In the next chapter of The Benedict Option, Dreher makes a number of shrewd observations about the role of community in resisting the encroachments of the Leviathan state. What Hillary Clinton famously said in promotion of that devouring Leviathan turns out actually to be true in another sense—“it takes a village to raise a child.”
The sense in which it is true turns out to be a variation on Edmund Burke’s great observation about the “little platoons.” An atomistic culture, where each individual is an isolated atom, will be unable to resist the massive force of the collective. But if we have numerous molecular bonds—church, family, school, region, etc.—we will be much better equipped to resist the demands of the Hive.
And Dreher does a good job in pointing this out. “It really does take a village—that is to say, a community—to raise a child” (Loc. 1831). And “religion is like a language: you can learn it only in community” (Loc. 1836). There is also this: “Despots, he said, ‘have never worried about religion that is confined mutely to individual minds’” (Loc. 1845). “Their thick community is a strong model of being in the world but not of it” (Loc. 2003).
Our efforts in this regard will have to be intentional because we are up against it. “The power of secular culture to break the chains anchoring us firmly in the biblical story is immense” (Loc. 1857).
Dreher also does a good job here in advocating a life of actual discipline while at the same time warning against buzzkill religiosity.
“That means maintaining regular times of family prayer. That means regular readings of Scripture and stories from the lives of the saints—Christian heroes and heroines from ages past” (Loc. 1862).
“. . . the laughter and conversation around our hearth and table with travelers and other guests and associate that with what it means to be a Christian family, sharing our blessings with others and receiving in turn the blessing of their company” (Loc. 1880).
He also knows that the Benedict Option is going to be instantly attractive to that category of person who always wanted to live in a Unabomber cabin, and he warns us about that temptation. “If you isolate yourself, you will become weird” (Loc. 2070).
And if you form a community, but you do it the wrong way, too strictly and on too small a scale, you are trying to fight off Leviathan by forming weird little cults. That won’t work either.
“The greatest temptation for tight-knit communities is a compulsion to control its members unduly and to police each other too strictly for deviation from a purity standard” (Loc. 2064).
You can say that again. In fact, I think that this would be one of the greatest challenges to any serious Benedict efforts. How can you attempt the Grand Oddball Reaction to Modernity without having genuine oddballs wanting to join it? To his credit, Dreher really does see those possible problems and clearly warns against them.
At the same time, I do have a couple of criticisms, not so much of the chapter, as of some of the background assumptions floating, as background assumptions are wont to do, in the background.
On the one hand, he notes (correctly) that “American Christians have a bad habit of treating church like a consumer experience” (Loc. 1970). At the same time, he puts the claims of truth (the only real answer to consumerism) in the back seat. He does this in the way he talks about “an ecumenism of the trenches” (Loc. 2029). For example, he does this when he discusses a gathering associated with “the legendary Eighth Day Books” (Loc. 2033)—which is, by the way, a great place to shop for books. My concern is not the fact of such ecumenical friendships and discussions. It is wonderful that we have “a kind of Christian speakeasy” (Loc. 2035).
The problem is that Dreher’s description of it falls plomp into the trap of “religious convictions as a consumer choice.” He says, for example, “that nobody is trying to convert anybody else” (Loc. 2047). Everybody is given “the grace to bring their full Christian selves to the table without fear of reproach” (Loc. 2049). Put another way, if this really were true, then nobody really believes anything they are saying. In this restaurant, you are free to order your eggs whatever way you want, but if the rule is that you cannot question anybody else’s eggs, then what everybody is saying is that “this choice is true for me.” But that kind of thing is what got us the Leviathan state in the first place.
The second problem is related. When he is talking about the little platoons that are developing ways to resist Leviathan, the example of the Mormons serves him just as well as more orthodox bodies. He points to the fact that Mormons do not church shop. They are grounded geographically. “They are assigned their ward based on where they live and have no right of appeal” (Loc. 1967).
