Free Republic

Hal Freeman is an American who relocated to Russia with his Russian-born wife, and their children — this, in part to take a Benedict Option of their own. He writes a blog about his experiences there. Recently, he wrote about a post I’d made here, about people who have decided to leave America to live abroad. In his response, Freeman talked about his experience, and about a new book by University of Chicago political theorist John Mearsheimer. Excerpts: Others, not writing from a Christian perspective, have also noted major changes in American culture and the inability of much of “the...

Christian families and communities that don’t embrace some form of the Benedict Option aren’t going to make it through this time of testing Veteran journalist Rod Dreher has just produced a potent study of what ails America—and is proposing that the best solution may be (as his new book is titled) “The Benedict Option.” As the book’s promotional materials describe it: Now is a time of testing, when believers will learn the difference between shallow optimism and Christian hope. However dark the shadow falling over the West, the light of Christianity need not flicker out. It will not be...

The poet T.S. Eliot predicted that, after the disintegration of Western society, civilization would be conserved and restored by a new monastic movement. He was referring to the events at the end of the fifth century, when Benedict of Nursia abandoned the decaying Roman Empire and established small communities of men and women dedicated to prayer, work and study. In Benedict’s day, the once-great Roman Empire had collapsed into chaos. Through economic disaster, famine, plague, moral decadence and political corruption, the society was enervated and vulnerable. Barbarians invaded from the north and east, sensing lucrative spoils to be had. In...

~snip~ "What I call the Benedict Option is this: a limited, strategic withdrawal of Christians from the mainstream of American popular culture, for the sake of shoring up our understanding of what the church is, and what we must do to be the church. We must do this because the strongly anti-Christian nature of contemporary popular culture occludes the meaning of the Gospel, and hides from us the kinds of habits and practices we need to engage in to be truly faithful to what we have been given."