Benedict Option vs. Wesleyan Option

Benedict Option versus Wesleyan Option

on December 22, 2015

The Benedict Option despairs of redeeming postmodern Western Civilization and counsels a Christian retreat into separatist communities to rebuild Christian culture through faithful discipleship. The model obviously is St. Benedict, who founded a vibrant monastic movement in the ashes of the imploding Roman Empire.

No doubt the Body of Christ and wider culture would benefit greatly if more Christians were to pursue some form of the Benedict Option, creating centers of self-denying devotion, prayer, learning and charity, even celibacy. May this movement, to the extent it fosters Christian growth and witness, grow and prosper!

But just as in Benedict’s day, roughly 99 percent plus of Christians will decline to actively pursue this option. Maybe some don’t have the spiritual insight and discipline. But many more likely don’t have the calling. Throughout the church’s history most believers have had a vocation to live and work within the world, with all of its temptations and snares.

(Read rest of article in Canon and Culture.)

  1. Comment by Curt Day on December 22, 2015 at 1:27 pm

    Any attempt to create religious communities of a single faith is really supporting apartheid-type living and can lend the communities into becoming cults because of diminished contact with the outside. The difference between the two options as described in the article is that of one community withdrawing more from the public than the other, but the community that isn’t withdrawing may not recognize the proper boundaries between church law and civil law.

    The only way to adequately change culture is to find values on which Christians and nonChristians can agree and then promote those values with nonChristians. Otherwise, we will not be sharing society with others as equals. Instead, we will either withdraw from society or try to rule over it.

  2. Comment by Ben Welliver on December 22, 2015 at 2:00 pm

    The progressive churches are already fully accommodated to secularism. In fact, unless a left-wing Christian identified himself as Christian, no one would ever guess it. They need never fear persecution or ostracism. An atheist visiting a liberal church would find nothing remotely offensive. He would be wise enough to discern that the people in that congregation are on exactly the same page as him. Though they might claim to believe in God, God has no place at all in their worldview. The mainlines are essentially agnostic/atheist, nothing more than auxiliaries of secular humanists.

  3. Comment by Curt Day on December 22, 2015 at 2:23 pm

    Ben,

    The problem I find with the mainline churches is that they overreact to the mistakes of the Conservative churches. Take the same-sex marriage issue. Whereas the conservative churches wanted to legally prohibit same-sex marriage in society, the mainline church not only wanted to make such marriages legal in society, they wanted to make these marriages allowable in the Church too. It is allowing such marriages in the Church that qualifies as accommodation to the world.

    Likewise, while the mainline churches observe other errors made by conservatives, they feel that the solution is to forge a universal faith instead of correcting faith that strives to be orthodox.

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