But can we really resist, effectively resist, what is coming at us if we make the truth optional, the gospel optional, the presence and power of the Spirit optional?
All of this is to say that I believe that “intentional communities” will certainly be a part of our resistance to the kultursmog, but they themselves will have to be the fruit of something else. What is that something else? I don’t think the vanguard will be a new Benedict, planting such communities. The need of the hour—if we were doing things according to my specifications—would be ten or twelve modified Billy Grahams, filling up stadiums like nobody’s business. They would all have floppy Bibles in their left hand, a pocket-sized copy of the Westminster Confession in their suit coat pocket, right next to the heart, and a worn out copy of Pilgrim’s Progress at home.
I said modified.
I’m amazed this guy is getting so much press. He’s King of the Religious Chattering Classes. Yap, yap, yap!
It is actually a good book. Even Wilson is learning it has a lot of good stuff in it.
The Rule of St Benedict was used by some early Protestants (including Wesley) as a general rule for all Christians. The principles in this book are not that far from Wilson’s principles.
When Dreher is right, it’s by accident.
I would be honored if you said that about me. What you think is wrong is usually right and vice versa
LOL! Ashv actually has some nuggets of wisdom now and then.
I suppose Dreher does too, but over all I was not terribly thrilled with his book.
I enjoyed the book. The whole think reminded me of Angels in the Architecture and Doug Wilson at his best. From Doug’s review, I am not sure he disagrees all that much either.
“All of this is to say that I believe that “intentional communities” will certainly be a part of our resistance to the kultursmog, but they themselves will have to be the fruit of something else. What is that something else?”
Let’s start with, “intentional Christians,” shall we? Religion should be personal, not as in keeping it to yourself, but as in it starts there. Intentionally, deliberately. We don’t need to go build communities, we already ARE communities. What we need to do is to simply step into it.
Is Billy Graham a Calvinist?
I sometimes wondered why people were so upset at the takes-a-village dictum because it states what most of us already knew–that, in addition to parents, kids need coaches, pastors, godparents, and caring neighbors. Was the pushback against the belief that, if Hillary were in charge, it would be a government village?
The “government village” tends to take our children away from us, Jilly. They undermine what little authority parents have,they brainwash them away from faith in public school, and Child Protective services challenges you constantly,especially if you are poor and lack the resources to fight back.
I can see that. I tried not to be an attack mom, but I still had way too many unpleasant encounters with my daughter’s schools.
It’s rather difficult for a public school to brainwash children. Teachers are quite low on the hierarchy in terms of influencing children’s beliefs (almost always below parents and peers, situationally below church and adult friends as well). And administrative agendas are likely to be below even teachers. The most cohesive attempts at institution-wide brainwashing, like DARE, have been shown to be pretty useless.
I would say the one place school brainwashing works is in the obsession with grades, but parents are often driving that as much or more than the school is.
If public school teachers in the US were destroying their students’ faith in evolution, we wouldn’t have 60% of the population still rejecting the theory. I don’t think most teachers set out to brainwash students, and I don’t think they would be very successful at it if they tried. An unethical teacher who happens to be very good-looking and charismatic can do damage. In my experience (watching this as a teacher), this tends to take the form of undermining parental authority and encouraging teenagers to see their parents as the enemy. “I’m cool. I understand you. I recognize your need… Read more »
Yup – for a teacher to have that kind of power, they basically have to step out of the “school authority” role and become something akin to a peer or a close family friend. And have the charisma to pull it off. And its unlikely that whatever they’re brainwashing the kids in while they do so is aligned with any directives from higher-up.
