Should Christians exercise ‘The Benedict Option’?
Rod Dreher to make the case for emulating St. Benedict’s retreat from a decadent world in ýĻƷ appearance
Rod Dreher, a widely quoted author who argues that Christianity is under siege and that Christians should prepare for a coming dark age of persecution by forming their own communities, will discuss the topic at the University of Colorado Boulder next month.
ٰ’s presentation, titled “The Benedict Option: The Future of Religious Conservatism in Post-Christian America,” is scheduled for Wenesday, April 5, at 6 p.m. in Eaton Humanities 150 on the ýĻƷ campus.
The event is free and open to the public, but for the event is strongly encouraged to ensure that enough seating is available.
Dreher, a writer and senior editor at The American Conservative, is the author of “The Benedict Option,” a New York Times bestseller that urges Christians to follow the example of St. Benedict of Nursia, a sixth-century monk who retreated from the chaos and decadence of the collapsing Roman Empire, and found a new way to live out the faith in community.
Rod Dreher
Dreher writes: “There can be no peace between Christianity and the Sexual Revolution, because they are radically opposed. As the Sexual Revolution advances, Christianity must retreat—and it has, faster than most people would have thought possible.”
Dreher answered questions from Colorado Arts & Sciences Magazine about his work:
Q: The New York Times columnist David Brooks and The Atlantic characterize your view of the threat to Christianity as being primarily from the sexual revolution. Is that distillation correct?
A: Not really, but I can see how someone would interpret it that way. The threat to Christianity, as I hope the book shows, is from modernity in the sense that what characterizes modernity as a mindset (as distinct from what came before) is a metaphysical belief that truth is in the eye of the beholder. Gradually, over centuries, we in the West came to see truth as a subjective phenomenon; it became “truth.” In the 20th century, the sovereign self moved clearly into the center of our collective consciousness, and fulfilling the self’s desires became our telos, or ultimate goal. “Freedom” meant not freedom for moral excellence, as in the classical view, but freedom from constraint.
The Sexual Revolution is the most important revolution of our time, because it is predicated on a cosmic revolution — that is, the shattering of Christian norms. The Sexual Revolution proclaims sexual desire as central to human identity, and fulfilling sexual desire as the near-absolute telos of life. In 1966, the social critic Philip Rieff, a secular Jew, observed that the emerging permissive sexual ethic was radically incompatible with historic Christianity, but the church today would not be able to stop it. I think there is a direct correlation between the ongoing triumph of the Sexual Revolution and the decline of Christianity. It’s not that there was ever an era in which all Christians were chaste; that would be a silly claim. What has changed is that we have abandoned the old standard, however badly we failed to live up to it in the past. From that, a great deal of moral and social disorder has taken hold in society. I think it’s no accident that the churches that have accommodated themselves to the Sexual Revolution have not flourished, but are collapsing faster than those that have mounted some resistance.
I think this is inextricably tied to consumer capitalism, too, and the way it teaches us to find our identity in our desires and their fulfillment. But that’s another story.
Because people might have different conceptions of what the sexual revolution was or is, how would you define it?
It’s a broad term referring to events from the years 1960 to 1980, roughly, during which time the older view of sexuality, its meaning, and the ethics surrounding it. For various reasons—including, note well, the advent of the birth control pill—American society began to embrace, indeed to celebrate, sexual autonomy. This led to the skyrocketing divorce rate in the late ‘60s and ‘70s, and the ongoing fragmentation of the family in the decades since. And now, we have not only lost the natural family model, but we are watching the connection between biology and gender being demolished. Has anything like this ever happened to the human race—and so quickly?
To be sure, the Sexual Revolution is only the leading edge of the broader revolution firmly establishing the Self as sovereign in our society.
I’m talking about preserving the faith in community so that decades, even centuries, from now, if American society, or its successor, is willing to embrace Christianity again, and return it to the center of culture, there will be an orthodox form of Christianity for them to embrace.
You’ve argued that journalists tend not to represent Christianity or Christians fairly; if you were to offer one piece of advice to American journalists about covering religion and Christianity, what would it be?
This is a hard one, because there are so many things I could say. I suppose the main one is to put aside the idea that Christianity—or any religion, really—is an add-on to life. For people serious about their faith, it is their life. It is true, alas, that many, perhaps most, American Christians don’t live their faith this way, but however imperfectly, many of us understand our faith as the thing that orders all of our life, and not the other way around. Along these lines, I would strongly encourage journalists to set aside the assumption that secular liberalism is a neutral stance. It is not. It has its own dogmas and doctrines, but the fact that so many journalists and American elites are secular liberals, the dogmatic nature of it is hidden from their sight.
If like-minded Christians were to withdraw from society, at least in part, would they be able to insulate themselves sufficiently from discrimination and harassment (e.g., job loss and name-calling)?
Not if by “insulate” you mean avoid it. It’s coming, and we had better prepare for it. Preparing for it means forming ourselves spiritually to endure without losing our faith or our composure. Christians are not permitted by our faith to hate those who persecute or ill-treat us. This is going to be a challenge, for sure. But I also believe that we should build the economic and social support infrastructure to support each other when we lose our jobs or are treated badly. That’s not insulation, exactly, but it does make for resilience.
In the longer term, if some Christians were to build communities of resistance that would “outwit, outlast and eventually overcome the occupation,” how would you suggest that those future Christians later live with those who had engaged in a secular “occupation”?
In peace. I don’t want to give you the impression that I’m talking about some kind of weirdo Christian militia. I’m talking about preserving the faith in community so that decades, even centuries, from now, if American society, or its successor, is willing to embrace Christianity again, and return it to the center of culture, there will be an orthodox form of Christianity for them to embrace.
ٰ’s appearance is sponsored by ýĻƷ’s .