Category: Benedict Option
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Do You Have a Better Idea? What my version of The Benedict Option might look like
I’m ready to wrap up this exercise, and I have no doubt you are too. I hadn’t intended to close by offering an outline of what alternative I would offer to Dreher’s framework, but it seems only fitting, having spent way too many words taking shots at his concept that I at least try to…
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Unplug from Technology (says the guy who blogs for a living)
So, there is some irony in Dreher’s last topical chapter of The Benedict Option. It’s not that his points are wrong, but there’s something about hearing about how we need to unplug from our screens in order to save our souls from a writer who came to prominence by blogging and keeps an active Twitter…
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My favorite chapter in The Benedict Option
Let me go back to my prelude for a minute. I’m not a writer by trade; I mean, I write a lot, but it’s mostly in short spurts. I blog a little, but I am prone to the very worst temptation of blogging, which is to dash off a first draft, publish it, and move…
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Work in the Benedict Option
OK, now I can write about work. And just to mix things up, let me start with what I see as the positive elements of Dreher’s treatment of work. Maybe this is just a matter of my own place in the world evolving and my filter bubble becoming tighter, or maybe it’s a by-product of…
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The Elephant in the Room: Sexuality in The Benedict Option
My intention had been to wait until I got to the chapter on family before dealing with this, and I got oh so close. But the reality is that the culture war battles over gay marriage, transgender rights and abortion run through the entirety of TBO, and I don’t think I can do justice to Dreher’s…
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Education in The Benedict Option
Next Dreher moves to a discussion of education. Here’s the short form of his argument: Public education is horrible. Christian schools are really not Christian. Unless they are classical Christian schools that immerse your child in Scripture and the Western classics. If you don’t have a classical Christian school, you should start one or homeschool…
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Villages, Christian and otherwise
Villages, Christian and otherwise I am all about Dreher’s chapter on how Christians need to rebuild the concept of a village – a tightly knit social network rooted in a connected geography that is deeply committed to the good of each member. In fact, the village concept has rebounded across any number of fronts in…
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The Church Shouldn’t Give Two Hoots about “Christian civilization”
Dreher’s chapter on church is probably the one that most gets to the core of what I am attracted to and what I am repelled by in his thesis. He starts by ominously citing a First Things writer bemoaning the “collapse of Christian civilization.” Then he summarizes the message thus: If you do not change your…
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Politics in The Benedict Option
BenOp Politics This is the area around which BenOp has gotten the most coverage in the press, and it’s the area where I most misunderstood the concept before reading the book. On its face, I thought a concept modeled after cloistered monastic communities would likely translate to a call for Christians to abandon politics altogether.…
Reading Francis 