Rod Dreher and the “Benedict Option”

 

This past week, Rod posted a remarkable bleg over on the website of the American Conservative. Because Rod’s premise is so arresting–he believes we’ve about reached the point at which good and decent people need to drop out of American society to form their own counterculture–and because Rod himself is such a sweet writer, I thought I’d re-post his bleg right here.

To wit:

You who have been following my work for years know that I keep coming around to this idea of the “Benedict Option.” In short, it means this: At what point do the conditions of moral breakdown and atomization become such that people who want to live out the moral life in community realize that they have to secede from mainstream culture in a serious way? The idea comes from MacIntyre’s final paragraph in After Virtue:

“A crucial turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium. What they set themselves to achieve instead…was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming ages of barbarism and darkness. If my account of our moral condition is correct, we ought also to conclude that for some time now we too have reached that turning point…This time, however, the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament. We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another — doubtless quite different — St. Benedict.”

I’m working on a piece right now for the magazine [the American Conservative] on the feasibility of what I call the Benedict Option for our culture. That is, what “new forms of community” might we realistically construct for the purpose of living out our faith and moral values together, against a hostile culture? What I’m not looking for is any manifestation of radical separatism. Rather, I’m looking for real-life examples that conservatives, religious and otherwise, are doing, and that might be an option for others.

For example, I spoke yesterday to the abbot of the Clear Creek Abbey in rural eastern Oklahoma, and am going to make a visit there soon to talk to people in their community. Since that traditional Benedictine congregation started building its monastery in the late 1990s, a community of Catholic laity who wanted to settle in the monastery’s shadow and participate in its liturgical life have relocated there. I’m interested to learn how they’ve done. The abbot told me that many of them live in material poverty, but spiritual joy. I’d like to see for myself, and the abbot very kindly invited me to come for a visit.

I have other, non-Catholic examples in mind. Please send me your own suggestions.

What are we to make of this, Ricochetti?  Do you accept Rod’s premise–that is, that it’s high time to consider the “Benedict Option?”  And if you do, what suggestions would you offer to Rod?

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  1. Profile Photo Member
    @PaulDeRocco

    Against simple decadence, the Benedict Option is plausible, because the merely decadent will largely ignore the secessionists.. Against a committed ideological movement of the left, it is not, because their whole essence is to compel the submission of everyone.

    Irregularly, every few decades, the left goes all Pol Pot, and unleashes an insane fury on the world. I sense a momentum in that direction now, even in our own culture. Something is happening that is unprecedented in human history, just as communism was a century ago. The rate at which the left devises fresh outrages is accelerating. And some, like the contraception mandate, seem so pointless, except as a way of sticking it to the left’s enemies–as a way of saying, no, you can’t opt out, you’re going to eat it and like it.

    • #1
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    @FredWilliams

    Absolutely, it’s high time to “consider” the Benedict Option (MacIntyre wrote in 1981 or thereabouts), but I think of it in terms of detachment, not radical separation.  My suggestion – – Focus on who gets to teach the children and what to teach them (Socrates?).

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    @

    To paraphrase somebody (Lenin? Churchill?) “You may not be interested in Society, but Society is interested in you.”  You can do this to the extent an intrusive State lets you.  The “Benedictine” is a very limited option; I doubt it is a useful model for non-celibates.  And for all your understandable motives, the Church remains in the world, and is meant to be so, and be a leaven within it.

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    @ScottWilmot

    Katie: so the New Evangelization the past 2 popes spoke about and that Pope Francis lives daily is a waste of time? I don’t buy your pessimism on this. After my son’s wedding this summer and seeing the Catholic witness he and his bride bring into the world I have great hope for their generation. The moral and religions consensus in our generation may be lost, but not in theirs. 

    katievs: I do think we’ve come to the end of the American Experiment.

    The moral and religious consensus it depends on is gone, and without a gigantic religious revival, we won’t get it back.  

    It’s too late. · 3 hours ago

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    @OdinGray

    When Rod Dreher shows up, it’s time to opt out of Ricochet

    • #5
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    @katievs
    Scott Wilmot: Katie: so the New Evangelization the past 2 popes spoke about and that Pope Francis lives daily is a waste of time? I don’t buy your pessimism on this. After my son’s wedding this summer and seeing the Catholic witness he and his bride bring into the world I have great hope for their generation. The moral and religions consensus in our generation may be lost, but not in theirs. 

