How should Christians today navigate the current cultural landscape? That’s really the fundamental question Rod Dreher addresses in his book, The Benedict Option. In my previous posts, I’ve given an overview of the book as a whole, and I’ve touched upon the hottest “hot button” topic the book mentions: the gay marriage/LGBTQ debates. In this post, though, I want to touch upon Dreher’s comments regarding politics and education.
Let’s Get Political, I Want to Get Political, Let’s Get into Political
Now the thing to remember is Dreher’s audience is clearly conservatives and Evangelicals. Dreher himself is a conservative. And so, a progressive who reads the book will probably zero in on the specific political views Dreher has, object to them, and fail to see that at its core, The Benedict Option is a clear repudiation of the “Moral Majority/Right Wing” style of politics that has dominated the Evangelical worldview for the past 40 years.
Dreher focuses on politics in Chapter 4. When faced with the changing political landscape, the natural question for conservative Christians has become, “What should we do now?” Dreher’s warns his readers that they might not like his answer: “The answer will not satisfy conservative Christians who understand the church as the Republican Party and prayer, or who go into the voting booth with more conviction than they show at Sunday worship” (78). Not only is that statement witty and clever, it is a pretty clear indictment that the true allegiances of many conservative Christians lay with the GOP party platform, and not the Kingdom of God.
Dreher correctly points to the Roe vs. Wade abortion decision of 1973 that sparked the rise of the religious right, and he also correctly points out that that movement has ultimately failed. The very fact that Evangelicals turned out in droves to elect “someone as robustly vulgar, fiercely combative, and morally compromised as Trump” (79) in hopes of restoring a sense of Christian morality to the culture is, as Dreher says, “morally delusional. He is not a solution to the problem of America’s cultural decline, but a symptom of it” (79).
And no, Dreher doesn’t suggest Christians should vote Democrat either. The fundamental problem is that for too long Christians have thought that the key to restoring morality was through political action. As Dreher states: “No administration in Washington, no matter how ostensibly pro-Christian, is capable of stopping cultural trends toward desacralization and fragmentation that have been building for centuries. To expect any different is to make a false idol of politics” (81).
Translation? Conservative politics is not the gospel that brings good news to the culture; neither is liberal politics. Washington D.C. is not the New Jerusalem. Instead of looking to D.C. to use power to enforce our moral views on the rest of society, Dreher says we should focus more locally, on our own communities, and effect small-scale change on the local level. Furthermore, the moral issues that conservative Christians should focus one should extend beyond the abortion and gay marriage issues. They should include things like fighting AIDS, combating sex-trafficking, addressing poverty, working toward healing race relations, etc. The weird thing is that somewhere along the way, those issues were deemed “liberal issues,” and conservatives tended to neglect them, and in some cases, fight against them, for fear of “sounding too liberal.”
To that, Dreher says, “Why?” Those are the kinds of issues that conservatives should find common ground with liberals. I’ve got to say, that’s good advice.
The Benedictines and Antipolitical Politics
That being said, Dreher is not advocating for more of the same old political activism. His point is the very political structure we have all been used to is crumbling and beyond repair, therefore it is foolish to put our hopes that crumbling structure. Christians are fools to try to continue to put their hopes in the same old politics as usual. Instead, he argues we should focus our attention locally and take our cues about how to run our local Christian communities from the example of Benedictine monks. As he states, “The politics of a Benedictine monastery are very different from the politics of a liberal democracy. This is how it should be. The ultimate goal of a monastic life is not the same as the [ultimate goal] of life in a secular state” (88).
What does that mean? Just look around. What exemplifies much of modern American life? It’s the mall, advertisements, hyper-individualism, materialism, obscenity and pornography—and not just literal pornography, but the sex-driven consumeristic market that sells music, movies, shampoo, gum, everything. Like it or not, these are the things that are shaping individual lives and culture as a whole. And the fact is, our modern secular politics are largely geared to “protect the American way of life”—but if that is the American way of life, should that be the Christian way of life?
Answer: no. Let’s be clear, the whole American ethos is one of the hyper-individualism of the autonomous self. The governing principle seems to be, “Individual freedom is the greatest commandment, and that means let me do whatever I want, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else. My personal happiness and fulfillment takes absolute priority.”
By contrast, what Benedictine monks emphasize, and what indeed traditional Christian teaches, is that we are part of a community, and therefore since we are called to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves, the Christian life involves self-denial, putting others’ need above our own. The ultimate goal is to build each other up so that we can be an image-bearing community, the church, the Body of Christ. Christian freedom is being free from being slaves to our selfish, self-centered desires.
Dreher’s point is clear: the “American way of life” is by and large opposed to much of the Christian life. Therefore, conventional American politics are not the answer: “They are inadequate because in both their left-wing and right-wing forms, they operate from the position that facilitating and expanding human choice is the proper end of our politics. The left and the right just disagree over where to draw the lines. Neither party’s program is fully consistent with Christian truth” (96).
Dreher obviously goes into more detail as to what the “politics” of a “Benedict Option community” looks like, but I’ll leave it up to you to read the book.
Education and Christian Formation
One big part of being that “Benedict Option community” that Dreher discusses, though, involves a proper understanding of the role of education. Having been a high school teacher in Christian schools for 16 years, I found Chapter 7 to be very interesting.
