Is It Time for the ‘Benedict Option’?

May 12, 2016May 12, 2016 / rtrube54 / 8 Comments

Saint Benedict (detail from a fresco by Fra Angelico)

The other day I expressed on my Facebook page my disenchantment with the choices on offer in our presidential and senatorial races and that I may, for the first time, have come to the place where I cannot in good conscience vote for any of the presumptive candidates in these races. I struggle with this because I have always voted since I was 18 (shortly after the amendment that gave 18 year olds the right to vote).

One of the comments to this post pointed me to the writing of Rod Dreher, who for several years has been writing and talking about what he calls the ‘Benedict Option.’ The Benedict he has in mind is Benedict of Nursia, who in the early sixth century AD fled what he saw as the decadence of Rome and formed a monastic order that preserved everything from the practical skills of farming to literacy, morality, order, learning, and a vibrant faith while these were lost in the collapse of Roman culture.

Dreher, drawing on philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, contends we may be in a parallel situation to the late Roman empire in the West, and particularly in the United States. He sees much of the church as having been assimilated to the wider culture, it’s theology reduced to what sociologist Christian Smith has described as “moral therapeutic deism.” And he believes that the only way the church can preserve both its own identity, and preserve “the good, the true, and the beautiful” is a form of strategic withdrawal into the equivalent of Benedict’s monastic communities. In his original post, he gives two examples of religious communities, both in remote locations, which have done just this. He also advocates for the disengagement of the church from all but the most local of politics.

My initial reaction to this proposal is to push back against it. I come out of an ethos of Christians living as ‘salt and light’ in society, of being ‘in’ but not ‘of’ the world. I have always preferred conversation to confrontation or cloistering. I’ve seen numerous examples of people of faith whose “faithful presence”, to use James Davison Hunter‘s phrase, has transformed neighborhoods, businesses, and institutions. I’m not ready to give up on that.

What Dreher does emphasize is that the current state of Christianity in America is in a parlous state, often more captive ideologically, morally, and politically to the culture than to the gospel. Both youth and adults often lack substantive formation in belief and practice and their world views are often shaped more by YouTube, social media, and talk radio (and TV). We are often far from being the “Christian counter-culture” John Stott described in his exposition of the Sermon on the Mount. At best we are a subculture.

Do we need to withdraw to save our souls? Are “the barbarians at the gates”, where it is time to flee to the hills? While I don’t think such a time has come, Dreher’s proposal is a challenge to our congregations and parishes and the place these have in the lives of people of faith. Often, these are at the periphery of life. Almost everything else in our lives get greater attention from the condition of our lawns to the fitness of our bodies to the academic and athletic success of our children. Should it then surprise us to find our faith and practice so flabby?

I would propose an alternative to the ‘Benedict option’, one that might be called ‘the Redeemer option’ after Redeemer Presbyterian Church, operating in the heart of New York City. On its website, the church articulates its vision in these terms:

“As a church of Jesus Christ, Redeemer exists to help build a great city for all people through a movement of the gospel that brings personal conversion, community formation, social justice, and cultural renewal to New York City and, through it, the world.”

This is a congregation characterized by theological integrity, intellectual rigor, artistic excellence, and a robust engagement with the needs and culture of New York City. While I will not deny the importance of the monastic tradition in the history of the church, I would contend there is another tradition, from the first “urban Christians” to their contemporaries in our great urban centers nurturing both a vibrant life and cultural engagement in supposedly ‘decadent’ places. Might not the call of our time be just as much ‘the Redeemer option’–a counter-culture of the people of God in the city?

