Is the Benedict Option Islamic?

Diane beat me to the BINGO buzzer on Tom's insightful comment (RTWT) and so I decided to do a whole post on my thoughts. The key point to me was the so-called Benedict Option as “an application of the emotion of fear to today's circumstances”. After pondering this, Pikkumatti rhetorically asked “Hasn't ‘fear of the modern world’ been the prime source of conflict in the Islamic world over the recent past?”

That sent my mind racing back about seven years ago when Daniel Nichols made an interesting prediction – somewhat humorously – about Dreher’s religious future. I consider Nichols to be very intelligent and possessing a keen insight into the nature of spiritual things, although I disagree with him about mostly everything touching political matters. His prediction was Dreher’s next step would be to convert to Islam out of frustration at the state of evangelical Christianity. At first I frowned at this as being over the top and unlikely, even as the vehicle to make an intended point. But it seems to me now like he might have been onto something.

Muslims practice a form of colonization as part of their living out of the hijrah when they emigrate. So you will see places where Muslims are overrepresented like Dearborn, for example, or even my old nabe in North Olmsted. It’s about more than just safety in numbers; they actively resist assimilation and start pushing for the acceptance of Sharia law. You can see that happening big time in England, and it's starting to happen here. They are masters at this, and polls show that a majority of Muslims in America would prefer to be under Islamic law.

Do Christians – or Catholics in particular – want to live under a theocratic system? Obviously not, since many Catholics don’t even listen to the magisterium on moral issues. Protestants don't because “look what happened in the middle ages,” a sentiment with which I provisionally agree. So liberal Catholics get involved in social justice concerns, Conservative Catholics join pro-life groups and religious freedom defense funds, American protestant Christians proliferate new, exciting, democratically-run denominations. But all of this represents reaching out, not erecting barricades. Very few members of any of these Christian subgroups are interested in establishing gated ghettos. Why not? They aren't scared enough to circle the wagons. Fear is noticeably missing from Christianity.

Islam is different because of the motivation of fear.

In what is arguably G. K. Chesterton's greatest book, The Everlasting Man, he mused that the cross as “a thing at right angles pointing boldly in opposite directions” was an apt symbol of Christianity, the circle or wheel was the symbol of the eastern religions, symbolizing a closed world at the mercy of cyclic impersonal forces, and the swastika was like a cross turning back into a wheel. It can be seen that the crescent and the scimitar have replaced the swastika in the 21st century, and so the Islamist move back toward the circle of violence and fear is succeeding where the Nazis failed.

So when the Benedict Option is seen to be a circling of the wagons I think there is at least a hint of the motivation of fear. When the objection is made by proponents of the Benedict Option that it's not a retreat from public life, well, neither is the hijra, although it might appear as one to the ignorant observer. It is a waiting game. It is a resettlement as Ann Corcoran argues in the book I linked to. I'm sure there would be even stronger objections to the suggestion that the Benedict Option would be a Christian version of a no-go zone, but there is sort of a compound-ish, commune-ish vibe hidden beneath all the “strategic withdrawal” veneer.

I don’t believe that Dreher will convert to Islam and I definitely would never predict that. But I do think he wishes, perhaps earnestly, that Christians would be more like Muslims especially in the fear department. Si vis pacem para bellum, of course. But the question is how does one prepare? If Christians were determined to resist by actively not being part of society rather than keeping themselves “unstained by the world”, there would be a lot more acceptance of a need for the so-called Benedict Option on their part.

Tom Tommorow's artist conception of Rod Dreher

[Here is some recently-published related reading material which readers may wish to read and comment on.]

Red flags

Thanks, Pauli, for letting me post here.  Hope I can make an occasional worthwhile contribution.

So . . . here I am, a handgun owner (at the encouragement and nudging by my son – imagine that), wondering why the recent gun control “conversation” is bugging me more than many things these days. Something doesn’t seem right about it, beyond the obvious that this was going to be the type of conversation in which they tell us what is going to be done and we are going to listen.

I guess it is because there are all these red flags popping up.  We have horrible evil perpetrated on innocent children, and much to-do that something has to be done, even “if it saves only one life”, but what we get are proposals that have little to do with solving the stated problem. 

If the solutions being trumpeted don’t solve the stated problem (esp. in a high profile case like this), you can be sure that there is another agenda in mind.   

