Should Lutherans Take ‘The Benedict Option’?

By Jason Lane

In his best-selling book, The Benedict Option (Penguin Random House, 2017), Rod Dreher attempts to offer readers a countercultural way of living Christianity in a post-Christian society by following what he calls “the Benedict Option.”

Dreher takes the suggestion of the Catholic philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, who believed that we must build new forms of Christian communities to safeguard Christianity — while also perhaps preserving western culture and morality, just as Benedict did.[1] Dreher attempts to draw on the wisdom of St. Benedict’s Rule to teach Christians of all denominations how to live countercultural lives in intentional ways, both personally and communally.

Dreher presents the Benedict Option as if it were something new to Christians. In historically broad terms, Dreher declares that Christians have come to a decisive moment in human history requiring us to live drastically, that is, to make decisive and intentional moves in our lives that will change us, our children, the church, and perhaps the world. He writes that his aim in writing the book is

to wake up the church and to encourage it to act to strengthen itself, while there is still time. If we want to survive, we have to return to the roots of our faith, both in thought and in practice. We are going to have to learn habits of the heart forgotten by believers in the West. We are going to have to change our lives, and our approach to life, in radical ways. In short, we are going to have to be the church, without compromise, no matter what it costs.[2]

Dreher is convinced that what was true for Benedict then is true for Christians today. In the face of the moral and spiritual decay of both American society and American churches, Christians must build new forms of sacred communities to defend ourselves and to prepare for a world that is or soon will be godless.

Dreher declares that modern institutions, especially our educational structures, our political and legal structures and basic social structures of family, have been overrun by the liberal left to such an extent that Christians must build new, parallel institutions: new classical schools or homeschool groups, new spiritual communities, businesses, and a recommitment to our churches, the family, and biblical sexuality. Dreher insists not only that we can do it, but that we must, if we hope to endure the rampant corruption of this world.

Dreher’s ‘option’ is simply Christ’s mandate

Lutherans may find the Benedict Option appealing, because it seems to take seriously things that we have always valued: the central place of the Divine Service of Word and Sacrament in the Christian life, the sanctity of marriage and the faithful instruction of children in doctrine and life, a life that is ruled only by faith in the Word of God and is poured out in love for the neighbor through acts of service, the protection of innocence and a clear-headed understanding of being human, and so on. Dreher seems to be urging us to cling to all these things.

The difficulties that many Lutherans will have or, I argue, should have with the book are Dreher’s presuppositions and his conclusions. He thinks that Benedict’s form of Christian living is radically different from what sincere Christians are already doing: receiving the Word and Sacraments and living in but not of the world. Benedict’s instruction for personal piety and the familial bonds of the sacred community, after all, is strikingly similar to New Testament Christianity.

Nathaniel Peters of the Morningside Institute wrote a review of Dreher’s book back in 2017 that I commend to readers of The Lutheran Witness. In it, Peters argues that Dreher’s “Benedict Option” is not exactly optional. The Benedict Option that Dreher describes is a call for us to flee worldliness, to dedicate ourselves and our families to an intentional life of discipleship. In that way, Dreher proposes a way of living, like Benedict, that takes seriously the First Commandment, “You shall have no other gods before Me.” Every Christian knows that our idolatry must be rooted out and, like plucking out an eye to save the rest of the body for the kingdom, it may hurt; it may mean real sacrifice and real hardship in the world. None of this is optional; it’s Christianity. If the Benedict Option is just about “being the church,” then it all hangs on Christ’s mandate and not on Benedict’s option.

