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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?
Published in General
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Now, let Republicans advocate for “Real_Choice”. Of two governments, each person chooses one to affiliate with. Once a year, maybe at tax time. Republicans pay the flat or slightly progressive, simple income tax, and the Demons get to keep (and pay for) their Obamacare. Etc. What’s_wrong with_such_a_world?
Nothing wrong with it. It just won’t happen. The Left requires our participation. It will never leave us alone. ·1 hour ago
Amen. The Benedict option is not an option, alas.
Opting out is not, I believe, an option. In time, they will come for us. If we do not fight, home-schooling will soon be outlawed. In France, early in the 20th century, the monasteries were forcibly closed, and the land was taken.
I have spent time at the Abbey Rod Dreher mentions. I have been there twice — on Holy Thursday, on one occasion. It is perfect for those who have the vocation. But for others withdrawal is just another word for surrender — which is what folks on the right do best, alas.
We can shield ourselves from the culture, but we can never abandon it to itself except in the most extreme case (I’m thinking Cuba, NK, USSR, etc.) I live less than 20 miles from Seattle (as the crow flies), but I am a world away from it culturally. ·9 minutes ago
Our everyday interactions with society are being micromanaged by people who cannot (will not?) recognize the moral flaws inherent to the tyrannies that ruled Cuba, USSR, NK, etc.
On the contrary, Democrats are more likely to be apologists for those regimes. Or they’ll play their moral equivalence games.
No. What we are seeing is a mild foretaste of what that tyranny looks like.
And, it will not go away if we simply pretend that it will. Only a people who can see the difference, and resist it, will ever see the tyranny die.
History goes in phases. The stupid things that have held sway in the past astound us now. In the future, the priorities of now will astound everyone. Conservatives are those who stick to the basics of a meaningful life through thick and thin. God and the Bible–in other words, meaning and wisdom– are what have given humans continuity for a long time and will continue to do so when the current phase is long gone. ·1 hour ago
We agree with your hope that the Third Great Awakening can happen, but the Founders understood that history is not a cycle. Western Judeo-Christian civilization is built on the understanding that history is linear. It is the continuing story of man following the truth, or interrupted when man denies truth and once again lives a lie.
We are in the lie now, and there is no natural cycle to pull is out.
God can.
…Progressives do not believe in the same things we do. Nor are their aims the same.
Exactly why I am devoting my reading to the history of Progressivism. I have completed significant slices of The Progressive Revolution in Politics and Political Science, edited by John Marini and Ken Masugi and highly recommend it to all. Together with Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism, you’d have a good primer on the subject.
If you don’t understand, properly define and analyze your enemy (yes…enemy ), you have no hope of crafting a strategy to defeat him.
P.S. to WC, raycon/lindacon and The Mugwump: See you in COS soon.
I am generally of the mind that I am going to keep 1 month of liquidity and my operating expenses in the US and when feasible offshore everything else into a series of index funds of overseas markets.
The logical result of separate societies is, eventually, separate countries. Which isn’t a bad idea. I don’t have jack-squat in common with a San Franciscan that wants gay marriage and the government to be our mommy and daddy. And they certainly have nothing in common with me.
Beautiful point.
I’m not too inspired by the “material poverty” ingredient in this stew. Why would a conservative give up his earned wealth? Anyway, this solution is community oriented. So, the prospects for another form of governmental organization is anticipated. Risky! Let’s say the battle has been lost. OK, so drop out – on your own. Just don’t play.
“We pledge our lives, our treasure and our sacred honor”
We are lesser men if we cannot join their pledge.
Someone beat me to the Duck Dynasty reference, but let me expand on it in a moment. In the environment many of us grew up in, the revivals of Billy Graham & others were a reminder and a call, back to what we knew was true, but had let wither. Today, the fundamental assumption of the commanding heights of culture is that God doesn’t exist, or if He does, what He thinks about something doesn’t matter.
We weren’t called to be isolated from our culture; we are called to infect it. How am I going to share in God’s primary mission, the winning back of men & women to Himself, if I cut myself off from them to protect myself & my family?
I referenced Duck Dynasty earlier; in addition to being an obviously commercial venture, on some level, the show is a subversively effective tool of evangelism. Ordinary people (who are a lot smarter than they let on, by the way) enjoying life and showing others that life with Christ is anything but boring, but fun, otherly and real. They make fun of each other, but would willingly sacrifice anything for each other. (cont)
(continued from #76)
Christians need to be in community with one another, for our own health and because real ministry happens in community. We all get weird if left on our own. The DD crew has had anything but a cakewalk through life, like most of us. They came through it, with each other and with God’s help.
