The Benedict Option at the dawn of a new ‘Dark Age’

Rod Dreher is convinced that America, indeed the whole project of modernity, is doomed, and he thought this long before Donald Trump took up tweeting or occasional residence in the White House.

Mar 23, 2017

By Paul Baumann
Rod Dreher is convinced that America, indeed the whole project of modernity, is doomed, and he thought this long before Donald Trump took up tweeting or occasional residence in the White House.

Trump is the least of our problems, he assures us.

In The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation, Dreher insists that a “flood of secularism,” bringing with it a tsunami of sexual libertinism, is destroying the family and ushering in the new Dark Ages.

In response to the collapse of the Roman civilisation in the sixth century, St Benedict established monasticism, preserving the faith from the barbarian hordes. Dreher thinks proponents of liberalism, moral relativism, heedless consumerism and, of course “political correctness” are the new Visigoths, and pose a similar threat to the faith today.

He goes further. It is time for “orthodox” lay Christians — and he won’t tolerate much shilly-shallying about what “orthodox” means — to form intentional communities that are separated in significant ways from the moral contagion of the larger culture.

These communities will be family-centred (naturally) and, presumably in some cases, economically self-sustaining (good luck with that). They will most likely be anchored to a church or, perhaps, gathered around a monastery. (Dreher is smitten by monks, whose sage prophecies of doom he seems to take at face value.)

Traditional Christian practices of worship and communal cooperation, based on St Benedict’s Rule, will structure everyday life. Children will be home-schooled or sent to Christian academies and thus protected from our toxic popular culture and the state’s malign meddling regarding sexual morality.

This is necessary, Dreher writes, because American society has abandoned, and the federal government is now openly hostile to, biblical Christianity and, especially, traditional sexual morality. Drastic action is required.--La Croix

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