In which he starts another new thread about 'Benedict Options' and other 'monastic' style strategies
Gamma Gamaliel
Shipmate
in Purgatory
The references to various 'let's take over the world' groups and movements on the Christian Nationalism thread has got me thinking.
@Kendel's citation of a comment that 'self-denial' is the antidote to such toxic theocratic tendencies.
Is that sufficient?
If so, what form should it take?
If not, what should accompany it?
What would it look like?
Lehrer's 'The Benedict Option' posits a kind of constructive withdrawal from the world - home-schooling, close-knit fellowship etc etc.
He cites an instance of an Orthodox Cathedral in Alaska where everybody moved closer to the building so they could form a closer knit community.
BBC Radio 4 recently reported on a town in The Appallachians which has become a monastic centre with a wider hinterland of rather right-wing Orthodox converts - a kind of alt right mish-mash of 'Confederates', neo-Nazis Monarchists (yes, in the US!) and assorted far-right crazies.
Cards on table. I'm all for monasteries and neo-monastic movements such as Iona, The Northumbria Community and various new-ish lay-led Catholic communities I've heard of recently.
The Orthodox see monasteries as central to any mission strategy.
If 'strategy' is the right word - I've encountered precious little that can considered strategic since I became Orthodox! 😉
Other traditions would emphasise other models and means. The parish, the minster, the gathered congregation etc.
If we are to build wholesome communities that don't veer into swivel-eyed nut-job territory, where should we start?
How do we maintain our saltiness and spread it around? Note the both/and thing there.
@Kendel's citation of a comment that 'self-denial' is the antidote to such toxic theocratic tendencies.
Is that sufficient?
If so, what form should it take?
If not, what should accompany it?
What would it look like?
Lehrer's 'The Benedict Option' posits a kind of constructive withdrawal from the world - home-schooling, close-knit fellowship etc etc.
He cites an instance of an Orthodox Cathedral in Alaska where everybody moved closer to the building so they could form a closer knit community.
BBC Radio 4 recently reported on a town in The Appallachians which has become a monastic centre with a wider hinterland of rather right-wing Orthodox converts - a kind of alt right mish-mash of 'Confederates', neo-Nazis Monarchists (yes, in the US!) and assorted far-right crazies.
Cards on table. I'm all for monasteries and neo-monastic movements such as Iona, The Northumbria Community and various new-ish lay-led Catholic communities I've heard of recently.
The Orthodox see monasteries as central to any mission strategy.
If 'strategy' is the right word - I've encountered precious little that can considered strategic since I became Orthodox! 😉
Other traditions would emphasise other models and means. The parish, the minster, the gathered congregation etc.
If we are to build wholesome communities that don't veer into swivel-eyed nut-job territory, where should we start?
How do we maintain our saltiness and spread it around? Note the both/and thing there.
Comments
More seriously, Christians are called to be in the world. Retreating into solipsistic navel-gazing where we only talk to ourselves is certainly not helpful. I do agree, though, that monasteries are a good thing and ought to be more fully embraced by Christians in my own (Anglican/Episcopal) tradition. Dreher’s flaw is in thinking that Christians need to cut ourselves off from the corrupting world, when it’s quite the opposite: we need to spread the reparative power of Christ crucified. We don’t do that for many, many reasons and we live a world that doesn’t really care about that, but I’m not sure any grand strategy can address either of those problems.
Yes there's probably a range of Niebuhrian options to how the Church and Culture interact, but a large part of it is probably one of co-existence and paradox.
Yes, whoops! I meant Dreher.
I know nothing about him other than he's collected the full set of Christian traditions- Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox.
And that I didn't agree with the promise of his book.
In what way is he more troubled now than when he wrote it? He seemed pretty troubled then.
He's a big admirer of Orban of course.
He's also a big opponent of immigration, particularly where migrants are brown or Muslim.
But somehow it's OK for him to migrate from the US and live somewhere else. Oh, I see, it's fine for him to do so because he's white and Christian.
I'm sure Hungary is lovely. The elder Gamaliette liked Budapest so much she stayed there 15days when she was travelling around Europe.
But there does seem to be a self-fulfilling prophecy element to Dreher's thesis. 'I'm not getting my own way so I'll move somewhere where I can ...'
The Pilgrim Fathers set a trend there in 1620.
Whatever the case, I didn't want this thread to become all about him.
Rather, I was hoping for some discussion and exploration of what sociologists call 'plausibility structures'. If we are serious about embodying the Gospel in our society in an 'intentional' way, how do we do that most effectively?