Dreher is a big proponent of Classical Christian schools. To be clear, this is not the same thing as your typical “Christian school.” But in order to understand what Classical Christian schools are, I had better articulate first the three types of schools Dreher addresses:
- Typical public schools: Dreher is not a fan. He sees them as examples of Western-style secular liberalism that teaches facts while denying any real purpose in life other than to promote the ideals of secular liberalism and equip students to get jobs, so they can have pleasant lives where they can be consumers and buy things.
- Typical Christian schools: Dreher isn’t a fan of these either. Essentially, he sees them as simply public schools, but with prayer before classes, Bible classes, and chapel once a week. The problem as Dreher sees it is that the fundamental model of education is basically the same.
- Classical Christian schools: Dreher argues that these types of schools are designed to incorporate the facts one learns in school with the overarching worldview of traditional Christianity, and to promote the practice of virtue and the traditional Christian disciplines of pursuing the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.
If that’s a little vague, you’ll have to read the book to get a fuller picture. But if I were to simplify and crystalize what the differences are, I’d have to say this. The goal of typical public schools seems to produce good workers who can earn a paycheck so they can “buy stuff” and live the American materialistic dream. The goal of typical Christian schools (sadly) seems to be pretty much the same thing, with only one difference: hopefully students will be good little boys and girls who won’t smoke, drink, or have sex before marriage…and they’ll have daily devotions.
By contrast, Dreher argues that Classical Christian schools have the aim at integrating the students’ intellectual lives with their spiritual lives by having them immerse themselves in the classics of Western literature, by having them gain a truly good grasp of Western civilization, Christian theology and Scripture, and by challenging them to incorporate what they learn within the life of the Church.
Dreher’s point is that you cannot have genuine Christian education if you do not take deliberate steps to teach students the history of the Church’s role in Western civilization. The true goal of true Christian education should be intellectual and character formation within the traditions of historical Christianity.
Conclusion
Again, Dreher spells out his views in more detail in the book. Generally speaking, I tend to agree with his assessment to a point. I do feel his characterization of “public schools” en masse tends to be too much of an over-generalization. My parents were both public school teachers; I went to public schools up through 8th grade, and my son goes to a public elementary school. There are plenty of good public schools; that being said, there are plenty of bad ones too—those are the ones you tend to see on the news.
As far as his assessment of “Christian schools” are concerned, a lot of what he says is true. I taught in Christian schools of for 16 years, and to be blunt, part of the reason I ended up completely developing my own Bible and Worldview curriculum is because most of the stuff out there that is geared for the high school level simply sucks, plain and simple. The concept of teaching Worldview is great: to challenge the students to think critically about the issues and to encourage open and honest debate and dialogue. Unfortunately, what often happens is basically this: “Oh let’s encourage them to think critically, but let’s be sure to let them know that this position is the right one.”
I was confronted by this very thing by a headmaster who objected to be presenting all the major views of the creation/evolution debate objectively. I made it a point to show some sort of video for each view, and then had students discuss what they felt the strength and weakness of each view was. This headmaster objected my showing a video on theistic evolution because I didn’t tell them ahead of time that it was wrong, and because I didn’t, I was effectively endorsing that view.
Now again, there are some very good Christian schools as well. Just like with public schools, some are good, and some are bad. That’s just reality.
Finally, Dreher’s description of the Classical Christian school model is interesting and intriguing, but at one point I wrote in the margin: “Any system is ‘secular.’” Here’s what I meant: when it comes to education, we cannot fool ourselves into thinking there is some “perfect model” or “perfect system” that will guarantee well-adjusted, godly, students and citizens. The thinking that there is a “system” that can achieve that is, in my opinion, fundamentally a secular notion. There never will be a perfect system because we are human beings, not robots. It’s not just a matter of proper programming.
That’s not to say I am objecting to the notion of Classical Christian schools—in fact, in many ways, the way in which Dreher describes them made me think, “That’s how I tried to run my Biblical Worldview classes.” In that respect, the notion is intriguing. If I had the opportunity, I certainly would look into teaching at a Classical Christian school. The thing that seems best about them is that there truly does seem to be a truly different focus as to what the goal of education should be. If you think about it, if Classical Christian education truly is different than public education and your typical Evangelical Christian education, then “Classical Christian education is the new counterculture” (173).
If nothing else, Dreher’s comments on education has convinced me that perhaps somewhere down the line I’m going to have to write a post or two on what should constitute a truly Christian education.
In my next post: sex and technology…what could go wrong?
> Classical Christian schools
Sigh. When a classic Christian school opened in our city, we were elated and sent all three of our children there. Not until it was too late did we realize how much damage they did. Instead of Christ-centered and Convenental, it was Creationist and Calvinist.
The public school would have been far better.
Don’t get me wrong — Classical Christian is amazing if done properly. Just pay attention to the character of the people running it.
I agree, and that was sort of my point with my comment about “all systems are secular.” I probably didn’t articulate that point well enough. A good Christian education should structure the curriculum with the goal and purpose to fully integrate knowledge of Church history/theology/Biblical Studies, along with the “classics” of Western Civilization, into the whole person. BUT…too often education (both public and Christian) devolves into seeing education as just an imposed system that indoctrinates students into one specific view (thus actually discouraging true critical thinking), in the expectation that the imposed system can just crank out cookie-cutter students (AiG curriculum and schools as a supreme example).
Point: it all comes down to the actual people. At the three different Christian schools I worked at, there were great administrators who really strove for good, challenging Christian education; but then when they left, a few really bad ones came in and screwed things up.