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.

The Permanent Thangs

No to be confused with The Permanent Things. Whatever they are.

Long after our current President is known as "that dark-complected guy who talked too much" I hope people remember the blond, white chick with the smart-girl glasses who epitomize his presidency. One of the thangs to remember her by is this hashtag.

She is truly unbelievable. We are truly dumbfounded to find anyone this dumb.

Apology Melodramatics

If you are at a Justin Bieber concert and you spy a young lad and lassie making out furiously in the aisle, let me be the first to acknowledge something. It is possible that these two sincerely love each other and in ten years will be happily married with three kids and a nice house in the suburbs. But let me also be the first to point out that no one would fault you if you thought these two were at least to some degree just using each other and were dispensing with any self-respect they might have, trading it for stimulation in the passion and heat of the moment.

Likewise no one would fault you if you doubted the sincerity of a quadruple apology made publicly on a blog by someone who was virtually unknown to four better-known people for unspecified offenses. Even if the apologizer uses the strongest terms for himself in order to appear self-flagellatory — demonic and satanic, for instance — the fact that one of them didn't even know he had attacked him might detract from the perception of seriousness on the part of third party passers-by. I hope that no one who really feels the need to apologize to me ever decides to just throw me into a category of people-I-may-have-offended-if-they-knew-who-I-was-and-what-I-said and then thinks they've done something unburdening and praiseworthy by making an impassioned public apology, chewing the scenery like a starved chihuahua. Just say it to me directly and privately; email is fine.

I should point out that this is by no means the first public apology which sounds somewhat phony. The whole public apology industry is problematic even if you can afford speech-writers.

I imagine you might hear a security guard at that Bieber concert whisper to another, "See her over there, making out with that dude? She's that hate-mail chick who's trying to get back-stage." Then you hear the other one nod and say "Got it. I'll keep an eye."

So who's being "Binary"?

I was surfing around looking at anti-Sirico stuff after reading this jab by The Grumpy Mailman Blog when I came across this recent review by Elias Crim over at the American (cough) Conservative (cough, cough). Excerpt:

Culturally speaking, Fr. Sirico gradually became an adherent of the Reagan revolution, a movement that seemed to find its vindication in 1989, only to ossify intellectually in the years following. Even without an Evil Empire, the Reaganites seemed only able to think in a binary fashion: capitalism vs. socialism (or anything else). Even as supply-side economics became a matter of Republican institutional dogma, the historical record showed a growing government and increasing income inequality. Reagan’s vision of widespread employee ownership went unfulfilled, and for most members of the American middle class, the unintended consequence of economically neoliberal policies was a road to serfdom that by 2008 felt more like a superhighway. Wage slavery, with no path to ownership, or welfare: take your pick.

The author asserts that Reaganites are being "binary" when they point out that you either have some sort system based on economic freedom (like capitalism) or some sort of system based on central control (like socialism). But he goes on to state that Reaganism leads to either "Wage slavery, with no path to ownership, or welfare: take your pick." That sounds thoroughly binary to me, although I prefer to use the term false dichotomy to describe this particular fallacious view of reality. Sorry, but I'm not a "wage slave", whatever that is precisely, and I'm not on welfare, thank you very much. I left my job as an IT Professional (not a slave) and started an incorporated consultancy.

Furthermore, I have many friends who are neither slaves nor freeloaders. Sure, I know people who dislike their job. But most of them are able to change employers--and often do--and the ones who can't are most often constrained by external factors, not by whip-cracking capitalist villains in larger offices.

Finally, I'm not sure whether or not Mr. Crim considers those who pay him to write copy as his "slave-masters", but I'm pretty sure he is not a welfare case. The tag at the end of his review states that he "is at work on a new web zine to be called Solidarity Hall." I have to say that makes him sound very much like someone taking advantage of the freedom we have in our country to be an entrepreneur.

So his own existence itself is evidence against his own assertion, ironically. The more these people attempt to promote an imaginary Third Way, the more they just become dogmatists touting their own contrarian ideology.

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More on this later

Wow. Rod Dreher almost convinced me to become Eastern Orthodox in his latest article about how great Eastern Orthodoxy is. Then I saw the picture...

...and I could not believe my eyes. Orthodoxy has completely sold out and become suburban American as evidenced by that big powder-blue Tupperware pitcher used to fill the baptismal font. Plus that book the deacon is reading from is a paperback. It's like Pizza Hut with an iconostasis. Obviously Eastern Orthodoxy has become just as hokey as Catholicism, and all hope for civilization and transcendent beauty is now lost.