What is Rod Dreher's Benedict Option good for?

Academic Christian logrolling, of course.

Let's imagine you're Rod Dreher's close friend Patrick Deneen and you establish something called the Tocqueville Forum at your university, Georgetown, in order to raise your profile and prestige above that of the other academics employed there. Helpful come salary review time, true, but there's also a cost: now you have to feed your new pet, and it eats content.

On the other hand, let's imagine you're Rod Dreher, also seeking to raise your profile and prestige by trying to montgolfier a phrase called the Benedict Option into The Religious Question of Our Time but, above all else, into a book you desperately hope might sell this time. You, in turn, need a friendly forum to act as if your idea had intellectual importance so a publisher, any publisher, will take you seriously this time.

Academic Christian forum needs content-fodder to legitimize and justify its existence. Vaporous Christian-sounding phrase needs academic Christian forum to legitimize and justify its existence.

Academic Christian means meets academic Christian ends meets...

This is the reciprocal, mutually referential push-pull marketing of the business of academic Christianity.

Patrick, Rod. Rod, Patrick.

Tocqueville Forum, Benedict Option. Benedict Option, Toqueville Forum.

Excellent. Now, who will be discussing Rod Dreher's Benedict Option at the Tocqueville Forum?

Who cares? Just as who cares that the Benedict Option itself is a no more than a completely elastic, indeterminate, all-inclusive tabula rasa? Both are entirely secondary concerns. The one and only important thing is that each serves as the mutually beneficial means to the ends of the other.

We anticipate including some thoughtful, constructive critics of the Benedict Option as well.

Of course we do.

But first, let's review our Christian priorities in play here. An indeterminate academic Christian forum of as yet non-existent panelists is already set for an all day discussion of an inchoate phrase of indeterminate intellectual and practical dimension.

What's important is that both parties are gainfully employed in support of one another. All the rest, including any Christianity involved, is merely detail filler. Have your disciples contact my disciples.

Mark Perkins says:
July 19, 2015 at 12:42 pm

Intriguing. Alan Jacobs or Ken Myers speaking?

[NFR: We haven’t nailed down the line-up yet. Watch this space. — RD]

Yes, we know that. We already understand the line-up is only of trivial, derivative importance relative to the joyful, transcending congress of forum-to-be-filled and filler-to-be-forumed.

Guess who won't be in the line-up?

Rod Dreher's TAC colleague Noah Millman.

His "Three Questions"? Not only is that piece still dead, deliberately deleted and suppressed by TAC for being thoughtfully and constructively critical far above and beyond the call of duty to Rod Dreher, but now TAC has deliberately contacted Google and had Google's previously cached version wiped as well.

So much for TAC's cover story of just a little "technical turbulence". And, obviously Georgetown, Patrick Deneen, and his Tocqueville Forum have no problem with a little TAC wet work of that sort in service of the greater cause outlined above.

John Zmirak Nope, neither thoughtful nor constructive. Obviously not enough tongue. Definitely not.

Dr. Adam A. J. DeVille Nada. Too thoughtful and constructive.

Alasdair MacIntyre, author of After Virtue, whose prestige and utterance of the term "Benedict" is the only concrete element in this whole charade.

You're joking, right?

Patrick Deneen, far right, and Rod Dreher exercising a strategic Benedict Option withdrawal at New Orleans' legendary Galatoire's

This is how the ends-in-themselves links of academic Christian sausage are made these days, and this is the nature of the hygiene employed in their manufacture, including both the unclean hands and the diligent scrubbing of all wrongthinking.

Still, with any luck, both Dreher and Deneen will successfully manipulate your angst about the times you live in into another wonderful meal at Galatoire's like the one they enjoyed above this past March.

You, of course, won't be invited, nor would you expect to be, huddling in your own strategic retreat from life, nibbling a Ritz cracker, and grateful to the both of them for showing you the Way.

Rod Dreher's Benedict Option lies

One of the tell-tales of a larger fraud like the fraud with which Rod Dreher is currently trolling Christians with his protean and chimerical Benedict Option is the trail of smaller deceits it leaves like turds along its way.

