Marginal Christianity

The Need for a New Monasticism Many “options” for the survival/renewal of the church in North America are floating around today. Rod Dreher’s “Benedict Option” is the best known among them and the touchstone for this recent flurry of other “options.” All of them share two basic convictions: -the American church is in dire trouble and needs a fundamental reshaping, and -this reshaping requires intentional community to resist the world’s incursions. Most of them point to monasticism, a reform movement in the early church protesting the accommodation of the church to ideas, ways, and mores of the Roman Empire, as a model for the kind of reform needed. This is a sound instinct. The trick is to discern the shape of the features of a monasticism fit for North America in these times. And that’s been the catalyst for the discussion around Dreher’s book. Is it Benedict, or Francis, or the Jesuits, or some other version of monasticism that might serve us best in this time and ...

Wes Granberg-Michaelson Dietrich Bonhoeffer continually asked this question: “Who is Jesus Christ for us today?” That question, asked in any time, and accompanied by a clear discernment of the times, will undermine the power and authority of any regimes intent on imposing a reign based on the prerogatives of privilege, race, wealth, and might....We know how important it is to say what we believe, and what we mean . . . But the danger is to believe that once we say it correctly, and get the words planted in our heads, then our hearts will automatically follow, shaping our lives... It requires more than the persuasion of well-crafted words analyzing our present context and commending action, to prompt participation in God’s mission in such a time as this. This takes the unfettered allegiance of people’s hearts, and the formation of their lives of discipleship. Countless pernicious forces press in the opposite direction, lulling the church back into complicit comfort, condoning narro...