Free Book: The Benedict Arnold Option

Rod Dreher seems to have turned-course, but my book, in response to him, is still as timely as ever.

In 2017, an Eastern Orthodox political commentator named Rod Dreher seemed to be all the rage among the Evangelical Intelligentsia. He was championed heavily by Russell Moore and his orbit at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), by The Gospel Coalition and their various contributors, and even in several Southern Baptist Seminaries.

I explained at the time….

And then others quickly joined the cause, which included;

Albert Mohler, President of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (source), Matt Chandler, President of the Acts 29 Network and pastor of The Village Church (source), Russell Moore, President of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention (source), Carl R.Trueman, Westminster [PA] Theological Seminary, and John Piper, founder and teacher of desiringGod.org (source), and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary.

Catching my interest that someone who denies Penal Substitutionary Atonement would be heralded by professing evangelicals, I soon became perplexed by Dreher’s message and not just his religious affiliation.

The Benedict Option was praised, seemingly to me, everywhere and always by the wrong people. The synopsis was simple; Dreher claimed that Christianity survived tough times and cultural collapse, in part due to monks like Benedict who nestled away in caves, avoiding interaction with the world outside that was going to hell in a hand basket.

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I immediately saw The Benedict Option for what it was, and knew intuitively why Russell Moore and the gang was so fond of the book. This was during the story arc when Moore and The Gospel Coalition guys were trying to convince evangelicals to disengage from “culture wars.”

Russell Moore described The Benedict Option, saying it, “encourages believers and churches to abandon the popular models of cultural engagement and focus instead on shoring up our own theological foundations and communities.”

We knew, even at the time, the “disengaging” was only step one of Russell Moore’s plans with the Evangelical Intelligentsia. First, they would convince young Christian men to not be involved. And once unyoked from the Republican Party, Moore would kick it into second gear, and step two was to convince those same young Christian men to reengage…as Democrats.

That’s what I predicted at the time, and that’s what came to pass in 2020, beginning with the death of George Floyd.

And so, I put together a book called The Benedict Arnold Option, likening retreat more to the traitorous Benedict Arnold than any Catholic monk. Christians, I said, must not retreat from the culture wars. And because I spent so much time discussing Dreher’s Eastern Orthodoxy, I wanted to prove I wasn’t just an anti high-church bigot, so in my last chapter I praised a papist, Matt Walsh, for showing us how the culture ought to be properly engaged.

Something happened to Dreher, it seems, when Russell Moore’s second phase was kicking into high gear during the George Floyd riots. Having used The Benedict Option as part of his reason to encourage young Christians to disengage (from Republicans), and just as Moore was then beginning to encourage them to reengage as leftists, Dreher was pulling up his pants legs and wading back into culture engagement.

Today, you might be surprised that Dreher has not only not retired from cultural engagement, and he has not surrendered to the evil culture as some kind of devilish inevitability, Dreher has - to his credit - helped lead the conservative movement against the left’s war of ideological aggression.

I reached out to Dreher recently, and asked him what changed.

Either way, as I pointed out in The Benedict Arnold Option, there’s a lot about Dreher’s The Benedict Option that’s good.

In terms of timing, I wrote that book during the darkest days of the pre-resistance. This was before most recognized that Russell Moore was liberal, The Gospel Coalition was a Democrat PAC, and that liberalism had infiltrated the church. It was long before Shepherds for Sale, and long before evangelicals really started to fight back against the leftward drift.

I dedicated the book to my hero, Obadiah Holmes.

If you’re a paid subscriber, you’ll get a free copy in various e-formats on the other side of this paywall. I hope you read it, and enjoy it.