What Happens When the 'Moral Majority' Becomes a Minority?
September 28, 2015 11:36 AM Subscribe
Conservative Christian communities are split between doubling down on their advocacy, or walling themselves off from mainstream culture. - Laura Turner, Atlantic
Rod Dreher, worried that democracy is dying, has been the leading proponent of what he calls The Benedict Option for conservative Christians to withdraw from modernity, live as exiles in their own country, and reinvigorate their traditional communities.
Donald Trump and the Rise of the Moral Minority (via)
Opting Out Of The Benedict Option
Now Isn’t the Time to Flee the Public Square - "Dismay with the same-sex marriage decision doesn’t warrant a retreat from culture and politics." David Brooks weighs in.
The Christian Right’s ‘Benedict Option’ Makes All Kinds of Sense — And is Totally Not Racist. Yay!
Why the culture war’s losers shouldn’t retreat from public life
It's all part of America's Changing Religious Landscape - previously
What is The Future Of [Christian] Faith In America? Let's ask CS Lewis.
Rod Dreher, worried that democracy is dying, has been the leading proponent of what he calls The Benedict Option for conservative Christians to withdraw from modernity, live as exiles in their own country, and reinvigorate their traditional communities.
My argument is that Christians had better prepare for this. We are fighting a losing game. The country is not ours anymore. This is not our culture anymore. Maybe it never was our real home, but we have got to prepare ourselves and our families and our churches through intentional living, through disciplined living, and through an awareness of the cultural moment to deal with perhaps even persecution.This includes Anglicans, Catholics(via), Evangelicals, and Protestants [PDF] (via)
Donald Trump and the Rise of the Moral Minority (via)
DONALD TRUMP’S high poll numbers among evangelicals have preoccupied the media for months. But the most interesting thing about his Christian fans is not their willingness to overlook the sins of a casino playboy. Evangelicals happily voted for a divorced man of uncertain faith once before: Ronald Reagan. What is most striking is that Mr. Trump’s campaign has exposed a rift within evangelicalism — a split between those calling for culture war as usual and those who say Christians must adjust to life as a minority in American Babylon.Is St. Benedict even a good model? What about a Jeremiah option or a Dominican option or an Escriva option?
Opting Out Of The Benedict Option
Now Isn’t the Time to Flee the Public Square - "Dismay with the same-sex marriage decision doesn’t warrant a retreat from culture and politics." David Brooks weighs in.
The Christian Right’s ‘Benedict Option’ Makes All Kinds of Sense — And is Totally Not Racist. Yay!
Why the culture war’s losers shouldn’t retreat from public life
It's all part of America's Changing Religious Landscape - previously
What is The Future Of [Christian] Faith In America? Let's ask CS Lewis.
This post links a lot to Rod Dreher. If you find him insufferable, a position I fully understand, go with this link, this link, this link, and this link
posted by the man of twists and turns at 11:42 AM on September 28, 2015 [8 favorites]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 11:42 AM on September 28, 2015 [8 favorites]
A decline from 78% to 71% is hardly a "minority". But facts don't feed the persecution narrative.
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:43 AM on September 28, 2015 [46 favorites]
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:43 AM on September 28, 2015 [46 favorites]
I can't help contrasting the loud persecution complex of Evangelicals with the quiet co-existance of Jehovah's Witnesses, of whom my sister and her family are one. They have their Kingdom Hall, their faith-driven decisions on not engaging in certain activities, and for the rest of it, live and let live. The result seems to be a community that has very little problem remaining vibrant for those who want to be part of it, and a lack of friction with the rest of the world that seems to suit everyone.
Who among Evangelicals is counting the cost to their community of forcing an us-or-them choice on the following generation?
posted by fatbird at 11:48 AM on September 28, 2015 [34 favorites]
Who among Evangelicals is counting the cost to their community of forcing an us-or-them choice on the following generation?
posted by fatbird at 11:48 AM on September 28, 2015 [34 favorites]
I say this as a fairly-regularly-churchgoing man: The church could frankly use a little persecution to remind us of what the real stuff feels like. Then maybe empathy wouldn't trail too far behind. Hell, after that, we might find more people willing to join us.
posted by middleclasstool at 11:50 AM on September 28, 2015 [24 favorites]
posted by middleclasstool at 11:50 AM on September 28, 2015 [24 favorites]
Is St. Benedict even a good model?
IIRC, Benedict wasn't into the whole boning for procreation thing. So a Christian withdrawal from public life would have to take the form that it has taken, in numerous cases involving so many different Christian sects, throughout American history, starting with the Mayflower.
And it would do a whole lot of good. A lot of the ideas that make the Moral Majority so noxious come from them having to concentrate on presenting a particular facade for political theater. If instead they had to, well, apply their attention to preserving the family institutions they claim to value, well, maybe they'd succeed, and not have horrendous divorce rates. Maybe they'd succeed in staunching the losses from the heroin epidemic around middle America.
I'd call it the Rabbi Gamaliel option.
posted by ocschwar at 11:50 AM on September 28, 2015 [6 favorites]
IIRC, Benedict wasn't into the whole boning for procreation thing. So a Christian withdrawal from public life would have to take the form that it has taken, in numerous cases involving so many different Christian sects, throughout American history, starting with the Mayflower.
And it would do a whole lot of good. A lot of the ideas that make the Moral Majority so noxious come from them having to concentrate on presenting a particular facade for political theater. If instead they had to, well, apply their attention to preserving the family institutions they claim to value, well, maybe they'd succeed, and not have horrendous divorce rates. Maybe they'd succeed in staunching the losses from the heroin epidemic around middle America.
I'd call it the Rabbi Gamaliel option.
posted by ocschwar at 11:50 AM on September 28, 2015 [6 favorites]
What Happens When the 'Moral Majority' Becomes a Minority?
The world becomes a better place. If they want to withdraw and become Amish, let them knock themselves out. I'm of course referring to the asshats who go out of their way to try to force their religion upon everyone. I live/work/talk/engage/have fun with lots of religious individuals with a healthy live and let live philosophy, and worship at a church that believes that outreach means civil discourse, not screaming louder.
posted by prepmonkey at 11:51 AM on September 28, 2015 [33 favorites]
The world becomes a better place. If they want to withdraw and become Amish, let them knock themselves out. I'm of course referring to the asshats who go out of their way to try to force their religion upon everyone. I live/work/talk/engage/have fun with lots of religious individuals with a healthy live and let live philosophy, and worship at a church that believes that outreach means civil discourse, not screaming louder.
posted by prepmonkey at 11:51 AM on September 28, 2015 [33 favorites]
Hell, after that, we might find more people willing to join us.
Except that belief is not based on persecution. A growing number of young people are atheist/agnostic.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:51 AM on September 28, 2015
Except that belief is not based on persecution. A growing number of young people are atheist/agnostic.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:51 AM on September 28, 2015
The Moral Majority was never that--it was always a very loud, amoral minority with a poor grasp of history.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 11:51 AM on September 28, 2015 [72 favorites]
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 11:51 AM on September 28, 2015 [72 favorites]
I just want to point out to the Evangelicals who are contemplating retreat, they've discovered flowing water on Mars. Because you can never go too far away.
posted by happyroach at 11:53 AM on September 28, 2015 [7 favorites]
posted by happyroach at 11:53 AM on September 28, 2015 [7 favorites]
The Benedict Option is precisely the same catharsis for Evangelicals and post-Evangelicals as zombie movies are for people. It's the fantasy of the reset button, a chance to rebuild without all those other people fucking up your shit. I say this as someone whose parents pretty much did Benedict Option their adult lives (bought a little farm where we grew as much of our food as we could, homeschooled us kids, mostly cut us off from TV and from our peers).
It's an escape from the actual work of living in a society with other people whose ideas you don't agree with, in light of an ever-dawning loss of privilege that Evangelicals are not able to call the cultural shots (anymore, implicitly assuming that Evangelicals once called the shots and that the world was indeed better when they did).
I'd be inclined to say "let them go" except that this particular strain of thinking tends to run alongside a strongly patriarchal gender politics which is often ripe for child abuse, and it is difficult to stomach the potential harm there.
posted by gauche at 11:55 AM on September 28, 2015 [60 favorites]
It's an escape from the actual work of living in a society with other people whose ideas you don't agree with, in light of an ever-dawning loss of privilege that Evangelicals are not able to call the cultural shots (anymore, implicitly assuming that Evangelicals once called the shots and that the world was indeed better when they did).
I'd be inclined to say "let them go" except that this particular strain of thinking tends to run alongside a strongly patriarchal gender politics which is often ripe for child abuse, and it is difficult to stomach the potential harm there.
posted by gauche at 11:55 AM on September 28, 2015 [60 favorites]
We are going to have to learn how to live with at least a mild form of persecution.
Not getting what you want != persecution
posted by prepmonkey at 11:55 AM on September 28, 2015 [100 favorites]
Not getting what you want != persecution
posted by prepmonkey at 11:55 AM on September 28, 2015 [100 favorites]
the dogs bark, but the caravan goes on
posted by Postroad at 11:59 AM on September 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
Because you can never go too far away
Well, just remember to keep out of the Arachnid Quarantine Zone....
posted by Esteemed Offendi at 12:00 PM on September 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
Well, just remember to keep out of the Arachnid Quarantine Zone....
posted by Esteemed Offendi at 12:00 PM on September 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
Not getting what you want != persecution
I say the *same* thing, almost every day, to sullen teens. They don't believe it either. And they have their own form of door-slamming, retreat to sulk, hate you all, Benedict Option response.
I'm assuming the teens will outgrow it. Not sure about the evangelicals.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 12:00 PM on September 28, 2015 [31 favorites]
I say the *same* thing, almost every day, to sullen teens. They don't believe it either. And they have their own form of door-slamming, retreat to sulk, hate you all, Benedict Option response.
I'm assuming the teens will outgrow it. Not sure about the evangelicals.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 12:00 PM on September 28, 2015 [31 favorites]
The country is not ours anymore.
Speaking as an American: the country was never yours, not much past the founding of a few colonies. The Founding Fathers are not yours, the Constitution is not yours, the great struggles were not yours -- they are ours (for good and ill); you only yelled loudly enough that you convinced yourselves (and a few others) that you were the voice of America.
--> Dustbin of History.
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:01 PM on September 28, 2015 [74 favorites]
Speaking as an American: the country was never yours, not much past the founding of a few colonies. The Founding Fathers are not yours, the Constitution is not yours, the great struggles were not yours -- they are ours (for good and ill); you only yelled loudly enough that you convinced yourselves (and a few others) that you were the voice of America.
--> Dustbin of History.
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:01 PM on September 28, 2015 [74 favorites]
Except that belief is not based on persecution. A growing number of young people are atheist/agnostic.
I felt like that part went without saying. But there is also a growing demographic of people who believe in a higher power and consider themselves spiritual who have zero desire to ally themselves with religion for reasons of bigotry, outdated ways of thinking, and a general lack of empathy.
posted by middleclasstool at 12:02 PM on September 28, 2015 [6 favorites]
I felt like that part went without saying. But there is also a growing demographic of people who believe in a higher power and consider themselves spiritual who have zero desire to ally themselves with religion for reasons of bigotry, outdated ways of thinking, and a general lack of empathy.
posted by middleclasstool at 12:02 PM on September 28, 2015 [6 favorites]
Worried that democracy is dying because their viewpoints are no longer pre-eminent?
Sounds like somebody never had a thorough grounding in civics or the meaning of the word democracy. Or change.
I say we should really embrace democracy and end tax-exemption for churches. There was a deal - religion stays out of government, and government stays out of religion. It's not really a deal if one side reneges at every turn.
To everybody who complains that the government interferes too much in their lives, I say: you are liars. You can easily live free of government interference, it's just that you want the things government and society provide. I assure you, if you want to go live away from taxes and the law, there are plenty of places in Montana or many, many other states where you can easily hide away from civil society.
In fact, there are a lot of places where it is apparently common to squat on corporate properties because the reach of the law is very limited.
No, what you want is to control the lives and free will of other people.
posted by Strudel at 12:03 PM on September 28, 2015 [61 favorites]
Sounds like somebody never had a thorough grounding in civics or the meaning of the word democracy. Or change.
I say we should really embrace democracy and end tax-exemption for churches. There was a deal - religion stays out of government, and government stays out of religion. It's not really a deal if one side reneges at every turn.
To everybody who complains that the government interferes too much in their lives, I say: you are liars. You can easily live free of government interference, it's just that you want the things government and society provide. I assure you, if you want to go live away from taxes and the law, there are plenty of places in Montana or many, many other states where you can easily hide away from civil society.
In fact, there are a lot of places where it is apparently common to squat on corporate properties because the reach of the law is very limited.
No, what you want is to control the lives and free will of other people.
posted by Strudel at 12:03 PM on September 28, 2015 [61 favorites]
Speaking as an American: the country was never yours, not much past the founding of a few colonies
Unless you are using the strict definition of country, the land here wasn't theirs either.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:03 PM on September 28, 2015 [13 favorites]
Unless you are using the strict definition of country, the land here wasn't theirs either.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:03 PM on September 28, 2015 [13 favorites]
But the most interesting thing about his Christian fans is not their willingness to overlook the sins of a casino playboy. Evangelicals happily voted for a divorced man of uncertain faith once before: Ronald Reagan.
Exactly -- it isn't interesting at all that the so-called "moral" evangelical voters happily overlook the sins of one who purports to be one of their tribe.
What's interesting is why anyone, particularly anyone in the media, presumes the "values voters" are at all sincere.
posted by Gelatin at 12:03 PM on September 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
Exactly -- it isn't interesting at all that the so-called "moral" evangelical voters happily overlook the sins of one who purports to be one of their tribe.
What's interesting is why anyone, particularly anyone in the media, presumes the "values voters" are at all sincere.
posted by Gelatin at 12:03 PM on September 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
This would actually be a return to an earlier version of Evangelical Christianity. Prior to the 1970s, Baptists in America were strongly opposed to mixing religion and politics, and lived in a sort of private bubble of righteousness that really tried not to be contaminated by worldly things.
It was Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority in the 1970s that led this shift, and I don't think it has been a good one for America or for Christianity, and one has inevitably corrupted the other.
posted by maxsparber at 12:04 PM on September 28, 2015 [13 favorites]
It was Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority in the 1970s that led this shift, and I don't think it has been a good one for America or for Christianity, and one has inevitably corrupted the other.
posted by maxsparber at 12:04 PM on September 28, 2015 [13 favorites]
Who among Evangelicals is counting the cost to their community of forcing an us-or-them choice on the following generation?
Fred Clark of Slacktivist, for one. He has some great things about the terrible problems that incoherent theology cause, on an institutional and personal level. His comments about the psychological toll of the demand to Witness (when hardly anyone is any good at direct Witnessing) explained a lot for me.
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:05 PM on September 28, 2015 [16 favorites]
Fred Clark of Slacktivist, for one. He has some great things about the terrible problems that incoherent theology cause, on an institutional and personal level. His comments about the psychological toll of the demand to Witness (when hardly anyone is any good at direct Witnessing) explained a lot for me.
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:05 PM on September 28, 2015 [16 favorites]
Yeah, and what's weird is how this thinking conflates being considered irrelevant with being treated with hostility. I see this in my friends who have not made the same escape from our background that I have. There is no being dismissed or agreeing to disagree; there is only The Truth and The Lie.
posted by gauche at 12:05 PM on September 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by gauche at 12:05 PM on September 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
i for one welcome our new fundy underlords.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 12:07 PM on September 28, 2015 [6 favorites]
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 12:07 PM on September 28, 2015 [6 favorites]
I'd be inclined to say "let them go" except that this particular strain of thinking tends to run alongside a strongly patriarchal gender politics which is often ripe for child abuse, and it is difficult to stomach the potential harm there.
