Benedict Option

The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation by Rod Dreher, 244 pages

For too long, Rod Dreher suggests, American Christians believed that all that was necessary to live their faith was to go to church on Sunday, believe in the right things, and live ordinary lives.  The past few decades, however, have seen the rise of an activist progressivism which is intrinsically hostile to authentic Christianity, while conservative Christians have atrophied into the chaplains of consumerism.  It is now time, Dreher insists, to face hard truths - the culture war has been lost, and orthodox Christians are an increasingly despised minority, under legal and social pressure to compromise their beliefs.  To survive, traditional Christians must cultivate detachment and build a parallel culture, a key feature of which will likely be the formation and cultivation of intentional communities of like-minded believers.

It is easy to misunderstand Dreher as advocating a retreat from the world, but the path sketched in The Benedict Option aims at more effective engagement, beginning with an awareness that orthodoxy is not merely a matter of correct doctrine, but of consciously living in harmony with a transcendent order.  Even if the "Benedict option" is not the best strategy for the future of Christianity in the West, Dreher should be thanked for reemphasizing the truth that the challenge facing Christians in the 21st century is not primarily legal, political, social, or even moral, but anthropological and cosmological.