Thoughts on “The Benedict Option” by Rod Dreher
[For previous discussions of the Benedict Option, see here]
In reducing his signature idea to book form, Rod Dreher set a clear, if daunting, task for himself: 1) Describe the challenges that serious Christians face in the modern world due to increasing secularism, and 2) Propose solutions to meet those challenges.
One difficulty for Dreher lies in balancing generally applicable advice against more concrete solutions. The most essential advice is hardly revelatory. When Dreher tells the reader to read scriptures daily, choose friends wisely, or stand firm in Christian morals, the serious Christian may be inclined to ask, “All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet?”
Dreher goes further, however. He tells Christians in no uncertain terms to pull their kids out of public school, and to homeschool them when an uncompromised Christian school can’t be found. He admonishes Christians to be spiritually prepare themselves to be poor, in the event that Christians are excluded from all high-status professions. Jesus gave the same injunction, of course, but it is nonetheless a challenge that modern Christian professionals have not yet fully faced.
Dreher also tells us to keep social media out of church, and keep smartphones out of the hands of children. If this seems like obvious advice, consider that a friend of mine who teaches early morning seminary is getting pushback on her “no smartphones” rule from a parent who says her son simply won’t attend seminary if he can’t have his phone.
The stories that Dreher tells of Christians who are successfully living the Benedict Option are the most important parts of the book. The examples will be familiar to anyone who reads his blog: the Benedictine monks of Nursia, the Amish, St. Jerome Parish in Maryland, etc. We Mormons merit a couple of brief mentions for our geographically-based ward system, and for (cough) home teaching. These examples are important not because any one of them is the “correct” system, but because it’s helpful to discover models that might be particularly suited to our own situation.
An analogy could be made to antibiotics. Some will cure the disease; some may cause an allergic reaction. I suspect that I am quite allergic to monasticism.
What I hoped to glean from the book, which I have never quite been able to pick out of Dreher’s other writings, is a unifying principle. What do the various successful Christian strategies against secularization have in common? If a common element can be identified, it may help us devise new strategies that are best suited to us.
Dreher quotes Leah Libresco, a Catholic convert from atheism, as follows:
“People are like, ‘This Benedict Option thing, it’s just being Christian, right? And I’m like, ‘Yes! You’ve figured out the koan!’ But people won’t do it unless you call it something different.”
There is some truth to this; the communities that have already started living according to Benedict Option principles did so by aspiring to live out Christianity itself, without the benefit of Dreher’s book. But “just be Christian” is a little too vague to be helpful.
A clearer answer, in my view, lies in the first part of the book, where Dreher explores how we got to this point. Dreher describes the pre-modern Christian worldview as follows:
- “The whole world and everything in it is part of a harmonious whole ordered by God and filled with meaning—and all things are signs pointing to God.”
- “Society is grounded in that higher reality.”
- “The world is charged with spiritual force.”
In Dreher’s telling, it was the intellectual segregation of the material realm from the spiritual realm that paved the way for Nietzsche’s death of God: Not that God is dead, but that He is dead to modern man. And here is where I will humbly posit that, more than ward boundaries or home teaching, what helps Mormons resist the tide of secularism better than most other denominations is that our theology collapses the modern dichotomy of the spiritual and material.
Sometimes the material is collapsed into the spiritual:
Wherefore, verily I say unto you that all things unto me are spiritual, and not at any time have I given unto you a law which was temporal; neither any man, nor the children of men; neither Adam, your father, whom I created. – D&C 29:34
And sometimes the spiritual is collapsed into the material:
There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes; We cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified we shall see that it is all matter. D&D 131:7-8
I am particularly fond of the following quote from Wallace Stegner in “The Gathering of Zion”:
“No responsible historian can afford to underestimate the literalness of Mormon belief. These emigrants were convinced that they went not merely to a new country and a new life, but to a new Dispensation, to the literal Kingdom of God on earth. In the years between Joseph’s vision and its fulfillment, persecution and hardship discouraged many, and others fell away into apostasy, but what might be called the hard core of Mormonism took persecution and suffering in stride, as God’s way of trying their faith. Signs and wonders accompanied them, their way was cleared by divine interventions. Rivers opportunely froze over to permit passage of their wagons, quail fell among their exhausted and starving camps as miraculously as manna ever fell upon the camps of the Israelites felling Pharaoh, the sick (even sick horses) upon whom the elders laid their hands rose up rejoicing in health[.]”
While I don’t kid myself that nothing has been lost from the pioneer generation, I believe this literal belief endures. Faithful Mormons believe that God is really real, and we are really his children, and he’s actually watching over us and expects us to follow his commandments.
And this is why I continue to be dismayed by ostensibly serious Christians who resist Dreher’s ideas so strongly. Is Christianity just a nice moral code to them? How can they be so sanguine when Christian faith is bombarded from every side? I look at the communities already living some form of the Benedict Option, and I see people who simply live as if they truly believe God sees them, cares whether they are faithful to Him, and intervenes directly in their lives. They do not see their lives as separate from the spiritual realm, but an integral part of it.