I've been watching this with growing concern since I first noticed Dreher's grotesque bleating a while ago (a comment I posted in the Obergefell thread, frex).
I'm not a member of the Christian Right, however you want to delineate that, but I grew up in one part of it, and had a lot of friends and relatives pretty deep in other parts. The thing I'm certain of is that a reinvigorated Christian withdrawal-from-society movement will have an enormous human cost for the people caught inside of it. For people Dreher's age, the damage is done. For a lot of kids, this could be a decades-long nightmare and a lifetime of lingering damage even if they manage to escape.
posted by brennen at 12:08 PM on September 28, 2015 [18 favorites]
I've been watching this with growing concern since I first noticed Dreher's grotesque bleating a while ago (a comment I posted in the Obergefell thread, frex).
I'm not a member of the Christian Right, however you want to delineate that, but I grew up in one part of it, and had a lot of friends and relatives pretty deep in other parts. The thing I'm certain of is that a reinvigorated Christian withdrawal-from-society movement will have an enormous human cost for the people caught inside of it. For people Dreher's age, the damage is done. For a lot of kids, this could be a decades-long nightmare and a lifetime of lingering damage even if they manage to escape.
posted by brennen at 12:08 PM on September 28, 2015 [18 favorites]
You see the thing is, the rest of us didn't consider America to be "our country" in the sense that we owned it and got to tell it what to do.
posted by Naberius at 12:08 PM on September 28, 2015 [31 favorites]
posted by Naberius at 12:08 PM on September 28, 2015 [31 favorites]
I sometimes wonder if conservative evangelicals feel any sort of cognitive dissonance at the juxtaposition between the romanticized idea/delusion they have of being a persecuted "countercultural" minority and the desire they have to impose their beliefs upon the rest of society, plus their insistence that recent SCOTUS decisions don't truly reflect the will of the people.
That's if their bleatings about being countercultural aren't heavily based on sour grapes.
posted by imnotasquirrel at 12:11 PM on September 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
That's if their bleatings about being countercultural aren't heavily based on sour grapes.
posted by imnotasquirrel at 12:11 PM on September 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
Karen Armstrong discusses this in Battle for God, about the trends in American Christianity towards expansionism and isolationism, and the different periods of each. She talks about various trends like evangelism (revivalism/televangelists, etc...), homeschooling, millennial thinking (Millerites, Russellites, etc...)...
It'll be interesting to see if the tide turns, but I have a very hard time to think it would be so. But yeah, the Donald certainly *is* an interesting change compared to the historical trend of pretty much all Republicans candidates (and many many Dems) to have to wear their religion on their sleeve.
posted by symbioid at 12:14 PM on September 28, 2015 [5 favorites]
It'll be interesting to see if the tide turns, but I have a very hard time to think it would be so. But yeah, the Donald certainly *is* an interesting change compared to the historical trend of pretty much all Republicans candidates (and many many Dems) to have to wear their religion on their sleeve.
posted by symbioid at 12:14 PM on September 28, 2015 [5 favorites]
But Trump does, in fact, wear his religion on his sleeve, insofar as Mammon is a deity.
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:19 PM on September 28, 2015 [11 favorites]
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:19 PM on September 28, 2015 [11 favorites]
This just seems like usual Dominionist culture war rhetoric to me. They've been talking about talking their ball and going home for decades. They can't actually win.
posted by happyroach at 12:21 PM on September 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by happyroach at 12:21 PM on September 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
Last Week: Congressional Republicans vote to defund Planned Parenthood
This Week: Conservative Christians are losing their fucking minds over their views being marginalized.
These people will never give up, and they will never position themselves as anything other than victims in the media. Their inability to engage in honest debate is the real threat to democracy.
posted by lownote at 12:22 PM on September 28, 2015 [27 favorites]
This Week: Conservative Christians are losing their fucking minds over their views being marginalized.
These people will never give up, and they will never position themselves as anything other than victims in the media. Their inability to engage in honest debate is the real threat to democracy.
posted by lownote at 12:22 PM on September 28, 2015 [27 favorites]
It's the fantasy of the reset button, a chance to rebuild without all those other people fucking up your shit.
Oh, it's the fantasy of the rest of us who aren't the Christian Right too.
What a glorious day it will be when all those awful sacks of shit break away and isolate themselves from the rest of us. Maybe the more awful libertarians will finally "Go Galt" and leave us alone too.
For a lot of kids, this could be a decades-long nightmare and a lifetime of lingering damage even if they manage to escape.
It sounds like this is largely already true. There already seems to be fantastic pressure to stay inside the community.
The choice seems to be between these nutcases harming their children, or harming their children and everyone else as well.
posted by Sangermaine at 12:23 PM on September 28, 2015 [9 favorites]
Oh, it's the fantasy of the rest of us who aren't the Christian Right too.
What a glorious day it will be when all those awful sacks of shit break away and isolate themselves from the rest of us. Maybe the more awful libertarians will finally "Go Galt" and leave us alone too.
For a lot of kids, this could be a decades-long nightmare and a lifetime of lingering damage even if they manage to escape.
It sounds like this is largely already true. There already seems to be fantastic pressure to stay inside the community.
The choice seems to be between these nutcases harming their children, or harming their children and everyone else as well.
posted by Sangermaine at 12:23 PM on September 28, 2015 [9 favorites]
It sounds like this is largely already true. There already seems to be fantastic pressure to stay inside the community.
The choice seems to be between these nutcases harming their children, or harming their children and everyone else as well.
1. There is overwhelming pressure on parents to raise kids who perfectly parrot their parents' beliefs, and accordingly the parents put a ton of pressure on kids to be those parrots. Have a look at some of the early writings of Homeschoolers Anonymous and you'll see it.
2. At the same time, and this is perhaps just me coming from my place of having broken free of this toxic ideology, I have to say that the idea that anybody's children are some kind of acceptable collateral damage for getting these troublesome Christians out of politics feels a little glib to me. If that is indeed the choice, it is a pretty poor one. I don't think it that the options are really quite so constrained.
posted by gauche at 12:31 PM on September 28, 2015 [10 favorites]
The choice seems to be between these nutcases harming their children, or harming their children and everyone else as well.
1. There is overwhelming pressure on parents to raise kids who perfectly parrot their parents' beliefs, and accordingly the parents put a ton of pressure on kids to be those parrots. Have a look at some of the early writings of Homeschoolers Anonymous and you'll see it.
2. At the same time, and this is perhaps just me coming from my place of having broken free of this toxic ideology, I have to say that the idea that anybody's children are some kind of acceptable collateral damage for getting these troublesome Christians out of politics feels a little glib to me. If that is indeed the choice, it is a pretty poor one. I don't think it that the options are really quite so constrained.
posted by gauche at 12:31 PM on September 28, 2015 [10 favorites]
I had to stop reading this article for fear of spraining an eye muscle.
From all the rolling. Of my eyes.
posted by kcds at 12:34 PM on September 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
From all the rolling. Of my eyes.
posted by kcds at 12:34 PM on September 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
I never said they were acceptable collateral damage. I said it's already the case that it's difficult for children to escape the toxic communities of these people even while they're engaged in politics now. That's not going to change either way, it's not an option these Christian Conservatives are exploring. If there's a major Evangelical group that's flirting with promoting openness, choice, and skepticism in their children and community, that would be great, but there isn't.
Of the options they are exploring, getting them out of politics so they can at least stop fucking everyone else is the best. It might even help kids escape, once the political clout of these communities is weakened or negated so that they no longer control their local (and sometimes national) government apparatus.
posted by Sangermaine at 12:36 PM on September 28, 2015
Of the options they are exploring, getting them out of politics so they can at least stop fucking everyone else is the best. It might even help kids escape, once the political clout of these communities is weakened or negated so that they no longer control their local (and sometimes national) government apparatus.
posted by Sangermaine at 12:36 PM on September 28, 2015
I really hope the options aren't limited to double-down on controlling society or withdrawing entirely. I've mentioned Brian McLaren around here before, and he has quite a few readers that he is pointing to another alternative. A snippet from a previous, epic-length comment:
posted by Pater Aletheias at 12:41 PM on September 28, 2015 [74 favorites]
But that certainly doesn't mean cooperate with an oppressive regime. Folks who were in the "Roman Empire right or wrong" club were always upset with Jesus for speaking of the kingship of God. That's why Matthew records that at the crucifixion the crowd yelled "We have no king but Caesar." It was clear that Jesus wasn't interest in bolstering the power of the establishment.This is really what Jesus was all about service, not power; engagement, not withdrawal. The New Testament is pretty clear on this stuff. Christians are leaven in the dough, salt in the meal, a light on a hillside. A small thing that makes everything else better. Or it's supposed to work that way. There's an increasingly strong care-for-the-poor, anti-racism, pro-feminist strain in young evangelicals that think is going to win out. Not doubling down on political action committees, not retreating to the desert, but engaging society in a respectful and helpful way.
And the people in who thought that the right thing was to withdraw into monastic retreat were scandalized at how earthy the Jesus crowd could be. When Jesus and the disciples showed up, there were feasts, abundant wine, dancing and singing. They were fully engaged with life and with other people.
Jesus presented option D: engage the world for the purpose of blessing it, knowing that your true king was God. Rebellion won't change the world, it'll just add more misery to it. Willing co-option won't change the world, it'll just corrupt your values. Isolation certainly won't change the world, and all your personal enlightenment won't make any difference to suffering folks still out in the world.
"If you are part of this kingdom, you won't slit Roman throats like the Zealots. Instead, if a Roman soldier backhands you with a blow to the right cheek, you'll turn the other in a kind of nonviolent resistance and transcendence. If a soldier forces you to carry his pack for one mile, you'll carry it a second mile as an expression of your own transcendent free will; you choose a higher option, one above either passive submission or active retaliation. If you are part of this kingdom, you won't curse and damn the notorious sinners and scoundrels to hell; instead, you'll interact with them gently and kindly, refusing to judge, even inviting them to your parties and treating them as neighbors --being less afraid of their polluting influence on you than you are hopeful about your possible healing and ennobling influence on them. . . you begin to live in a way that some will say is stupid and naïve. . . but others might see in your way of life the courageous and wild hope that could heal and transform the world. . ."--McLaren, Secret Message of Jesus, page 16ish.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 12:41 PM on September 28, 2015 [74 favorites]
I am confused. Can someone please confirm that the "Benedictine Option" is the lifestyle equivalent of placing fingers in the ears and shouting "LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU" whenever your views are challenged? And... this is being seriously proposed as a "solution"? I mean, an actual person who has a brain and etc. is telling other humans they should seriously consider this option. Seriously? "Let's take our toys and go home" is not a way to live.
posted by caution live frogs at 12:43 PM on September 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by caution live frogs at 12:43 PM on September 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
For a lot of kids, this could be a decades-long nightmare and a lifetime of lingering damage even if they manage to escape.
Here is one of the enduring tensions of a free democratic society: Kids are unacceptable collateral damage. This cannot be changed by any government fiat or democratically enacted decision without trampling on a right to privacy or right to raise children however we want.
It's similar to the problem of how a commitment to free speech means a certain amount of terrible speech. Regardless of whether people are withdrawn into their own communities or agitating for political change, everywhere people do terrible things to each other and it cannot be stopped absent invasive government policy a lot of people would neither countenance nor like.
The only "fix" is better civil society and encouraging education and a better culture. The internet has helped in some regards. But if people want to raise children like puppets, it's really hard to stop. As I posted earlier, it's not that hard to get away from society if you don't want to be a part of it.
I'm not saying that the collateral damage is acceptable. But the grim truth of a truly free society is that it's inevitable. People are free to commit crimes, and so they will. People are free to parent badly (or homeschool), and so they will. The most you can do to fight it is to make a cultural fabric to look down on all of these things. But sufficiently insular communities do things differently. This is a fact of human civilization. In terms of the slow process of trying to make people better, it looks like Norway and the other scandinavian nations are closest to figuring it out. And still there are issues.
posted by Strudel at 12:45 PM on September 28, 2015 [6 favorites]
Here is one of the enduring tensions of a free democratic society: Kids are unacceptable collateral damage. This cannot be changed by any government fiat or democratically enacted decision without trampling on a right to privacy or right to raise children however we want.
It's similar to the problem of how a commitment to free speech means a certain amount of terrible speech. Regardless of whether people are withdrawn into their own communities or agitating for political change, everywhere people do terrible things to each other and it cannot be stopped absent invasive government policy a lot of people would neither countenance nor like.
The only "fix" is better civil society and encouraging education and a better culture. The internet has helped in some regards. But if people want to raise children like puppets, it's really hard to stop. As I posted earlier, it's not that hard to get away from society if you don't want to be a part of it.
I'm not saying that the collateral damage is acceptable. But the grim truth of a truly free society is that it's inevitable. People are free to commit crimes, and so they will. People are free to parent badly (or homeschool), and so they will. The most you can do to fight it is to make a cultural fabric to look down on all of these things. But sufficiently insular communities do things differently. This is a fact of human civilization. In terms of the slow process of trying to make people better, it looks like Norway and the other scandinavian nations are closest to figuring it out. And still there are issues.
posted by Strudel at 12:45 PM on September 28, 2015 [6 favorites]
I mean, an actual person who has a brain and etc. is telling other humans they should seriously consider this option. Seriously? "Let's take our toys and go home" is not a way to live.
Honestly, most of us live that way for at least 90% of the hot-button political issues going on around us. Perhaps even more than that, given that folks tend to double down on their beliefs when confronted with contradictory evidence.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:47 PM on September 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
Honestly, most of us live that way for at least 90% of the hot-button political issues going on around us. Perhaps even more than that, given that folks tend to double down on their beliefs when confronted with contradictory evidence.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:47 PM on September 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
Seems kinda off conflating Evangelicals, Catholics, and (Eastern) Orthodox. Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy are pretty similar & working on reunification, Evangelicalism is very different and tends to hate on Catholicism.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 12:52 PM on September 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 12:52 PM on September 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
From David Brooks:
The defining face of social conservatism could be this: Those are the people who go into underprivileged areas and form organizations to help nurture stable families. Those are the people who build community institutions in places where they are sparse.
Yes, and there's been absolutely no history of that approach having horrible outcomes on the communities and cultures that existed before the arrival of the enlightened and morally upright. Would these socially conservative groups be prepared for the fact that nurturing a stable family in an "underprivileged area" might involve family structures and cultural mores that aren't in keeping with evangelical views on the same? That community institutions need to reflect the communities they serve, and not the community the benevolent bringers of what is morally pure believe is right for everyone? What Brooks is suggesting echoes some very paternalistic, abusive, and destructive approaches and while I want to believe he doesn't intend that, I can't help but hear it in his words.
The fact that American evangelical communities have the ability to consider the "Benedict Option" is a huge statement of privilege and is a lot more than many other communities have had down through the centuries.
posted by nubs at 12:56 PM on September 28, 2015 [9 favorites]
The defining face of social conservatism could be this: Those are the people who go into underprivileged areas and form organizations to help nurture stable families. Those are the people who build community institutions in places where they are sparse.
Yes, and there's been absolutely no history of that approach having horrible outcomes on the communities and cultures that existed before the arrival of the enlightened and morally upright. Would these socially conservative groups be prepared for the fact that nurturing a stable family in an "underprivileged area" might involve family structures and cultural mores that aren't in keeping with evangelical views on the same? That community institutions need to reflect the communities they serve, and not the community the benevolent bringers of what is morally pure believe is right for everyone? What Brooks is suggesting echoes some very paternalistic, abusive, and destructive approaches and while I want to believe he doesn't intend that, I can't help but hear it in his words.
