(Updates) The Benedict Option?
The Benedict Option
Living in obedience to God with increasingly hostile law and society continues to be an unresolved and severe problem for Christians in the contemporary West. The need to remember God’s Word and be faithful disciples of Christ, resisting the pressure and allurement of the world to acquiesce in sin has elicited social commentator Rod Dreher’s proposed “Benedict Option”…In order to regain our integrity as disciples of Christ, should we partially retreat from the world into our own communities?…
…“A world is coming to an end,” he said. That world is the Western civilization which was made by the Judeo-Christian religious tradition, and the fragments of that tradition that survive in the wider society cannot be expected to last much longer. As a result, the “West is facing the greatest spiritual crisis since the collapse of Rome” and “signs of spiritual depletion” have become impossible to ignore…
…Dreher believes that this situation will get worse, and that believers should “build and occupy an ark.”
From Rod Dreher discusses the need for the Benedict Option, by Rick Plasterer, Juicy Ecumenism
See also:
When the Benedict Option Is the Only Option, Dwight Longenecker
An Abundance of Benedict Options, by John Meinert, Crisis Magazine
Truth, Cultural Renewal, and the Benedict Option by Christopher Morrissey, The Imaginative Conservative
The Benedict Option—not radical enough, LifeSite
The Benedict option – Spectator, Rod Dreher
Benedict Option by R R Reno, First Things
Fearing Dreher: Why the Benedict Option Scares Christians, The Imaginitive Conservative
Eating locusts will be (Benedict) optional, by Carl R Trueman, First Things
Others do not agree with Dreher’s solution:
Secularism is part of God’s cunning plan, by Theo Hobson, Spectator [response to Dreher]
Christians, don’t quit the game at half time! By Michael Brown, WND
The cultural mandate, not the Benedict Option, by Andrew Sandlin, Centre for Cultural Leadership
The Benedict Option Omits the Fatima Answer by John Horvat II
A summary and discussion of the positions here: Should Christians adopt ‘The Benedict Option’ and withdraw from civic society? By James Macintyre, Christian Today (featuring a quotation from Andrew Symes)
Other related pieces
The perils of religious liberty, by Yuval Levin, First Things
Where are the Reformers today? By John J. Murray, Banner of Truth
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