The Benedict option?

Jonathan Haidt is Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University.

In March, under the aegis of the Veritas Forum, he debated with Tim Keller on how we can have a properly pluralistic society in which all points of view are respected. It is online to watch. Haidt is an atheist who recognises the benefits which faith has brought about in the evolution of civilised society (click here for a review of his landmark book The Righteous Mind ). During the debate however, he confessed that there are a number of subjects that he cannot discuss openly, for fear of losing his job.

We certainly don’t have a society at present where people are allowed to express opinions which contradict currently politically correct dogma. Threats, cyber bullying and even police action are likely to result if we step out of line. And biblically faithful Christians are way out of line on all kinds of issues, from abortion to gender roles and so much more. Christians have lost the culture wars.

Tactical withdrawal?

With this in mind, a book which has stirred discussion recently is Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option*. An American conservative who has moved from evangelicalism to Catholicism to Eastern Orthodoxy, Dreher tells all ‘mere Christians’ that it is time we thought seriously about a strategy similar to that of St Benedict of Norcia AD486–547. Horrified by the moral chaos which followed the fall of the Roman empire, Benedict advocated a tactical withdrawal. He retreated to a monastic life to build communities of order, prayer, worship, stability and hospitality (which was evangelistic), with the aim of surviving the Dark Ages for Christianity to flourish again later.

Dreher proposes that the modern faithful church needs to do something similar. It is no good evangelicals trusting in politics (Trump took 81% of the evangelical vote last November). The cultural change that has occurred with the emergence of the politically correct / LGBT world cannot be reversed by the legislature. The churches need to retrench and with God’s help rebuild a genuine Christian culture that will once again salt the world.

What should the churches do?

You will have to read the book and be thoughtful. Dreher is rightly scathing about much of evangelicalism which, with its individualistic emphasis has acted for years as ‘chaplain to the consumer society’ and whose services simply parody pop culture trends – concert rather than worship. Dreher says we need a return to liturgy, self-denial, the church as a loving disciplined local community able to influence its area, to evangelise with goodness, and to embrace the possibility of persecution.

Quoting Alasdair MacIntyre, he says that if we want to know what to do, we must first determine the story to which we belong. Christian worship, done properly, provides us with regular reminders of our story. Even evangelicals used to have a liturgy of life. This consisted of baptism, the Lord’s Supper, the weekly Lord’s Day of Word and worship (morning and evening), and the daily quiet time (Proverbs 8.34; Mark 1.35). Such habits, pursued properly, strengthen character. But pragmatic, consumer evangelicalism is abandoning much of this. And while it is true that in a sense we only need the gospel and all else is ‘secondary’, this has pandered to individualism and undermined the church as a committed family able to withstand the corrosive culture of society and be the cities of light set on a hill to give hope to the world.