The Benedict Option—not radical enough
by Phil Lawler, LifeSite:
The Benedict Option is the most talked-about book of 2017, at least among religious conservatives. Personally I am pleased with this development, for two reasons. First because I count the author, Rod Dreher, as a friend as well as a gifted controversialist, and I’m happy to see his work prosper. Second because the book examines the same question that I have been examining for years: How should American Christians live out their faith in an increasingly hostile environment?
Asking the right question is, of course, not a guarantee that one will find the right answer. The Benedict Option has been roundly criticized as well as highly praised. Even among reviewers who would accept Dreher’s major premise—that we live in a post-Christian society—there is a lively debate about his proposed solution.
That debate, too, is a reason to welcome the book. Dreher has forced religious conservatives—the Americans who might be lumped together in the category of the “Religious Right”— to examine their assumptions and question the effectiveness of their efforts. That stock-taking is long overdue. For the space of a full generation, Christian conservatives in America have based their plans on the assumption that their goals are shared by most of the American public—by the vaunted “moral majority.” If that ever was true, it certainly is not true today. The defenders of faith and family form a minority. So the question now is whether we will be a “creative minority,” as envisioned by Pope Benedict XVI, enriching the culture around us; or a despised minority, shrinking gradually into desuetude.
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