Rod Dreher: What is the Benedict Option?

a lot of sense so but you mentioned the Benedict option so you published that at 2017 and you've been working on that for a while that Benedict option said well in a way I've been working on it since around 2004 because I've been blogging since around that time my first book came out in 2006 called crunchy cons and it was more political and religion but at they at the end of the added a new ending to the paperback edition of crunchy cons where I talked about Alistair McIntyre the philosopher who wrote in 1981 I think it was in his book after virtue he talks about the collapse of a sense of common common morality or a common basis for moral reasoning in our society post enlightenment and he said famously MacIntyre did that our time is a lot like the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West and we await a new and doubtless very different st. Benedict what he meant was someone who a figure who was charismatic but also could come up with a way of living out the faith that made made it resilient in a time of great chaos and turmoil that gave a still place a solid place a defensible place within which the traditions of the faith can survive this time of turmoil well that really appealed to me as a journalist who wrote about the columns about the news and about political conflict cultural conflict religious conflict I could see that MacIntyre was on to something and I began to wonder as far back as 2006 2005 2006 what would st. Benedict today have to say to Christians and I blogged about it for many years and finally wrote a book that's great well you will you just give us a summary of what the Benedict option is what is the Benedict option well the Benedict option is a choice that I think all Christians who are small o Orthodox about what I mean it's those who believe that we are called as individuals to orient ourselves to the objective transcendent truth that we know through the Bible and depending on our particular traditions through the structure of the church and what I mean by small Orthodox is I have more in common as an Eastern Orthodox Christian with Southern Baptist and with Catholics despite our differences and our very real differences if these Southern Baptists and Catholics believe that we can't make it up as we go along we believers then we then those Christians and I are already set apart from liberals within our own traditions you know who believe that we can the tradition should be reinterpreted to suit current felt needs well I believe that the smaller Orthodox Christians all of us are on the losing side of the culture right now and that we are going to have to see ourselves as a people in exile and I bring up Saint Benedict here Benedict of Nursia was a holy man born in the year for 84 years after the final Roman Emperor in the West abdicated he was a Christian Benedict was raised in the mountains by faithful parents went down to the city of Rome to finish his education around the Year 500 Rome was ruled barbarian King Benedict saw all the moral chaos there and said if I stay here I risk losing my faith so he set out for the woods he lived in a cave prayed fasted read Scripture and prayed for God to lead him when he came out he became an abbot they invited him to be the head of a religious community he eventually wrote his famous rule st. Benedict's rule which is just a guidebook for how to live in a monastery he called a monastery the school for the Lord's service and I remember thinking when I read the rule that it was going to be a book of mystical knowledge from in the early Middle Ages it wasn't it's just I don't live in a monastery but there's a lot of spiritual depth hidden there because these rules were all about how to order a life around the constant pursuit of the Lord and how to live a disciplined life and to inculcate the search for God into daily life so the Benedict option as you finished after that Prelude I think that we Christians have a decision to make either we are going to continue to live in this post Christian world a world where Christ the the gospel narrative is not how we understand ourselves collectively if we continue to live in the world as if nothing were wrong we are at risk of losing our faith exactly as young Benedict thought he would if he stayed in Rome at the time but if we take the Benedict option if we choose to step outside and form communities in which we can be educated in our faith and not only educated but discipled in the faith then we might stand a chance of surviving and I what the bit addiction is not is let's head for the hills let's live in monasteries monasteries are built for monks and nuns not for laypeople we are called to live in the world but if we are going to live faithfully in the world then we have to spend a certain amount of time away from that world holding on to what we've been given studying our tradition praying fasting and building communal bonds because if we don't we're not going to make it that's the radical choice that we have to make now but just going along to get along or pretending that this thing might pass us by it's not going to happen we have got to act now if our children and our grandchildren and future generations if they're going to have a Christian faith lastly the reason that st. Benedict's example is so important Benedict only did was set out to build monasteries establish communities where vowed Christians could live in community and learn to serve God he died the year 547 when he died there were he had left behind maybe 1213 monasteries what he could not have foreseen is what God did with his work over the next few centuries movements spread like wildfire throughout Western Europe now remember Western Europe was lawless it was a place of barbarian tribes and fighting and chaos but the Benedictines slowly slowly moved across Western Europe building their communities civilizing the place cleaning things up preaching the gospel and helping the local people to learn things about the art of living that they had forgotten when Rome collapsed and eventually they laid the groundwork for the rebirth of civilization I think that's our task now we're not going to save the world we're not going to make make Rome great again make America great again but what we can do is be faithful where God has planted us and create these small islands of light and order and the love of God and use that to build out what from there you

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Length: 7min 40sec (460 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 22 2020