The Benedict Option - A Review

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Rod Dreher’s 2017 book, The Benedict Option: A Strategy of Christians in a Post-Christian Nation, caused quite a stir when it was published. It was reviewed both favorably and unfavorably. Dreher defended his position at The American Conservative, the magazine website he is the editor of, vocally and often. There were points in the public discussion that it wasn’t clear that everyone who was criticizing the book had read the same thing.

The Benedict Option is an idea borrowed from the monastic order that descended from St. Benedict. Dreher drew the idea that a resurgence of a Benedictine ethos would be beneficial from Alistair McIntyre’s seminal work, After Virtue.

Dreher, formerly a Roman Catholic, who has migrated to the Eastern Orthodox faith, sees a separatist community as the path forward in resisting the corrosive effects of our post-Christian culture.

Strengths

It is clear that Dreher has a good understanding of the problems with Western culture. It isn’t that one thing or another is the big problem. For example, sexual immorality in its various forms as celebrated by our culture, is not the main problem with our world. Or, perhaps more clearly, it is not unique to our culture.

The unique aspect of our culture is how relentlessly intrusive the anti-Christian influences are. Before the digital age keeping your kids from pornography was largely a function of not buying dirty magazines and reasonably screening their time at a friend’s house away from the family. Now pornography is streaming down the same digital pipeline as the cute, if inane, videos about making pretty bracelets or surviving in the wilderness.

Dreher recognizes that even if parents put a filter on their home internet and monitor usage carefully, the vast majority of the parents in the community have given their child their own digital device with unfettered access to whatever the internet might offer. The only way to keep you kids safe (that is, to preserve them in some condition of relative innocence) is to form a contrast community that has agreed upon norms to help protect the group.

Another strength of Dreher’s vision is that, if implemented, it would give Christians the opportunity to practice authentic community in ways that are exceedingly difficult in our dis-integrated modern world. The Benedict Option would require intentional re-integration of life, neighborliness, and humanity. There is something strongly attractive about the move toward a more conscientious observation of the creational order.

Weaknesses

Although the vision Dreher presents are attractive and do seem to answer many of the contemporary, the Benedict Option is not without its difficulties. Many of these were made apparent during the period after the release of the book, when the roiling rage of reviews threatened to swamp the Christian blogosphere. Many of Dreher’s critics seemed to misread his book, exaggerating his claims. However, there are some legitimate points of criticism.

Most significantly, this book makes much less sense read independently than it does when read as a sequel to Dreher’s 2006 book, The Crunchy Con Manifesto. That book gives a better sense of what Dreher’s desired cloister might look like. In fact, looking back at many of the reviews of The Benedict Option, much of the criticism of the book seems to be based on assumptions about the nature of Dreher’s vision for community, which is spelled out much more clearly in his earlier book. Putting the two books together also makes it clearer that Dreher’s book is not merely a reaction to the infamous Obergefell decision, but a rejection of the broader tendencies of modernity.

As a second significant weakness, Dreher’s Benedict Option seems to give little place for evangelistic missions. It seems to point toward bolstering the bastions rather than sending out emissaries for Christ. Dreher clearly does not deny the importance of evangelism, but the theme is largely absent from his work. Taken in combination with his Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, the failure to discuss this important duty of Christians warrants concern by missions-oriented Protestants.

Conclusion

If you’ve not read The Benedict Option and have formed your opinions about the book from the internet chatter about it, then you’ve likely drawn the wrong conclusions. Dreher posits an idea, which I think deserves a hearing, even if it needs significant modification to be applied. The best thing about Dreher’s Benedict Option is that it offers a positive conception of life as it should be to discuss and strive for. In a world where Christian culture tends to mimic and act as slow-moving revolutionaries, Dreher offers something different.

It may be work quoting a couple of paragraphs of The Benedict Option to give a sense of the work in Dreher’s own words:

The Benedict Option is not a technique for reversing the losses, political and otherwise, that Christians have suffered. It is not a strategy for turning back the clock to an imagined golden age. Still less is it a plan for constructing communities of the pure, cut off from the real world.

To the contrary, the Benedict Option is a call to undertaking the long and patient work of reclaiming the real world from the artifice, alienation, and atomization of modern life. It is a way of seeing the world and of living in the world that undermines modernity’s big lie: that humans are nothing more than ghosts in a machine, and we are free to adjust its settings in any way we like.

There is some wisdom in what Dreher outlines. It is worth considering his plan of action to determine if we can formulate a better one.

God and Galileo - A Review

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The legend of Galileo’s scientific rebellion against the faith has grown to enormous levels. It is a mainstay myth in the legendarium of modern culture: The Church rejected science, so Galileo chose science over the church.

