Brother Boris on the Benedict Option: "The Church as a Purity Cult"

The Internets are truly amazing. Yesterday Tom throws out the phrase "creepy culty", which naturally reminds me of Boris the Spider. This morning I find some musings about the Benedict Option as a "purity cult" by someone calling himself Brother Boris.

I am not sure what to think about Rod Dreher. To be honest, I really don't know that much about him. I have no strong feelings either in favor of him nor against him. From what I have researched on the Internet, Dreher was raised as a Methodist. He converted to Roman Catholicism in 1993 and then to Eastern Orthodoxy in 2006.

Forgive me for being so blunt, but I do not think it is in good spiritual form for recent converts to the Orthodox faith to tell others (especially those outside of the visible Orthodox Church) how to live or to dispense ecclesiastical or spiritual advice. Dreher has been Orthodox for less than a decade. He is still taking his baby steps in Orthodoxy. He is still in the process of acquiring an Orthodox phronema (mindset). This is a process that takes many years, especially for adult converts and especially for American Orthodox converts. The Orthodox Church in the United States is exceedingly small and marginalized. Less than one-half of 1% of Americans are Orthodox.

Brother Boris then explains how he had talked to an Orthodox Bishop about his interest in the monastic life soon after his conversion, and how the Bishop advised him to go live at a monastery for three years, then come back to the United States and go to seminary, get a degree and then decide whether or not to take monastic vows. This makes sense to him now as being wise advice, but at the time he felt it was unrealistic. The insinuation is that he was impatient and wanted to start something before he knew or understood anything about it. Then he goes on:

I say all this just to caution people, especially people who are not Eastern Orthodox, to be cautious about taking spiritual advice from new converts to Eastern Orthodoxy. Our new converts often have zeal, but it is not always a zeal born of knowledge or spiritual discernment. Often it is simply the passion of the neophyte. It can also manifest itself in what political position or cause this neophyte happens to embrace. Be especially cautious about Orthodox converts who take dogmatic political positions on any issue. Remember that politics, of whatever nature, is not and never has been dogma.

Checklist time; let's see. Zeal without spiritual discernment: check, passion of the neophyte: check, dogmatic political positions: check. I admit I said a lot of dumb things when I was converting which I truly wish I could go back and do over, usually by following the advice of St. James: STFU.

Then Brother Boris delivers a warning based on the derangement of another Orthodox convert.

When I became Orthodox twenty years ago, Franky Schaeffer was all the rage. He had just published his book, Dancing Alone, and he had all the answers. He was angry, self-righteous, and he had all the answers to society's shortcoming and yours as well. He was very much a finger-pointer. Now look at him. He's nearly burned out on his own rage. I sincerely wonder now if Franky is even a Christian, let alone Orthodox. In the last youtube videos I've seen of him, he sounds so incredibly depressed and agnostic, almost bordering on being an atheist. It made me wonder if he embraced Orthodoxy because he thought it was true, or because he thought it was the PERFECT Church or the PURE Church. Making the Church into a Purity Cult is always a danger to the adult convert, and perhaps part of Franky's Calvinist heritage that he never could leave fully behind.

I see a similar strain of "Purity Cult" thinking in Rod Dreher's "Benedict Option" and it concerns me. The very idea that Christians should separate themselves from the rest of society and live in intentional communities reminds me a whole lot more of Calvinist New England under the Puritans than Byzantine "symphonia" in Constantinople or Holy Russia. In addition, Dreher's rigorism concerns me, especially where he says:

The community is going to have to be the center of your life, not just something you do on Sunday.

Please don't misunderstand me. I am not advocating nominalism, casual church attendance and spiritual lukewarmness. Its Dreher's tone that concerns me. It's the tone of the fanatic. The Church, especially the Orthodox Church, has always been "here comes everybody." In Orthodoxy it is the whole village at worship, not some sectarian conventicle of the elect few and holy. Again, this seems to go back to the same theme I saw in Franky Schaeffer, the Church as a Purity Cult.

Personally I can't see Dreher ever becoming as deranged as Schaeffer, although anything is possible. Schaeffer did write books slamming his family post mortem, and he has seemed to be driven as a sort of contrarian no matter where he is as we had been discussing.

There can be no doubt, however, that Brother Boris's words are insightful written as someone who has witnessed the effects of flighty zeal without the foundation of experience and discernment.

One more observation and I'll leave the rest to readers. Brother Boris mentions Dreher's "rigorism". I would point out that it is selective rigorism as so much else is with Dreher and as I've noted before.

Self-debunking Style

A conspiracy theory fanatic about whom I've blogged in the past just sent me this in an email. I've reduced the font size for the benefit of readers.

What does the sinking of the "Titanic" (i.e.the Olympic) have to do with the Federal Reserve and financing World War I ?? (As well as WW II and the coming WW III)

A compelling presentation by researcher John Hamer, and author of the recently published book 'The Falsification of History', to New Horizons in St. Annes, Lancashire, England.

And how could ice punch a 5" round hole through solid steel? A total debunking from one end to the other of the official story of the sinking of the "Titanic!"

[Youtube link to wacky Titanic conspiracy video removed.]

Albert pike laid out the Masonic / Illuminati plan for three world wars in 1871 :

[Link removed from Seventh Day Adventist nutcase.]