The fact that American evangelical communities have the ability to consider the "Benedict Option" is a huge statement of privilege and is a lot more than many other communities have had down through the centuries.
posted by nubs at 12:56 PM on September 28, 2015 [9 favorites]
Pater Aletheias: "There's an increasingly strong care-for-the-poor, anti-racism, pro-feminist strain in young evangelicals that think is going to win out. Not doubling down on political action committees, not retreating to the desert, but engaging society in a respectful and helpful way."
I am generally 100% opposed to many viewpoints supported by the evangelical community - the source of morality, the definition of marriage, the stance on abortion - but I think we live in a richer society if these voices are heard rather than silenced. Respectful intercourse with those who believe differently is a path towards changing the world for the better. This is the key reason why the Moral Majority is so vile to me. There is no intent within the movement to do other than railroad society into their line of thinking. There is no respect, and there is no communication. It is a one-way broadcast, fueled by the end goal of legislating their view of morality into existence.
Going To Maine: "most of us live that way for at least 90% of the hot-button political issues going on around us."
I can't say that I disagree with you, but even then, there remains an intent to discuss rather than an intentional shunning of the possibility of discussion. If I go to a political rally I expect to be confronted by people holding signs stating "vote for the OTHER person". There may not be a productive discussion, but there is an exchange of opinions and the tiniest chance that some little point or other will stick. To effectively counter a point of contention, you must understand the other side well enough to break it down.
If I wall myself into a community where the OTHER person is never mentioned, I am living in an echo chamber where there is not even the slightest chance of personal growth. My views are never challenged. This is incredibly sad to me. Pointless argument I can understand even if nothing comes of it, but cutting off all outside contact? That kind of approach is typically how we define cults, is it not?
posted by caution live frogs at 1:01 PM on September 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
I am generally 100% opposed to many viewpoints supported by the evangelical community - the source of morality, the definition of marriage, the stance on abortion - but I think we live in a richer society if these voices are heard rather than silenced. Respectful intercourse with those who believe differently is a path towards changing the world for the better. This is the key reason why the Moral Majority is so vile to me. There is no intent within the movement to do other than railroad society into their line of thinking. There is no respect, and there is no communication. It is a one-way broadcast, fueled by the end goal of legislating their view of morality into existence.
Going To Maine: "most of us live that way for at least 90% of the hot-button political issues going on around us."
I can't say that I disagree with you, but even then, there remains an intent to discuss rather than an intentional shunning of the possibility of discussion. If I go to a political rally I expect to be confronted by people holding signs stating "vote for the OTHER person". There may not be a productive discussion, but there is an exchange of opinions and the tiniest chance that some little point or other will stick. To effectively counter a point of contention, you must understand the other side well enough to break it down.
If I wall myself into a community where the OTHER person is never mentioned, I am living in an echo chamber where there is not even the slightest chance of personal growth. My views are never challenged. This is incredibly sad to me. Pointless argument I can understand even if nothing comes of it, but cutting off all outside contact? That kind of approach is typically how we define cults, is it not?
posted by caution live frogs at 1:01 PM on September 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
...split between doubling down on their advocacy, or walling themselves off from mainstream culture.
I dunno. My experience has been that evangelicals don't see that as an either/or choice. They seem to want both...wall themselves off into their own glorious bubble, while also doing everything they can to force their bubble-world on the rest of us.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:02 PM on September 28, 2015 [6 favorites]
I dunno. My experience has been that evangelicals don't see that as an either/or choice. They seem to want both...wall themselves off into their own glorious bubble, while also doing everything they can to force their bubble-world on the rest of us.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:02 PM on September 28, 2015 [6 favorites]
I say this as someone who was immersed in evangelical culture from the ages of about 14 to 22, and who strongly disliked many of its aspects while quietly trying to cultivate an authentic spiritual life.
On the one hand, I'm still in contact with some really, really fine individuals who can see the difference between openly sharing the "good news" of their faith, usually in the form of kind words and deeds, and brazen proselytizing, which they consider unseemly at best and manipulative at worst. If they have conservative views, they can back them up with reasonable arguments which don't always rely on scripture, but to be honest their views are more often moderate if not outright liberal. They seem to move comfortably through both religious and secular circles with their faith as a strengthening agent.
And then on the other, and this set is regrettably larger in my circles, there are those who can't defend a political position to save their lives except to pull some Bible verses out of context, season that with some emotional (usually angry) appeals, and, when all else fails, fall back on the whole "Jesus is coming back soon" schtick which functionally ends the argument. There is no civil discourse to be had with them, yet these tactics have been, inexplicably (to me), winners at a national level for years now. I have no animosity at a personal level toward these folks who I have known for years (well, with maybe two or three exceptions), but I honestly can't wait for the day that they either develop some new life skills (a little non-binary thinking would be a start) or step back.
posted by vverse23 at 1:07 PM on September 28, 2015 [8 favorites]
On the one hand, I'm still in contact with some really, really fine individuals who can see the difference between openly sharing the "good news" of their faith, usually in the form of kind words and deeds, and brazen proselytizing, which they consider unseemly at best and manipulative at worst. If they have conservative views, they can back them up with reasonable arguments which don't always rely on scripture, but to be honest their views are more often moderate if not outright liberal. They seem to move comfortably through both religious and secular circles with their faith as a strengthening agent.
And then on the other, and this set is regrettably larger in my circles, there are those who can't defend a political position to save their lives except to pull some Bible verses out of context, season that with some emotional (usually angry) appeals, and, when all else fails, fall back on the whole "Jesus is coming back soon" schtick which functionally ends the argument. There is no civil discourse to be had with them, yet these tactics have been, inexplicably (to me), winners at a national level for years now. I have no animosity at a personal level toward these folks who I have known for years (well, with maybe two or three exceptions), but I honestly can't wait for the day that they either develop some new life skills (a little non-binary thinking would be a start) or step back.
posted by vverse23 at 1:07 PM on September 28, 2015 [8 favorites]
"The thing I'm certain of is that a reinvigorated Christian withdrawal-from-society movement will have an enormous human cost for the people caught inside of it. For people Dreher's age, the damage is done. For a lot of kids, this could be a decades-long nightmare and a lifetime of lingering damage even if they manage to escape."
So, in this thread there have been numerous statements to the effect that conservative Evangelical communities are unambiguously toxic and damaging to children, perhaps they are even so, by definition. Is it really surprising that an Evangelical Christian would read that (and it's an increasingly common view of them) and feel persecuted?
posted by oddman at 1:10 PM on September 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
So, in this thread there have been numerous statements to the effect that conservative Evangelical communities are unambiguously toxic and damaging to children, perhaps they are even so, by definition. Is it really surprising that an Evangelical Christian would read that (and it's an increasingly common view of them) and feel persecuted?
posted by oddman at 1:10 PM on September 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
Can someone please confirm that the "Benedictine Option" is the lifestyle equivalent of placing fingers in the ears and shouting "LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU" whenever your views are challenged? And... this is being seriously proposed as a "solution"?
Not at all. Lots of communities exist that retain their own distinct culture and ethos, accepting that they're not, and never will be, dominant; that their community is "intentional", in the sense of they choose to act in certain ways to retain their particular community, without help or confrontation of the larger society in which they exist. Jehovah's Witnesses. Hutterites. Lesbian separatists.
What the Benedictine Option is a polite way of saying to Evangelicals is "give up your belief that your larger society is or should be 'yours' in the dominionist sense. Retain your faith, support your community of belief, and live".
posted by fatbird at 1:13 PM on September 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
Not at all. Lots of communities exist that retain their own distinct culture and ethos, accepting that they're not, and never will be, dominant; that their community is "intentional", in the sense of they choose to act in certain ways to retain their particular community, without help or confrontation of the larger society in which they exist. Jehovah's Witnesses. Hutterites. Lesbian separatists.
What the Benedictine Option is a polite way of saying to Evangelicals is "give up your belief that your larger society is or should be 'yours' in the dominionist sense. Retain your faith, support your community of belief, and live".
posted by fatbird at 1:13 PM on September 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
Is it really surprising that an Evangelical Christian would read that (and it's an increasingly common view of them) and feel persecuted?
Evangelical Christians have loudly proclaimed persecution every moment at every opportunity, even when they were firmly in control of the governments of large parts of the nation, and even the federal government itself, and a driving cultural force.
There is literally nothing that will ever stop them proclaiming their persecution. These current howls of persecution and martyrdom come not at a time when they've been forced into the shadows, but when they're enjoying slightly less power than they did at their height. Evangelicals, for instance, are still massively powerful and influential at the state level.
They're classic bullies and crybabies, and will always be so.
posted by Sangermaine at 1:14 PM on September 28, 2015 [22 favorites]
Evangelical Christians have loudly proclaimed persecution every moment at every opportunity, even when they were firmly in control of the governments of large parts of the nation, and even the federal government itself, and a driving cultural force.
There is literally nothing that will ever stop them proclaiming their persecution. These current howls of persecution and martyrdom come not at a time when they've been forced into the shadows, but when they're enjoying slightly less power than they did at their height. Evangelicals, for instance, are still massively powerful and influential at the state level.
They're classic bullies and crybabies, and will always be so.
posted by Sangermaine at 1:14 PM on September 28, 2015 [22 favorites]
If I wall myself into a community where the OTHER person is never mentioned, I am living in an echo chamber where there is not even the slightest chance of personal growth. My views are never challenged. This is incredibly sad to me. Pointless argument I can understand even if nothing comes of it, but cutting off all outside contact? That kind of approach is typically how we define cults, is it not?
I dunno, man. We’ve got a community here that is pretty strongly for deleting all comments that smack of bigotry and sexism. Which I’m for, I should add, but it’s certainly opened us up for criticism of being an echo chamber. But I think we’re happier without the sealioning.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:15 PM on September 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
I dunno, man. We’ve got a community here that is pretty strongly for deleting all comments that smack of bigotry and sexism. Which I’m for, I should add, but it’s certainly opened us up for criticism of being an echo chamber. But I think we’re happier without the sealioning.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:15 PM on September 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
Evangelical Christians are not being persecuted anywhere. Saying that their values are sexist, homophobic, etc. doesn't infringe on their rights, or their freedoms under the Constitution.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:17 PM on September 28, 2015 [18 favorites]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:17 PM on September 28, 2015 [18 favorites]
Is it really surprising that an Evangelical Christian would read that (and it's an increasingly common view of them) and feel persecuted?
No, certainly not surprising, because Evangelical Christians feel persecuted as a matter of course. It's a core cultural value. If you're not being persecuted, then your very Christian-ness is vaguely suspect. (Like the Chaplain at my high school (Episcopal, granted) used to say when he was feeling sardonic, "There's a long line to get to the cross.")
But the term for a more appropriate response might be to feel "criticized." "Persecuted" is probably better applied to Christians who are being driven out of their homes and slaughtered by ISIS fighters than those who are being, well, disagreed with.
posted by Naberius at 1:19 PM on September 28, 2015 [16 favorites]
No, certainly not surprising, because Evangelical Christians feel persecuted as a matter of course. It's a core cultural value. If you're not being persecuted, then your very Christian-ness is vaguely suspect. (Like the Chaplain at my high school (Episcopal, granted) used to say when he was feeling sardonic, "There's a long line to get to the cross.")
But the term for a more appropriate response might be to feel "criticized." "Persecuted" is probably better applied to Christians who are being driven out of their homes and slaughtered by ISIS fighters than those who are being, well, disagreed with.
posted by Naberius at 1:19 PM on September 28, 2015 [16 favorites]
oddman, on the one hand, I wrote what I wrote above because I think there's a tendency to say dismissive, reductive, fairly trite shit about Christians and some other religious communities on MetaFilter, in a way that most people here would probably judge pretty harshly in many other contexts.
On the other hand, I also wrote it because conservative Evangelical communities (particularly of the kind where homeschooling and other forms of withdrawal of the kind that would be bolstered by a widespread acceptance of the Benedict Option framing are popular) are in my substantial personal experience toxic and damaging to children.
You're right. It's not in any way surprising that that view feeds the persecution complex. I guess in other settings I would try to be less blunt about it, and I think a lot of what has been said in here is not the kind of thing that is going to do anyone who would like to engage with extremely conservative Christians a lot of good. But perhaps it doesn't matter much if MetaFilter wants to engage with "these people".
I think I oughta step out of this thread.
posted by brennen at 1:21 PM on September 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
On the other hand, I also wrote it because conservative Evangelical communities (particularly of the kind where homeschooling and other forms of withdrawal of the kind that would be bolstered by a widespread acceptance of the Benedict Option framing are popular) are in my substantial personal experience toxic and damaging to children.
You're right. It's not in any way surprising that that view feeds the persecution complex. I guess in other settings I would try to be less blunt about it, and I think a lot of what has been said in here is not the kind of thing that is going to do anyone who would like to engage with extremely conservative Christians a lot of good. But perhaps it doesn't matter much if MetaFilter wants to engage with "these people".
I think I oughta step out of this thread.
posted by brennen at 1:21 PM on September 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
I guess I never understood it to begin with. The Ten Commandments say Thou shalt not lie, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, honor thy mother and father, take not the Lord's name in vain. Jesus said, Love your neighbor as yourself. Nobody, to my knowledge, is trying to write any of these things into law. Why must we have these tremendous legal fights over things that rightfully should be very peripheral to fundamentalist Christian belief?
And how does it save anyone, to avoid having sinned because it was illegal to do so? Wouldn't it be far better, to avoid sin because you knew in your heart that it was wrong? Real Christians should let go of the idea of winning arguments through legislation, gerrymandering, ad buys in contested districts, threatening to 'throw the bums out'.
Christians should commit to persuading people through public discourse that is illuminated by their faith and their love for their fellow human beings. Maybe then they would actually be doing some good.
(I say this not as a Christian but as someone who sees the actions of large swathes of Christian America to be entirely discordant with what is actually called for in the Bible.)
posted by newdaddy at 1:21 PM on September 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
And how does it save anyone, to avoid having sinned because it was illegal to do so? Wouldn't it be far better, to avoid sin because you knew in your heart that it was wrong? Real Christians should let go of the idea of winning arguments through legislation, gerrymandering, ad buys in contested districts, threatening to 'throw the bums out'.
Christians should commit to persuading people through public discourse that is illuminated by their faith and their love for their fellow human beings. Maybe then they would actually be doing some good.
(I say this not as a Christian but as someone who sees the actions of large swathes of Christian America to be entirely discordant with what is actually called for in the Bible.)
posted by newdaddy at 1:21 PM on September 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
But the term for a more appropriate response might be to feel "criticized."
I don't think American evangelicals see any real difference between criticism and persecution. After all, criticism may lead to areas of society not letting them have the near-complete control they had before, hence persecution.
Also, if Christianity is always under threat from Satan, and criticism is assumed to be Satanic in origin, then yes, criticism would be understood as persecution. Hell, simply being able to see people living differently would be seen as persecution.
posted by happyroach at 1:27 PM on September 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
I don't think American evangelicals see any real difference between criticism and persecution. After all, criticism may lead to areas of society not letting them have the near-complete control they had before, hence persecution.
Also, if Christianity is always under threat from Satan, and criticism is assumed to be Satanic in origin, then yes, criticism would be understood as persecution. Hell, simply being able to see people living differently would be seen as persecution.
posted by happyroach at 1:27 PM on September 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
The moral majority never was much of either. They were a special interest group with enough political clout pull small-government/pro-business moderates under their tent through coordinated FUD campaigns.