Review: Athanasius: The Life of Antony of Egypt

January 24, 2014January 24, 2014 / rtrube54 / 2 Comments

Athanasius: The Life of Antony of Egypt by Albert Haase
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Voices from the past can be like a bucket of cold water awakening us to realities to which our own age renders us oblivious. Reading Athanasius, particularly in this vivid paraphrase is like that. Part of this is the subject matter for most of this work, the life of Antony. Antony was a desert monastic–holy but hardly tame. Most striking in Athanasius narrative on Antony is his spiritual combat with demonic beings. Were it not for the wisdom and discernment Antony shows elsewhere, one might think him a bit deranged. Yet perhaps this reflects our own obliviousness to the spiritual powers and that they may lull us with subtleties and not need to attack directly. Here is one quote from Antony that gives a sense of this (and of Haase’s paraphrasing):

“If you really had guts and power, only one of you would have come. But since the Lord has conquered you, you had to gang up on me like schoolyard bullies. In reality, your bark is worse than your bite….If you really have guts and power, then come on and have at me! But if you are a wuss, why disturb me? For faith in our Lord is the strongest of defenses and the best of weapons.”(p.33)

We also see in Antony the combination of the interior spirituality of the desert with the ability to minister with insight with both individuals and groups where necessary. Antony’s life is an account of the physicality of spiritual formation as he deals with lust, fasting, physical suffering and more and how facing these dependent upon Christ can immeasurably deepen our love for God.

The book also includes several shorter pieces by Athanasius. The letter to Ammoun gives pastorally wise counsel to a young man about the normal physical excretions of the body (including nocturnal emissions) and that since God made the body, these are not evil or unclean but normal and good. The letter to Dracontius challenges one fleeing a call to the bishopric to courage and obedience. And the fragment of Festal Letter 19 is an important piece of evidence from the early fourth century to the already forming consensus of the church on the canon of scripture.

The book includes a study guide for reflection or discussion, and an annotated bibliography on the works of Athanasius–all in 128 pages!

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Review: The Rule of Saint Benedict

November 9, 2013November 9, 2013 / rtrube54 / 3 Comments

The Rule of Saint Benedict by St. Benedict of Nursia
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

For most of us to read this work is to enter another world. Not only is this written in the 6th century AD but it is written about a kind of experience, the truly monastic life, that few of us will experience, much less understand. So what is the worth of this work?

First of all, the choice of a monastic life is the choice to pursue a greater love of God and holiness of life through poverty, simplicity, submission, and stability in a community. For those who don’t choose monastic communities, it seems there is much we can still learn from Benedict, if we are willing to accept the challenge implicit in the “rule” he develops.

Benedict covers all matters of life in the monastery from the qualifications of the abbot to entering the monastery to the ordering of Psalms used in the prayers of the hours to times for meals, amounts of food and drink, the care of the sick, the treatment of guests and even the qualifications of the porter and the cellarer (the person responsible for keeping the monastery in food and drink).

Perhaps most challenging are some of the rules pertaining to excommunication. It seems on first reading harsh, because one can be excommunicated for even minor faults. Reading more carefully, it is evident that much of this has to do with resistance to the authority necessary to sustain such a community. There also are clear provisions for the abbot to work with the excommunicate to restore him and specific steps to restoration. What all this speaks into is the recognition that sin is deceitful and its roots go deep into our lives and that if one cares deeply about pursuing a holy life, such drastic measures may be necessary and that we cannot do it ourselves but only as we come under the authority of Christ and those who minister on his behalf.

Much of this challenges our “I’m basically a good person” culture that embraces radical personal freedom. It recognizes that freedom often comes through submission to the rule of another that brings order to lives out of control. And so, I think there are a number of insights from Benedict’s “Rule” that apply to those of us not living as monastics:

1. If loving God above all else is indeed the one thing in our lives, then this implies the simplicity that removes all that distracts from this pursuit.

2. Some “rule of life” is necessary for all of us–a rhythm of ordering our hours and days around the pursuit of our first love.

3. We cannot do this alone. Work and prayer in community with others of like mind is important to sustaining our resolve.

4. “Submission” is a nasty word to most of us in contemporary society and yet if we do not submit to Christ and those seeking genuinely to act on his behalf as shepherds to us, how can we hope to flourish “in green pastures and beside still waters”?

This particular edition is preceded by an essay by Thomas Moore and a helpful chronology of monasticism. Even if all the details of monastic life seem irrelevant, I would recommend reading the first seven chapters which include discussions of humility, the restraint of speech and seeking the counsel of others that have relevance for all of us. But the rest will not take a great deal of time, the whole “Rule” only occupies 70 pages in this edition.

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