Rod Dreher addressing Noah Millman's Benedict Option post

One such turdlet of truthlessness is this classic small boy squirmer, one of Dreher's "NFR"s in response to commenter Maxine pressing him on the question his colleague Noah Millman got deleted for asking originally (as usual, because we are dealing with items that have a habit of mysteriously disappearing when they prove embarrassing to Rod Dreher, the screen capture of this comment may be found here):

[NFR: I just now realized that Noah posted today about the Benedict Option. I had not seen that post; I thought you were referring to the post back in May. Noah’s post today has not been deleted; here it is. I will answer those questions. But you know what? I’m really tired of your gripey, hostile attitude. I don’t understand why you read this blog, except for the sake of liberal outrage porn. But I don’t have to waste my time with your constantly kvetchy comments anymore. — RD]

Let's unpack these casual, pathological untruths one by one, shall we?

I just now realized that Noah posted today about the Benedict Option

No, Rod, you didn't. "Today" would have to be July 9, 2015, the date stamp of the post. Google's cached version of Millman's post is two day's earlier on July 7, 2015 at 16:01:33 GMT. You did not realize that Noah posted today about the Benedict Option.

Noah’s post today has not been deleted; here it is.

No, Rod, it has been deleted. Your "here it is" link goes to the same "Not Found" page it has been doing for the last three days now, the same "Not Found" page it has been going to when you declared I have no idea why Noah’s article is not here anymore (screen capture here). You are lying either by saying that it has not been deleted when you know it has, or by attempting to deceive your readership by blindly throwing a link up you calculate few will follow, simply trusting your word about it instead.

But let's be as charitable as possible; after all, no matter Rod Dreher's actual calendar age, it's pretty obvious we are still dealing with the mind of a child habituated to reflexively throwing out any answer he believes might get him off the hook when cornered and confronted by a grownup.

The only way Rod Dreher, self-appointed Christian prophet and impresario of his so-called Benedict Option could be telling the truth is if he has no real knowledge of his TAC colleague Noah Millman's recent and incisive critique of his Benedict Option at all - not when it was originally posted, not that it was deleted, not that it "has not been deleted; "here it is", not what it asks answers to, nothing, nada - , a critique, moreover, that raises, not one, but three questions while quoting from Ross Douthat, a columnist Dreher admires greatly and quotes from frequently himself.

To be innocent of lying Dreher must be entirely innocent of any knowledge of the recent Millman post as well.

We must believe Rod Dreher has had absolutely no interest in this recently deceased Millman piece critical of his Benedict Option, not when it was originally posted on July 7 (or earlier), not that it had been deleted, not that he could as easily have pointed his commenter Maxine to the cached Google version just as we do - none of that.

In a post entitled "Critics of the Benedict Option" constructed of Rod interviewing himself as a way of responding to their questions, our most charitable alternative to seeing Dreher as a childlike, pathological liar is to presume his response to his critics has no real interest in any real world, actual critics asking concise questions, particularly those who work for the same publication he does.

Behold your prophet, fellow Christians. Follow this dissembling little boy at your caprice and at your peril.

What happened to Noah Millman's "Three More Benedict Option Questions"?

Yesterday Rod Dreher's The American Conservative colleague Noah Millman published a probing critique of Dreher's Benedict Option entitled "Three More Benedict Option Questions" which, unfortunately, you can now only read by way of Google's cached version; a screen capture of the cached version may also be found here.

This morning, after Rod Dreher had awakened from a customary long nap, Millman's article had mysteriously disappeared.

Perhaps TAC has simply misplaced Millman's post from yesterday critical of Rod Dreher's Benedict Option and written without Dreher's editorial guidance or prior approval and it will re-emerge some time in the future.

In the meantime, if you happen to be one of those hapless bloggers who linked to Millman's piece and are having to deal with a 404 today, again:

Google's cached version.

Our screen capture of Google's cached version, in the event the latter swan dives into the memory hole as well.

Oh, you're quite welcome.

UPDATE (as they say): In fast-breaking Benedict Option news, this just in: Noah Millman's piece critical of the Benedict Option has been superseded by Rod Dreher's piece controlling the narrative from both sides:

While I was away in Italy and France these past nine days, there has been lots of talk, much of it critical, about the Benedict Option. I think I’ll answer these critics by interviewing myself.

As I explained above, whatever Rod Dreher does in fact defines the Benedict Option, so this sort of narrative control and revisionism is not only perfectly understandable but perfectly consistent as well. Moreover, if you find yourself in a Rod Dreher Benedict Option community, this is the sort of control you should look forward to embracing as your defense against the forces of cultural darkness.

Although I think the Clintons have always done this sort of narrative thing more elegantly, don't you?