Wednesday, November 25, 2015

The premise of the Benedict Option

Today Dreher asks (via an alleged Muslim commenter):

... when you ask Muslim immigrants to integrate, what do you mean? Integrate into what?

Dreher has no answer -- other than this:

... I'm not sure how I would answer it. I've never thought about it before, and am embarrassed to realize that. 

... I think when Europe asks them to integrate, it's asking them pretty much to quit being Muslim. When America does, I think it's more or less asking them, "Will you please not act in ways that make us feel afraid?"

I guess the only way one can think like this is because one thinks like this:

.... Post-Obergefell, to what extent should Christians remain engaged with and willing to defined the America we have? .... 

.... I no longer hold the view that America is a nearly unambiguous force for good in the world. In fact, I think American culture is in many ways poisonous, and a force for evil....

.... I believe that there is a meaningful difference between being a good Christian and a good American ....
 
This is the premise of the Benedict Option. When one believes that the "Enlightenment project" has failed, then one cannot answer that simple question of "what does it mean to integrate" with the obvious answer that "to integrate" means to accept the founding ideas of the Nation:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed....

Despotism awaits those who follow the path of the Benedict Option.