It’s a common story that I heard growing up, but it is wrong.

David Block and Kenneth Freeman have written a thoroughly engaging book that works through the faith/science question in light of a letter that Galileo wrote a Letter to the Grand Duchess Christian of Tuscany.

Like most of the time when you actually read the primary sources, it quickly becomes apparent that the grade school history book account of Galileo and the Church, faith and science is dramatically different than what was portrayed.

God and Galileo: What a 400-Year-Old Letter Teaches Us About Faith and Science is an accessible, informative read on the faith/science dialogue, especially the particular history surrounding Galileo’s heliocentric model of the cosmos. As someone who has done a fair bit of reading on the topic before, I was thoroughly engrossed and thoroughly entertained by the account Block and Freeman give.

The book is divided into three parts. Part One has eight chapters. Part Two contains three. Part Three consists of two chapters. Helpfully, the book also includes an appendix, which contains the entire Letter to the Grand Duchess reprinted.

A detailed summary of each chapter would be wearisome, but the authors discuss important topics in the faith/science debate like the relationship between special and general revelation, the tenacity with which we hold our interpretations of Scripture about natural phenomena, and the errors of scientism. There are also several historical vignettes that enrich the discussion and help provide the backdrop to Galileo’s particular situation. These vignettes also reveal that although Galileo did not fair well, the reality is that Christendom adopted his position not long after his death and has even built some significant observatories for continuing astronomy in his legacy. The final two chapters of the book offer the testimonies of Blaise Pascal and David Block.

It’s hard to characterize this book simply, to put it into a clear category. Usually that is a criticism, but in the case of God and Galileo it is because the book does a great deal well. Are you seeking a resource to disrupt a materialist’s view that faith and science are mutually exclusive? This book can help do that. Are you interested in the contours of the faith and science debate as a Christian? This book will inform you. Are you looking for an enjoyable read for a quiet evening? This book offers it. Are you longing for a volume that encourages you to enjoy God through both his special and general revelation? This book calls you into a sense of wonder at both.

Block and Freeman have done excellently with this book. This is a volume that should get a wide audience and that bears re-reading. Two significant astronomers reflecting on the integration of faith and science would draw a huge crowd on the seminary campus or university. This book is like getting a series of those talks in a digestible written form.

NOTE: I was provided a gratis copy of this volume by the publisher with no expectation of a positive review.

The Gospel of Our King - A Review

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What are people for?

That is the question Bruce Ashford and Heath Thomas set out to answer in their book, The Gospel of Our King.

This book is another example of contemporary authors attempting to present the biblical storyline in a way that is fresh, innovative, and inspires appropriate action in response. Thomas and Ashford do quite well in their attempt.

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Books like The Gospel of Our King are part of an effort to counteract the dominance of the metanarratives of our culture. In the West we are taught that the world exists to meet our demands and serve our presence. We custom order t-shirts to bear our favorite messages, choose the facts we will be subjected to, and select every expression of our identities. This is the story of our world. But the contemporary story is a damaging one, because it drives us away from the truer, better story of Scripture. Unlike to world’s story, God’s story, as laid out in the Bible, is life giving and conforms with reality.

The book begins by outlining the grand story of Scripture in four movements. The first four chapters of the volume outline creation, fall, redemption, and restoration, respectively. These four movement describe the arc of God’s work from the beginning of time into the future. Having offered this summary of the movements within Scripture, Ashford and Thomas turn to providing definitions for commonly misused terms, which are essential to this discussion. Chapter Five defines worldview, gospel, and mission. The final four chapters look at how a gospel-formed mission, built on a Christian worldview, works itself out in theological, social, cultural and global dimensions. None of these four terms will surprise anyone who grew up in a sound, biblical church oriented toward getting the good news of Christ’s resurrection out to the world. However, the authors put some meat on the terms by arguing that the mission of God must remain grounded in sound doctrine, expressed to people in real, often practical terms, brought to bear in culturally specific ways, across the globe to people of every tribe, tongue and nation.

The Gospel of Our King affirms the reality that we were not made for ourselves, but to serve the King of the Universe.

I have read dozens of books on worldview, the gospel, and mission. I found The Gospel of Our King to be a refreshing presentation of this topic. This is a book that I am glad to recommend. Above all, this is a volume that helped to remind me of the central purpose of the Christian life: To glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

The book is written at a very accessible level. Even though it is published by Baker Academic, this is a volume that would be helpful in a high school class or a discipleship class with believers seeking to go beyond the most basic outlines of Christian doctrine. This will also be a helpful tool for more academic settings, like an undergraduate or seminary classroom.

