The Benedict Option is now officially closed to new inquiries
Like a mutual fund closed to new investors, with this declaration
You are right about that. The Benedict Option discussion has become so big now that I have decided no longer to publish comments that take random potshots, or that say things like, “I still don’t know what you are talking about” and “So you want to take your football and go home, is that it?” There are plenty of posts archived on this blog in which we talk at length about what we think the Benedict Option is, or might be. If anybody cares to read them, they have the ability to look them up. I’m not wasting any more time answering questions and criticisms I’ve dealt with many times before, or answering questions and criticisms that I don’t think are serious or constructive. By all means criticize; it will help me and readers think more clearly about the Benedict Option. But don’t come here to post the same old stuff and expect me to approve of the comment. I leave you with the words of my spiritual adviser in such matters.
Rod Dreher has closed his Benedict Option book income project to new inquiries and explanations. Those wishing to passively accept whatever the Benedict Option might be beyond a book marketing gambit remain welcome to add additional blog hits to his posts on The American Conservative. Such efforts, of course, will still not include Noah Millman's questions and criticism, which remains available here.
As for the rest of you, Rod Dreher doesn't need you any more. He now has all the potential investors in his book marketing gambit that he needs.
As we at EQE (and many others) have recognized and maintained all along, from the beginning Rod Dreher's Benedict Option has always been nothing more than a dimensionless, self-referential meme designed to attract potential purchasers to yet another book for him to write, given the successively poor outcomes of his prior two.
With this most recent declaration that the gates of explanation of the Benedict Option will be formally closed, Dreher is signalling that he believes he has accumulated enough believers in whatever his Benedict Option might be to fund a book on the subject. As for a publisher, one that believes that at the bottom of all this there surely must be a pony to be found somewhere has yet to step forward.
Christians who wish to continue passively about Dreher's word singularity - the rhetorical equivalent of a black hole, where words and ideas circle a self-referential event horizon until they are ultimately sucked into an abyss from which nothing, not even thought, can emerge - are no doubt encouraged to do so; after all, there is no such thing as bad advertizing.
Rod Dreher's Benedict Option |
Those still holding out hope of understanding whatever his Benedict Option might be are now officially out of luck.
The Benedict Option Fund is now officially closed to new inquiries.