There’s something very right about Rod Dreher’s call to action in The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation. He urges us to ask if we have “compromised too much with the world” and suggests ways to renew the integrity of our religious communities. Yet there’s also something wrong. A rhetoric of crisis runs through The Benedict Option. The dire picture of our present challenges is likely to confuse Christians rather than help us discern the way forward.

Dreher is a journalist who has perfected the art of blogging. On the American Conservative website, he gathers material from a wide range of sources, quoting them liberally while interposing sharp comments and observations of his own. Reader comments are integrated into his commentary in an authentic give-and-take. The upshot is something unique on the web: an ongoing seminar led by a kinetic, engaged teacher who brings urgency and enthusiasm to his subject.

Arresting images and memorable monikers are Dreher’s strong suit. In the early 2000s, he recognized that young conservatives are less and less likely to be middle-American Rotarians. They don’t like Big Box stores and chain restaurants. Many share with progressives an interest in organic lettuce, free-range chicken, and locally produced cheese. He pulled together these and other threads in Crunchy Cons, published in 2006.

Dreher was on to something, and “crunchy con” entered our lexicon, a testimony to Dreher’s talent for minting a memorable phrase. The same is true for “Benedict Option,” which Dreher draws from the much-quoted ending of Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue that foresees a new Dark Age and our need for a “another—doubtless very different—St. Benedict.” It’s impossible to keep up with the debates about the Benedict Option. That’s not just because Dreher has pressed its adoption with unflagging regularity for a number of years (so much so that James K. A. Smith has characterized Dreher’s project as an ongoing campaign to promote brand recognition—BenOp™). We all sense that the social context for Christian faith and practice is changing in America, and in the West more broadly, and we know we need to decide what it means to be the Church today.

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