(Like the Chaplain at my (Episcopal) high school used to say when he was feeling sardonic, "There's a long line to get to the cross.")
To quote a modern poet (who likely was referencing an earlier aphorism,) "Come down from the cross, we can use the wood." The song might actually be good advice for the separatists. Separatism used to be a grand old American tradition from the Rappites on through to Ida B. Wells.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 1:28 PM on September 28, 2015
(Like the Chaplain at my (Episcopal) high school used to say when he was feeling sardonic, "There's a long line to get to the cross.")
To quote a modern poet (who likely was referencing an earlier aphorism,) "Come down from the cross, we can use the wood." The song might actually be good advice for the separatists. Separatism used to be a grand old American tradition from the Rappites on through to Ida B. Wells.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 1:28 PM on September 28, 2015
It's a fantasy that's not going to go anywhere. Evangelicals love persecution stories— starting from the New Testament. Doesn't mean they're all going to disband the GOP and live in a closed-off valley, any more than leftists are going to all move to Canada.
It would be good to remember that "Christians", and even "Evangelicals", are not united blocs, nor are they all defined by their most obnoxious leaders. This Pew summary is a good place to start: 42% of Protestants voted for Obama, and even 20% of Evangelicals. Catholics actually favored Obama 50-48. Note that one group of conservative Christians voted 95% for Obama... that is, blacks.
And young Evangelicals are rejecting a lot of the confrontational baggage of their elders. E.g., 40% support gay marriage. (That's less than non-Christians... but double the rate of older Evangelicals.)
posted by zompist at 1:37 PM on September 28, 2015 [5 favorites]
It would be good to remember that "Christians", and even "Evangelicals", are not united blocs, nor are they all defined by their most obnoxious leaders. This Pew summary is a good place to start: 42% of Protestants voted for Obama, and even 20% of Evangelicals. Catholics actually favored Obama 50-48. Note that one group of conservative Christians voted 95% for Obama... that is, blacks.
And young Evangelicals are rejecting a lot of the confrontational baggage of their elders. E.g., 40% support gay marriage. (That's less than non-Christians... but double the rate of older Evangelicals.)
posted by zompist at 1:37 PM on September 28, 2015 [5 favorites]
Speaking as a Catholic here (whose dad and brothers and uncles went to a college on the grounds of one of -- or actually the -- America's largest Benedictine abbey) who just wants to say, if Thomas Merton couldn't withdraw from modern life without missing travel and conversation and boning his nurse and such, what luck does an attention-seeker like Dreher?
Don't claim to speak for me, just pack your bags and go.
posted by wenestvedt at 1:42 PM on September 28, 2015 [6 favorites]
Don't claim to speak for me, just pack your bags and go.
posted by wenestvedt at 1:42 PM on September 28, 2015 [6 favorites]
Hell, simply being able to see people living differently would be seen as persecution.
That aligns perfectly with the behavior and displayed attitudes of the many conservative Christians I have known. I used to express it as "Your freedom oppresses me."
posted by Naberius at 1:44 PM on September 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
That aligns perfectly with the behavior and displayed attitudes of the many conservative Christians I have known. I used to express it as "Your freedom oppresses me."
posted by Naberius at 1:44 PM on September 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
He lived at the time of the rise of Christian monasticism, a tradition founded several generations earlier that encouraged Christians in Europe (and, eventually, the Middle East) to leave their families of origin and trade communal life in society for monastic life in the desert, either alone or in small clusters led by abbots.
Dear Atlantic Writers: try reading wikipedia before writing about any history before 1950. Monasticism started in Egypt, moved into the Middle East, and then moved into Europe. Benedict was influential in the promotion of monks living in communities (instead of alone), but the trend went from the east to the west - as so many things did at the time.
/pendant tired of euro-centrism.
posted by jb at 1:56 PM on September 28, 2015 [14 favorites]
Dear Atlantic Writers: try reading wikipedia before writing about any history before 1950. Monasticism started in Egypt, moved into the Middle East, and then moved into Europe. Benedict was influential in the promotion of monks living in communities (instead of alone), but the trend went from the east to the west - as so many things did at the time.
/pendant tired of euro-centrism.
posted by jb at 1:56 PM on September 28, 2015 [14 favorites]
Can someone please confirm that the "Benedictine Option" is the lifestyle equivalent of placing fingers in the ears and shouting "LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU" whenever your views are challenged? And... this is being seriously proposed as a "solution"?
Okay, to really understand it you probably have to go back to Nietzsche, who did a lot of the foundational work on "weltanschauung" -- in English, perhaps, "worldviews" -- which is where the whole "God is dead" business was meant to be applied. The notion is that a worldview is something that holds together in a gestaltic if not systematic sort of a way, and that the Western moral worldview was based in large part on belief in a Christian or pseudo-Christian divine being -- at a minimum, a demiurge -- which did a lot of the explanatory work necessary to account for both facts (i.e., arrangements of physical affairs) and moral propositions (i.e., claims about what one ought or ought not to do).
The problem, for Nietzsche, and perhaps for all of us, was that the Western moral framework had become an edifice with nothing beneath it: which meant two things. First, that we no longer required reference to a deity to account for facts, and so we no longer acted as though we did, but also second, that we acted as though nothing had changed in moral terms. "God is dead" is a challenge: "why don't you act like it!?"[1]
You may know that the father of the modern Evangelical movement (perhaps this is not the right word) is Francis Schaeffer, who springboarded off of Nietzsche's concept of "worldviews" toward the wholesale creation of a "Christian worldview" which would be informed by the idea that God is not dead, and with everything else following logically from there. You will not understand Evangelicals without understanding what Schaeffer was doing in the late '70s and early '80s.
First to my mind, out of the many problems with creating a "Christian worldview" is this: worldviews are not things that are consciously adopted. Schaeffer is working much higher on the cognitive stack, so to speak, than he should be, given the tools he's trying to wield. So there's this weird double-think inherent in trying to have a "Christian worldview" which is that you have to filter your immediate thoughts and impressions up through higher-level layer of your thinking and responding to the world, but the expectation will be that that layer is supposed to be the authentic source of yourself, because you are a Christian, after all. It's like running all your signal through a filter while vehemently denying, even to yourself, that there is even a filter there.
Second problem: you never escape your own historical moment and the worldview (hah!) that you inherit. So when building his "Christian worldview" as a matter of conscious deliberation, Schaeffer -- like all of us -- included his own worldview, with all of the prejudices and beliefs that he -- again, like all of us -- inherited by virtue of being born himself in his moment and place in history. A worldview in the Nietzschean sense -- as distinct from what Schaeffer was trying to build -- is of necessity be a lot more complex and robust as a result of having absorbed the contradictions of history. Within the contradictions, such a worldview contains room to breathe and evolve, because if it were too fixed and rigid, it would be eroded as history moved over it. What Schaeffer created was a snapshot and a codification of what a particular thoughtful, well-educated Christian who was working on such a project in the 1970s in the West would think of as a "Christian worldview."
Why Schaeffer was successful in promoting his snapshop has a lot to do with the history of (white) protestant Christianity in the 1970s and 80s that I do not have time to get into right now, but white flight plays a larger role than one would like it to.
Of course, the thing about a snapshot or a codification is that it does not evolve or move, and the thing about branding this snapshot with the term "Christian worldview" has kept many Evangelicals locked into a particular tension with respect to the many competing narratives which all of us navigate in our daily lives, because they do not feel free to resolve the contradictions between these narratives when that resolution runs contrary to the "worldview" that Schaeffer constructed. So to resolve that tension, Evangelicals have to cut out these competing narratives, and seek to encounter them less and less often. This is, I think, why the "Benedict Option" is so popular among this set. Because of how this "Christian worldview" is set up, there's no way to move forward through time without leaving pieces of it aside along the way, but you can't leave any pieces of it away because it is intended to be a whole, and the promise is that it collapses when a few of the pieces are removed.
Late in my teens, as I was studying this stuff and logic at the same time, I had the realization that Schaeffer's foundationalism (which is one of his favorite methods: the claim that all of this falls apart unless X is true) is basically identical to nihilism, save for the single answer to a single question (is X true?). About which two things: first, it's kind of funny that a Christian intellectual would do so much of the work of nihilism, setting up precisely the sort of edifice that someone like Nietzsche loved to push over. Second, that there is a kind of troubling revenge-fantasy aspect to the belief that the whole of society will fall apart because it excludes the thing that you are saying is central and necessary.
[1] We'll set aside, for now, the idea that the Western moral framework to which I refer is indeed a single thing which hangs together in a gestaltic or logical way and not the inheritance of a series of historical accidents involving the expression and interplay of various types of power, because even if that is indeed what's going on, there is space within Nietzsche to understand it that way; the point is that we don't, or didn't, talk about it that way even if we understand it so.
posted by gauche at 2:10 PM on September 28, 2015 [36 favorites]
Okay, to really understand it you probably have to go back to Nietzsche, who did a lot of the foundational work on "weltanschauung" -- in English, perhaps, "worldviews" -- which is where the whole "God is dead" business was meant to be applied. The notion is that a worldview is something that holds together in a gestaltic if not systematic sort of a way, and that the Western moral worldview was based in large part on belief in a Christian or pseudo-Christian divine being -- at a minimum, a demiurge -- which did a lot of the explanatory work necessary to account for both facts (i.e., arrangements of physical affairs) and moral propositions (i.e., claims about what one ought or ought not to do).
The problem, for Nietzsche, and perhaps for all of us, was that the Western moral framework had become an edifice with nothing beneath it: which meant two things. First, that we no longer required reference to a deity to account for facts, and so we no longer acted as though we did, but also second, that we acted as though nothing had changed in moral terms. "God is dead" is a challenge: "why don't you act like it!?"[1]
You may know that the father of the modern Evangelical movement (perhaps this is not the right word) is Francis Schaeffer, who springboarded off of Nietzsche's concept of "worldviews" toward the wholesale creation of a "Christian worldview" which would be informed by the idea that God is not dead, and with everything else following logically from there. You will not understand Evangelicals without understanding what Schaeffer was doing in the late '70s and early '80s.
First to my mind, out of the many problems with creating a "Christian worldview" is this: worldviews are not things that are consciously adopted. Schaeffer is working much higher on the cognitive stack, so to speak, than he should be, given the tools he's trying to wield. So there's this weird double-think inherent in trying to have a "Christian worldview" which is that you have to filter your immediate thoughts and impressions up through higher-level layer of your thinking and responding to the world, but the expectation will be that that layer is supposed to be the authentic source of yourself, because you are a Christian, after all. It's like running all your signal through a filter while vehemently denying, even to yourself, that there is even a filter there.
Second problem: you never escape your own historical moment and the worldview (hah!) that you inherit. So when building his "Christian worldview" as a matter of conscious deliberation, Schaeffer -- like all of us -- included his own worldview, with all of the prejudices and beliefs that he -- again, like all of us -- inherited by virtue of being born himself in his moment and place in history. A worldview in the Nietzschean sense -- as distinct from what Schaeffer was trying to build -- is of necessity be a lot more complex and robust as a result of having absorbed the contradictions of history. Within the contradictions, such a worldview contains room to breathe and evolve, because if it were too fixed and rigid, it would be eroded as history moved over it. What Schaeffer created was a snapshot and a codification of what a particular thoughtful, well-educated Christian who was working on such a project in the 1970s in the West would think of as a "Christian worldview."
Why Schaeffer was successful in promoting his snapshop has a lot to do with the history of (white) protestant Christianity in the 1970s and 80s that I do not have time to get into right now, but white flight plays a larger role than one would like it to.
Of course, the thing about a snapshot or a codification is that it does not evolve or move, and the thing about branding this snapshot with the term "Christian worldview" has kept many Evangelicals locked into a particular tension with respect to the many competing narratives which all of us navigate in our daily lives, because they do not feel free to resolve the contradictions between these narratives when that resolution runs contrary to the "worldview" that Schaeffer constructed. So to resolve that tension, Evangelicals have to cut out these competing narratives, and seek to encounter them less and less often. This is, I think, why the "Benedict Option" is so popular among this set. Because of how this "Christian worldview" is set up, there's no way to move forward through time without leaving pieces of it aside along the way, but you can't leave any pieces of it away because it is intended to be a whole, and the promise is that it collapses when a few of the pieces are removed.
Late in my teens, as I was studying this stuff and logic at the same time, I had the realization that Schaeffer's foundationalism (which is one of his favorite methods: the claim that all of this falls apart unless X is true) is basically identical to nihilism, save for the single answer to a single question (is X true?). About which two things: first, it's kind of funny that a Christian intellectual would do so much of the work of nihilism, setting up precisely the sort of edifice that someone like Nietzsche loved to push over. Second, that there is a kind of troubling revenge-fantasy aspect to the belief that the whole of society will fall apart because it excludes the thing that you are saying is central and necessary.
[1] We'll set aside, for now, the idea that the Western moral framework to which I refer is indeed a single thing which hangs together in a gestaltic or logical way and not the inheritance of a series of historical accidents involving the expression and interplay of various types of power, because even if that is indeed what's going on, there is space within Nietzsche to understand it that way; the point is that we don't, or didn't, talk about it that way even if we understand it so.
posted by gauche at 2:10 PM on September 28, 2015 [36 favorites]
As a Christian who is delighted with the steps toward justice we've made the last few years, and who is convinced God also is so-delighted; I say good riddance to y'all.
posted by persona au gratin at 2:16 PM on September 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by persona au gratin at 2:16 PM on September 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
I was talking about this with a friend of mine the other day. He works in a print shop (think Kinkos/FedEx Office/etc.) and, due to being located in the Bible Belt, a lot of his regular customers are parents who homeschool and need copies of whatever conservative Christian books and lecture materials they use. A lot of the time when they bring the kids in with them it's obvious just from looking at them that they're both uncomfortable but often also a bit excited. Being the real world is new to them.
So he'll try to spend the time while they wait talking to the kids and joking around and just generally trying to help them see that the greater world isn't as scary of place as they've been told their entire lives. Because where else are they going to get it? Everyone they see regularly is part of their parents' small closed off world and this arrangement is defended as both good and necessary. But any opportunity to engage them outside of that may plant the seed that people who aren't "one of us" can be good people too. And hopefully enough of those moments happen that they can someday break away from that life altogether.
posted by downtohisturtles at 2:20 PM on September 28, 2015 [18 favorites]
So he'll try to spend the time while they wait talking to the kids and joking around and just generally trying to help them see that the greater world isn't as scary of place as they've been told their entire lives. Because where else are they going to get it? Everyone they see regularly is part of their parents' small closed off world and this arrangement is defended as both good and necessary. But any opportunity to engage them outside of that may plant the seed that people who aren't "one of us" can be good people too. And hopefully enough of those moments happen that they can someday break away from that life altogether.
posted by downtohisturtles at 2:20 PM on September 28, 2015 [18 favorites]
I should add that I am playing a bit fast and loose with my Nietzsche and my Schaeffer as I have not read either in far too long, but that's how I would describe the context of a need in the minds of Evangelicals that the Benedict Option is intended to fulfill.
posted by gauche at 2:23 PM on September 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by gauche at 2:23 PM on September 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
Evangelicals are suffering under the depredations of corporations and the wealthy just as much of the rest of us if not more, though they're confused about who's responsible.
But not that much more confused, as witness our general willingness to blame them for our common troubles instead of the truly evil and cynical people who are abusing their credulity to such advantage.
posted by jamjam at 2:28 PM on September 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
But not that much more confused, as witness our general willingness to blame them for our common troubles instead of the truly evil and cynical people who are abusing their credulity to such advantage.
posted by jamjam at 2:28 PM on September 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
What Brooks is suggesting echoes some very paternalistic, abusive, and destructive approaches and while I want to believe he doesn't intend that, I can't help but hear it in his words.
