The argument for the 'Benedict Option'

America has leapt quickly from feminist egalitarianism to same-sex marriage and now to teaching “gender fluidity” and “gender spectrum” as facts of life in the public schools. The advance of sexual nihilism against Christian culture and orthodoxy—its mortal foes—seems limited only by the boldness of the modern imagination.

In response, Rod Dreher suggests the “Benedict Option” (see last week’s column, “The call for a ‘Benedict Option.’”) Benedict was a sixth century young nobleman who withdrew to the wilderness from the iniquity of Rome, 25 years after the fall of the empire, in pursuit of a fuller Christian devotion. He established isolated communities—the first monasteries—that functioned as conservatories of faith, learning, and civilization. Arguably, in the long run, he saved the Western world.

Western civilization is again—but in a different way—hostile to the greatest treasures of heart, mind, and spirit. We have been aggressive at the polls and in the courts while neglecting the integrity of our families, the Christian education of our children, and their exposure to cultural toxins, and allowing our churches to become extensions of the service and entertainment industries. It is time for Christians, Dreher argues, to execute a strategic withdrawal—perhaps for generations—from attempting to recover our cultural dominance. He describes it as “a radical shift in perspective among Christians, one in which we see ourselves as living in the ruins (though very comfortable ones!) of Christian civilization, and tasked with preserving the living faith through the coming Dark Ages.”

He does not have in mind an Amish-like isolation, despite his praise for people who haul off to Alaska to be part of a tightly knit Eastern Orthodox parish. Nor does he intend a neo-fundamentalist separation. It is not a “Bunker Option,” any more than cultivating a thriving and hospitable Christian home is a bunkered domestic life.

The Benedict Option has three elements: re-centered Christian identity, attractive community witness, and defensive political engagement. Dreher calls it “a new and concentrated inwardness so that we can strengthen our communal lives and our outward witness and service to the broader culture.” His call is to rediscover what should have been our focus all along: the Christ-headed community that sustains us in our precious faith, matures our understanding of it, and enables our consistent practice of it. In this way, Dreher’s Benedict Option is both preservative and proclamatory.

Politically, it entails “a strong recalibration on the part of Christians of what is possible through politics in a liberal order.” This recalibrated effort nonetheless calls for aggressive defense of religious liberty, e.g., through organizations like Alliance Defending Freedom. In the almost half-century of culture-warring, we left our rear flank exposed. Dreher is calling us to fortify that flank while maintaining a defensive stance on the political front, all while flinging wide open the doors of the city to receive refugees from the Dark Lord’s territory.

Only when Christians more credibly understand themselves as the church and live more consistently in that will the crown rights of Christ become appealing to a spiritually destitute populace.