This realness of belief is scandalous to our modern world. Yes, He really died on a cross and came back to life. No, it’s not just a metaphor for bouncing back from a demotion at work. Yes, He’s still alive. I talk to Him everyday.
We cannot fear being weird. I suspect that what bothers Dreher’s Christian intellectual opponents the most is that he shatters their aspiration to be fully Christian and also fully normal and accepted.
“Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.” 1 Cor. 3:18-19
seriouslypleasedropit
July 20, 2017
Further inquiry into this line of thought is merited.
MC
July 20, 2017
SPDI,
By “line of thought,” do you mean the BO generally, or some particular part of this post?
P.S. Every time I see “SPDI” it looks like an abbreviation for an obscure Catholic order, like the Society of Pius the 501st.
seriouslypleasedropit
July 20, 2017
The post in general brought to mind the first of Screwtape’s letters to his nephew, in which he makes remarks to the effect of “Careful—you very much want to avoid letting your patient do any actual thinking…who knows what could happen then.” We give the devil too much credit, imagining that he makes this or that point in honest argument. But really he just lies.
This post seemed like a part of one of those trains of thought against which Screwtape warns. It has the ring of the practical: “Well, if we cannot be righteous in the world, so much the worse for the world.” The priorities are in proper order.
The irony is not lost on me, thus, when I mention I have some reservations about the BO in terms of monastic retreat. It feels like the equivalent of casting one’s eye out if it offends. But I’m a little more optimistic. I think we have some low-hanging fruit available through simple repentance. The Lord is on our side, after all—I think He would be quite pleased to see us pull out a win where it looks like a loss.
Huston
July 20, 2017
Great review! If I may be so bold, here’s my own review, which makes some of the same points you do, and which I think of as “The Prophet Option” https://gentlyhewstone.com/2017/06/07/the-prophet-option-a-mormon-review-of-the-benedict-option/
I’ve been reading Dreher’s blog for months now, and the biggest thing that shocks me isn’t how many critics he has in the comments, but how many people claim to be conservatives of some sort, yet clearly aren’t. These people aren’t liars, just deeply deluded: “I’m a gay polygamous socialist atheist, and I agree that civilization is declining–if only more people would be old-fashioned conservatives like us!”
I don’t know if Dreher would agree with our terminology, but I suspect that at least part of him would say that modern Christianity is in a state of apostasy and in need of a restoration…
Agellius
July 20, 2017
Huston:
As a Catholic, I totally agree that modern Christianity is largely in a state of apostasy and in need of restoration. I just don’t agree that it’s a total apostasy, entailing loss of teaching authority, priesthood, etc.
seriouslypleasedropit
July 20, 2017
Err, to be more clear: Leah Libresco’s remark about “just being Christian” rings true. And I think it applies fractally: at the individual level, as well, as the societal. What we need is righteousness, broadly defined.
Ivan Wolfe
July 20, 2017
“And this is why I continue to be dismayed by ostensibly serious Christians who resist Dreher’s ideas so strongly.”
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/benedict-option-dialogue/
“Rod Dreher: Christians do not possess the weapons necessary to fight liquid modernity.
Critics: Yeah, but let’s fight anyway.
RD: With what? We are not well enough equipped.
Critics: You are absolutely correct, we are not well equipped, but we cannot cede our position.
RD: What position? The modern world has run the Christian, and largely the Western worldview out of any position of influence.
Critics: Yes, but we must continue to fight!
RD: With what? We have largely surrendered all of our weapons to the opposition. We have traded our swords for their pitchforks.
Critics: Quite true, quite true, we have made some mistakes in the past, but it would be a mistake to retreat now.
RD: Retreat is a means of survival. Washington retreated from New York. The Allies retreated at Dunkirk. Had either held their position, they would have been unquestionably annihilated and the world would be a much different, and likely worse, place than it is now.
Critics: Yes, but this is different. That won’t happen to us.
RD: How is it different? Why won’t it happen to us?
Critics: Because we have God on our side!
RD: So have thousands of men and women whose lives were lost at the hands of those who raged against God. Are you advocating martyrdom?
Critics: Not at all.
RD: So what will happen?
Critics: We will win! God will reward our courage!
RD: … so, martyrdom?
Critics: No, Rod. It would simply be unwise to retreat now.
RD: Ok.”
Bruce Charlton
July 20, 2017
I think the dialogue shown by I.W. is a fair summary of how things look to me; except things are worse…
A real problem with the B.O is the lack of un-corrupted leadership among most Christians, and indeed the lack of good leaders anywhere. When a good leader arises, the kind who might lead an autonomous community, he is often impossible to replace; then the community gets an over promoted middle manager instead (or a psychopath). And assimilates to the politically correct linked bureaucracy, or dies.
e.g The Church of England is breaking up due to the usual secular Leftism among the leaders, but despite the need and desire there is so far no leader emerging to create the necessary structures.
