Reading About Rod Dreher’s Benedict Option (Part I)

(Part I: pp. 1-78.)

Of all the reviews I’ve read thus far, only Joshua Rothman’s profile in The New Yorker last month of Rod Dreher and his latest book The Benedict Option: a Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation (2017, NY: Sentinel) explained the context of the book in its relation to his previous ones.

There has been much criticism, most of it unfair, about the book. Perhaps because:

“It is the talent of our age and nation to turn things of the greatest importance into ridicule.”

—Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)[1]

And:

“The world is ashamed of being virtuous.”

—Laurence Sterne (1713-1768) [2]

Or maybe I’m being overly sympathetic toward Dreher and not enough toward the criticism of him because:

“Almost nothing is inherently miserable, unless you think it is.”

—Boethius (480-524 AD) [3]

And:

“We identify ourselves with the under dog, just as we always think of ourselves as more oppressed than oppressing.”

—Gilbert Murray (1866-1957) [4]

So there is no need for me to engage in a typical book review, which I have no habit and little experience of doing anyway, because, in  general, I believe:

“Every man, as a member of the commonwealth, ought to be content with the possession of his own opinion in private, without perplexing his neighbour or disturbing the public.”

–Jonathan Swift[5]

Instead I can only compare Dreher’s book to thing’s I’ve recently read, including the above-mentioned criticism.

In his summary of Christian history in the West, Dreher mentions:

“The [Protestant] Reformers quickly discovered that casting off Rome’s authority solved one problem but created another.” [6]

And I wonder: if the Benedict Option does indeed solve the problem it states in its subtitle, will solving that problem simply create other problems? For often when we think we’ve solved one of society’s problems, all we’ve done is pass the buck and given ourselves a new set of problems. Perhaps we’re enchanted by the novelty of new problems, but on the other hand, there is no such thing as a problem-free life. So an arresting question begins to emerge early in the book and it is a question of balance. It has something to do with Emersonian compensation:

For every grain of wit there is a grain of folly. For every thing you have missed, you have gained something else; and for every thing you gain, you lose something….

There is always some levelling circumstance that puts down the overbearing, the strong, the rich, the fortunate, substantially on the same ground with all others….

There is a crack in every thing God has made. It would seem, there is always this vindictive circumstance stealing in at unawares, even into the wild poesy in which the human fancy attempted to make bold holiday, and to shake itself free of the old laws, — this back-stroke, this kick of the gun, certifying that the law is fatal; that in nature nothing can be given, all things are sold….

We cannot stay amid the ruins. Neither will we rely on the new.[7]

If the Benedict Option succeeds in rebelling against modernity[8] (something daring, audacious, and ambitious enough for at least some non-Christians to perhaps champion for their own interests), what will the counterbalance be? Resentment? Respect? Utter apathy? Intrigue?

More thoughts on the book to come.

UPDATE: See “Reading About Rod Dreher’s Benedict Option (Part II).”

NOTES

[1] Swift, Jonathan. “Vindication of Isaac Bickerstaff.” 1709. Jonathan Swift – Major Works. NY: Oxford World Classics. Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Angus Ross and David Woolley. 1984. p. 216.

[2] Sterne, Laurence. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. 1756–1767. NY: Oxford World Classics. Edited by Ian Campbell Ross. 1983. 1998.  VIII, xxvii, p. 468.

[3] Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Consolation of Philosophy 524 A.D. Translated by David R. Slavitt. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP. 2008.  II, iv, prose, (2008) p. 40.

[4] Murray, Gilbert. The Classical Tradition in Poetry. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1927. p. 61.

[5] Swift, Apothegms and Maxims [from Journal to Stella] Jonathan Swift – Major Works. p. 185.

[6] Dreher, Rod. The Benedict Option: a Strategy for Christian in a Post-Christian Nation. NY: Sentinel. 2017. p. 32.

[7] Emerson, “Compensation,” Essays: First Series. Boston, MA. 1841.

[8] Dreher writes:

Young men taking up a tradition of prayer, liturgy, and ascetic communal life that dates back to the early church—and doing so with such evident joy? It’s not supposed to happen in these times. But here they are: a sin of contradiction to modernity. (The Benedict Option p. 76)