    The New Evangelization is about the gospel, not the American Experiment!

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    @ScottWilmot

    Yeah I know, but you said that the moral and religious consensus the experiment depends on is gone, and that is what the new evangelization is meant to confront.

    katievs

    Scott Wilmot: Katie: so the New Evangelization the past 2 popes spoke about and that Pope Francis lives daily is a waste of time? I don’t buy your pessimism on this. After my son’s wedding this summer and seeing the Catholic witness he and his bride bring into the world I have great hope for their generation. The moral and religions consensus in our generation may be lost, but not in theirs. 

    The New Evangelization is about the gospel, not the American Experiment. · 0 minutes ago

    • #7
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    @katievs
    Scott Wilmot: Yeah I know, but you said that the moral and religious consensus the experiment depends on is gone, and that is what the new evangelization is meant to confront.

    Well, yes. But there’s nothing incompatible between having hope for the New Evangelization and not having hope for the American Experiment.

    As I said, I think it’s too late to save that, absent a gigantic religious revival.  And even then, I think it unlikely. A religiously neutral form of government won’t stand against the twin onslaughts of atheistic materialism and radical Islam.

    I have no worries at all about the future of the Church. I have no doubt that Catholicism will thrive, and that new modes of Christian living and human governance will emerge from the rubble of our civilization.

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    @CrowsNest

    Pseudodionysius, call your office.

    • #9
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    @JMaestro

    Also realize: every household is, to some extent at least, a separate peace. Or should be.

    The call to evangelization is compelling, though. As is the call to separatism.

    I think our side has been far too reluctant to utilize economic boycott. Why?

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    @JMaestro

    I accept the premise. The question is no longer “whether” the question is “how.”

    I submit that Ricochet itself is a sort of voluntary community that enables a form of exchange not otherwise supported by pop culture. But it’s hard to see how such a dynamic could translate into other areas of the everyday living.

    Subsistence is a challenge who renounces the use of government money (and alas we would have to — so many strings are tied to its use.)

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    @Guruforhire

    bitcoin.

    • #12
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    @Casey

    Have you ever gotten smacked by an ocean wave, pulled down by the undertow, and for a brief moment found yourself unsure which way was up? Reading this was a bit like that. In a good way.

    • #13
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    @DelMarDave

    If anybody locates Galt’s Gulch, please call me.

    • #14
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    @CrowsNest

    ~Paules (or Mugwumps nowadays) call your office.

    • #15
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    @Spin

    I humbly suggest that Ricochet is no echo chamber.  It’s a Benedict Chamber.  Another example are the small groups that many evangelical churches have established as the main form of Christian fellowship.  

    From the Christian perspective, it is important to realize that we are no longer Christians among Jews.  Rather we are Christians among Greeks.  That is to say, we are no longer living among people who recognize who God is and long to follow His way, and simply need a nudge.  We are living among people who value something altogether different than God.  They simply do not accept the authority of God in the world.  It’s not “Hey, you love God, so follow this way.”  It’s “I know you don’t believe there is a God, so let me tell you why I do.”  Christians fail to reach out to a lost and dying world because they fail to realize that this world does not know who God is.

    • #16
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    @ZinMT

    You could say that the home school movement is a start of this sort of option.

    However, I don’t think we should give up the fight just yet.  If Egypt, Turkey, and Iran can go from largely secular almost European societies 80 years ago to the fundamentalist Muslim societies they are (or becoming) today, than maybe the US can return to a traditional Judeo-Christian morality.

    If and when the [expletive] hits the fan on our unsustainable debt, community trust networks (i.e. churches, common moral values and traditions) will become much more important to economic success, which will lead our society back to a more traditional culture.

    Basically, this is Kevin Williamson’s thesis in “The End is Near: and It is going to be Awesome”.

    Peter, please get Kevin Williamson onto Uncommon Knowledge.

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    @JMaestro
    Z in MT: If Egypt, Turkey, and Iran can go from largely secular almost European societies 80 years ago to the fundamentalist Muslim societies they are (or becoming) today, than maybe the US can return to a traditional Judeo-Christian morality.

    I certainly hope for that but I’m not confident. Fundamentalist Islam was/is a political project just as much as it is a religion. And its wanton resort to coercion is… noted.