The directives from higher-up usually take the form of demanding that teachers add yet more irrelevant and time-consuming items to the standard curriculum. It is hard enough to cover European history 1300 to 2000 in nine months without making the teacher add cross-cultural studies, or reflections on how the government of the Iroquois nations was just as good as the British parliament. I’m not disputing that, knowing nothing whatever about it. There should be classes devoted to these sorts of comparisons. But when you are preparing kids for a tough AP exam, when every topic you don’t have time to… Read more »
Jilly, the teachers are brainwashing children when they follow worthless doctrine given to them by those on high. Teachers teach the standardized tests because that is where the money is. If your school doesn’t score high on standardized testing your school stands to lose federal or state funding. Never mind teaching reading, writing, math, history and so on. Yes, teachers are brainwashing students when they use their positions to teach against the US Constitution. Or, for that matter, avoid teaching the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the papers of our founding fathers. If teachers were… Read more »
You do realize that virtually all the standardized testing is centered around math and reading, right? At least when I was teaching, those were the only subjects which were put into standardized testing with consequences for the schools. Students on rare occasions (something like every three years) would also take science tests, but there were no stakes attached to those results. I agree that schools should teach more life skills and such. But I would suspect that that would start veering much closer to the sort of things that Katecho would think of as brainwashing. And I wasn’t aware of… Read more »
While the testing is centered on reading, composition, and math, the test prep tends to devour the entire day. When my daughter was in elementary school, she had reading all morning and math all afternoon. She did not encounter science or history until middle school. This is tragic. Once LAUSD realized its students were testing very badly, it brought in scripted reading programs in which the teachers were not allowed to go off-book. She never read a novel in elementary school. They were given endless paragraphs with which to practice identifying the main idea, underlining the supporting details in different… Read more »
Yes, everything on point. Everything that the government is doing right now in terms of “school quality” is absolutely wrongheaded. The “focus on the basics” form of rote learning is the worst thing you could be doing even for learning the basics, much less higher-order thinking skills. And all educational research has shown this, not to mention nearly everyone’s personal experience (it’s incredible that people actually remember what they hated in school and yet still inflict more kids with that). And yes, I think the idea that public schools don’t teach government was just a typical fear-mongering talking point by… Read more »
I can’t comment on the US education system in general, but I think that life skills should be taught by parents and that schools should focus on academics. The idea that schools should be responsible for every single thing a child learns has led to a culture where some children begin school without having learned how to turn the pages of a book. I don’t understand parents who are full of indignation against schools because their kid doesn’t know how to live on a budget or cook a few meals. That’s your job, folks.
To be honest, everything you’re talking about adding sounds more interesting and relevant than the vast majority of the “facts” that the kids are supposed to be rote memorizing for an irrelevant test. It is, of course, a much different conversation about education. And if the school doesn’t take out all the long list of required “facts” the students are supposed to know when they add the extra stuff, it’s not helping the situation at all. But the whole idea of these facts-based curricula where students are forced to memorize enormous lists of things which they will not retain 90%… Read more »
I largely agree with you, but there does need to be basic factual knowledge in order to make those connections and applications. The Defenestration of Prague makes no sense at all except in relation to the religion wars. We can’t get to the point of discussing the really interesting questions–why did Cardinal Richelieu support the Swedes rather than his fellow Catholics–until you understand the issues and the identity of the players. But the only reason for a non-history buff to know the date of the Battle of White Mountain (1620) is the hope he or she might one day be… Read more »
Apropos: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/10/ap-classes-are-a-scam/263456/
That is extremely on point.