I think, given the tenor of his writings so far, you can safely assume he means it exactly as you fear.
It's been about 10 years now since I left Christianity (though perhaps not belief in general) and one of the many many joys of doing so was realizing that I no longer had to run any proposed action or idea through the filter of doctrine (which always meant a lingering guilty fear that I was sinning in some way); I could, finally, follow my conscience, be happy, embrace things that were positive (while still using my critical faculties to be sure I wasn't being fooled) and live my life as I believed best.
Right-wing evangelical Christianity made my life into a tiny, dingy jail cell that I will never go back to. I think the people who built it, and who are the keepers, know that, and that's what makes them so angry when someone leaves and has no regrets about it. They don't want the other prisoners to get ideas.
posted by emjaybee at 2:29 PM on September 28, 2015 [17 favorites]
I think, given the tenor of his writings so far, you can safely assume he means it exactly as you fear.
It's been about 10 years now since I left Christianity (though perhaps not belief in general) and one of the many many joys of doing so was realizing that I no longer had to run any proposed action or idea through the filter of doctrine (which always meant a lingering guilty fear that I was sinning in some way); I could, finally, follow my conscience, be happy, embrace things that were positive (while still using my critical faculties to be sure I wasn't being fooled) and live my life as I believed best.
Right-wing evangelical Christianity made my life into a tiny, dingy jail cell that I will never go back to. I think the people who built it, and who are the keepers, know that, and that's what makes them so angry when someone leaves and has no regrets about it. They don't want the other prisoners to get ideas.
posted by emjaybee at 2:29 PM on September 28, 2015 [17 favorites]
brennen: I think you're right about stuff being said about Christians here that wouldn't pass with any other group. I ignore it, I suppose, because after all the damage it has done to marginalized groups over the years, it's surely due for some shots of its own.
posted by persona au gratin at 2:32 PM on September 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by persona au gratin at 2:32 PM on September 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
gauche: ahh, yes, Francis Schaeffer. Did you read James Sire, too? There was some really bad thinking done in the "consequences" of a non-Christian worldview between the two of them.
posted by persona au gratin at 2:38 PM on September 28, 2015
posted by persona au gratin at 2:38 PM on September 28, 2015
Pater Aletheias: This is really what Jesus was all about service, not power; engagement, not withdrawal.
Thank you - your comment made me both more hopeful for future religious youth, and understand my annoyance at the NOTW (Not Of This World) brand. Make the world better by being part of it, not by separating yourself from it.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:51 PM on September 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
Thank you - your comment made me both more hopeful for future religious youth, and understand my annoyance at the NOTW (Not Of This World) brand. Make the world better by being part of it, not by separating yourself from it.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:51 PM on September 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
newdaddy: "Christians should commit to persuading people through public discourse that is illuminated by their faith and their love for their fellow human beings. Maybe then they would actually be doing some good. "
Evangelical Christians aren't very good at this because -- and I don't mean this in a nasty way -- it's a Bible-rich but philosophy-poor tradition. Catholics, Lutherans, even if they're traditionally educated within a religious framework, they get a hot heaping helping of western philosophy along with theology and Bible study. Evangelicals, because of their views on the primacy of the Bible, and because they trend literalist in a way Mainstream Protestant traditions don't, do not have a framework for making moral arguments without the Bible as a foundation. Indeed, the often see it as flatly dishonest and a denial of faith to do so.
As a thought experiment with bright but very isolated conservative Christian students I had in my ethics classes, I'd challenge them to make an ethical argument for why X should be law as if they had to make it to the state legislature and convince a bunch of people who don't share their reading of the Bible. (The conservative group I had most as students around here are an Anabaptist offshoot who tend a bit more toward this "Benedict idea" where they maintain separate communities and obey the law but try to limit their interaction with civil society, so they're not constantly in Springfield lobbying about the law and getting handy handouts on How To Culture War.) I'd "buzzer" them every time they were explicitly or implicitly making a Biblical argument. This was very, very hard for a lot of them, and more than a few said to me, "Not only is this hard, but it's making me really uneasy because I feel like I'm lying about my faith and trying to come up with reasons I don't really believe." (They honestly did better if I told them to imagine arguments SOMEONE ELSE might make, because it took away the anxiety about misrepresenting themselves and their morality.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:51 PM on September 28, 2015 [40 favorites]
Evangelical Christians aren't very good at this because -- and I don't mean this in a nasty way -- it's a Bible-rich but philosophy-poor tradition. Catholics, Lutherans, even if they're traditionally educated within a religious framework, they get a hot heaping helping of western philosophy along with theology and Bible study. Evangelicals, because of their views on the primacy of the Bible, and because they trend literalist in a way Mainstream Protestant traditions don't, do not have a framework for making moral arguments without the Bible as a foundation. Indeed, the often see it as flatly dishonest and a denial of faith to do so.
As a thought experiment with bright but very isolated conservative Christian students I had in my ethics classes, I'd challenge them to make an ethical argument for why X should be law as if they had to make it to the state legislature and convince a bunch of people who don't share their reading of the Bible. (The conservative group I had most as students around here are an Anabaptist offshoot who tend a bit more toward this "Benedict idea" where they maintain separate communities and obey the law but try to limit their interaction with civil society, so they're not constantly in Springfield lobbying about the law and getting handy handouts on How To Culture War.) I'd "buzzer" them every time they were explicitly or implicitly making a Biblical argument. This was very, very hard for a lot of them, and more than a few said to me, "Not only is this hard, but it's making me really uneasy because I feel like I'm lying about my faith and trying to come up with reasons I don't really believe." (They honestly did better if I told them to imagine arguments SOMEONE ELSE might make, because it took away the anxiety about misrepresenting themselves and their morality.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:51 PM on September 28, 2015 [40 favorites]
This could be great. The more the far right sequesters itself, the more we can go on legislating without them.
Let them have their city on a hill. It will quickly look like something between Brigham Young's Utah and the Islamic State. And let everyone see which ideologies do and don't contribute to the relative peace and prosperity of Western civilization.
posted by andrewpcone at 2:55 PM on September 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
Let them have their city on a hill. It will quickly look like something between Brigham Young's Utah and the Islamic State. And let everyone see which ideologies do and don't contribute to the relative peace and prosperity of Western civilization.
posted by andrewpcone at 2:55 PM on September 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
"If we can't impose our world view on everyone, we will contract the horizons of our world to the point that we can impose our world view on everyone within!". I'm for it[1], and I find it somewhat amusing that these people think the idea of removing their influence from public life is somehow a bad thing for the rest of us.
[1] Before anyone steps up to chastise me, I'm being facetious here. I'm aware of the potential for the people who actually have to live in these cloistered communities to face a horrorshow life.
posted by kjs3 at 3:29 PM on September 28, 2015
[1] Before anyone steps up to chastise me, I'm being facetious here. I'm aware of the potential for the people who actually have to live in these cloistered communities to face a horrorshow life.
posted by kjs3 at 3:29 PM on September 28, 2015
I checked this up. The majority of Supreme Court justices have been appointed by Republican presidents now going back to 1970.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 3:34 PM on September 28, 2015
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 3:34 PM on September 28, 2015
So, one option is, um, "Friends with the Benedicts?"
posted by Chuffy at 4:07 PM on September 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Chuffy at 4:07 PM on September 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
R.Crumb's take on the MM back in 1980
posted by bonobothegreat at 4:08 PM on September 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by bonobothegreat at 4:08 PM on September 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
Let them have their city on a hill. It will quickly look like something between Brigham Young's Utah and the Islamic State. And let everyone see which ideologies do and don't contribute to the relative peace and prosperity of Western civilization.
That's literally the origin story of multiple parts of this country to begin with
posted by Apocryphon at 4:19 PM on September 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
That's literally the origin story of multiple parts of this country to begin with
posted by Apocryphon at 4:19 PM on September 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
If you think about it, the U.S. reverting to The Handmaid's Tale is about as thematically accurate as Australia turning into Mad Max. Makes me wonder which dystopia post-apocalypse ur-Canada would look like.
posted by Apocryphon at 4:21 PM on September 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Apocryphon at 4:21 PM on September 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
I checked this up. The majority of Supreme Court justices have been appointed by Republican presidents now going back to 1970.
Yeah but they keep turning liberal so they don't count.
posted by Talez at 4:31 PM on September 28, 2015
Yeah but they keep turning liberal so they don't count.
posted by Talez at 4:31 PM on September 28, 2015
Makes me wonder which dystopia post-apocalypse ur-Canada would look like.
Pontypool
posted by Going To Maine at 4:33 PM on September 28, 2015 [6 favorites]
Pontypool
posted by Going To Maine at 4:33 PM on September 28, 2015 [6 favorites]
Dreher isn't an evangelical. He's an Orthodox Christian. I've been following his Benedict Option posts fairly regularly, and one thing often pointed out is that the BO is anathema to evangelicals precisely because it's at odds with what they perceive as their spiritual mandate to spread the Good Word.
posted by echocollate at 4:54 PM on September 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by echocollate at 4:54 PM on September 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
Tangential to this, I've noticed something about urban planning, at least in my corner of the Southeast US. See...my neighborhood is rather known for being diverse, interesting, with lots of eclectic shops, bars and restaurants. And, whoa, do we have some eclectic people. We have a real town square. People hang out. Music venues and concerts on the Square. It's a destination in the greater metro area.
But I've noticed that some folks who used to come down now don't and tell me "oh, we built our own town square just like you have, so we go there". There are a number of them around town now. And occasionally I drive out there, and they've indeed built a "square", with some high-end apartments, 1-2 maybe interesting but annoyingly slick restaurants/bars, and a bunch of chains. There's usually a Target within walking distance. And *lots* of security, mostly rental. Skateboarders are ruthlessly pursued; homeless and mentally ill (other than the upper class white kind) are never seen. Traffic from Thursday-Sunday through the "square" makes rush hour in downtown Atlanta during a Falcons game look like smooth sailing. All large SUVs or luxury cars; no one bikes.
In other words, these suburban wasteland dwellers are out there building the bizzaro-world version of what they think they want in my neighborhood to fill some undefined "need" for a real community, but without the minorities and the poors (outside of the kitchen), or the mass transit, or the colorful characters (N.B. - that funny drunk guy that always hangs out at the generic sports bar in your generic square isn't really colorful; he's an alcoholic), or the actually interesting places. So it's not just the Evangelicals who are segregating themselves into the world they think they want to live in. There are people actually building it.
posted by kjs3 at 4:55 PM on September 28, 2015 [11 favorites]
But I've noticed that some folks who used to come down now don't and tell me "oh, we built our own town square just like you have, so we go there". There are a number of them around town now. And occasionally I drive out there, and they've indeed built a "square", with some high-end apartments, 1-2 maybe interesting but annoyingly slick restaurants/bars, and a bunch of chains. There's usually a Target within walking distance. And *lots* of security, mostly rental. Skateboarders are ruthlessly pursued; homeless and mentally ill (other than the upper class white kind) are never seen. Traffic from Thursday-Sunday through the "square" makes rush hour in downtown Atlanta during a Falcons game look like smooth sailing. All large SUVs or luxury cars; no one bikes.
In other words, these suburban wasteland dwellers are out there building the bizzaro-world version of what they think they want in my neighborhood to fill some undefined "need" for a real community, but without the minorities and the poors (outside of the kitchen), or the mass transit, or the colorful characters (N.B. - that funny drunk guy that always hangs out at the generic sports bar in your generic square isn't really colorful; he's an alcoholic), or the actually interesting places. So it's not just the Evangelicals who are segregating themselves into the world they think they want to live in. There are people actually building it.
posted by kjs3 at 4:55 PM on September 28, 2015 [11 favorites]
And... this is being seriously proposed as a "solution"?
It's ridiculous, but we've had a ton of absurd proposals and statements coming from the right, religious or otherwise, for decades now and I would expect nothing less. We're already seeing, at the risk of Godwining this thread, a "final solution" type thing being proposed and celebrated, that being the mass round up of people of a certain background and shipping them out of the country and in addition to that, building a fucking wall. It is truly frightening, horrifying, and utterly nonsensical. Yet the person(s) who support such things do so openly.
posted by juiceCake at 4:57 PM on September 28, 2015
It's ridiculous, but we've had a ton of absurd proposals and statements coming from the right, religious or otherwise, for decades now and I would expect nothing less. We're already seeing, at the risk of Godwining this thread, a "final solution" type thing being proposed and celebrated, that being the mass round up of people of a certain background and shipping them out of the country and in addition to that, building a fucking wall. It is truly frightening, horrifying, and utterly nonsensical. Yet the person(s) who support such things do so openly.
posted by juiceCake at 4:57 PM on September 28, 2015
We're already seeing, at the risk of Godwining this thread, a "final solution" type thing being proposed and celebrated, that being the mass round up of people of a certain background and shipping them out of the country and in addition to that, building a fucking wall.
Also they want to build a wall with public money. Can't deal with their own undocumented problem so they make us pay for all of it. Healthcare for kids? Fuck them. They should learn some personal responsbility. A hispanic guy walking down the street? DEPORT! DEPORT! DEPORT! WALL WALL WALL! TAXPAYERS SHOULD PAY FOR OUR SECURITY!
posted by Talez at 5:06 PM on September 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
Also they want to build a wall with public money. Can't deal with their own undocumented problem so they make us pay for all of it. Healthcare for kids? Fuck them. They should learn some personal responsbility. A hispanic guy walking down the street? DEPORT! DEPORT! DEPORT! WALL WALL WALL! TAXPAYERS SHOULD PAY FOR OUR SECURITY!
posted by Talez at 5:06 PM on September 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
Makes me wonder which dystopia post-apocalypse ur-Canada would look like.
2051, ten years after World War 4 . . .
posted by KingEdRa at 5:57 PM on September 28, 2015 [6 favorites]
2051, ten years after World War 4 . . .
posted by KingEdRa at 5:57 PM on September 28, 2015 [6 favorites]
Reading Dreher is probably my guiltiest pleasure. It's like the joke about the Jew who reads Der Sturmer.
posted by PMdixon at 6:04 PM on September 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by PMdixon at 6:04 PM on September 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
(KingExRa, you beat me to it!!)
posted by wenestvedt at 6:38 PM on September 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by wenestvedt at 6:38 PM on September 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
Makes me wonder which dystopia post-apocalypse ur-Canada would look like.
The Beachcombers.
posted by jb at 7:45 PM on September 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
The Beachcombers.
posted by jb at 7:45 PM on September 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
I was just going to say "Markham."
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:28 PM on September 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:28 PM on September 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
I can't help contrasting the loud persecution complex of Evangelicals with the quiet co-existance of Jehovah's Witnesses, of whom my sister and her family are one. They have their Kingdom Hall, their faith-driven decisions on not engaging in certain activities, and for the rest of it, live and let live.