The Benedict Option will never save us

Christians of all denominations will find much to praise in Dreher’s prophetic warnings and common-sense critique of our fractured and lonely age. Yet there remains in Dreher’s writing, both in his critique of culture and proposal of the Benedict Option, an element of uncertainty concerning God’s work in this world and His faithfulness to His church. Rather than turn readers to the confidence we can have in God’s promises in Christ, Dreher has a tendency to appeal to the will of individuals and to the resilience of the human spirit to accomplish the task of enduring to the end. Lutherans will find in Dreher a clear call to repentance for our apathy or even capitulation to this world, but they will also find a list of activities for body and soul to work toward reforming ourselves, our families, and our churches. Dreher maintains that the stronger we become in Christian community by decisive commitment, the more prepared we will be to withstand the onslaught of a culture set against God and His Word. He suggests that, with perhaps some intentional effort, Christians can preserve western culture and rebuild what we have lost in the age of smartphones, sexual malevolence, and cultural and moral chaos.

Dreher points to the sexual revolution of the 1960s and the rapid deterioration of human sexuality and marriage since the invention of the internet as watershed moments in American society that have signaled the end of western culture. Dreher believes that the time is right for something radical, because, he is convinced, we are heading into dark ages just as Christians faced at the time of Benedict. His despair is at times palpable. “There are people alive today,” he declares, “who may live to see the effective death of Christianity within our civilization.”[3] For Christians who have come to know God not in visible success in this world, but, as Luther would say, “through suffering and cross,” Dreher’s despair suggests that he was hoping for much more out of this world than it will give. At times his rhetoric will sound to discerning ears like the pursuit of glory, to build a kingdom that cannot be shaken, as if we could with our tent pegs and canvas. But only God can build such a kingdom. He has done it by His cross and He calls each of us: “Pick up yours and follow Me.”

Dreher offers many practical suggestions that may help us in our daily walk as Christians. His suggestion, for instance, to move closer to our congregations makes a lot of sense. As Dreher presents these many suggestions about what we can do to protect our children, parents especially may be tempted either to despair or to pride. Some of us are homeschooling or starting schools or are intentionally involved in our Lutheran schools, others are still involved in our public schools. We may think that we are on the road to success, only to find out that we’re raising real sinners and that we, too, are apt to think that our right method or option produces the right results every time. Experience will teach us otherwise.

Readers may question whether the motivation of this book is fear of the world or confidence in God’s mercy in Christ for it. Dreher wants to say in a tone of prophetic warning and evangelical counsel that it is both. On a practical level, his suggestions are certainly Christian. We should be involved in our churches and rejoice in God’s Word and Sacraments. We should sing hymns together and pray for one another. We should offer our children a superior alternative to this world’s cheap show and create a real culture of life, full and rich. Furthermore, he’s right. Parents shouldn’t get divorced. Children don’t need smartphones. Pornography corrupts. And, yes, many of us parents are going to have to find better options for schooling, if the schools are teaching our children lies.

His critique is correct and many of his suggestions are helpful, and yet his approach lacks confidence in Christ, and therefore directs Christians — unintentionally, I think — to their own efforts and works. Of greater concern for LCMS Lutherans is Dreher’s subtle suggestion that you can do it. His road map for Christians appeals to the pharisee in all of us, because he invites us to look at what we are doing. If he intends this to be in any way comforting to Christians, to the kind of Christians who not only have to deal with the mindless assaults of a godless generation but who also contend daily with their own sin and weakness, this is a dreadful confusion of Law and Gospel. Dreher has a lot to say about the Law, but he offers a strange gospel that is really no Gospel at all. The Benedict Option begins and ends with works, good works to be sure, but works all the same. And works are bound to cause in us either despair or pride: despair when we realize that we can never do enough what God (not Dreher) commands, and pride when we think that we are doing enough for God because “We’re doing the Benedict Option!”

What Christians need more than a Benedict Option is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ who on His way to the cross to pay for our sins promised: “In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

[1] Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame, IN: University Notre Dame Press, 2007), 263.

[2] Rod Dreher, The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation (New York: Penguin Random House, 2017), 3.

[3]Dreher, Benedict Option, 8.

Cover image: “St. Benedict delivering his Rule,” France [Monastery of St. Gilles, Nimes], 1129, Courtesy British Library.