Yes – everything you say about AP courses killing the love of learning, and why, is dead-on perfect. My favorite classes ever were the ones I taught in jail. Because I was good at my job and because adult education is managed far less rigorously than child education, I was largely free to teach whatever I wanted. So we covered things in a topical manner, and picked interesting ones. Even without much in the way of materials at all, discussion was lively, debates were common, and student opinions were actually interesting. The writing assignments that I got from those students… Read more »
Again, I agree with you completely. But it is also true that today’s history teacher has to face challenges that were pretty much unknown when I was in high school in the sixties. One is an almost complete lack of any sense of historical sequence. Clearly I don’t mean knowledge of dates, but rather any idea of human history over a very long time. My teachers could take for granted that everyone knew that the age of exploration must have preceded European colonialism, that the Renaissance came after the Middle Ages, and that Napoleon and King Henry VIII were not… Read more »
Jonathan wrote: Yup – for a teacher to have that kind of power, they basically have to step out of the “school authority” role and become something akin to a peer or a close family friend. And have the charisma to pull it off. Jonathan seems to be assuming that children are first introduced to government classrooms in their teens, after having learned to question authority. However, little children don’t share the same attitudes toward authority that today’s teens do. God has made little children to be completely trusting and without skepticism toward their parents, and toward those approved by… Read more »
That claim makes me question whether you even have children of your own, much less understanding of them within schools. Yes, six-year-old absolutely have the ability to question their teachers, though far more often they simply ignore or forget what they have to say. Again, family is far more instrumental to the moral development of a child, followed by peers, followed by family friends/role models that are more organically chosen. The “teacher in front of a classroom” style of teaching just doesn’t tend to penetraye much. And yes, the Grand Canyon is millions of years old, and a simple fact… Read more »
Dunno about him, but I have four.
Yes, kids are very wowed by their teachers, especially when little. They start questioning their parents much earlier than they do teachers. “But teacher said” was always the cue for the start of a necessary and annoying unlearning session.
Jonathan wrote: The most cohesive attempts at institution-wide brainwashing, like DARE, have been shown to be pretty useless. Having already successfully marinated the children in a warm bath of moral relativism (and against any objective standard of morality), is Jonathan really so surprised that they couldn’t convince the children to abstain from indulging their flesh with drugs and alcohol? The DARE program was not a moral appeal, but was reduced to pragmatic, consequentialist, utilitarian arguments about social cost, which meant nothing to the children already brainwashed on moral relativism since pre-school. Jonathan needs to connect the dots a bit more… Read more »
Your argument can read one of two ways.
1. Schools are really effective at brainwashing kids when they have vague undocumented goals and the majority of the teachers, staff, and parents aren’t consciously particpating; but, they utterly fail when there are clearly stated goals, and the faculty staff, and parents are almost unanimously supportive.
Or
2. You throw out or weakly rationalize away any evidence that doesn’t fit with your priors.
I’m fairly certain you know next to nothing about public schools. I went to school in the 1980s and 1990s, and I can’t think of a single thing I could have called “marinated in a warm bath of moral relativism” or “against any objective standard of morality”. We read the Chronicles of Narnia in school, sang songs about Jesus during Christmas plays, had to follow the rules…but for the most part, arguments for or against moral relativism really didn’t come into play. Can you give examples of the moral relativism that the children of the 1980s and 1990s were bathed… Read more »
Jonathan wrote:
Well. I guess that settles it then. Move along everyone.
Yeah, I thought it would be difficult for you to actually justify that claim.
Actually, the one time in public school that I started to feel slightly brainwashed – at my school both 1984 AND Animal Farm were assigned, required readings. And because I had already read 1984 for some other earlier project in a different class, the teacher gave me the alternate reading, Brave New World, instead. Reading those three books in quick succession did feel like a rather direct political message.
On the bright side, those are all excellent novels, with brave new world being the best of the bunch.
The problem with much highschool reading is that most students aren’t prepared for it. Therefore, it is drudgery and kills their interest in reading “serious” literature for life (assuming such an interest could have been cultivated by other means).
Alistair Roberts wrote an interesting retrospective of Brave New World here:
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/brave-new-world-85-years-later
I agree with you about Brave New World. I think it is by far the best of the modern dystopian novels. And I agree that there are few things more difficult than trying to get 15-year-olds to engage with Jude the Obscure.
On the other hand, I am not happy with the solution that is often chosen: assigning high-interest, low-difficulty teenage novels to be studied as literature.
What do you think of Margaret Atwood?
Although she is a fellow Canadian, I can’t stand her writing. There is a quality or an intensity which I can’t quite identify, but which always makes me want to go take a shower!