I was in the church for a few years as a teenager. I seriously doubt that any Jehovah’s Witness would agree that the church's doctrine is one of “live and let live.” For one thing, Witnesses would have no reason to go door to door to “make disciples of people of all the nations” — which is something that they still do, judging from the Witnesses I've seen come to my door on my relatively low-traffic street — if they believed in “live and let live.” They also believe in an apocalyptic end-times eschatology. Perhaps they believe that they do not force their beliefs on anyone, which may be the case, and maybe they aren't looking to multiply their membership as aggressively as other evangelical churches are. But I don't think that's the same thing as “live and let live.”
posted by blucevalo at 9:04 PM on September 28, 2015 [6 favorites]
I was in the church for a few years as a teenager. I seriously doubt that any Jehovah’s Witness would agree that the church's doctrine is one of “live and let live.” For one thing, Witnesses would have no reason to go door to door to “make disciples of people of all the nations” — which is something that they still do, judging from the Witnesses I've seen come to my door on my relatively low-traffic street — if they believed in “live and let live.” They also believe in an apocalyptic end-times eschatology. Perhaps they believe that they do not force their beliefs on anyone, which may be the case, and maybe they aren't looking to multiply their membership as aggressively as other evangelical churches are. But I don't think that's the same thing as “live and let live.”
posted by blucevalo at 9:04 PM on September 28, 2015 [6 favorites]
Metafilter: playing a bit fast and loose with my Nietzsche and my Schaeffer as I have not read either in far too long
posted by Cookiebastard at 9:20 PM on September 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by Cookiebastard at 9:20 PM on September 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
Yeah the JW are pretty much somewhere between mainstream American Evangelicals and Church of Latter-Day Saints in terms of proselytizing and controlling, they just happen to lack the political power of both. But probably they still have as much institutional power as either two-thirds of the Unification Church, or a quarter of the Scientologists.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:15 PM on September 28, 2015
posted by Apocryphon at 10:15 PM on September 28, 2015
Oh, and I guess The Quiet Earth makes perfect sense as post-apocalypse ur-New Zealand. None of the ur-Anglosphere is worthy of being Middle Earth, however.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:21 PM on September 28, 2015
posted by Apocryphon at 10:21 PM on September 28, 2015
Let them have their city on a hill. It will quickly look like something between Brigham Young's Utah and the Islamic State. And let everyone see which ideologies do and don't contribute to the relative peace and prosperity of Western civilization.
That's literally the origin story of multiple parts of this country to begin with
And typically what happens is that subsequent generations try to get out if they can.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 10:24 PM on September 28, 2015
That's literally the origin story of multiple parts of this country to begin with
And typically what happens is that subsequent generations try to get out if they can.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 10:24 PM on September 28, 2015
JWs have a dogmatic commitment to being uninvolved in the civil sphere; "live and let live" is between them and everyone else. They don't vote; they're explicitly politically neutral. Unlike the Church of Latter Day Saints and evangelicals, they think it's basically wrongheaded to try to shape the world outside their community in the likeness they prefer. At best, it's a distraction; at worst, idolatry.
I'd never be a JW, or a Christian of any sort, for that matter. But as religious communities go, they're a lot easier to live with than others.
posted by fatbird at 11:53 PM on September 28, 2015
I'd never be a JW, or a Christian of any sort, for that matter. But as religious communities go, they're a lot easier to live with than others.
posted by fatbird at 11:53 PM on September 28, 2015
JWs are indeed politically neutral, or they say they are, because they view the secular world as irredeemably corrupt. I would say that they're easy to live with if their beliefs don't have a direct day-to-day impact on your life. They shrink from the political sphere and the public spotlight and don't advertise their views unless they're trying to bring you in as a member. But I would agree that their not being loud and sharp-elbowed aggressors in the political sphere is a net good thing, when compared with the more vocal and aggressively public-policy-shaping evangelical churches.
posted by blucevalo at 5:16 AM on September 29, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by blucevalo at 5:16 AM on September 29, 2015 [1 favorite]
As a thought experiment with bright but very isolated conservative Christian students I had in my ethics classes, I'd challenge them to make an ethical argument for why X should be law as if they had to make it to the state legislature and convince a bunch of people who don't share their reading of the Bible.
I see the point of this in a classroom setting, but when they use these techniques in anger it's one of the things that annoys me about current conservative Christianity. Especially when you have creationist asshats telling churches that they're getting the Bible back into school while telling judges that there's no religion in creationism. They should file briefs that say "The Bible and our traditions say the Earth was created by God in 4004 BC" and lose honestly rather than lie to judges for Jesus by making up crap they hope might fly in a courtroom. Likewise, if the reason you want to prevent gays from marrying is that you think it offends your god, that's what you should file in your brief even though you know it's going to lose, because that is your actual argument, not the made-up shit you can be demonstrated by your behavior not to actually care about.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:50 AM on September 29, 2015 [4 favorites]
I see the point of this in a classroom setting, but when they use these techniques in anger it's one of the things that annoys me about current conservative Christianity. Especially when you have creationist asshats telling churches that they're getting the Bible back into school while telling judges that there's no religion in creationism. They should file briefs that say "The Bible and our traditions say the Earth was created by God in 4004 BC" and lose honestly rather than lie to judges for Jesus by making up crap they hope might fly in a courtroom. Likewise, if the reason you want to prevent gays from marrying is that you think it offends your god, that's what you should file in your brief even though you know it's going to lose, because that is your actual argument, not the made-up shit you can be demonstrated by your behavior not to actually care about.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:50 AM on September 29, 2015 [4 favorites]
Going To Maine: "I dunno, man. We’ve got a community here that is pretty strongly for deleting all comments that smack of bigotry and sexism. Which I’m for, I should add, but it’s certainly opened us up for criticism of being an echo chamber."
I'd hardly say this is an echo chamber. Mefi leans strongly liberal and US-centric, true, but I've had my views challenged more here than in many other places in my life. The key is that we have a mutual agreement to keep the conversation respectful, and to ask those who get overheated or abusive to take a time out before coming back. We don't intentionally choose not to let another side be heard. This agreement to keep it respectful helps those who feel marginalized to speak up and present their side. "This is why your jokey comment is hurtful" is one of the more meaningful bits of feedback I have gathered from people who do not believe as I do, and Metafilter is the place I was able to hear this feedback the most. "Christ, I was being an ass, wasn't I?" is a tough realization but it's one worth coming to when necessary. Without open lines in a relatively safe environment, like Mefi, this message is often never sent or received.
gauche: "Okay, to really understand it you probably have to go back to Nietzsche..."
That. That right there is why I love this place. No matter what the topic, somebody here knows more about it than everyone else and takes the time to explain it in detail, ignoring the derails and jokes and sarcasm and putting the train back on the tracks.
posted by caution live frogs at 9:17 AM on September 29, 2015 [3 favorites]
I'd hardly say this is an echo chamber. Mefi leans strongly liberal and US-centric, true, but I've had my views challenged more here than in many other places in my life. The key is that we have a mutual agreement to keep the conversation respectful, and to ask those who get overheated or abusive to take a time out before coming back. We don't intentionally choose not to let another side be heard. This agreement to keep it respectful helps those who feel marginalized to speak up and present their side. "This is why your jokey comment is hurtful" is one of the more meaningful bits of feedback I have gathered from people who do not believe as I do, and Metafilter is the place I was able to hear this feedback the most. "Christ, I was being an ass, wasn't I?" is a tough realization but it's one worth coming to when necessary. Without open lines in a relatively safe environment, like Mefi, this message is often never sent or received.
gauche: "Okay, to really understand it you probably have to go back to Nietzsche..."
That. That right there is why I love this place. No matter what the topic, somebody here knows more about it than everyone else and takes the time to explain it in detail, ignoring the derails and jokes and sarcasm and putting the train back on the tracks.
posted by caution live frogs at 9:17 AM on September 29, 2015 [3 favorites]
Rod Dreher really took it hard when public opposition to gay marriage pretty much collapsed in the late 00s despite appearing to sweep the nation in 2004. I think, too, that despite being an Orthdox Christian (*maybe* 1% of the US population), he hasn't really reconciled himself to being a religious minority and doesn't understand how to handle it. In fact, much of his personal history revolves around trying to identify sources of "power" and associating himself with them, and this is the first time he's had to grapple with his beliefs conflicting with what is socially advantageous and numerous.
But this is all something lots of religious believers have gone through. The Catholics used to be a minority held in deep suspicious by a Protestant majority who imposed their own belief system on public life, so the Catholics started the own schools and had their own communities. Rod's own Orthodox Christianity has grappled for more than a century about how to preserve and spread their religious beliefs within a country that considers them unusual and alien.
He is discovering out to the suburbs to live surrounded by other "appropriate" middle class people isn't going to succeed as a method of finding like minded people who will approve of your faith. The "Benedict option" he is advocating (and he is still trying to flesh it own in his mind) is going to be less about the fundamentalist homeschooler idea of moving out to the middle of nowhere and making sure your children don't speak to anyone in the outside world as much as forming communities of "your people" rather than relying on the idea that as long as you move to a "proper" bourgeois neighborhood that your beliefs will be publicly celebrated by your neighbors and the local government. For most non Protestants/non Christians/non whites this has been the norm of their community history, and for Rod he is coming to terms with how to deal with his goal of being a member of the socially dominant class with his own religious beliefs.
posted by deanc at 9:47 AM on September 29, 2015 [1 favorite]
But this is all something lots of religious believers have gone through. The Catholics used to be a minority held in deep suspicious by a Protestant majority who imposed their own belief system on public life, so the Catholics started the own schools and had their own communities. Rod's own Orthodox Christianity has grappled for more than a century about how to preserve and spread their religious beliefs within a country that considers them unusual and alien.
He is discovering out to the suburbs to live surrounded by other "appropriate" middle class people isn't going to succeed as a method of finding like minded people who will approve of your faith. The "Benedict option" he is advocating (and he is still trying to flesh it own in his mind) is going to be less about the fundamentalist homeschooler idea of moving out to the middle of nowhere and making sure your children don't speak to anyone in the outside world as much as forming communities of "your people" rather than relying on the idea that as long as you move to a "proper" bourgeois neighborhood that your beliefs will be publicly celebrated by your neighbors and the local government. For most non Protestants/non Christians/non whites this has been the norm of their community history, and for Rod he is coming to terms with how to deal with his goal of being a member of the socially dominant class with his own religious beliefs.
posted by deanc at 9:47 AM on September 29, 2015 [1 favorite]
Dreher is a convert to Orthodoxy from Catholicism, though. I'd have to wonder if that affects his outlook on this subject.
Has anyone seen Front Porch Republic before? The whole ethos of localism, the idea of going back to small town Americana, less atomized communities- that seems to be what they're proposing, except with a more explicit religious angle. Wendell Berry and G.K. Chesterton. All very Shire. But America is no longer a country of hobbits, if it ever was.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:42 AM on September 29, 2015
Has anyone seen Front Porch Republic before? The whole ethos of localism, the idea of going back to small town Americana, less atomized communities- that seems to be what they're proposing, except with a more explicit religious angle. Wendell Berry and G.K. Chesterton. All very Shire. But America is no longer a country of hobbits, if it ever was.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:42 AM on September 29, 2015
Here is one of the enduring tensions of a free democratic society: Kids are unacceptable collateral damage. This cannot be changed by any government fiat or democratically enacted decision without trampling on a right to privacy or right to raise children however we want.
I am totally comfortable trampling on both of those rights because children, by definition, cannot defend themselves and often need protecting from predatory and/or toxic adults.
For those of you saying "yep ok off you go then" I invite you to consider what happens to QUILTBAG kids in these communities. What happens to women in these communities.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:15 AM on September 29, 2015
I am totally comfortable trampling on both of those rights because children, by definition, cannot defend themselves and often need protecting from predatory and/or toxic adults.
For those of you saying "yep ok off you go then" I invite you to consider what happens to QUILTBAG kids in these communities. What happens to women in these communities.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:15 AM on September 29, 2015
Here is one of the enduring tensions of a free democratic society: Kids are unacceptable collateral damage. This cannot be changed by any government fiat or democratically enacted decision without trampling on a right to privacy or right to raise children however we want.
Except, of course, it has been. Western governments have had child welfare/child protection laws on the books for a very long time, which is the state putting itself in between any right to privacy in the family home or a parental right to raise children as they see fit.
As an example, when I worked in the rural school system as a family support staff, I occasionally had to finesse child welfare investigations/interviews at the school. That meant (because the child welfare worker was often coming from over an hour away), checking to ensure the kid was at the school that day, arranging for an interview room, and reminding the teachers and the principal that under the legislation, child welfare could do this without any other adult present, and most importantly, without the parent being made aware.
As another example, in Texas, the compound of a polygamous sect was raided, resulting in charges of child sexual abuse and assault against some of the men present.
Basically, while we might have free democratic societies, we have also implemented government policy and decisions that are aimed at protecting children, regardless of what other rights might be trampled in the process.
posted by nubs at 11:52 AM on September 29, 2015 [1 favorite]
Except, of course, it has been. Western governments have had child welfare/child protection laws on the books for a very long time, which is the state putting itself in between any right to privacy in the family home or a parental right to raise children as they see fit.
As an example, when I worked in the rural school system as a family support staff, I occasionally had to finesse child welfare investigations/interviews at the school. That meant (because the child welfare worker was often coming from over an hour away), checking to ensure the kid was at the school that day, arranging for an interview room, and reminding the teachers and the principal that under the legislation, child welfare could do this without any other adult present, and most importantly, without the parent being made aware.
As another example, in Texas, the compound of a polygamous sect was raided, resulting in charges of child sexual abuse and assault against some of the men present.
Basically, while we might have free democratic societies, we have also implemented government policy and decisions that are aimed at protecting children, regardless of what other rights might be trampled in the process.
posted by nubs at 11:52 AM on September 29, 2015 [1 favorite]
For those of you saying "yep ok off you go then" I invite you to consider what happens to QUILTBAG kids in these communities. What happens to women in these communities.
feckless: We're basically talking about how to gerrymander the radical religious right into minimal power. I'd call the two approaches "sequestration" and "dilution."
I'm pro-sequestration because I think the Christian far-right will stay large enough that they can pull the mainstream their way, even if they can't win on same-sex marriage and abortion. We are just on the edge of having over the counter access to hormonal birth control. The only thing standing in the way is a small number of die-hard religious activists. I suspect even a small decrease in their participation could mean large and lasting victories.
Also, I think it's important to point out that the "Benedict Option" does not, in general, entail establishing an independent state, and it is hard for me to imagine they could successfully co-opt an existing one. With the exception of Israel, which happened at a weird historical moment and with lots of military force, attempts to carve out brand-new politically/spiritually/ethnically pure homelands generally flop. Deseret became Utah; the Puritans became Massachusetts, white supremacists can't even take over tiny towns in the northwest, etc. My prediction would be that any attempt to gain sovereignty would just reduce their hold on mainstream power and demoralize their movement.
Like, what are they gonna do, buy a shitload of land in North Dakota and perpetually fend off DCFS, crusading lawyers, and criminal investigators? Good luck with that. It would be epic lulz watching that play out.
Sure, lulz aside, and such attempt would have human collateral damage, but fuck, Christian far right influence in the US damages millions of lives *now*. It sucks, but I think that sadly these people are going to have *some* power to do damage no matter what, and we just have to minimize it.
posted by andrewpcone at 2:06 PM on September 29, 2015 [1 favorite]
feckless: We're basically talking about how to gerrymander the radical religious right into minimal power. I'd call the two approaches "sequestration" and "dilution."
I'm pro-sequestration because I think the Christian far-right will stay large enough that they can pull the mainstream their way, even if they can't win on same-sex marriage and abortion. We are just on the edge of having over the counter access to hormonal birth control. The only thing standing in the way is a small number of die-hard religious activists. I suspect even a small decrease in their participation could mean large and lasting victories.
Also, I think it's important to point out that the "Benedict Option" does not, in general, entail establishing an independent state, and it is hard for me to imagine they could successfully co-opt an existing one. With the exception of Israel, which happened at a weird historical moment and with lots of military force, attempts to carve out brand-new politically/spiritually/ethnically pure homelands generally flop. Deseret became Utah; the Puritans became Massachusetts, white supremacists can't even take over tiny towns in the northwest, etc. My prediction would be that any attempt to gain sovereignty would just reduce their hold on mainstream power and demoralize their movement.