Perhaps more significant than its helpfulness as a teaching tool, The Gospel of Our King is encouragement even those who already know the story well. I read this in a day (in part because I read it on an airplane travel day), but I found it a balm to the soul, an exhortation to live more faithfully, and an inspiration to tell others about the gospel of our King.

NOTE: I have worked with both of the authors of this book, but I enjoyed it and think it is good, so I am reviewing it.

Pursuing an Earthy Spirituality - A Review

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When someone refers to something as “spiritual” it often conjures the image of something ascetic, disembodied, or concerned with something other than the physical world. That impulse is a result of gnostic impulses that are foreign to biblical Christianity. In truth, while there is certainly division between body and soul in the human, our earthly life is a significant part of our spirituality.

C. S. Lewis’s writing is powerful on many levels, which is part of the reason he remains popular today. One of the themes that makes Lewis so helpful is idea that joy is attainable on this earth as embodied beings. That is, Lewis teaches his readers that our bodily lives have value, can bring glory to God, and can be a source of delightful worship as we live, eat, and love.

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Gary Selby traces the theme of embodied worship in his book, Pursuing an Earthy Spirituality: C. S. Lewis and Incarnational Faith. Selby contrasts an earthy spirituality to a “negative spirituality,” which emphasizes solely spiritual goods.

After a brief introduction, the book is divided into eight chapters with a short conclusion. Chapter One begins, not surprisingly, by analyzing what Lewis meant when he wrote of Joy. The second chapter considers the nature of God as a good creator who wants his creatures to delight in him through creation. Chapter Three explores the negative spirituality Lewis grew up with, which still plagues so many Christians. In the fourth chapter Selby considers a Lewisian spirituality, which calls believers to be both conscious of good things and to choose the good over the lesser. Chapter Five delves into the formation of character through a Lewisian spirituality. The sixth chapter applies the positive spirituality found in Lewis to the physical life, especially to eating, which is a significant topic in Lewis’s fiction. Chapter Seven deals with seeking out community with those whom we might otherwise avoid. In the eighth chapter, Selby explains an earthy spirituality can positively impact our hope of heaven. The conclusion ties the book together by revisiting the topic of joy.

More than five decades after Lewis’s untimely death, many of the possible topics about Lewis’s life and work have been written. There have been favorable biographies, critical ones. Dissertations of varying content and quality have been composed. For the most part, books about what Lewis said about particular topics have been written. There is, within the field of Lewisiana, a growing danger of repetitiveness or digression into meditations about “what Lewis means to me.”

Pursuing an Earthy Spirituality manages to avoid the status of retread. There is a great deal in this volume that overlaps other treatments of Lewis, but Selby writes well, thinks clearly, and presents Lewis in a way that is both helpful and interesting.

This is a book that does well by pointing the reader back to Lewis. It should be read after one has already read a great deal of C. S. Lewis, since Selby is integrating themes from across Lewis’s canon. Readers who have read The Chronicles of Narnia and a few of Lewis’s shorter non-fiction works will probably feel a little lost in this book. Those who have feasted on the Space Trilogy and many more of Lewis’s essays and non-fiction books will find Pursuing an Earthy Spirituality very engaging and delightful.

As such, this is a volume that belongs on the shelves of those who enjoy and have deeply read the work of C. S. Lewis. I expect to find myself referencing this volume in years to come as I continue to think and write about Lewis’s work.

NOTE: I received a gratis copy of this volume from the publisher with no expectation of a positive review.

The Great Risk Shift - A Review

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There has been a shift in recent decades in the United States on several fronts. The rise of the internet has both fragmented local communities and allowed cliques to form over great distances around a common (and sometimes really weird) interest. Politically, the two dominant parties in the United States have become more polarized than in the middle of the 20th century. And, according to Jacob Hacker, there has been an invidious shift in risk from broad risk pools to individuals.

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Hacker’s book, The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream, is meant to show that injustice perpetrated by Republicans and other economic and social conservatives that tend to lean that direction (particularly given the options) is keeping the little guy down. The nation has seen continued attacks on the policies of redistribution imposed by FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society movements. Defined benefit corporate pensions have been replaced by 401k plans, which force individuals to take responsibility for their own saving.