Can we develop distinctive ways of being that don't hive off into cranky territory? Of course, anything Amish-like or monastic - 'celibacy? Steady on!' - is going to look odd - and being 'different' isn't necessarily a bad thing in and of itself.
Dreher represents a counsel of despair to my mind. Yet I still see scope for the skete, the monastery, the 'base-community', the neo-monastic networks or the Nonnatus House of 'Call The Midwife'.
As well as the parish or the gathered congregation model and so on.
How can we create and maintain such 'plausibility structures'?
This is what MacIntyre wrote:
"This time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament. We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another—doubtless very different—St. Benedict."
Monasticism in itself is not an adequate response to social anomie, the loss of cultural capital and a heartless war-mongering status quo. Monastic seclusion isn't possible for most people, it is a privileged leisure fantasy for those who can afford breaks from work or family in places of great natural beauty, silence, provided food and liturgical togetherness. What is necessary is the critical distance that enables movements, secular or faith-bound, to work out how best to protest the crimes of the state and disengage from complicity in what is going on. That's how I've understood the Occupy protests, eco radicalism around climate change and current mass rallies against what is happening in Gaza.
What interested me in Occupy, flawed or ineffectual as it may have been, was their loose and fluid 'plausibility' structure: “decentralized forms of consensus-based direct democracy,” found in Occupy encampments and informed by the maverick writings of David Graeber. Graeber rejected the classic Weber definition of the state as a group able to claim a monopoly on violence; he argued that the modern Western state combines three elements: control of violence, control of information, and individual charisma. Most of Graeber's insights in Debt: The First 5,000 Years had to do with how debt is incurred and used by the state to [mis]inform the public. Consumers blame themselves individually for the burden of debt that shapes their lives; the costs of debt in maintaining old historic church buildings, the cost of paying clergy and lay workers in the church, the debts of getting a theological education, the endless worry over mounting debt in the life of the church. What Occupy understood was that the intolerable burden of debt they were lugging around was a structural strategy centuries in the making, not an individual failing.
If the change needed isn't likely to come from within compromised and shrinking churches, where else would we look for inspiration and critical thinking?
To back up a moment and to clarify my own position and 'emerging' thoughts on these things... I'm not as well-read on these matters as you are so it's a case of thinking aloud.
When I say I'm in favour of 'neo-monastic' movements I say that in the context of the development of a corporate spiritual life- in the same way that if someone became a tertiary or third-order Franciscan or similar, I'd expect that to have some impact on their 'spiritual development' as well as, hopefully, the way they treat other people and engage positively with the world around them.
I'm very aware that retreats and pilgrimage and so on are the preserve of those who can afford them. I know people who participate in such things all the time in the same way that other middle-class people might go on cruises or skiing.
No, when I talk about monasticism here I mean the real deal, not spiritual tourism.
The real thing rather than an ersatz version of it is much harder to maintain. I know of an Orthodox monastery here which has struggled to keep going because conditions there are so primitive and harsh. Sixth century monks or people from Ethiopian monasteries would probably cope with it.
I'm not suggesting that monasteries in and on themselves are a key to creating sustainable 'plausibility structures.' But they can provide a resource for those of us 'in the world' - but not in the form of a spiritual zoo we visit from time to time to gawp at the exotic monks and nuns.
I quite like the free-wheeling model you describe in relation to movements like Occupy but when applied to Christian faith and discipleship am wary that could lead to all manner of abusive personality cults and whackadoodlery.
But then, we see the US Christian Right aligning itself with corporate and political power in ways I can't countenance either.
Yes. I met someone from one of these groups last summer and he said something very similar.
He felt that his particular group was sufficiently savvy to learn from the mistakes and abuses elsewhere.
But he would say that...
Of course, being firmly locked into existing structures does not in and of itself prevent abuses. Indeed, it may even encourage them in some contexts.
Somehow we need elasticity and frameworks that provide a structure not a straitjacket.
Due to holiday travel, I find myself standing in to lead a RC men's bible-and-prayer group tomorrow night. Unfortunately I don't have a subscription to 'Zoom' which I think means our prayers will be curtailed at the 40 minute mark, which given my Methodist affiliations I had thought would barely enable us to construct an Agenda. Perhaps we can go backwards and cover mistakes (but hopefully not abuses) under AOB at the start
Would it be helpful to point out that when zoom kicks you off after 40 minutes, you can all immediately rejoin the same meeting, or not?
I think gentle and wise oversight is what's needed.