Like, what are they gonna do, buy a shitload of land in North Dakota and perpetually fend off DCFS, crusading lawyers, and criminal investigators? Good luck with that. It would be epic lulz watching that play out.
Sure, lulz aside, and such attempt would have human collateral damage, but fuck, Christian far right influence in the US damages millions of lives *now*. It sucks, but I think that sadly these people are going to have *some* power to do damage no matter what, and we just have to minimize it.
posted by andrewpcone at 2:06 PM on September 29, 2015 [1 favorite]
I'd hardly say this is an echo chamber. Mefi leans strongly liberal and US-centric, true, but I've had my views challenged more here than in many other places in my life.
Oh, I wouldn’t say this is an eco-chamber. But it’s been accused of being one, and I think there are many points on which we don’t like to be challenged and appreciate the mods for filtering out. For instance, we’re not going to discuss why you shouldn’t misgender trans people, and the mods will likely silence anyone who try to make that a topic of discussion. I appreciate being in a community where that’s cut out.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:16 PM on September 29, 2015
Oh, I wouldn’t say this is an eco-chamber. But it’s been accused of being one, and I think there are many points on which we don’t like to be challenged and appreciate the mods for filtering out. For instance, we’re not going to discuss why you shouldn’t misgender trans people, and the mods will likely silence anyone who try to make that a topic of discussion. I appreciate being in a community where that’s cut out.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:16 PM on September 29, 2015
Agreed, the enactment of a Benedict Option would be less a political project than a lifestyle one. Sorta like homeschooling or purity balls.
posted by Apocryphon at 2:16 PM on September 29, 2015
posted by Apocryphon at 2:16 PM on September 29, 2015
Deseret became Utah; the Puritans became Massachusetts, white supremacists can't even take over tiny towns in the northwest, etc.
I do not accept the collateral damage of defenceless children for a couple hundred years until things start getting a bit better in the isolationist communities these people want to and/or already live in.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:23 PM on September 29, 2015
I do not accept the collateral damage of defenceless children for a couple hundred years until things start getting a bit better in the isolationist communities these people want to and/or already live in.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:23 PM on September 29, 2015
Milton argued that cloistered virtue was no virtue at all. Though they've probably never read him directly, despite stealing most of their ideas of Hell from him.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 2:27 PM on September 29, 2015
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 2:27 PM on September 29, 2015
Social change has taken place in Christendom since before there even was a Biblical canon, or a proper "church." The difference between now and back when, say, William Wilberforce was knocking down slavery with evangelical fire, of course, is that the West has largely secularized and "God is dead" and is socially liberalizing and all that.
So now, conservative believers can see gay marriage be legalized and say, "Those heathens, those atheist misbelievers, they're attacking our religion! They don't see the world as we do! We must dissent."
That's because they can more easily Other those who they disagree with on the basis of religious difference. But how did earlier Christians on the losing sides take it? I don't think British pro-slavers called the abolitionists un-Christians and pagans and then decided to move to the American South. I don't think turn-of-the-century anti-Suffragette men called progressives like Teddy Roosevelt heretics and atheists. After all, the righteous need not cower before the drumbeat of human progress. So how did previous Christians deal?
posted by Apocryphon at 2:38 PM on September 29, 2015
So now, conservative believers can see gay marriage be legalized and say, "Those heathens, those atheist misbelievers, they're attacking our religion! They don't see the world as we do! We must dissent."
That's because they can more easily Other those who they disagree with on the basis of religious difference. But how did earlier Christians on the losing sides take it? I don't think British pro-slavers called the abolitionists un-Christians and pagans and then decided to move to the American South. I don't think turn-of-the-century anti-Suffragette men called progressives like Teddy Roosevelt heretics and atheists. After all, the righteous need not cower before the drumbeat of human progress. So how did previous Christians deal?
posted by Apocryphon at 2:38 PM on September 29, 2015
feckless: Even before Massachusetts became more cosmopolitan, the Puritans were never able to enforce their theocracy to the extent they wanted. By the early 1700s it was nothing like what the pilgrims intended. Deseret was only a thing for a few years, and even the less-than-autonomous Utah Territory didn't even last another 50 before prevailing norms around polygamy &c won and Utah became a state. And in both cases, we're talking about pretty small populations. So I maintain these efforts were flops. They were flashes in the pan, not stable theocracies.
Anyway, I think you're discounting the effect of their leaving on mainstream society. Defenseless children (and others) are being victimized their activism right now.
posted by andrewpcone at 2:50 PM on September 29, 2015
Anyway, I think you're discounting the effect of their leaving on mainstream society. Defenseless children (and others) are being victimized their activism right now.
posted by andrewpcone at 2:50 PM on September 29, 2015
And more children get more hurt the more they are isolated.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:57 PM on September 29, 2015
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:57 PM on September 29, 2015
Please stop using "but won't someone think of the chiiiiildren" as an excuse to demonize Christians.
This is exactly the same tactic the right uses against, e.g., gays and lesbians: pretend that the hated group is particularly harmful for children, therefore it's all right to harass them socially and legally. Are they really "thinking of the children"? No, they're just finding a way to express their hatred that sounds moral. Don't do the same thing.
posted by zompist at 3:24 PM on September 29, 2015 [3 favorites]
This is exactly the same tactic the right uses against, e.g., gays and lesbians: pretend that the hated group is particularly harmful for children, therefore it's all right to harass them socially and legally. Are they really "thinking of the children"? No, they're just finding a way to express their hatred that sounds moral. Don't do the same thing.
posted by zompist at 3:24 PM on September 29, 2015 [3 favorites]
Please stop using "but won't someone think of the chiiiiildren" as an excuse to demonize Christians.
A little bit of pushback: “please think of the gay children” isn’t quite the same as “please think of the children”. Kids who are biologically members of a protected class do seem like a bit of a different case than “the children” generally. Also, given that one of the things that troubled Justice Kennedy about the marriage inequality was all of the children unable to say that their parents were married, I think that there is a space for arguments to be advanced related to the rights of children. But I’m not a lawyer, so I have no idea.
posted by Going To Maine at 4:00 PM on September 29, 2015
A little bit of pushback: “please think of the gay children” isn’t quite the same as “please think of the children”. Kids who are biologically members of a protected class do seem like a bit of a different case than “the children” generally. Also, given that one of the things that troubled Justice Kennedy about the marriage inequality was all of the children unable to say that their parents were married, I think that there is a space for arguments to be advanced related to the rights of children. But I’m not a lawyer, so I have no idea.
posted by Going To Maine at 4:00 PM on September 29, 2015
Please stop using "but won't someone think of the chiiiiildren" as an excuse to demonize Christians.
I'm really comfortable using it as a fully accurate way to demonize people who behave like demons to their children. In this case, we are talking about evangelical/fundamentalist separatist Christians, who en masse are anti-gay and misogynist, and raise their children in that toxic soup.
Are they really "thinking of the children"? No, they're just finding a way to express their hatred that sounds moral. Don't do the same thing.
I'm not. Queer youth suicide is more or less inextricably linked to acceptance, which is not exactly at high levels amongst these sorts of Christians. "Won't somebody think of the children" is trumpeted by moralizing jerks who have an astonishingly high overlap with the Christians we're talking about here. I am, in fact, thinking of the children. Of the lesbian girls and gay boys and trans kids (who may overlap in the first groups) who will be told that they have to hide and deny or risk persecution, injury, and death. To say nothing of the young women who are seen as nothing more than mobile baby factories and as possessions of men.
To falsely equate what I am saying with the people who freak out over Target removing gender markers from the toy aisles is both abhorrent and dishonest.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 4:20 PM on September 29, 2015 [4 favorites]
I'm really comfortable using it as a fully accurate way to demonize people who behave like demons to their children. In this case, we are talking about evangelical/fundamentalist separatist Christians, who en masse are anti-gay and misogynist, and raise their children in that toxic soup.
Are they really "thinking of the children"? No, they're just finding a way to express their hatred that sounds moral. Don't do the same thing.
I'm not. Queer youth suicide is more or less inextricably linked to acceptance, which is not exactly at high levels amongst these sorts of Christians. "Won't somebody think of the children" is trumpeted by moralizing jerks who have an astonishingly high overlap with the Christians we're talking about here. I am, in fact, thinking of the children. Of the lesbian girls and gay boys and trans kids (who may overlap in the first groups) who will be told that they have to hide and deny or risk persecution, injury, and death. To say nothing of the young women who are seen as nothing more than mobile baby factories and as possessions of men.
To falsely equate what I am saying with the people who freak out over Target removing gender markers from the toy aisles is both abhorrent and dishonest.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 4:20 PM on September 29, 2015 [4 favorites]
So what is being proposed here? Laws to prevent Christians from moving where they want? Legislation outlawing home schooling? Maybe require proof that all children in a home sufficient exposure to social media in order to get a job?
I hear talk about how isolation is bad, and how the children are being harmed, etcetera, but I haven't heard a proposal on how to prevent it.
posted by happyroach at 6:09 PM on September 29, 2015
I hear talk about how isolation is bad, and how the children are being harmed, etcetera, but I haven't heard a proposal on how to prevent it.
posted by happyroach at 6:09 PM on September 29, 2015
Personally, I'd ban homeschooling in favour of actually putting real money into our educational systems, decoupling that funding from millage rates or indeed any kind of hyperlocal revenues, and banning any kind of religious controls over school curricula--both public and private. You may teach your children whatever you like after school, but for 6-7 hours a day they will learn actual facts.
This removes religion from schools, ensures children are less isolated (and, therefore, that other adults will at least theoretically be checking in on them), and helps remove this anti-factual scourge from society.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 6:13 PM on September 29, 2015
This removes religion from schools, ensures children are less isolated (and, therefore, that other adults will at least theoretically be checking in on them), and helps remove this anti-factual scourge from society.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 6:13 PM on September 29, 2015
I’d ban homeschooling
People homeschool for all sorts of reasons that aren’t purely ideological. More fundamentally, though - they’re your kids. I just can’t see that flying, especially given the rather grim history of minority groups having their children abducted to be raised in accordance with dominant cultures.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:24 PM on September 29, 2015 [2 favorites]
People homeschool for all sorts of reasons that aren’t purely ideological. More fundamentally, though - they’re your kids. I just can’t see that flying, especially given the rather grim history of minority groups having their children abducted to be raised in accordance with dominant cultures.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:24 PM on September 29, 2015 [2 favorites]
More fundamentally, though - they’re your kids.
So? We already have laws to protect children from abuse and neglect. The way religious fundamentalists treat women, and anyone of a gender or sexual minority, is abuse. One very effective way to curtail that is to not allow them to be isolated.
As for children being abducted... I'm Canadian, I'm extremely familiar with the horror that was the residential school program. That is not even remotely what I am suggesting. I am saying, however, that the right of children to grow up to be themselves without being told they are sick and wrong entirely trumps some nebulous right that adults think they have to warp children in any way they see fit.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:36 PM on September 29, 2015 [2 favorites]
So? We already have laws to protect children from abuse and neglect. The way religious fundamentalists treat women, and anyone of a gender or sexual minority, is abuse. One very effective way to curtail that is to not allow them to be isolated.
As for children being abducted... I'm Canadian, I'm extremely familiar with the horror that was the residential school program. That is not even remotely what I am suggesting. I am saying, however, that the right of children to grow up to be themselves without being told they are sick and wrong entirely trumps some nebulous right that adults think they have to warp children in any way they see fit.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:36 PM on September 29, 2015 [2 favorites]
One could even argue it on pretty old grounds--life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The latter two of which gender/sexual minority kids in fundamentalist religious settings do not get.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:37 PM on September 29, 2015
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:37 PM on September 29, 2015
What I’m hearing you suggest is that, as a class, religious fundamentalists should be forced to cede control of their children when they exhibit minority gender/sexual orientations . (As opposed to, say, in specific cases of abuse, which I’m assuming is the llaw right now.) Certainly making it easier for those kids to get help or get placed elsewhere seems like a very good idea.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:50 PM on September 29, 2015
posted by Going To Maine at 7:50 PM on September 29, 2015
No. I am saying that all children must go to a real school that teaches actual facts in order to counteract the shit being shoved down their throats at home. Applies across the board.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:52 PM on September 29, 2015
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:52 PM on September 29, 2015
I mean really, it boils down to this:
If you want to see more sexual abuse, more teenage pregnancies, more GSM kids committing suicide, more warped psychologies imposed by the closet, more women being subjugated, then by all means applaud for these retrograde people to hide amongst themselves. (And this is not limited to evangelical Christians--there is much documentation of those kinds of abuse and those problems in insular Jewish communities of a more Orthodox bent, Amish and Mennonite communities, etc etc.)
I get the urge, I really do--it's the exact same urge as "sure let Texas secede and take the assbags with them." Which is a not entirely unreasonable feeling to have in theory. In practice, though, what you are doing is sentencing future generations of vulnerable populations (GSM, women) to living under the exact kind of theocracy that most of us here on MeFi are horrified by.
So like yeah, for those here who are like "sure go," by all means you are entitled to your opinion on the matter. Just be honest with yourself about the severe amounts of damage you are endorsing by doing so.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:10 PM on September 29, 2015
If you want to see more sexual abuse, more teenage pregnancies, more GSM kids committing suicide, more warped psychologies imposed by the closet, more women being subjugated, then by all means applaud for these retrograde people to hide amongst themselves. (And this is not limited to evangelical Christians--there is much documentation of those kinds of abuse and those problems in insular Jewish communities of a more Orthodox bent, Amish and Mennonite communities, etc etc.)
I get the urge, I really do--it's the exact same urge as "sure let Texas secede and take the assbags with them." Which is a not entirely unreasonable feeling to have in theory. In practice, though, what you are doing is sentencing future generations of vulnerable populations (GSM, women) to living under the exact kind of theocracy that most of us here on MeFi are horrified by.
So like yeah, for those here who are like "sure go," by all means you are entitled to your opinion on the matter. Just be honest with yourself about the severe amounts of damage you are endorsing by doing so.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:10 PM on September 29, 2015
So like yeah, for those here who are like "sure go," by all means you are entitled to your opinion on the matter. Just be honest with yourself about the severe amounts of damage you are endorsing by doing so.
The Atlantic article is vague in the extreme about what the Benedict Option actually demands that Christians do differently; the only concrete point seems to be that the religious right should drop out of the culture wars and stop fighting political battles. It seems like “Sure, go” really just means “Yes, please do stop taking overtly combative positions within the culture.” As you note, isolated religious groups are already abusing the rights of women and sexual minorities without having pulled back any further from the culture; the FLDS Church is practicing polygyny in Colorado City, the hasids in New Square are still faking student progress reports in order to claim that people are being educated about more than just the Talmud. They’ve been doing that stuff this whole time.
If anything, the benefit of living in a post-Satanic Panic, post-Moral Majority, post-Creation Museum world is that it’s not likely that these issues are going to disappear from the radar. Even if the religious right wants to take up the Benedict Option, we’re assuming that modernity as a whole wants to take its eyes off of them. And given that these groups aren’t actually oppressed but are simply seeing their privilege recede, I don’t think that society will lose track of them.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:56 PM on September 29, 2015
The Atlantic article is vague in the extreme about what the Benedict Option actually demands that Christians do differently; the only concrete point seems to be that the religious right should drop out of the culture wars and stop fighting political battles. It seems like “Sure, go” really just means “Yes, please do stop taking overtly combative positions within the culture.” As you note, isolated religious groups are already abusing the rights of women and sexual minorities without having pulled back any further from the culture; the FLDS Church is practicing polygyny in Colorado City, the hasids in New Square are still faking student progress reports in order to claim that people are being educated about more than just the Talmud. They’ve been doing that stuff this whole time.
