The light of the Christian faith is flickering out all over the West. American churches are beset by a rapidly secularizing culture, the departure of young people, and watered-down pseudo-spirituality. Political solutions have failed, as the self-destruction of the Republican Party indicates, and the future of religious freedom has never been in greater doubt. The center is not holding. The West, cut off from its Christian roots, is falling into a new Dark Age.
The good news is that there is a blueprint for a time-tested Christian response to this decline. In The Benedict Option, Dreher calls on traditional Christians to learn from the example of St. Benedict of Nursia, a sixth-century monk who turned from the chaos and decadence of the collapsing Roman Empire and found a new way to live out the faith in community. For five difficult centuries, Benedict’s monks kept the faith alive through the Dark Ages, and prepared the way for the rebirth of civilization. The Benedict Option shows believers how to build the resilience to face the modern world with the confidence and fervor of the early church. Christians face a time of choosing, with the fate of Christianity in Western civilization hanging in the balance. In this powerful challenge to complacency, Dreher shows why churches who fail to take the Benedict Option aren’t going to make it.
What is Christianity now? This deeply thought out history of theology in the west argues for a strategic retreat in the face of the secular onslaught of the elites that has precipitated out of centuries of science and social contract philosophy. I would also add things like the Monty Python Life of Brian which was astutely criticized by Malcolm Muggeridge and the Bishop of the Southwark in a panel discussion with John Cleese and Michale Palin on BBC after the movie was aired for the audience. Malcolm Muggeridge wrote a…
A Must Read for Anyone Who Considers Themself a Christian Highly recommended! I saw the Author’s interview on Tucker Carlson Tonight and I couldn’t wait to buy this book and put his thoughts into practice in my lost and confused world. Change begins with me and Christ is within me.Â
Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Man “The Benedict Option” is, as I expected, an outstanding book. Rod Dreher has definitively shown that he is the Pope Urban of a new and dynamic movement, and this book has occasioned much commentary in the mainstream press. Unfortunately, the main point of Dreher’s book—to make a countercultural call for individual and group Christian renewal focused on communities of believers—has been somewhat lost in a subsidiary point, the real and growing persecution of Christian…