Noah Millman legitimately wants specifics about the Benedictine Option (and here I thought it was an after dinner cocktail):
Ok, then: monasteries were communities of celibates who held property in common. Anyone from the outside could join the community by taking the necessary vows, and non-votaries could visit, even dwell with the community for a time. But the monastic community was constituted by rules of considerable complexity, and it played a unique economic role in the larger society by virtue of its distinctive legal status. So I’d expect discussion of the Benedict Option to center on what such communities such look like, how they should relate to the larger, less-tethered community of co-religionists and the larger society as a whole. Should Benedict-Option Christians found communities outside of major cities, so as to be able to fully express their ethos, and encourage non-Benedict-Option Christians to visit them there? What should the economic relationship be between communal organs and individual adherents? What should the rules be for joining – or leaving? What kinds of legal protections would such communities need as corporate bodies? And how should adherents behave when they are among “gentiles?”
These are the kinds of questions that actual ethical communities – groups like the Amish and Mennonites, yes, but also Orthodox Jews, Mormons, American Sikhs, utopian Socialists, kibbutzniks, all kinds of groups – have wrestled with at their founding. Communal organization for a self-conscious ethical group within a foreign society – not necessarily hostile nor necessarily friendly, but foreign – is not a new problem. I’d expect advocates of the Benedict Option to be particularly interested in such forerunning models, and to be discussing how they might or might not be applied to the specific challenges of small-o orthodox Christianity in a society that still retains the trappings of Christianity but, from their perspective, can no longer be called Christian in any meaningful sense.
That, however, doesn’t seem to be the center of the discussion about the Benedict Option, at least not so far as I have seen. Instead, most of what I’ve seen is discussion of how corrupt and threatening to Christianity the surrounding culture is becoming, and how small-o orthodox Christians need to recognize that fact and prepare for it, combined with repeated assurance that the Benedict Option does not mean withdrawing from the world or compromising the Christian obligation to witness, spread the gospel, be in the world while not of it, etc. In other words, I hear a lot about why the Benedict Option is important, and a lot about what the Benedict Option isn’t, but very little that I can grasp with any kind of firmness about what the blasted thing is in the first place.
Protestants were not (and still aren’t) big on monasticism. Protestantism was a piety for life in the world and the doctrine that undergirded that real life was vocation.
But Protestants were also big on sanctifying the Lord’s Day, as in setting it apart:
This Sabbath is then kept holy unto the Lord, when men, after a due preparing of their hearts, and ordering of their common affairs beforehand, do not only observe an holy rest, all the day, from their own works, words, and thoughts about their worldly employments and recreations, but also are taken up, the whole time, in the public and private exercises of his worship, and in the duties of necessity and mercy. (Confession of Faith, 21.8)
You could argue, then, that every Sunday is a kind of monastic retreat from the world and that’s certainly how many Protestants practiced it. Even my Baptist parents knew this and so when the prospects of Little League came, I had to decline because I would be compelled to play baseball on Sundays. Why my brother and I could watch the Phillies on Sundays thanks to the television was a question we didn’t ask. We wanted to watch. We weren’t in charge.
What if the wider Christian world (Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Protestant) treated Sunday as a day for a kind of monastic existence? No work, no inappropriate reading, no sex, lots of bread, even more beer. Couldn’t this be a way to set Christians apart without having to become celibate and so see Christianity go the way of the Shakers?
No sex? I seem to recall from Ryken’s ‘Worldy Saints’ that some Puritans thought Sunday afternoon was a great time for it. Maybe we should ask Pastor Mark.
LikeLike
DGH…
WHAT???? Little League played baseball on Sundays back in your day?
I thought the whole world went to church twice on Sundays and never walked more than 50 paces away from the path of home to church right up to where it all fell apart around 1980 (or so I recall.)
LikeLike
Speaking of Pastor Mark, he’s right we can’t lose our justification. Not a bad post <——-there about 10 words back, it seemed to me on my first pass. Anyone else, thoughts? Comments here are open after all, TVD knows full well.
Next.
LikeLike
I meant Driscoll, pony person.
LikeLike
There’s a lot of marks around these days, got confused my purtain mark with your strawberry man. but i always enjoy a comment my way, so what they hey..
LikeLike
that was disappointing, thought it’d be a coupon for a Driscoll endorsed skull t-shirt
LikeLike
What if the wider Christian world (Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Protestant) treated Sunday as a day for a kind of monastic existence? No work, no inappropriate reading, no sex, lots of bread, even more beer. Couldn’t this be a way to set Christians apart without having to become celibate and so see Christianity go the way of the Shakers?
Elegant. Baseball, though. Dispensations must be given to baseball players. They’re doing the Lord’s work.