There was one novel in the seventies (I can’t remember the title) which I liked sections of because it described what it was like to grow up in English-speaking Canada when the ethos was still very British. It made me relive my own childhood when a country far away which most people would never visit was still “Home”.
After reading something of hers I always need a light-hearted ‘chaser’! I think she is a gifted writer with a certain jaded perspicuity that identifies the worst aspects of human motive and morality. Her societies are fallen about as far as they can fall, which is probably what makes the reader feel unclean. There is not a whiff of the presence of God. This makes it dreary and exhausting reading but pretty good dystopia in my view.
I don’t think low quality reading should be offered at all. (Of course I only get to be arbiter of “low quality” to my own children). The main thing that should be done is push back the recommended ages for most works, they are pushed too early for most kids. And read fun books that are also quality, think Lewis, Graham Greene, Stevenson, haggard etc. (At least for the boys). Offer the denser stuff as short stories – Youth by Conrad will be much more approachable to a highchool Junior than Lord Jim. Hemmingway has excellent short fiction but his… Read more »
You’re right, I had forgotten Conrad when I responded to Indigo. My students liked Youth and they really enjoyed The Secret Agent. Another one I had forgotten was Wilder’s Bridge of San Luis Rey. Something I appreciated about teaching English in a Catholic school was my freedom to create my own reading lists. Once my students had read the compulsory Lord of the Flies, I had them read The Coral Island on which it is loosely based. It’s a Victorian adventure story about how young English boys behave beautifully when confronted with having to survive being shipwrecked on a south… Read more »
What do you think would help prepare students to tackle proper literature? I remember being gobsmacked as a teenager when we studied Wuthering Heights back to back with a stupid Australian coming-of-age novel. My classmates adored the novel and couldn’t bear Wuthering Heights. How do you fix that?
There is no real fix. Most people of any age are not going to love serious literature, and we can’t expect that. So it is all a question of compromises and good teaching. It is no longer remotely possible to have separate selections for boys and girls, but it remains a fact that a lot of girls will like Jane Eyre and almost every boy will hate it. A lot of boys will like Hemingway, but he is a tough sell for many girls. In my ideal world, there would be a way to accommodate this. Perhaps one English teacher… Read more »
I wasn’t so much commenting on their quality as that it felt like an awful lot of very didactic books about “the State” to be reading in short succession.
I agree both that Brave New World is the best of the three and that’s a great look back on it! Only 1984 felt like drudgery at the time – the main point was great and I appreciated the book, but there’s 100 or so unnecessary pages in there. I do agree that most of my classmates weren’t ready though.
I’m with you, katecho. How to explain moral relativism, indoctrination, and public education to people who don’t get it is beyond me, however. It’s like when a fish is in the ocean,it doesn’t know it’s wet. Heck, it doesn’t even realize there is an ocean.
We aren’t speaking of individual teachers here, we’re talking about systematic abuse that uses many tools, mandatory attendance, peer pressure, severed authority of parents.
So fill us in on what were the most successful means of indoctrinating “moral relativism” in your own public schooling experience in the 1980s and 1990s?
Well, we could start with when they banned prayer, changed Easter break to “spring break,” banned Christmas, stopped saying the pledge of allegiance, brought in a student health clinic, and changed the law to allow 13 years olds not only access to birth control, but also abortion without parental consent. By the time my kids got into school,they were passing out colored condoms in health class and teaching 3rd graders about homosexuality and gender identity.
That must be the Pacific Northwest! Even in my daughter’s schools there was very little sex education, and school nurses were a thing of the past! It is true that any kid can get birth control here from their family doctor or a public clinic without parental knowledge or consent, but not typically at LA schools. They could scarcely afford to give out bandaids! Parents can opt their children out of sex ed. If you wanted your child to participate, you had to sit through a preview. We parents were all a little disappointed when we were hoping for hot… Read more »
That is not exactly indoctrination in moral relativism. What is being promoted is a change in values, and the people doing the promoting are hostile to Christian ones, nothing relative about it.