It really does come down to my attitude toward others; do I love them enough to invest time and emotional resource (and risk getting wounded), or do I look to simply protect my own & hold on to what I have? I say this to myself first of all, because I need to get better at being in community.
Believe me, I understand the impulse to withdraw. What is going on in our society makes us scream, shake our heads & say “what’s the use?” But God didn’t call us to withdraw; He called us to be in the world, but not of it.
Why did the Sword of the Spirit and like communities all over the place fail? Because there are no such vows with their accompanying grace, and when human beings try to design “intentional communities,” what they usually end up designing is a cult.
Precisely. Absolutely. This is an incredibly important thing to realize. There is a huge, huge danger in trying to set up this kind of community. Usually, the communities fall back on ever-increasing complex rules and legalism, and on weird authoritarian power structures, to try to deal with their members’ sinful natures, and disaster follows.
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.
I just have to say that I had trouble falling asleep last night, after having had a very happy and productive day. But there was something wrong, a nagging sense of things not right in the world. After consideration, I figured out that it was this–Pseudo’s saying he was leaving us.
Pseudo, I simply cannot believe that you are being called to give up your engagement with the world and in particular the way you engage it through this forum. Lots of people here depend on your wit and your wisdom, and you have an impact on the spiritual lives of countless people by posting here.
Please don’t go. You are very sorely needed.
…There is a huge, huge danger in trying to set up this kind of community. Usually, the communities fall back on ever-increasing complex rules and legalism, and on weird authoritarian power structures, to try to deal with their members’ sinful natures, and disaster follows. ·3 minutes ago
Heh, that description very neatly fits the Great Progressive Experiment we want so much to escape.
But I do agree every community risks lapsing into a similar malaise. Gotta get the ground-rules right. In fact, that’s all we really want from our Progressive Overlords: fair ground-rules.
First, Pseud: You are our Amos/Hosea/Jeremiah/Ezekiel – and our Ezra and Nehemiah after we enter exile…Where will we be without our prophet?!
Second, I feel a powerful call both to prayer and engagement/encouragement for those at the barricades; to be leaven to the young people in my ambit. Opting out is most definitely not an option for me…Ricochet has made my world larger and deepened my curiosity; I no longer feel alone and powerless. Thanks, All!
Peter, many people are already there. I cannot count the number of my friends who have opted out of ‘popular culture’ – they no longer listen to the broadcast news or watch prime time tv (in real time). The home school movement is expanding dramatically and preppers get their own TV show.
It is a matter of degree, but the tectonic shift is very much underway.
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. ·5 hours ago
Really? Are there still a lot of Christians who fail to see this?
It’s been fairly obvious to me my whole life that serious Christians are a minority, that most people in our culture view religion as a quaint collection of old fairy tales that teach a moral lesson, like Aesop’s Fables.
That others are not aware of this, or are in denial, surprises me.
It’s quite a common response to After Virtue to find MacIntyre’s diagnosis compelling, while wishing to resist his prescription. So it’s an important question whether it’s possible to accept MacIntyre’s claims about what ails our moral and political culture while resisting the conclusion that the appropriate response is to take “the Benedict Option.”
Part of the difficulty of answering that question is figuring out what the Benedict Option even amounts to. I don’t think it’s fair to characterize it as “opting out” or creating insulated groups that are wholly separate from larger society, but I do think it’s clear that MacIntyre envisages it as involving a reorientation to the local. This is MacIntyre talking to Giovanna Borradori, some years after the publication of After Virtue:
“Large-scale politics has become barren… Attempts to reform the political systems of modernity from within are always transformed into collaborations with them. Attempts to overthrow them always degenerate into terrorism or quasi terrorism. What is not thus barren is the politics involved in constructing and sustaining local communities, at the level of the family, the neighborhood, the workplace, the parish, the school, or clinic.”
Why does an actual Benedictine Abby work? Because of their religious vows (of poverty, chastity, obedience and stability) and the divine grace that goes with them.
Why did the Sword of the Spirit and like communities all over the place fail? Because there are no such vows with their accompanying grace, and when human beings try to design “intentional communities,” what they usually end up designing is a cult.
