Category: Culture War
Neo-Anabaptists and the Benedict Option
One of the underlying questions behind much of Rod Dreher’s discussion of the Benedict Option so far concerns how we ought to think about a limited withdrawal from mainstream America in order to protect ourselves as orthodox believers against “corrosive...
The Blinkered Benedict Option
Rod Dreher was very kind to put more thought into his response to my joke post at First Things at the Benedict Option. I did have a point—which he gets, and has written about before (although I think Jake summed...
Benedict, Patrick, Jeremiah, and Other Nouns as Well
One of the persistent challenges to the ongoing discussion of the Benedict Option is the claim that the BenOp is primarily a retreat from public life and is, therefore, wrong-headed. Though they are presented under separate names, this seems to be...
The Benedict Option and the Pace of Middle Class Life
NOTE: If you are a reader in the DC area interested in further discussion about the BenOp, consider attending an event this Saturday at Georgetown University featuring Rod Dreher and Ken Myers of Mars Hill Audio. You can learn more about...
Race and the Benedict Option
In one of its clumsier formulations, the Benedict Option might be understood as the response of orthodox Christians to the United States taking a decisive turn to, for the first time in its history, oppose orthodox Christians for their faith....
Class and the Benedict Option
When asked to give specifics about exactly what Christians should withdraw from, Benedict Option proponents have often cited our nation’s public schools as a good place to begin. I’ve heard friends offer that prescription and, indeed, I suggested it myself just last week....
Protestantism and the Benedict Option
The following is less a long-form essay and more a series of semi-connected thoughts concerning the Benedict Option and American Protestantism. I’ve broken them down with headers in hopes of making it easier for readers to pick out which parts...
Why Toleration is Not Enough
Bryan McGraw is Associate Professor of Politics at Wheaton College and lover of all things smoked BBQ. Two groups lately have found themselves on the defensive politically and socially, and seem deeply befuddled as to why—and why it seems to...
Home, Retreat, and the Benedict Option
Just off a state highway in northern Iowa there is a place called Littlefield Abbey. It’s a two-bedroom farmhouse on about five acres of land on the edge of a small Iowa town that belongs to a pastor at a...
Evangelicals and the Search for Credibility
There’s a sort of American Christian (almost always white and middle-to-upper class) who seems to think that the American church’s biggest problem at the moment is the previous generation of the American church. There are various sub-groups within this broader camp. The...