Reflections on Postliberalism

Part 7, A Progressive Benedict Option

One of the things I wholeheartedly embrace from the postliberal theological vision, from people like Hauerwas and John Howard Yoder, is their focus upon the church. And in this regard, there is a lot I like in Rod Dreher’s postliberal description of the Benedict Option.

And yet, I take to heart David Congdon’s concern that the hard church/world contrast found in postliberal theology can tend toward othering and dehumanization. Why do I take that concern seriously? Well, because you see a lot of dehumanization coming from people like Rod Dreher and Doug Wilson.

Back in 2015 I described how BenOp communities tend toward the Pharisaical and how the gospels raise questions about that tendency. Specifically, a debate about the BenOp is at the heart of the gospels. In the gospels we observe a conservative religious group who, reacting to the corruption of the political and religious establishment under empire, decide to turn inward to reclaim their distinctive culture and traditions in order to cultivate the virtues that would sustain them. This BenOp group were the Pharisees.

The Pharisees were the conservative advocates of the BenOp of their day. Observing how the political and religious institutions had been co-opted by empire, the Pharisees called for a BenOp, a call for communities to invest in local synagogues where teaching, liturgy, and the daily practices of Torah observance would sustain the Jewish people in the dark age they were living in.

According to modern BenOp proponents, that first-century situation is not unlike our own, which means that today’s calls for a BenOp are going to be haunted by this same shadow of Pharisaism.

Given this temptation I’ve called for a progressive vision of the BenOp, one that will resist the Pharisaical tendency. Consider, as an example here, Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector:

He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’” (Luke 18.9–12)

According to Jesus, a Pharisaical BenOp involves the contemptuous moral sorting of the world into the saints and sinners, the good guys and the bad guys, Us and Them. Precisely what you see from people like Dreher and Wilson. A Pharisaical BenOp turns inward and polices boundaries of moral purity. The BenOp of Jesus, by contrast, turns outward and violates those boundaries:

And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples. And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard it, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’” (Matthew 9.10–13)

A progressive expression of the BenOp will exhibit the radical hospitality of Jesus. Examples of progressive BenOp communities practicing community and radical hospitality are Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove’s Rutba House and the Catholic Worker movement. And it’s so diagnostic, damning really, that Dreher didn’t give attention to Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker in The Benedict Option. Dorothy Day’s commitment to social justice and radical hospitality just didn’t fit with Dreher’s Pharisaical vision, so he left her out.

Beyond the Pharisaism that shadows the BenOp, a related concern is how many BenOp expressions on the political right are patriarchal. While there are healthy BenOp communities that practice traditional gender roles, it’s also true that women and children are especially vulnerable in insular patriarchal communities. This history of abuse is the dark side of the BenOp.

All that to say, I think that there are Dreher and Wilson–style BenOps that are Pharisaical and explicitly traffic in the dehumanization that Congdon worries about. But as I’ve just described, taking a cue from Dorothy Day, there are progressive expressions of the BenOp. Rather than damning the world, stones in hand, progressive BenOp communities exist, to borrow from Bonhoeffer, for the sake of the world. As Bonhoeffer wrote, “The church is the church only when it exists for others.” To make a contrast with Dreher’s vision, I’ve described this as The Francis Option, given how the early Franciscans were noteworthy for their care in leper colonies. Pope Francis, not coincidentally, also promoted this vision.

So those are the dragons to the right: Rod Dreher’s Pharisaical BenOp, along with its insular patriarchy. What are the dragons to the left?

These were the dragons that Dorothy Day had to deal with when young liberal activists showed up at the Catholic Worker. Day’s Catholic devoutness, her intense and committed religiosity, conflicted with the irreligion and moral libertinism of the younger Workers. Just as challenging was Day’s commitment to Catholic personalism. Dorothy Day could protest with the best of them, but her daily praxis was sitting with the poor, demented, and insane and having a cup of coffee with them. Day’s mission was simple: the Works of Mercy. For the younger Workers yearning for revolution, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and burying the dead didn’t seem relevant enough. Rather than Jesus of Nazareth they wanted Che Guevara.

That tension persists. Progressive churches struggle because of the political reductionism I’ve described in this series. When church reduces to political activism or becomes a local non-profit, its reason for existing evaporates. This is what has happened to the Protestant Mainline. Consequently, when a church begins to exist for others it has to hold onto the truth that it also exists before God. God cannot be eclipsed by the political. And this isn’t a moral demand. It’s for progressives’ own good. From our mental health crisis to our “bowling alone” isolation, we need God. I tell this story in Hunting Magic Eels and The Shape of Joy. As I’ve argued, ontology matters for mental health.

Which is another contrast between how the Pharisaical BenOp talks about church and how I, as a progressive, talk about church. Pharisaical BenOps define themselves through culture war contrasts with the world. This is why they overflow with bile. The progressive BenOp, by contrast, exists for the world and doesn’t define itself with culture war boundary markers. The question of God, in these spaces, concerns ontology, the reality of God. Again, Dorothy Day broadly shared the political vision of the younger Workers. Their differences concerned ontology, the reality of the living God, the issue of religiosity. And progressives desperately need this religiosity as they blindly bump around in the spiritual-but-not-religious fog. This is what animates my post-progressive quarrel with them: the reality of God and their need for God. And it’s here where I agree so much with the postliberal calls for a thick and rich sacramental community, a place where ontological realities come into view. A progressive vision of the BenOp is able to hold the activism and ontology together.