By the way, the one thing above that doesn’t exactly belong with the others is the pledge of allegiance; not in the same category as prayer, or observing Easter and Christmas.
It was a change in values, it was a removal of every moral foundation that people used to build the structure of their lives around. So morality was no longer about God, country, family, it all became relative. You shouldn’t have sex,bully people, or do drugs, but WHY not? Everything became relative, right on down to your very gender. Christmas, Easter, even in the secular world, was culture, tradition,ritual, things that could be counted on. What we are doing today amounts to pulling the foundation out from under people and attempting to promote a utilitarian kind of morality that is… Read more »
I’m not sure if it is more accurate to say the foundation has been removed so that we’re left with the ambiguity of no foundation, or if a good foundation has been removed and deliberately replaced with a bad one. Probably same effect either way. The rains came down and floods came up and the house on the sand – you know the ending, right?.
The claim was about why DARE didn’t work in the 1980s and 1990s. Almost nothing you said is relevant to answering why DARE didn’t work. You’re almost saying the opposite, claiming that public school imposition of its values DOES work, despite all the evidence to the contrary. And I doubt that sex education in schools in the 2010s is going to work one bit better than drug education did twenty years ago. First off, nothing that you mentioned is “teaching moral relativism”. Second, when I went to public school in the 1980s and 1990s, we all said the pledge of… Read more »
I don’t know if it’s so much being upset at the idea as rejecting the assumption of who counts as the “village.” In our society, that usually refers to the public school, the daycare, etc., not a community of Christ followers working together with like mind.
Correct. When Hillary said “it takes a village to raise a child”, she meant “it takes a cradle-to-grave socialist state”.
Is Billy Graham a Calvinist?
No
Thank God. But Franklin quacks like one.
No, I wouldn’t thank God for that. If Graham had been a Calvinist all these years he probably would have been faithful to Scripture and Christ.
Does a Calvinist lead tent-revivals?
I didn’t think so. I sang in the choir at one of his crusades when I was a teenager. My best friend at the time was Salvation Army.
Roman Catholic who married a Jew, sang at one of Billy Graham’s Crusades, and had a Salvation Army best friend.
That should either be a book or followed up with, “they all walk into a bar, and the bartender says…”
As a matter of fact, that sounds like it should be a Doug Wilson book.
Doug, Canon and I can work out the royalties for my idea.
AND my sister is a Presbyterian! I think she belongs to the liberal branch because when I asked her why she accepts predestination, she told me that nobody in her church has ever mentioned it! I like going to church with her, but the sermons are quite a bit longer than I am used to.
He was raised ARP, went to Bob Jones University, and was not allowed ordination in the ARP because he lacked the educational requirements. Great move by the ARPs.
Great move because he went on to do what he did?
Great move because he would have created a juggernaut of “evangelicalism” which would have ensured the ARP would never have returned to their Reformed roots against the tide.
Chapter One of The Snowflake Meets the Israelis:
Snowflake: “Can I get my mom to tell you about my health insurance?”
Israeli: “What are you? Twelve?”
As Trump pointed out, Hillary showed us what she meant by “it takes a village” in Haiti, where she took a couple.
“…..would be a government village?”
No, I was thinking it would be more like a “Village People” village! ; – )
Which, would be a thing if you happened to like Disco,
but at the end of the day, such a village would have about as many children as Studio 54. : – 0.
Dreher’s lofty words about communities would be more compelling if he wasn’t estranged from his (and his family).
There’s a large mega church gobbling up members from small churches like crazy. The small churches cannot compete with this Wal-Mart religious marketplace.
Several people told me they won’t ever go back to a small church. They don’t like the politics and drama. I responded it is still going on at Mega Church. You are merely insulated from it.
And when it blows up, like Mark Driscoll’s church(es) did, it will cause a much larger number of people pain.
Going to link to this again: Why Methodists Don’t Go To Heaven (My summary: when churches are only accountable to their congregations, megachurches are the natural, inevitable results of today’s culture.)
