Reflections on peace and faith
I have launched on my PeaceTheology.net site what will hopefully be a long, detailed series of blog posts. I will reflect on what I have been learning from a close reading of a new book, Greg Boyd, Crucifixion of the Warrior God: Interpreting the Old Testament’s Violent Portraits of God in Light of the Cross (Fortress Press, 2017), xlii + 1445 pages.
You can go to the first (long) post by following this link. I’d encourage you to subscribe to that site if you want to follow my posts.
Ted Grimsrud—May 20, 2017
I know that I am not alone in believing Donald Trump as president is a disaster. He’s a disaster beyond what anyone I know could have imagined as a realistic possibility up until about a year ago. I also know that I am not alone in deriving quite a bit of pleasure from seeing Trump go from one self-imposed crisis to another. It makes perfect sense that a growing number of people would be talking about impeachment.
But then I wonder, what would happen if Trump were actually impeached? Would that act makes things better in the US and wider world? I’m not so sure.
Only Republicans can impeach Trump
For one thing, Trump can only get impeached if a critical mass of Republicans in Congress vote for it. And we can be sure that that many Republican office-holders would only vote for impeachment if they had become convinced that Trump’s presidency worked against their program.
So, the way Trump gets impeached is not due to our public servants in power realize that Trump is too anti-democratic, too corrupt, too militaristic, too destructive of the environment, or too hostile toward non-white Americans. The way Trump gets impeached is not due to our public servants in power realize that we actually do need a kinder, gentle, more equitable, more peaceable America.
No, the way Trump gets impeached will be due to the Republican leaders deciding that their program—of an accelerated class war where governmental programs that actually enhance the lives of the most vulnerable are defunded with the money going to the 1%—is being hurt too much by the disaster of Trump’s incompetence. Continue reading “Impeach Trump? Not So Fast….”
Ted Grimsrud
In reflecting on Rod Dreher’s book, The Benedict Option, I have: (1) Summarized things I appreciate in his discussion, maybe most centrally his assertion that Christians need to take very seriously how our faith should shape our lives in a deeply problematic contemporary North American culture. (2) Offered a fairly sharp critique of his proposals, suggesting that at its heart, Dreher’s Benedict Option does not make the message of Jesus and his embodied love central enough. And, (3) I lingered a bit on the issue of same-sex marriage that Dreher seems to see as the paradigmatic expression of the anti-Christian dynamics in our society today. I believe that judgment is incorrect and profoundly hurtful. I conclude that third blog post by pointing to the possibility of a “Believers’ Church option” that more successfully embody core Christian convictions in countercultural witness. I’ll complete the series with some thoughts about this “option.”
It’s a measure of my appreciation for Dreher’s contribution that I point to it as inspiration for suggesting a “Believers’ Church Option” that perhaps in some ways complements Dreher’s Benedict Option, also perhaps stands over against it as a quite different kind of Christian approach.
The Believers’ Church Tradition
One way to think of Christian traditions is to make a distinction between “magisterial churches” and “believers’ churches.”
Magisterial churches are those traditions with a history of being, in some sense, state churches that are closely linked with magistrates (or governmental leaders). These include most of the larger Christian groups (Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and many Protestant groups such as Lutherans, Presbyterians, Reformed, and Anglican).
Alongside these state-connected groups, though, numerous independent Christian fellowships have arisen, especially with the break in western Christendom between Catholics and Protestants in the 16th century Reformation. These Believers’ Churches (e.g., Mennonites, Baptists, Church of the Brethren, Churches of Christ, Disciples of Christ, Pentecostals) have typically practiced believers’ baptism and been free from direct linkage with the state, more Bible-centered and less creedal, and non-hierarchical.
Dreher’s Benedict Option seems more closely related to magisterial church traditions (his own connections are mainly Catholic and Orthodox). That legacy may partly explain why Dreher seems unfamiliar with the idea of Christians being content with having a minority status in a given society—and being comfortable with that status. Continue reading “Dreher’s “Benedict Option”: Part 4—A Believers’ Church Alternative”
Ted Grimsrud
Rod Dreher’s book , The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian World (Sentinel, 2017), presents itself as a challenge to Christians in general to make their faith more central to their lives and to respond to the alleged anti-Christian influences of contemporary North American culture by developing countercultural communities that empower faithful living (see my first, positive, post on Dreher’s book).
Now, as I elaborate in my second post in this series, Dreher’s argument, as it unfolds, actually presents many problems. At their core lies what I perceive to be a marginalizing of Jesus’s message, most especially Jesus’s call to costly love even toward one’s enemies. As I read Dreher, both in this book and in his prolific blog posts, I see his inattention to Jesus’s message of love to be most apparent in his treatment of same-sex marriage.
The most-discussed problem according to Dreher
Over and over throughout the book and in his blog posts and other writings, Dreher mentions same-sex marriage (s-s-m) and the more general acceptance of same-sex intimate relationships (which is what I assume he means in his common use of the term “homosexuality”—see especially his 2013 blog post, “Sex after Christianity”) as the paradigmatic expression of deeply problematic Western culture. Such acceptance is antithetical to “orthodox Christianity.” Dreher’s discussion suggests that perhaps the main manifestation of the dangers “orthodox Christians” face in our society now and in the near future is the persecution that those who are not accepting of s-s-m face and are sure to face even more in the days to come.
