John Z Posts Article 3 on so-called Benedict Option

I don't know which event came first, Rod Dreher ranting about how we're not to discuss so-called Benedict Option anymore, or John Zmirak penning his third article on the so-called Benedict Option, which he has obviously been warming up for. Someone else can figure that out if they wish. Here's the lead-off teaser:

Rod Dreher's meme has become The Blob, engorging all it encounters, never assuming a shape you can nail down and consider rationally.

It's funny to me how the Catholics I've encountered who support the so-called Benedict Option all do claim to know what it is already. People like Diane's Facebook friend, for example, always explains that it's homeschooling, plus going to a parish with a respectful liturgy (no balloons, kangaroos or jellos, for example), plus generally keeping your kids protected from bad influences. They are so confident they know what it is in fact that they fully support it 100% and there is no way they need to buy and read a book about it.

But really—what about the BO isn't funny? Here's Zmirak's lead paragraph:

I wrote last week on the “Benedict Option,” a nebulous cultural strategy which its popularizer, Rod Dreher, describes as an “inchoate phenomenon in which Christians adopt a more consciously countercultural stance towards our post-Christian mainstream culture.” It’s named after St. Benedict, the father of Western monasticism, but Dreher isn’t recommending monasticism, or anything else that’s easy to pin down and examine. The concept’s nebulousness, I’ve come to realize, is not a bug but a feature. It allows Dreher an almost infinite freedom to imply whatever he wishes, without committing himself to a single logical or testable assertion from which he cannot backtrack when it’s contested. Nice work if you can get it.

It's also a more serious matter that Dreher has become a go-to guy for the liberal media on the topic of Christians in the public square:

Does Dreher counsel retreat from the public square, from civic life? It’s an urgent question because our First Amendment right to free exercise of religion is under sustained attack from the highest levels of government, the media and even many corporations. The clear-sighted, principled conservative Bruce Frohnen and I each took Dreher to task for waving the white flag in Time magazine just days after the Supreme Court’s same-sex ‘marriage’ decision. Dreher’s piece began with the boldface text: “Voting Republican and other failed culture war strategies are not going to save us now.”

So is dumping the “failed” strategy of voting Republican part of the Benedict Option? Time’s editors thought that this was what Dreher meant, which is why they used that headline — the author’s own words, excerpted from inside the piece. In fact, that call for surrender is surely why Time ran his column in the first place, in the same week that the magazine published an impassioned call for stripping churches of their tax exemptions. Time is not Christianity Today; it shows little interest in offering helpful essays for Christians in living out the gospel.

Then Zmirak embarks on an examination of just which conservatives it could possibly be who believe that all we need to do is vote Republican and Yay! we're saved!

Who is he talking about? Nominal Christians who rarely ever attend church and live as pagans? But half of them don’t vote; more than half of the remaining half don’t vote Republican; and the half of the half who do almost certainly aren’t doing it to save Christendom. So who are his invisible villains?

Dreher certainly cannot mean the Rev. James Robison, the founder of The Stream, who speaks about politics in defense of religious and economic liberty, marriage and the sanctity of life. Robison also runs a ministry that has led hundreds of thousands of people to Christ while his organization’s unflagging work has helped missionaries dig thousands of wells for poor people across the developing world.

Dreher also can’t be talking about the Catholic Church, which lavishes millions yearly on educating non-Catholic poor children in schools across the country, runs non-profit hospitals that refuse to perform abortions, and sends medical missionaries across the world.

And he’s not referring to the Southern Baptist Convention, which pours millions into disaster relief around the planet, helping Christians in Katrina-ravaged New Orleans and Buddhists in places like Nepal.

"Who is he talking about?" Thank you, Mr. Zmirak. I've long asked that question and the answer is brought to mind immediately: straw men. This question along with my oft-made statement that I don't know what he's talking about stands in contrast with those aforementioned Catholics who swear they already know what the BO is. And it is hilarious to me that his staunchest defenders are the least likely to be interested in a book about what they are already doing.

Maybe I'm beating this point to hard, or maybe you're just confused. In either case, it's possible that this literary reference will help (Courtesy of Keith).

He concludes by basically echoing my sentiments here. I'm hoping that we haven't heard the last from John Zmirak on the so-called Benedict Option. It really takes a constant pounding of logic and clear-thinking to talk some people down from ledges which they were lured onto by sweet-sounding words penned by crafty wordsmiths.