In The Great Risk Shift, Hacker presents a declinist narrative with a call to make America great again by expanding government programs, moving back toward pensions in corporate jobs, and generally trying to spread out risk to the entire nation. He begins by painting an apocalyptic picture of economic insecurity, focusing particularly on the financial crisis of the last decade. That shows, according to Hacker, how precarious life must be. In the second chapter he puts a line in the sand between those who feel that there should be a measure of accountability in risky decisions to those who believe risk should be shared equally. In the remaining four content chapters Hacker presents some data that illustrates his point about the risk to jobs, families, retirement, and due to the rising costs of health care based on a refusal to nationalize all risk. He concludes the book by a call to create new government programs, expand the ones we have nearly indefinitely, increases taxes dramatically, and hopefully get a robust economy that makes everyone reasonably wealthy simultaneously.

Hacker teaches at Yale, so he likely has done careful, well-reasoned scholarship to ascend to that level. This book is not that, but is a call to action intended to mobilize the already outraged. The argument, such as it is, in The Great Risk Shift is likely to galvanize the convinced, but has little power to convince those (like me, for example) who might agree with a number of his premises, but want an approach that takes reality into account. After the first couple of chapters, the book is a tedious tirade that is likely to ensure Hacker gets to speak on cable news, but does little to expand the range of human knowledge.

At the same time, Hacker has some worthwhile observations. There has been a significant shift in the last few decades toward a more individualized burden of risk. The shift away from the life-long, supposedly guaranteed, defined benefit corporate pension has changed the landscape of employment. To Hacker’s mind, that has been entirely to the negative. This example is perhaps the best way to show the major flaws in Hacker’s argument.

Based on Hacker’s argument, corporate pensions have been replaced by the 401k. That is entirely bad because fewer people have access to permanent security that gets funded on their behalf. All people had to do back in the good old days of pensions (when America was great?) is work at the same job for a few decades and, if they made it to 20, 30, 35 years, or whatever, they would walk away with a gold watch and a steady stream of replacement income for life.

Missing from Hacker’s account, however, is that when you get a jerk boss and you are five years from retirement, you are now forced to sit and take it or lose your permanent financial security. Also missing from the rosy story is that if both spouses work (something he laments and celebrates at the same time) and one gets the opportunity for a relocation, you now have a much bigger decision to make. Finally, Hacker ignores the accounts of the pension plans that have gone bankrupt or been significantly reduced because they were underfunded (in part due to changing assumptions for longevity, but also due to bad actuarial assumptions). In Hacker’s paradise, the risk seems reduced, but it merely makes the fall so much more stunning when the collapse cuts your supposedly guaranteed pension in half.

We can have a meaningful debate about the duties of a company (which may not exist by the time you retire) to permanently fund your future life, but the data to have that debate is missing from this book. Additionally, Hacker ignores the real benefits of individual retirement accounts, because of the mobility they provide. As someone who has changed careers several times, I appreciate having a retirement account that follows me rather than having wasted those years of accrued service.

For Hacker, people like me are waging a war against the rights of the poor to be protected because we see the benefits of portable retirement accounts, the ability to purchase insurance plans that cover the most likely risks for me and my family, and who see the benefit in allowing workers at all levels to keep more of their earnings. There are certainly those among fiscal conservatives who embody a more Randian individualism and think all risk should be individual. However, there are others (like myself) who think there is a place for pooling of risk, but that it need not be at the level envisioned by communism, democratic socialism, or lighter variations like those proposed in the so-called Great Society, New Deal, or the (not very green) Green New Deal.

What Hacker and others that urge greater government intrusion in life through more expansive redistribution programs is that a reduction in risk is typically coupled with a significant loss of potential. So, for example, a minimum of 15% of my lifetime earnings have already been assigned to the government’s preferred vision of a retirement plan through social security and FICA taxes (both my share and that deducted before my salary is offered by the company). If 15% of my productivity isn’t enough to satisfy Hacker, then how much of the reward of my labor should be dedicated to satisfying his need to avoid economic difficulty? Is 50% enough, or 75%? Or, should we shift to simply pooling our goods and then distributing the results according to government’s needs? Never mind that the progressive tax system already discourages me from being more productive because having the top end of my wages reduced by 50% through various state and federal taxes makes it not worth earning more. (Never mind the realization that for the first $388k a person earns, they make out like a bandit from Social security, but it becomes a rip off after that point.)

All of this is to say that a safety net a real need, especially in an industrial economy that draws people away from their families and has, as a discernable downside, the disruption of lifelong communities. However, some thought might go into being more efficient with the large portion of people’s wealth that is already taken for redistribution and reducing risk before we plan on taking a bigger chunk of the available resources to use according to the planners’ desires. Additionally, if books on important topics like The Great Risk Shift are to be taken seriously, then they ought to consider the existence of real arguments against their positions and the fact that there is no proposed solution that does not have obvious and likely downsides.

NOTE: I received a gratis copy of this volume from the publisher with no expectation of a positive review.