Distortions of Conservative Benedict Option Retreating Communities

How Fear itself can become a Spirit that Distorts the Body of Christ

Today's video is about 1/3 of a larger conversation that had 3 pretty distinct parts that I didn't want to get overlooked. In this part my conversation partner shares her experience in a conservative, @roddreher type Benedict option community

To summarize some of her story she converted to RC from Missouri Synod Lutheranism, almost became a nun, married, and went with her husband to live in a small town that was attracting Trad Catholics who wanted to have their faith reinforced by community.

Part of the strategy of the Benedict Option is to save one's soul, one's family and potentially the world by a strategic retreat into a community where Christian life together can be allowed to flourish and shape the future.

It's built upon an important realization that religious freedom is not just individual but communal. Christians are meant to live together and to create that dynamic where the community forms us and holds us in Christ.

Before the mid 20th century many immigrant communities like the @CRCNA that I grew up in practiced something like this. Christian day schools, colleges, institutions, retirement homes that could shape one's whole life. The community to live within.

The @CRCNA intentionally took down its walls after WWII. The experience of war and meeting other Christian traditions, urbanization, globalization, media, concerns of racism, all led the CRC and many other traditions into what Paul Kingsnorth called "the machine" or "the blob" with @PageauJonathan

It's a reasonable thing to retreat with like-minded people to try to create a small-scale model of what that group believes that life should be. That's part of the logic behind the Benedict Option. In many ways that's the foundational code of the Church.

What is often NOT seen is that the environment outside WILL always impact the environment behind the walls because WALLS are a part of the strategy itself. L in the video notes that there is a selection process already at work which impact what's behind the walls.

The fear that can drive people behind the walls itself becomes a spirit that distorts and shapes these communities in ways that distort them and can make them unhealthy.

They are formed by reactivity instead of love which may shape them to be oppositional rather than fundamentally rooted in the Christianity they wish to express, manifest and bear witness to.

For L's story this experience in a Benedict Option community eventually led her to deconstruct, leave the faith. In the next third I post she'll talk about her story back to faith.

There are no answers here, just an exploration of the fact that the challenge that conservative Christians face in this world is difficult.