Thanks. That was an interesting read.
I have such a hard time empathizing with that feeling. I’ve never been able to feel any real connection to a mega church. It’s less like a family and more like a place to consume church stuff.
Doug,
Chortle you may that your thing there in Moscow is Benedictine, but it’s exactly where Dreher’s going.
Also, your ecumenicism gets on full display when you invite any & all believers to the Table.
Our PCA, OPC, RCUS, RC, Lutheran etc brothers don’t.
Which PCA churches practice closed communion? Not the ones I’ve been to.
You are correct if you’re referring to the name they use for their practice of closing the Table off from, say, known and acknowledged (by all Session members) baptised believers of good community reputation but nevertheless aren’t attending an assembly they recognise as acceptable, such as a Calvary chapel or such, or at the other end the Roman or Orthodoxians.
And God forbid you be a likewise believer who wants to attend there at the PCA but can’t in good conscience agree with the definition of membership they’ve devised. No food for you.
… Huh?
PH thinks that any requirement that your profession has ever been judged to be detectably authentic by anyone outside your own head, even when it is left up to the individual to refrain outside of that, is closed communion.
Ok? The various PCA churches I’ve attended have said “come if you’re a follower of Jesus Christ”. Have to wonder where he’s been.
Officially, the PCA position is that only members in good standing of valid churches are allowed. (Honor system + up to the individual’s conscience whether their church qualifies.) It’s not always made clear, sometimes out of sloppiness, sometimes because a local church wants to be looser than they are supposed to be.
I don’t know why he’s so hung up on the PCA, though. Doug’s not PCA, most of the people here probably aren’t PCA, though some of us are.
What??? I heard the reason why Briarwood is getting its own police dept. is because they were having a problem with Methodists taking the Lord’s Supper with them!
If I could only understand why any firm Protestant wants to receive Communion in a Catholic church.
Some just love the folks there, and want to share a meal with the fam.
National Review online article about Benedict option and similar books pointed out the Benedict’s monasteries were NOT holy huddles of defense, but missionary sending stations (and more: centers of learning, etc), leaven-ly transforming the culture.
I’m curious what evidence they presented for this notion. St Benedict began his monastic course out of frustration with his surrounding culture, retreating to a cave to live as a hermit. His goal was not evangelism or cultural warfare, but an ascetic pursuit of individual holiness. His extreme devotion attracted other disciples who wanted a similar individual pursuit. The Rule of St Benedict is a detailed set of rigid rules that touch on every aspect of daily life, prescribing simplicity and punishments for violations. In other words, it is very much like entering back into a stage of childhood (rather… Read more »
I think there is evidence that the monasteries did become centers of learning, and that they dispensed a lot of charity. Hospitality was very important to the spirit of the order. But you’re right that the monastic rule was not for those purposes. Essentially it was to re-create the solitude of the caves while providing the advantages of community life. Most people who have experienced life in a religious order say that by far the greatest penance is community living. Generally, only extroverts with sunshiny natures can handle it easily, and there aren’t many of those who are attracted to… Read more »
jillybean wrote: Benedict never intended his rule for regular people working out their salvation in the world. It is intended to be a difficult and penitential life against nature. This is probably the most succinct statement of why Dreher should have titled his book something else. jillybean wrote: If they indulged individualism, they’d have a collection of eccentrics. On the other hand, providing a support structure for disciples to pursue an isolated, contemplative journey of personal holiness could be construed as the ultimate in “indulged individualism”. We should be at least a little suspicious of our own motives, no matter… Read more »
I don’t know much about early monasticism, but I can explain a little about what enclosed contemplative monastic communities see as their primary purpose and why it is not merely or even primarily the sanctification of the individual. The order with which I am most familiar is the Poor Clares because my spiritual director thought it likely I had a vocation to become one. But I realize that no explanation makes such sense outside the context of some Catholic teachings with which you are likely to disagree. Even many Catholics don’t see the point of the contemplative life. If you… Read more »