precious!” and they’ll think Dreher is completely “on their side.” Progressives will zero in on those same social issues, think, “He’s trying to steals the precious!” and conclude Dreher is “one of them” (and like Rachel Held Evans, will take to Twitter to denounce a book they haven’t read).
But Dreher, I believe, is really trying to point to something deeper than just the current political and social controversies. So, in this post, allow me to provide a brief overview of the entire book, chapter by chapter. And then, I will take two more posts, unpacking what issues in the book I believe need to be unpacked and wrestled with.
Chapter 1: The Great Flood
Dreher’s opening chapter certainly does open with a bang, jumping into political fray and claiming that ever since the sexual revolution of the 1960s, things like abortion, the LGBT agenda, gay marriage, the breakdown of the natural family, the loss of traditional moral values—all of these things signal that there has been a clear turning of the page in our culture. As he states, “This may not be the end of the world, but it is the end of a world, and only the willfully blind would deny it” (8).
Instead of commencing in a literary version of an altar call at church at a revival service, though, Dreher actually basically says, “What’s the point of trying to get people to go to church? Most churches reflect more of the materialistic and consumeristic American culture than they do of the Kingdom of God.” The “religion” of many churches isn’t real Christianity, but rather Moral Therapeutic Deism: God exists, He wants everyone to be nice, so be a happy boy or girl, and you’ll get to go to heaven when you die. If the image of Joel Osteen came into your mind as you read that, congratulations…the same thing happened to me.
Dreher’s point is simple: the culture is increasingly secular and unchristian, and the previous “agenda” of the Religious Right clearly was pretty wrong. By focusing on trying to change things politically, the church ended up just capitulating to the modern zeitgeist that views individualism as the supreme good, moral standards as subjective, knowledge of history as unimportant, and any religious narrative optional—all that matters is you and Jesus, and how he makes you feel. Therefore, Dreher proposes something rather different: let’s go back and take our cues from the Benedictine monks; let’s withdraw a little bit from the world, spend our time in local Christian communities, devoted to each other, devoted to prayer, and devoted to practicing spiritual disciplines, so when the modern American version of Rome does crumble, Christians will be ready to rebuild from the ruins.
Chapter 2: The Roots of the Crisis
In his second chapter, Dreher attempts to do what it has taken me to do in 57 posts (thus far) in my Ways of the Worldviews series. Well, not quite. His analysis starts in the 14th century and the height of Medieval Scholasticism and takes us up to the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s. In the simplest of terms, Dreher argues that, although the Medieval world wasn’t perfect, it did though hold to a sacramental view of the world: human beings and all creation was part of a natural order, and the way to maintain that order was through the love of God and the practice of the virtues.
But with then ensuing Protestant, Secular, and Scientific Revolutions, God got pushed to the margins, religion was replaced by science as the new “controlling narrative” of Western society, and in its place, hyper-individualism and “self-fulfillment,” without reference to God or society became the highest good. It is, therefore, that mindset that has brought about the current societal controversies that have been around for the past 50 years.
Chapter 3: A Rule for Living
Chapter 3 focuses on laying out the standard “rule” that Benedictine monks follow, and contrasts it with the standard way of life (what Dreher calls “liquid modernity”) that we in the modern world experience. And that distinction can be summed up as follows: life in the modern world in hyper-individualistic, fragmented, filled with fear, disoriented, and sex-saturated; by contrast, the rule of the monks has its goal to free you from that sort of bondage to our loneliness, fears, and desires. It does that by emphasizing order (both in the everyday tasks of life, and within ourselves), prayer (through practices like Lectio Divina), work (seeing work and manual labor as a means of glorifying God), asceticism (as in practicing spiritual disciplines like fasting), stability (no more church hopping; being rooted in a single community), and community (building true fellowship with other believers), hospitality (openly reaching out to the outside world, but be insistent on drawing boundaries), and balance (striving for a steady and mature life that practices moderation in all things).
Simply put, it goes back to the “being in the world but not of it.” It takes dedication and discipline to practice the Christian life. If you don’t allow yourself be remade in the image of Christ, through the traditional practices of the Church, you’re going to continue to be shaped by the practices of the current culture. Forty years ago, Francis Schaeffer wrote How Should We Then Live? Dreher’s answer to that question is this: “Let’s take our cue from the monks who rebuilt Europe after the old pagan world left it in ruins.”
Chapter 4: A New Kind of Christian Politics
Yes, this will be a chapter I’ll focus a bit more on in the next post. For now, let me sum up Dreher’s point: the GOP party platform is not the Gospel; Donald Trump is not the answer to the problems facing American culture—he’s a symptom of it.
Dreher is very critical of modern Evangelical Christians who seemingly cannot tell the difference between the GOP and the Kingdom of God. As he says, “There is first the temptation to worship power, and to compromise one’s soul to maintain access to it. There are many ways to burn a pinch of incense to Caesar, and some prominent pro-Trump Christians arguably crossed that line during the campaign season” (81). He’s completely right.
At the same time, Dreher also is adamant that in many ways, the traditional beliefs and convictions of Christians in America has come, if not under full attack, certainly under pretty violent criticism—and it is on this point he discusses some of the current social issues. His answer to this is simple: stop playing power games, stop looking to Washington to fix everything, and focusing on building true Christian community at a local level: “If we hope for our faith to change the world one day, we have to start locally” (95).