I don’t think he so much means to say that s-s-m is the most important of all issues as that it is our currently paradigmatic issue that shows just how thoroughly Christianity is being routed in our recent “culture wars.” It is the issue that catches up the problems of our society’s movement away from being a Christian culture. He doesn’t clearly explain why he continually cites s-s-m when he needs an example of the growing darkness and the growing danger that “orthodox Christians” will be treated ever harshly by the rulers of the present age (though I expect he would say the above cited essay, “Sex after Christianity” is an attempt to do so; I didn’t find it very illuminating, though). Continue reading “Dreher’s “Benedict Option”: Part 3—Same-sex marriage as the paradigmatic problem”
Ted Grimsrud
I believe that Rod Dreher, in his book The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation, identifies some genuine problems in American society and proposes a response that in some important ways resonates with biblical faith (see my affirmative first post in this series). However, that he is partly right actually makes the problems with his proposal more troubling.
The problem: Not enough love
In a nutshell, I would say that the “Benedict Option” ultimately hurts the cause of Christian faith because it does not take Jesus seriously enough. The very core of Jesus’s message points to the path of love—for God, for neighbor, for enemy, for self, and for the rest of creation. Dreher has very little to say in this book about Jesus or about love. It’s fine that this book is about our present day and not a biblical or theological treatise. At the same time, I find it significant that when making his case for what matters most for Christians navigating life “in a post-Christian nation,” Dreher barely references Jesus and the biblical story at all.
It is telling that the one clear call to the path of love does not come until near the end of the book. In the book’s conclusion, Dreher quotes Pastor Greg Thompson, a Presbyterian minister: The Benedict Option ultimately has to be a matter of love. “The moment the Benedict Option becomes about anything other than communion with Christ and dwelling with our neighbors in love, it ceases to be Benedictine” (page 237).
Thompson’s call surely is sincere, and it surely reflects Dreher’s own convictions. However, in the structure of the book, the call to love is clearly on the periphery. Dreher never finds the space to reflect on the meaning of love or to bring Jesus’s life and teaching into the picture. There are other reasons to perceive that love is not the driving force in this project. As I will discuss at more length in my next post, Dreher’s way of focusing on the “problem” of same-sex marriage reflects that marginalization of love.
Ironically, Dreher seems to miss one of the key points in the book that provided him with the image of St. Benedict as standing at the core of his project. In his book After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, Alasdair MacIntyre seeks to recover the Aristotelian emphasis on the virtues as what is needed to overcome the moral disarray of modern Western culture. But he points out key difference between Aristotle and later Christian appropriation of virtue ethics. Aristotle did not include love (or, an older term, “charity”) as a key virtue. In Aristotle’s moral universe, an emphasis on love is inconceivable. Whereas, for biblical Christianity, “charity is not … just one more virtue to be added to the list. Its inclusion alters the conception of the good for [humankind] in a radical way” (page 174). Continue reading “Dreher’s ” Benedict Option”: Part 2—A general critique”
Ted Grimsrud—May 3, 2017
[This is the first of a series of four posts. The others are: “Dreher’s ‘Benedict Option’—Part 2: A general critique;” “Dreher’s ‘Benedict Option’—Part 3: Same-sex marriage as the paradigmatic problem;” and “Dreher’s ‘Benedict Option’—Part 4: A Believers’ Church alternative.”]
The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation by journalist, blogger, and religious thinker Rod Dreher, is a book that has received an unusual amount of buzz. Clearly Dreher both has an excellent ability to garner publicity (fueled by his passionate energy) and an ability to speak to profound concerns shared by many people. [For summaries of the book’s key ideas, see Dreher’s post “The Benedict Option” from 2013, an excerpt published in Christianity Today, an interview with Dreher in Religion & Politics, and a recent lengthy profile in The New Yorker; here’s a link to a list of links to articles critiquing and otherwise relating to the Benedict Option.]
This is my first, a descriptive and largely positive essay, of a four-post series engaging Dreher’s book. Post two will offer a general critique. Post three will focus on Dreher’s concerns about same-sex marriage. And post four will offer what I am calling a “Believers’ church alternative.” I am most interested in engaging Dreher on the level of theological ethics, a focus not shared very many of the multitude of responses The Benedict Option has elicted.
What The Benedict Option is about
The Benedict Option is a fascinating book that addresses important issues—and should be of great interest for all who think carefully about how Christian faith navigates life in 21st century North America. Dreher writes well. See for yourself in the excerpt published in Christianity Today mentioned above and at his amazingly prolific blog.
It is important to keep Dreher’s stated agenda and his intended audience in mind in reflecting on what he has to say. He is writing to and about conservative Christians (politically and theologically—Catholics, Eastern Orthodox and Evangelical Protestants)—so progressives of any kind who read him should expect to feel as if they are overhearing a conversation they have not been invited to join. That is, he is not trying to persuade those who don’t fit into the circle of his intended audience, so there are not apologetics or carefully constructed arguments justifying controversial views. He’s self-consciously preaching to the choir. I don’t mean that as a criticism, just as a descriptive comment about his writing strategy. There is a lot to criticize in the book (see my next couple of posts!), but I don’t think it should be criticized for not spending much time presenting a careful argument to “BenOp” skeptics. That’s not Dreher’s agenda.
Dreher hopes to inspire a joining together of Christians of like mind in resistance to the downward spiral of American culture heading toward a pit of moral relativism, individualism, and hostility toward “orthodox” Christians. The goal is to inspire a counterculture that will have the ability to sustain “traditional” faith in this world. Continue reading “Dreher’s ” Benedict Option”: Part 1—What Dreher gets right”
Thinking Pacifism 