Rod Dreher, author of the much-discussed book The Benedict Option, commented on his book in Plough Quarterly (Summer, 2017). His book takes its name from Saint Benedict, a Christian monk in Italy during the Middle Ages. Benedict set up a religious order to, in Dreher’s words, “best serve the Lord in community during a terrible crisis.”
In commenting on his book, Dreher said, “Put all thoughts of total withdrawal out of your mind. That is not what the Benedict Option calls for.” It does, however, call for “a strategic separation from the everyday world.”
Following Dreher’s article, Ross Douthat, a columnist for The New York Times, continued a series of commentary on the book. Douthat seems less certain that the future is quite as bad as Dreher depicts.
“But,” Douthat writes, “I also don’t think it necessarily matters . . . because I think where we are right now is clearly a place where many of the things he calls for . . . are necessary and useful and important, no matter what happens in ten or twenty or thirty years.”
Douthat added, “Building resilient communities may not be the answer; . . . but it is an incredibly important answer to the challenges of our time.”
Not all communities are good. Nevertheless, even destructive communities like street gangs and the Islamic State illustrate the craving we all feel for identity and purpose.
The loss of community—the loss of belonging—fosters lack of purpose. Without purpose, we flounder.