LikeLike
kent, I can only do so much.
tvd, baseball, never forget.
www[dot]fangraphs.com/blogs/the-legality-and-physics-of-pences-triple-hit/
LikeLike
No thanks–im not up for a Sunday monastic life, ill leave that to others. cw- I am sure Mark Driscoll wouldn’t be either if you’ve ever heard his sermon from Edinburgh a few years back. His poor poor wife.. insert annoying emoticon. I am for cutting baseball at all times though. Its my babtist roots– i like to pick and choose. ‘duties of necessity and mercy’ can mean many things in many households. Jus sayin. Sry I try to leave this as a man cave for you guys–just thought I’d weigh in a bit.
LikeLike
shawnie, some of us know who you are and we know that we are not worthy…
LikeLike
SHHH dont tell on me–im no one,
a mere lurker lol
LikeLike
no comment needed
I’m glad urban dictionary got my note… now back to yall’s convo before it gets awkward-er lol
LikeLike
Shawnie live, dont want to short change ya. I’ll go find you on Facebook and we can be friends. 😉 I understand you have to go 😥
dude with all due respect just stop trust me . please I shouldn’t have posted. I get its urban dictionary and you’re not meaning offense but uhhhh yeah im gonna need you to not try and find me. yall have a good day. Sry Mr. Hart I didn’t mean this to happen
LikeLike
shawnie, blame
He started it:
Darryl’s cool, don’t sweat. I just always wonder who’s next to post, never in a million years would I have guessed a shawnie and pony boy on the same thread. God help us.
Who’s next?
LikeLike
Yea, that went well.
LikeLike
Sean, we must be doing something right. More and more she-males keep appearing. Are they attracted to that OLTS mojo? Don’t know..
LikeLike
AB, it’s not your fault and you don’t know, but drop it. Really.
LikeLike
Its dropped.
warriors currently ahead by 4. 21-17.
Fore.
LikeLike
Weirdest. Thread. Ever.
LikeLike
I thought it cleared a thing or two, up, sdb. Tied at half time (thanks to Harden), anyone can listen for free on espn radio right there.
LikeLike
Shawnie,
I was in a weird mood – I would ask DGH to delete all my comments on this thread.
Make of any of it what you will.
Who’s next?
LikeLike
I would think that Sunday conjugality might well fall under mercy.
Or necessity in some cases?
Following AB out.
LikeLike
I quit reading at “communities of celibates”.
LikeLike
You missed out. Shawnie is the most interesting olts interlocutor I’ve yet met.
LikeLike
AB = The guy at the comic book store that creeps out the female customers.
LikeLike
Amish,
Tell it to my face if you have the stones.
Nice to hear from you.
Grace and peace.
LikeLike
AB, you don’t want to go there with this one.
LikeLike
CW,
What can mortal man do to me?
LikeLike
D4, it depends on how much it resembles pulling an ox out of a ditch. Or maybe if it was incorporated into walking through fields of grain – wait until mid-Summer on that one.
LikeLike
AB, try pre-deleting all your comments.
Please don’t respond to this, as you will then make me guilty of enabling you.
LikeLike
But Muddy, sean says, don’t tell me what to do.
That said, tell me what to do. I hear you, and I understand.
It’s your world. I’m just living in it.
Grace and peace.
Who’s next?
LikeLike
Muddy, I don’t think it matters. And here’s the problem with the interweb, and work, and life….. we aren’t all created equal.
LikeLike
“lots of bread, even more beer.”
I don’t get that part. Because no one will be cooking?
LikeLike
Been there, Luther did that — or Father Dwight finds his inner Protestant:
LikeLike
Father Dwight’s other plan for renewal — Roman Catholic Promise Keepers:
Where does he find time to do the exegesis for his sermons?
LikeLike
Darryl,
Where does he find time to do the exegesis for his sermons?
RC parish priests don’t do exegesis, at least none of the ones I’ve known. Fits well with a religion that is not really about dogma, no matter what the RCs here think.
LikeLike
Robert, I was kidding.
LikeLike
I’ve dipped in and out of several of the threads here that touch on the neo-Benedictine angst that has apparently reached critical mass among the right wing chattering class of late. Maybe this point has been made here and I have missed it, but isn’t the feasibility of the kinds of communities Dreher and other advocates envision parasitic on the continued existence of a larger pluralistic community that will let them exist? Maybe the declinists ought to put down their copies of “After Virtue” and read “A Secular Faith.”
LikeLike
different Dan, D. G. is easier to spell than Alasdair.
LikeLike
Everyone is leaving the mainstream.
LikeLike
Benedictines warming up to sanctification of the Lord’s Day:
LikeLike