Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Ross Douthat provides an "effective example of the Benedict Option"

I fact checked the following passage from this source, and it seems to be true.

The New York Times columnist Ross Douthat has called Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, where Tim Keller serves as senior pastor, an effective example of the Benedict Option for our twenty-first century, post-Christian context. Like other TGC-inspired communities, Redeemer aims to blend countercultural biblical faithfulness with a Christ-exalting, city-embracing vision.

It took me awhile to figure out that TGC stands for The Gospel Coalition. It is obviously part of the growing coalition of Benedict Option compliant organizations, abbreviated as BenOpCoOp, which is in turn abbreviated BOCO. Here's the passage from the aforementioned Pastor Keller which provides the fact check.

Near the very end of this book, Douthat (whom I have not met as of this writing) very kindly used our Redeemer Presbyterian Church as a good example of some of the things he proposes for the church in our time. When I read it I was startled, then humbled, then strongly overwhelmed by a sense that, for all God's kindness to us over the years, we at Redeemer are so far from realizing our goals and aims. It actually discouraged me for several days until I noticed a little quote by G. K. Chesterton that Douthat cites near the end of his book. In The Everlasting Man Chesterton surveys the many forces over the last 2,000 years that threatened and should have destroyed Christianity.

“'Time and again,' Chesterton noted, 'the Faith has to all appearances gone to the dogs.' But each time, 'it was the dog that died.'”

So I don't know why we're waiting for a book about the Benedict Option when it's already being lived out by Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, anyone who home-schools their kids, people who grow their own food, Catholic integralists, people without cable television and anyone disgusted by Bruce Jenner and the Kardashians. Feel free to add your own definitions of the Benedict Option in the comments below. The more reasons everyone has to not waste their money on a senseless book, the better.

9 comments:

  1. Hosting a festival celebrating a famous regional novelist's location, cultural milieu, and personal tastes in liquor. Actually reading the writer's work is optional and not even especially encouraged. Extra credit if spokesman for festival has repeatedly admitted he doesn't much like reading fiction.

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    1. When did he say he didn't like fiction? I mean, I know he said he didn't like poetry -- is that what you're thinking of?

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    2. I'm pretty sure he's said he doesn't like to read novels. I can remember reading it but am too lazy to search his blog archives to find it.

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    3. OK, actually, it was pretty easy to find. Here you go:

      http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/fiction-cannot-die/

      Excerpt:

      "Maybe. I dunno. I continue to puzzle over why some people (like my wife) adore fiction but don’t read much non-fiction, and others (me) are exactly the opposite. I gave up on “Anna Karenina,” not because I didn’t like it, but because I found myself not picking it up, instead choosing to read one of the non-fiction books I have on my bedside table. This happens all the time. I really don’t understand it, and actually don’t like it — I mean, I wish I found it easier to lose myself in fiction, the way I can lose myself in a work of history, or biography, or politics, or popular science, and so forth."

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    4. That's from Feb. 20, 2012.

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  2. Hah!!! I follow several evangelical "discernment bloggers." Don;t always agree with them by a long shot, but they are very good at calling our cult-like mega-churches, pastors who cover up sex abuse, and so on. They cannot *stand* The Gospel Coalition, and they have investigated it in depth -- including this Tim Keller guy, who is often touted as the most benign of the bunch (as opposed to more toxic folks like Mark Driscoll and C.J. Mahaney).

    From what I understand, these TGC guys are very authoritarian, super-sexist, and control-freaky -- into binding "membership covenants" and so forth. If that's what the BenOp's supposed to be like, God help us.

    Gonna look up what the Wartburg Watch says about Keller during lunch hour. LOL!

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  3. Should read "calling OUT" not "calling OUR." Wish there was an edit function on Blogger! :o

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    1. Diane, what you can do is just cut, paste, re-post and delete your original message. A lot of people do that. Then I usually come by and do a "delete forever" operation so there won't be a notice about "Comment deleted by author" or something.

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  4. After reading what Diane wrote I'm wondering what Ross Douthat actually did say about Tim Keller and his church. This article made the page one Google hit for Benedict Option today.

    Here's the beauty of the thoroughly modern concept known as the Benedict Option. Because no one has defined it, it remains completely ecumenical. No Presbyterian is going to say "we're going to become celibate and live in a community" or "we are going to have a Corpus Christi procession, and an hour of Eucharistic adoration during which confession will be available". But they can say "We are an effective example of what is meant by the Benedict Option as alluded to by two contemporary commentators who share the initials RD."

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