I think this is a neglected reason why the situation has become as bad as it is, another is the growth of materialist- driven passivity and conformism – in the UK this has exploded in the past decades, such that genuine eccentrics and maverick have suddenly disappeared.
In sum, the B.O. is probably not going to happen, or it already would have happened – the longer the delay, the less basis for the B.O. remains.I
(What then? If trends continue I foresee that the only Christians will be those who find their faith internally, in the teeth of social and institutional pressure, including from their own church leaders. So far the CJCLDS leadership has apparently resisted corruption, uniquely? But?…)
aardvark
July 20, 2017
I’m still not convinced that the BO requires a monastic retreat.
I would say that a BO hasn’t occurred yet because the levels of real or perceived persecution have been low for quite a while now. It seems like only 10 or 15 years ago Mormons were your nice hardworking neighbor who had a weird belief system. Now we are hateful and bigoted neighbors with foolish beliefs.
I talk to my family about circling the wagons quite a bit, and they usually scoff at me. But all of them live in mostly conservative regions and think I’m blowing things out of proportion. But if I discuss the same things with my conservative friends who live in highly liberal areas or are in professions that attract mostly liberal people…they usually tell me they would gladly have a house on the compound or, more realistically, gather in the same neighborhoods.
John Mansfield
July 21, 2017
I disagree that this “Benedict Option” can be described simply as “just be Christian.” Keeping oneself unspotted from the world is just one aspect of discipleship, and even being faithful in that is only a partial guide to how engaged we should be with those who embrace sin. There is also something incoherent that a writer telling Christians to withdraw from the world does so as a participant in mainstream media.
As a Latter-day Saint, the problem I have with the Benedict Option is that is counter to what I am taught at church. I am taught to not partake of movies, books, music, etc. that will harm my spirit. I was taught to support my family by my income alone so that my wife can devote ample hours to the nurture of our children. I am also taught to be engaged with my community as fully as possible. Maybe the balance of that teaching will change in the future, but getting ahead of the prophet in withdrawing from the world is also an apostate failure to live as a Christian.
G.
July 21, 2017
Not having read the book, JM, I can’t say,but my impression is that Dreher doesn’t push withdrawing from the world in the sense of trying to avoid community involvement. It more means things like “not partaking of movies, books, etc” that will harm your spirit, or, perhaps more broadly, that fund the people who are trying to dissolve you. It means not accepting the cultural presumptions we are surrounded with, things like the presumption that wives should workd and a lower standard of living because of a single income is unacceptable.
In other words, my impression is that we are or should be already living out a variety of the Benedict Option.
But I could be wrong.
E. C.
July 21, 2017
Having read the book, I have to agree with Huston: it’s nothing the prophets haven’t been telling us for years – even as far back as the Restoration era.
The basic premise of the book is that we need to deepen discipleship, decide how far we’d really go for our faith, and then do what we can to live that out in daily life. From my reading, there was nothing about withdrawing from community, but much about withdrawing from culture – the ‘movies, books, etc.’ that JM is talking about.
I don’t know that I agreed with every point Dreher made in the book, but that our Western culture is rotten is pretty clear to see, so I can’t really say he’s wrong to want Christians to withdraw from it.
@G, I’d say that I see more of those who should be living the Benedict Option than those who are, at least in my part of the country (smack in the middle of Mormondom). Most people my age (early/mid-twenties) are unwilling to be ‘peculiar people’ if that means being seen as bigoted, backwards, or otherwise divergent from the wider social norms. This is not to say that I don’t think there is a need for Benedict Option-like living, just that there are probably too many saying “all is well in Zion”.
Wesley Dean
July 21, 2017
I haven’t finished the book yet, but I can’t escape the thought that the Lord has already revealed the specific solution to this eternal problem. The Lord’s answer is the covenants and ordinances of the restored temple.
Zen
July 21, 2017
What continues to come to mind for me, is a quote by Hugh Nibley, how we can’t mix Zion and Babylon. Historically, people always try it, and it always leads to destruction. The product of Zion and Babylon is always Babylon.
If we can’t even imagine withdrawing from Babylon, or if we are unwilling, then we are damned.
Again, we already have the solutions. We just have to take our discipleship seriously.
Vader
July 22, 2017
“The product of Zion and Babylon is always Babylon. ”
When you mix a teaspoon of potable water into a barrel of sewage, you get sewage.
When you mix a teaspoon of sewage into a barrel of potable water, you get sewage.
Bookslinger
July 22, 2017
“We just have to take our discipleship seriously.” I think that is a recurring theme of every general conference. And it is the essence of the “sunday school answers.”
I’ll flog one of my favorite books again, “Whatever Happened to the Power of God” by Michael L. Brown. https://www.amazon.com/Whatever-Happened-Power-Time-Rock/dp/0768430569/
He’s an Ev/Pent type, authored a handful of books, has a PhD. And he sounds a lot like President Kimball in writing, in terms of exhorting people to live holy lives, to actually walk the walk.
If you see that book at a yard sale, or for a cheap price on Kindle, snap it up.