Another red flag is the perversion of fundamental principles that has sadly become a habit with our current ruling class.  They refer to the free exercise of religion as ”freedom of worship” (culminating, so far, in the HHS mandate).  We saw it writ large in Obama’s second inaugural address, asserting that our unalienable right to liberty requires “collective action”. There has been a constant drip of this attitude, giving us the “sense that those who played by the rules and did well have instead done something wrong, or at least are under suspicion — and it is now time for their government to seek atonement from them”.

And on the gun issue, Obama tells us that he has “profound respect for the traditions of hunting”, and Biden tells us how many rounds hunters need.  This is a perversion of our natural right to defend our lives against an aggressor and the moral obligation to defined the lives of innocent others, as Pauli ably stated, not to mention our natural right to self-government rather than tyranny.

These red flags tell us that the current “gun control” proposals are not so much about “guns”, but are instead about “control".  The ruling class is demanding that we cede to the State at least part of our natural right to self-defense and our moral obligation to defend others, for our own safety, of course.  (Or not.)  But as the Declaration asserts, and as we Catholics especially know, we cannot cede our natural rights or our moral accountability – we remain obligated and accountable to protect innocent life.  A government that applies its power to take for itself our God-given rights and responsibilities violates the natural rights of man, and offends human dignity.  More on that topic here.

So yes, something ought to bug me.  This is a defining issue, IMO, masquerading as something happening on the edges.  We must resist this attempt, saying so based on principle rather than because we are specifically affected by the details. Why do we law-abiding citizens need high-capacity magazines? Not because I want one, but because we don’t want a fair fight if we must defend ourselves from an aggressor (or multiple aggressors), as is our right and obligation. Why do we fight a federal requirement to do a background check when we sell (or give) a weapon to our good friend down the street? Not because I don’t want the hassle, but because the federal government has no power over that transaction (nope, not even the commerce clause). Why do we law-abiding citizens need “assault” rifles? Not because the definition is a sham or because it is the best tool for what I want to do, but because “… we are not serfs. We are a free people living under a republic of our own construction. We may consent to be governed, but we will not be ruled.”. 

We live in an era of government-by-anecdote, in which every non-optimal event fitting the narrative turns into a call for federal action. Even if we avoid this current threat, some day there will be another bad result simply because evil and human imperfection exist. Like Pauli said, we need to take whatever "equal time" we can get to repeat those principles necessary to argue and defend against the creeping tyranny of "something has to be done" when the next bad event happens, as it necessarily will.

* More disclosure – I sold my second .45 to a friend of mine this weekend (don’t need two guns shooting the same round, especially at 50 cents per).  Don’t worry – I didn’t launder it through a ridiculous “buyback” nor sell it to a street thug or lunatic.  I sold it to a good friend who is on our parish pastoral committee, as a matter of fact.

Crunchy Kennedy Commentary by Pikkumatti

[the following guest-post was submitted by Dallas correspondent, Pikkumatti.]

Nothing livens up the Pauli-blog like a little of the Crunchy One's fine work. Well, down here in Dallas, we are frequently treated by some of Rod Dreher's output landing on our front door step. In today's edition of the local rag,, we get the following moral relativism, Crunchy-style, regarding the Greatest Senator of Our Time:

Today, it's almost unthinkable that a politician could get away with what Ted Kennedy did, which is good. Still, it's worth thinking about how much we lose because a Ted Kennedy is not really possible today.

Whatever their motives, if the people of that era hadn't been so tolerant of a Ted Kennedy's vices, America would have been a different place – and, for liberals, a worse place. Why are so many great men also morally mad? Moralism may make for a more sane politics – it's certainly more sanitized since the day the priapic lion of the Senate roared after whisky-soaked lunches at Capitol Hill brasseries – but it also makes the world safer for mediocrity.

The great thing about writing a blog post about what Rod Dreher writes is that his words speak for themselves.

[P.S. For a description of what Crunchy refers to as "Ted Kennedy's vices", I refer to the GQ article by the late great Michael Kelly. According to Rod Dreher, if only we would tolerate a few "whiskey-soaked lunches" like those described in the article, we would continue to receive the greatness that comes with it. Good thing Senator Dodd continues to serve, or we'd have to muddle along without his great leadership, too (read the Kelly article).]