The plan is for WW III to set the stage for the one World religion and government under AntiChrist and the False Prophet (who now occupies the Vatican) . The present BEAST system will be collapsed (the seventh head of the BEAST will receive "a deadly wound") and then "go into perdition" (Rev.17:8) and come back to life under Anti-Christ (Rev.13:3) who will occupy St Peters at the Vatican (2 Thess. 2:3-4; Matt. 24:15). The True Church will finally separate from this apostasy just as the early Jewish Christians finally separated from the apostate Jewish religious system.

The Jewish people will be betrayed by their vile masonic illuminatist Zionist masters and they will then finally turn to their true Messiah and finally take their rightful place as prominent in the True Church.

It's sad to read the rantings of people who believe whatever reinforces their prejudices. It's sad to me that the emailer, who claims to be a Catholic, would link to an anti-Catholic 7DA nutcase and claim the Pope is the anti-Christ even as the 7DA adherents routinely do.

But it is reassuring to note that for any thinking person, the content in an email like this more or less refutes itself. This man obviously has issues with obsession, grandiosity, anti-Jewish bigotry and gullibility, among other things. His endless spew of insane emails (I get one or two emails from him PER DAY) are sure to contain some things with which his readers will take issue. While it has been demonstrated that conspiracy theorists are inclined to believe any conspiracy theory even when it contradicts other conspiracy theories they hold, my hope is that the constant barrage of immoderate rhetoric and fanaticism from this man will call into question his credibility among readers.

Scratching my head about Mark Shea

Reading Mark Shea's post supporting universal handgun registration in Washington (which, by the way, passed) sort of left me scratching my head about his stance on firearms and the imposition of gun control on the populace. I guess this incident immediately came to mind with the famous Facebook banner we immortalized in this post several years ago.

I wouldn't even bring it up; even if he just stated, "Hey, I'm for gun control," I'd probably shrug it off. But vitriolic accusations like "threadbare lies and sophistries of the gun cult" and prayers like "May God break the power of the NRA and the gun cult" clash with the factual claims and measured arguments which the NRA presented against the ballot issue.

I was told two years ago that the picture is a still-frame from an independent film which Mr. Shea was in back in 2012. It appears that he, like many other Hollywood types who point guns at the camera, remains reality-challenged about their proper use.

Exposing Goofiness

Someone posted a meme-like pic to Facebook with the purported quote by Albert Einstein "I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots." There is a picture of a sagely Einstein with his hands folded above another picture of cute teenage girls using Smartphones. The implication is that all these young women would be interacting with one another but for something called technology which the sagely Einstein feared would surpass said interaction. Whatever that means.

My immediate reaction was to suspect the quote. It doesn't sound like Einstein to me at all. Plus it's just too perfect for the picture, right? And sure enough, it's most likely that the real Albert Einstein never said anything of the kind. Quote Investigator has the skinny, here's an excerpt:

I was suspicious of this attribution and when I searched the internet I found another similar saying credited to Einstein in a web forum. This statement was also illustrated with an image of people staring at cell phone screens.

I fear the day when the technology overlaps with our humanity. The world will only have a generation of idiots.

I have a different fear. I fear the day that individuals will believe that Einstein actually made one of these inane statements. Could you examine these sayings?

Quote Investigator: There is no substantive evidence that Einstein made either of these statements. Neither appears in the comprehensive collection of quotations “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein” from Princeton University Press. ¹

Both versions given by the questioner were in circulation in 2012. For example, a website called answerbag.com presented a version of the saying in a message with an attached date of October 21, 2012: ²

So it looks like I wasn't the first person to suspect/debunk this. This kind of goofiness disguised as wisdom just hits a nerve with me. If it sound like something Wendell Berry would say, the chances are very slim that a thoughtful person would say it.

But there's another aspect of this attempt to be clever that bothers me even more. If, about 15 years ago, you saw a bunch of businessmen standing around in Grand Central with their heads down reading magazines and newspapers before the morning commute, is your first thought really "These people are idiots who are eschewing human interaction!"? No. But what is the difference between them and the young ladies with cellphones? The newspaper and magazines are products of technology, just older technology. They put the town criers out of business just like the internet is putting them out of business now. Plus ça change.

The business man reading the newspaper instead of talking to his temporary neighbor at the terminal might be a callous manipulator who doesn't care whom he tramples, but no one can tell that by seeing him reading the paper or doing the crossword for that matter. He might be reading the paper before work so he has more time to interact with other humans throughout the day. Likewise the girls in the photo may be checking emails from their parents before an outing together, who knows?

Sure, it's irritating to see people using cell phones at inappropriate times, but blaming this on "technology" is to miss the real problems of intemperance, absentmindedness and all varieties of rudeness which have always existed. I have a friend who said that his father would spread out the Sunday paper on a kitchen table and you weren't allowed to talk to him until he'd read the entire thing. Only then could you even ask him for the comic section. Sorry, but that's anti-social behavior, no batteries required.

AND there is another aspect of this which many are not going to notice. It's sort of ironic and funny to me that this meme picture couldn't even be generated without the widespread proliferation of technology, let alone broadcasted all over social media and blogs. Photography is technology, people. And the fact that it captures a moment in time should be taken into account. Otherwise the following photo would represent the complete lapse of human interaction as much as a photo of girls using smartphones.

There has been a lot of good writing about curbing cell-phone use, like this one about not using phones in business meetings. I hope more people take that kind of good advice, but I also hope people don't lose their common sense in their over-zealousness to fight real abuses. If I whip out my iPhone while we're talking without saying "excuse me" then you have a legitimate beef about my behavior. But if you come upon me while I'm looking at my phone it doesn't mean I don't want to interact with you. Or talk to you.