If anything, the benefit of living in a post-Satanic Panic, post-Moral Majority, post-Creation Museum world is that it’s not likely that these issues are going to disappear from the radar. Even if the religious right wants to take up the Benedict Option, we’re assuming that modernity as a whole wants to take its eyes off of them. And given that these groups aren’t actually oppressed but are simply seeing their privilege recede, I don’t think that society will lose track of them.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:56 PM on September 29, 2015
The Atlantic article is vague in the extreme about what the Benedict Option actually demands that Christians do differently; the only concrete point seems to be that the religious right should drop out of the culture wars and stop fighting political battles.
That's how I'm understanding the drop-out option. Perhaps some will take it literally, but I see the call to monasticism more as a metaphor for solidifying the Christian communities that already exist and ignoring (shunning) certain troubling aspects of mainstream life. Politics, certainly, but perhaps public schools, much of the media, and whatever else they might consider worth doing without to make their own lives more holy.
Even as these people complain about being a minority, their lives are largely dependent upon the larger society and economy. If 2,000 people decide to go somewhere and build a walled city, that means uprooting and leaving jobs and family and friends and whatever earthly security they might have had. It's been done before, of course, but it's hard work and should require some solid planning. I doubt we'll see much of that.
Oh, and:
Makes me wonder which dystopia post-apocalypse ur-Canada would look like.
Fawlty Towers.
posted by bryon at 11:07 PM on September 29, 2015
That's how I'm understanding the drop-out option. Perhaps some will take it literally, but I see the call to monasticism more as a metaphor for solidifying the Christian communities that already exist and ignoring (shunning) certain troubling aspects of mainstream life. Politics, certainly, but perhaps public schools, much of the media, and whatever else they might consider worth doing without to make their own lives more holy.
Even as these people complain about being a minority, their lives are largely dependent upon the larger society and economy. If 2,000 people decide to go somewhere and build a walled city, that means uprooting and leaving jobs and family and friends and whatever earthly security they might have had. It's been done before, of course, but it's hard work and should require some solid planning. I doubt we'll see much of that.
Oh, and:
Makes me wonder which dystopia post-apocalypse ur-Canada would look like.
Fawlty Towers.
posted by bryon at 11:07 PM on September 29, 2015
Dreher sorta kinda confronts how his vision would play out in reality.
The double think is fascinating to watch.
posted by PMdixon at 11:29 PM on September 29, 2015
The double think is fascinating to watch.
posted by PMdixon at 11:29 PM on September 29, 2015
The basic problem with the Benedict Option is that it rejects the Amish model. The expectation is not to withdraw from secular life but to live together within it, much as Orthodox Jews around the U.S. have. I think that's the prevailing organizing principle in his mind, but the stuff in between is all underpants gnomes and wishful thinking.
A few months back there was some discussion on his blog of Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue. MacIntyre's critique of modernity and the incoherence of modern moral thought is pretty devastating, but his prescriptions are mealy and inchoate, and I say that as an admirer. So it was fascinating to watch Dreher and his audience try to adapt them to their own muddled enterprise.
As a final thought, I've always been impressed with the diversity of opinions and points of view represented in the comments at The American Conservative. The conservative point of view is well represented by a highly intelligent, articulate, and reasonable sort, and progressive voices of mostly civil dissent are welcome and for the most part engaged thoughtfully and in good faith. It's much less an echo chamber than even Metafilter has become, which is surprising given that it too is heavily moderated. What's more, outside of Dreher's blog, TAC seems to exist almost entirely to critique the excesses of the modern (i.e., populist) Right and the Republican party. I think a lot of Mefites would be surprised to know such organs even exist.
(But don't read anything by Pat Buchanan if you want to avoid getting your hackles raised.)
posted by echocollate at 6:00 AM on September 30, 2015 [3 favorites]
A few months back there was some discussion on his blog of Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue. MacIntyre's critique of modernity and the incoherence of modern moral thought is pretty devastating, but his prescriptions are mealy and inchoate, and I say that as an admirer. So it was fascinating to watch Dreher and his audience try to adapt them to their own muddled enterprise.
As a final thought, I've always been impressed with the diversity of opinions and points of view represented in the comments at The American Conservative. The conservative point of view is well represented by a highly intelligent, articulate, and reasonable sort, and progressive voices of mostly civil dissent are welcome and for the most part engaged thoughtfully and in good faith. It's much less an echo chamber than even Metafilter has become, which is surprising given that it too is heavily moderated. What's more, outside of Dreher's blog, TAC seems to exist almost entirely to critique the excesses of the modern (i.e., populist) Right and the Republican party. I think a lot of Mefites would be surprised to know such organs even exist.
(But don't read anything by Pat Buchanan if you want to avoid getting your hackles raised.)
posted by echocollate at 6:00 AM on September 30, 2015 [3 favorites]
"I am a product of the Benedict Option. In my own case, the Benedict Option failed for two reasons—first, I didn’t know how to interact with the outside world when I reached adulthood, and second, I was given an inaccurate understanding of what the outside world was actually like."
posted by MonkeyToes at 6:56 AM on October 3, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by MonkeyToes at 6:56 AM on October 3, 2015 [2 favorites]
Benedict Option FAQ
posted by the man of twists and turns at 1:29 PM on October 6, 2015
What is MacIntyre’s critique? Be succinct.He has a list of Benedict Option communities. Moscow, ID is not in them (anymore).
MacIntyre says that the Enlightenment project cut Western man off from his roots in tradition, but failed to produce a binding morality based on Reason alone. Plus, the Enlightenment extolled the autonomous individual. Consequently, we live in a culture of moral chaos and fragmentation, in which many questions are simply impossible to settle. MacIntyre says that our contemporary world is a dark wood, and that finding our way back to the straight path will require establishing new forms of community that have as their ends a life of virtue.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 1:29 PM on October 6, 2015
Okay, I read the whole FAQ and, for starters, these people are not reading MacIntyre right and it is annoying me. (Actually, ironically, I think that as an ex-fundamentalist Protestant reading a Catholic philosopher he is lacking in some of the shared base assumptions that Catholics bring to MacIntyre and therefore ends up in a "not even wrong" place that MacIntyre points out is a problem with ethical thinking in modernity divorced from the Christian tradition BUT I DIGRESS.)
Dreher has some cogent "in-house" critiques of American evangelical Christianity -- like that they interpret the "Great Commission" in a very narrow fashion, and that they ignore vast resources of Christian tradition by being hyper-modern Protestants with no memory or tradition prior to 1860. But he seems to think that most of them -- like him -- desire that memory and tradition. I don't think that's true. I think the ones who do mostly -- like him -- have already jumped ship for Catholicism or Orthodoxy.
I don't know. I don't exactly disagree with any of his theological premises (just his political ones, like about gay marriage being bad for Christianity), but he's just so "not even wrong." And I studied with Hauerwas, and I lived in a residential college system that was explicitly governed under (a modified) Benedict's Rule, and when we had in-dorm disputes they were frequently mediated with an appeal to the Rule. So I'm not unfamiliar with the idea of Christians withdrawing from the wider society, I don't think it's wrong or illegitimate, and I have lived in communities using the Rule. But ... it's somehow not so crazy when Hauerwas talks about it or college dorms are modeled on it, as when Dreher starts. There is something in the translation here -- and possibly it's just the appeal to American culture-war politics -- that is turning this from "perfectly in line with centuries of Christian tradition, works very well" to "OMG WHY ARE YOU CRAZY."
Actually, on reflection, I do think that's the issue -- it's not that he wants Christians to be Christian-er, it's that he wants them to be more conservative, and if he can't get that at a national level, he'll accept it at a personal level and in small communities. But conflating Christianity and the GOP doesn't make for a "thick" Christianity (nor does conflating Christianity and the Democratic party, but today I'm picking on Republicans) -- it's actually one of the precursors of the "thinness" of the modernism-influenced Christianity he deplores. One of the reasons the US remains so much more religious than Europe is that the US doesn't have a state church; combining modern politics with religion tends to weaken religion by bending it to political expediency and opening its offices to politics careerists and making it a default option rather than a choice. Evangelical politics, in the United States, has done exactly this since the 1980s and contributed massively to the "thinning" of Christian identity in the United States by conflating genuine doctrine with political policies; putting political careerists in positions of influence in churches who don't give a shit about the churches, just their political life; and encouraging people who aren't particularly committed to Christianity to become (or remain) members anyway for professional or social or monetary advantages. So attempting to combat the "thinning" of Christian identity and ideas by creating communities dedicated to a politically conservative, culture-war interpretation of Christianity seems both inauthentically Benedictine and doomed to failure in particularly nutty, scandal-prone ways.
Also Benedictine communities rely on an interplay between the community voice and a "thick" authority structure, and American evangelicals are total shit at thick authority structures. Like 90% of their raison d'etre is typically local self-governance, and Benedictine communities have almost always, and almost exclusively, occurred within strong-authority-structure churches like Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Anglicanism. Creating a semi-closed local community without outside authorities is ... a starter recipe for a cult. I mean it's not guaranteed to start a cult, but it's a pretty good sourdough starter for it.
And as the patheos blogger notes -- these things already exist. I'm not sure what Dreher is calling for that doesn't already exist, except for their to be a (more explicit) political test to find out if people are the "right" sort of Christians. I think she's hit on the heart of it -- it is not at all clear what Dreher wants Christians to do that they're not already doing, with varying degrees of success.
If I were going to get all eschatological about it -- these "BenOp" people (somebody needs to be fistpunched in the face, in a very Christlike fashion, of course, for that coinage) seem to believe that the vigor of the Christian community can be restored by returning to a more traditional lifestyle; they often explicitly set modern Christian Europe and North America against the vibrancy of the Islamic world and talk about the primacy of "family." (By which they mostly usually mean the oppression of women; never anything like "tax dollars supporting family programs.") I would suggest, rather, that perhaps we are living through a second Axial Age, a massive realignment of human thought, in this case to cope with modernity and its rapid communication and interconnectedness, and maybe the answer is to be profoundly engaging with this change of thought. Or maybe the prophetic challenge Christianity needs to be meeting right now is global climate change and a revitalization of Christian communities will come from using the Christian tradition to come up with human ways to address the crisis by, for example, offering alternatives to capitalist consumerism. I dunno, just spitballing.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:33 PM on October 6, 2015 [3 favorites]
Dreher has some cogent "in-house" critiques of American evangelical Christianity -- like that they interpret the "Great Commission" in a very narrow fashion, and that they ignore vast resources of Christian tradition by being hyper-modern Protestants with no memory or tradition prior to 1860. But he seems to think that most of them -- like him -- desire that memory and tradition. I don't think that's true. I think the ones who do mostly -- like him -- have already jumped ship for Catholicism or Orthodoxy.
I don't know. I don't exactly disagree with any of his theological premises (just his political ones, like about gay marriage being bad for Christianity), but he's just so "not even wrong." And I studied with Hauerwas, and I lived in a residential college system that was explicitly governed under (a modified) Benedict's Rule, and when we had in-dorm disputes they were frequently mediated with an appeal to the Rule. So I'm not unfamiliar with the idea of Christians withdrawing from the wider society, I don't think it's wrong or illegitimate, and I have lived in communities using the Rule. But ... it's somehow not so crazy when Hauerwas talks about it or college dorms are modeled on it, as when Dreher starts. There is something in the translation here -- and possibly it's just the appeal to American culture-war politics -- that is turning this from "perfectly in line with centuries of Christian tradition, works very well" to "OMG WHY ARE YOU CRAZY."
Actually, on reflection, I do think that's the issue -- it's not that he wants Christians to be Christian-er, it's that he wants them to be more conservative, and if he can't get that at a national level, he'll accept it at a personal level and in small communities. But conflating Christianity and the GOP doesn't make for a "thick" Christianity (nor does conflating Christianity and the Democratic party, but today I'm picking on Republicans) -- it's actually one of the precursors of the "thinness" of the modernism-influenced Christianity he deplores. One of the reasons the US remains so much more religious than Europe is that the US doesn't have a state church; combining modern politics with religion tends to weaken religion by bending it to political expediency and opening its offices to politics careerists and making it a default option rather than a choice. Evangelical politics, in the United States, has done exactly this since the 1980s and contributed massively to the "thinning" of Christian identity in the United States by conflating genuine doctrine with political policies; putting political careerists in positions of influence in churches who don't give a shit about the churches, just their political life; and encouraging people who aren't particularly committed to Christianity to become (or remain) members anyway for professional or social or monetary advantages. So attempting to combat the "thinning" of Christian identity and ideas by creating communities dedicated to a politically conservative, culture-war interpretation of Christianity seems both inauthentically Benedictine and doomed to failure in particularly nutty, scandal-prone ways.
Also Benedictine communities rely on an interplay between the community voice and a "thick" authority structure, and American evangelicals are total shit at thick authority structures. Like 90% of their raison d'etre is typically local self-governance, and Benedictine communities have almost always, and almost exclusively, occurred within strong-authority-structure churches like Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Anglicanism. Creating a semi-closed local community without outside authorities is ... a starter recipe for a cult. I mean it's not guaranteed to start a cult, but it's a pretty good sourdough starter for it.
And as the patheos blogger notes -- these things already exist. I'm not sure what Dreher is calling for that doesn't already exist, except for their to be a (more explicit) political test to find out if people are the "right" sort of Christians. I think she's hit on the heart of it -- it is not at all clear what Dreher wants Christians to do that they're not already doing, with varying degrees of success.
If I were going to get all eschatological about it -- these "BenOp" people (somebody needs to be fistpunched in the face, in a very Christlike fashion, of course, for that coinage) seem to believe that the vigor of the Christian community can be restored by returning to a more traditional lifestyle; they often explicitly set modern Christian Europe and North America against the vibrancy of the Islamic world and talk about the primacy of "family." (By which they mostly usually mean the oppression of women; never anything like "tax dollars supporting family programs.") I would suggest, rather, that perhaps we are living through a second Axial Age, a massive realignment of human thought, in this case to cope with modernity and its rapid communication and interconnectedness, and maybe the answer is to be profoundly engaging with this change of thought. Or maybe the prophetic challenge Christianity needs to be meeting right now is global climate change and a revitalization of Christian communities will come from using the Christian tradition to come up with human ways to address the crisis by, for example, offering alternatives to capitalist consumerism. I dunno, just spitballing.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:33 PM on October 6, 2015 [3 favorites]
Actually, on reflection, I do think that's the issue -- it's not that he wants Christians to be Christian-er, it's that he wants them to be more conservative, and if he can't get that at a national level, he'll accept it at a personal level and in small communities.
He's a "crunchy con" from way back. The whole traditionalist, minimalist, self-sustaining communities with folkways and foodways and smalltown life.
I would suggest, rather, that perhaps we are living through a second Axial Age
Full concur. How did you read the blog post that's only saved as a draft in my head?
posted by the man of twists and turns at 2:45 PM on October 6, 2015
He's a "crunchy con" from way back. The whole traditionalist, minimalist, self-sustaining communities with folkways and foodways and smalltown life.
I would suggest, rather, that perhaps we are living through a second Axial Age
Full concur. How did you read the blog post that's only saved as a draft in my head?
posted by the man of twists and turns at 2:45 PM on October 6, 2015
the man of twists and turns: "Full concur. How did you read the blog post that's only saved as a draft in my head?"
I have some exciting news for you about human communication developments in the dawning Axial Age!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:59 PM on October 6, 2015 [1 favorite]
I have some exciting news for you about human communication developments in the dawning Axial Age!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:59 PM on October 6, 2015 [1 favorite]
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