I speak as someone who shares all Rod’s cravings in that direction, and who has seen a lot of honest attempts go badly wrong.
I’m not yet sure it’s impossible. But pretty close. That is, until societal collapse really comes. Then new, smaller communities will form naturally, out of necessity.
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.
The Founders did not found a religiously neutral government. They founded a government which recognized the religious nature of man as an individual private decision.
As Christians we are not brought into the Kingdom of God as a corporate body, we are invited as individuals to enter his Kingdom. This decision is that of the individual, and God offers no pronouncements against the person who has yet to make that decision. He woos that person’s soul to Himself.
The Founders set up a government that was for people at all stages of religious development. Those who believe. Those who reject. Those who have yet to decide. Every nation has this mix of souls, and government must serve or rule over all.
That is not a religious government, which must fail or become a tyrant.
No other options.
Thank you, Pseudodionysius. I know some of Hittinger’s work but I hadn’t come across that lecture. I’ll be sure to take a look. And thank you Crow’s Nest, for the Manent recommendation. I know that MacIntyre admires Manent, and I’m sure he wouldn’t be surprised if Manent can help us in thinking about where we go from here, in part by helping us understand how we got here in the first place.
Katie, like Pomocons and EasternStraussians, you assume the Lockean possessive individualism of the Founding wasdestined to end up in materialism/hedonism, crystallized in smarmy finance capitalism of WallStreet (essentially money changers who don’t create anything).
I don’t assume it was destined to end up so, I only note that it has.
Nothing wrong with that. But it doesn’t touch either point I wanted to make:
1) That the American experiment depends for its success on a religious and moral consensus that no longer exists.
2) That a religiously neutral government lacks the wherewithal to resist the modern aggressions of atheistic materialism and radical Islam.
Where does this come from and how is this to the point?
I didn’t mention Jefferson’s wall of separation, never mind dismiss it.
For the record, I favor with all my heart the separation of Church and State.
Oh, Paul, I wish I didn’t believe you were right, but I do. To my very bones I do.
Since there are clearly a number of Ricochetti who are interested in MacIntyre’s work and sympathetic to his perspective, I thought I’d share the concluding paragraph from his inaugural lecture at the University of Notre Dame (delivered in 1989 and published the following year in the Review of Politics):
“As to whether we can even contrive a reopening of genuine public debate about rival conceptions of the good in contemporary America, let alone bring such a debate to an effective conclusion, the evidence, as I understand it, suggests that we ought to be as deeply pessimistic as is compatible with a belief in Divine Providence. But as to that remaking of ourselves and our own local practices and institutions through a better understanding of what it is that… the unity of moral theory and practice now require of us, we have as much to hope for as we have to do…”
From Pope Francis’s home archdiocese of Buenos Aires:
Katie, it’s clear from discussion, to which I’ve linked above at #83, that you have a big problem with with the fulcrum of the American Founding: the privatizing of religion or faith. And you’ve made clear you think the American Experiment has been a failure. So “destined” quibbling is semantics.
You’re whole-heartedly for the separation of Church and State. I’d never have doubted you believe that. You’re only confused about that separation’s meaning — again, Jaffa’s 2nd Chapter of New Birth, the magisterial, non plus ultra meditation thereupon. I took pains to explain in three comments the distilled meaning of that chapter. Here’s another: separation of C/S just is the privatizing of Christianity, so as not confuse the universal with the particular, for the sake of creating a particular people. The social contract excludes the rest of humanity. (The Church’s position on illegal immigration, for eg, is abysmal). Your humanism/feminism is at odds with manly self-reliance: ie, the superiority — which you rejected — of the self-reliant Lockean-Protestant framework necessary for the emergence of American liberty, and the sustenance of American/Western liberty in general.
Why did the Sword of the Spirit and like communities all over the place fail? Because there are no such vows with their accompanying grace, and when human beings try to design “intentional communities,” what they usually end up designing is a cult.
Precisely. Absolutely. This is an incredibly important thing to realize. There is a huge, huge danger in trying to set up this kind of community. Usually, the communities fall back on ever-increasing complex rules and legalism […]. ·6 hours ago
I’m a little confused by these comments. Are you referring to this Sword of the Spirit? (I was once a member, btw.) And how does it work that if a community lacks vows, it ends up as a cult? The Sword of the Spirit had significant problems but this is the first time anyone said a lack of vows one of them. Or maybe you’re thinking of vows of a particular kind. Please elucidate.