Or if I can put it in another way: Love God and love your neighbor…and render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. I’m sure I’ve heard that somewhere before.
Chapter 5: A Church for All Seasons
“The best witness Christians can offer to post-Christian America is simply to be the church, as fiercely and creatively a minority as we can manage” (101). And that is precisely the problem with the modern day Evangelical American church: yes, it seems to be a majority, but in reality, “too many of our churches function as secular entertainment centers with religious morals slapped on top…” (102).
In this chapter, one of Dreher’s main points is that Evangelicalism is really short on any sort of understanding of Church history and tradition, and really long on being drowned in liquid modernity and pop culture. If you grew up in an Evangelical home, ask yourself how much Church history you really know…then admit it, Dreher is right.
Dreher emphasizes the need for churches to recover liturgy, to tighten church discipline, and to emphasize beauty and goodness through the arts. Do those things pique interest or raise questions? I’ll address them in a later post.
Chapter 6: The Idea of a Christian Village
Yes, Hillary Clinton was right: it does take a village. Dreher seemed surprised by this as well. As he says, “The fate of religion in America is inextricably tied to the fate of the family, and the fate of the family is tied to the fate of the community” (123). In other words, the threats to the family cannot be addressed through Washington politics; they need to be addressed at the local and community level. And that means building true Christian community, both within individual churches, and across denominational lines.
Although I will address this a bit more in the next few posts, for now I’ll just say this: I’ve never felt I’ve ever been a part of a true church community that really practiced true community. Churches aren’t communities: they seem to be, for the most part, places where individuals see each other once a week. Yes, I know that’s not always the case; and yes, I fully acknowledge I tend to be rather an introvert, so that has something to do with it—but ask yourself if you have always felt the same way. If so, how can that change?
Chapter 7: Education as Christian Formation
Dreher’s chapter on education, particularly Christian education, deserves a lot of attention. Being someone who attended a Christian high school, and who taught in Christian schools for 16 years, I found quite a lot to chew on. If I were to summarize this chapter, it would be this: the problem with most Christian schools is that they pretty are just like any other schools, except they pray a generic prayer before class and they have chapel (that no one really likes) once a week. If you went to a Christian school, would you concur? I’m guessing you do.
Dreher is a big fan of a growing movement called Classical Christian Education. He feels that today’s education system (Christian schools included) is fundamentally secular in its goals, and that a Christian education should have its ultimate goal to integrate students into the life of the historical church. Like I said, there’s a lot to unpack in this chapter. You’ll just have to wait for me to unpack it.
Chapter 8: Preparing for Hard Labor
In chapter 8, Dreher talks about the possible challenges Christians will have living in a post-Christian, secular culture. Simply put, he argues that Christians might not be “persecuted” for their faith and moral stances, but some certainly are feeling the heat—specifically, he discusses the changed political and societal environment in regard to LGBT rights and homosexuality. Again, the controversial issues come to the forefront. One might call him alarmist, or one might take what he says and sound the alarm, but it is something that needs to be talked about. One thing he did mention that got my attention is that in Canada, the legal profession is apparently trying to forbid graduates from Trinity Western University, a Christian liberal arts college (and where I got my OT master’s degree) from practicing law—why? Because TWU isn’t sufficiently progressive when it comes to LGBT issues.
Chapter 9: Eros and the New Counterculture
In chapter 9, Dreher talks about sex: homosexuality, marriage, gay marriage, pornography, promiscuity, morality, sex education, and the Christian understanding of sex and sexuality. How can I even begin to get into this now? This post is already over 2000 words. You’ll just have to practice patience (something we Americans don’t like to do, especially with anything related to sex), and wait for me to cover it in a later post.
Chapter 10: Man and the Machine
In the final chapter, Dreher addresses the allure and challenges of modern technology, be it the internet or smartphones, Twitter, Facebook, the list can go on. No, he’s not one of those who thinks everything new in technology is bad, but he does address some very real concerns. Technology and the internet are very seductive, and often encourage people to cut themselves from real human contact (think of how easy it is to shout at people in Facebook debates, and how you’d never speak that way in person). They also flood you with so many ads and information, that it is impossible to process it all—certainly, that must have an effect on the development of our brains.
So again, given those challenges that technology brings us, along with all the challenges confronting us in today’s society, how are Christians to live? It’s been my experience that Conservative Christians tend to give one set of oversimplistic answers, and Progressive Christians tend to give an opposite set of oversimplistic answers—at least, that’s what I see on social media and internet articles.
When I talk to actual people, whether on the Left or Right, I soon realize that not too many people fit nicely into either ideological camp. And I think that is sort of one of the points Dreher makes indirectly in his book: if Christians are committed to being the Church, and if they insist on what is truly good and truly human, and if they resist the pressures to let the media and technology impose artificial stances and ideologies on society—they’ll be able to stake out the truly human ground, the true Kingdom of God, in their little corners of the world. And maybe that will make a difference in the long run.
Conclusion
Does The Benedict Option sound like an intriguing book? How many controversial social issues did I mention in this post? What’s the best way to address them? Come back over the next few days, and I’ll give my two cents.