    If anything, I see a fundamentalism emerging here already: secularism. Think of the HHS rules, the arguments made in support, the practical outcomes. Distinguish any of that from what “islamophobes” call dhimmitude.

    The problem with retreating into a Coptic ghetto is… then they know where to find you.

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    @Pseudodionysius

    On October 13th, 2013 my Ricochet membership expires. I am already preparing my Benedict option and a review of my comments will show I’ve used the Benedict quote often in the past. I leave you with the words of the late John Senior:

    “The crisis is over; we have lost. This is no longer just a prediction, it is a simple observation: Rome has been desecrated. We are in the age of darkness. Triumphalist reactions are in vain. The modern world and the Church deserve the punishment that God is raining down on us.

    Qui aures habet auriendi audiat.

    Farewell, everyone. I will keep you all in my prayers. Please keep me in yours.

    • #19
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    @Casey

    Might our economic divisions represent some sort of Benedictization? Those who adhere to certain codes of conduct achieve some material reward for their behavior and then tend to associate at that level?

    • #20
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    @ASquared

    Who is John Galt?

    • #21
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    @

    Perhaps I am a bit cynical tonight, with the on-going Obamacare and fiscal crisis, but I do not see how the Benedict option will work with the semi-omnipotent state.

    –  “It’s great you’re living in material poverty and spiritual joy, but where is your mandated health insurance?”

    • #22
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    @JMaestro

    Or are we really contemplating a “when in the course of human events” moment?

    Wherever we retreat to, we will need to govern ourselves. Mustn’t we first dissolve the existing bands? Explicitly? A document?

    • #23
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    @Fredosphere

    Anyone interested in pursuing this should look at the history of the Word of God Community in Ann Arbor, Michigan. (But be careful which historical sources you trust.) Much can be learned about what good and ill might be achieved by lay persons pursuing a fairly radical counter-community which stops well short of monastic separation. If you want to know about my personal knowledge of this group, send me a message.

    From what I’ve seen, separatism is a high-risk, high-reward strategy.

    • #24
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    @ScottWilmot

    I think I prefer Benedict XVI’s creative minority option whereby to be an active Catholic is a choice rather than a matter of social conformity. This means practicing Catholics will be active believers because they have chosen and want to live the Church’s teaching. These people won’t secede from mainstream culture and leave the public square naked but will jump at the chance when it comes to debating controversial public questions.

    I think Samuel Gregg makes a better case than Rod Dreher.

    • #25
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    @iWe

    Pseudo – Is it something we said? We don’t want you to go!

    If we really are in descent of this magnitude, then communities like Ricochet are going to become ever more important as coordination and mutual support become essential.

    • #26
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    @Fredosphere

    It also bears noting that the home school movement functions as a locus for Benedictine withdrawal, and on levels that go beyond educational. The movement is growing and can now be stopped only by draconian means that secular society would not presently be willing to exercise. (In the U.S., that is. Northern Europe is another story.) Benedict’s disciples are on the march.

    • #27
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    @Fredosphere
    iWc: Pseudo – Is it something we said? We don’t want you to go!

    If we really are in descent of this magnitude, then communities like Ricochet are going to become ever more important as coordination and mutual support become essential. · 4 minutes ago

    Ditto that. Why will your dropping out require you to deprive us of your wit and wisdom? Are you going completely off-grid?

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    @MerinaSmith

    Someone earlier mentioned Mormons and Amish.  These are examples of religious groups that live in the nation but have their own thriving communities.  Of course, Mormons more than Amish live in ordinary society.  My children are grown now, but if they were small, I would not put them in schools here in CA, but I would in Utah or Idaho, heavily Mormon states.  Things are just different and more sane there.  It’s an example of how local values affect local institutions, and I don’t see why this can’t be true in other places.  The left, of course, with its tyrannical tendencies, wants to smash such diversity (oh the irony) but I don’t think they will be as successful as they hope.  Dreher has long said that localism and federalism are our friends.  I think he is right about this.  

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    @Casey
    Pseudodionysius: On October 13th, 2013 my Ricochet membership expires. I am already preparing my Benedict option …

    Farewell, everyone. I will keep you all in my prayers. Please keep me in yours.

    Whatchoo talkin’ ’bout, Willis?

    • #30
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