So: pursue faithfulness, not success. Do your duty. And by all means, stay at your posts.
The hour is late in the West. So says Rod Dreher in his new book The Benedict Option, a best-selling text, and one worthy of thoughtful engagement.
Dreher, I think, lands his point. He succeeds in showing the dire conditions of Western civilization. Many have spoken in recent years of “culture war,” and many Christians understandably wish to opt out from it. But if illiberal thinkers come for a winsome voice like Tim Keller, as they recently did, or if LGBTQIA-promoting California legislators target an irenic school like Biola University, as they did in 2016, and if anti-Christian groups lash out at an outstanding public servant like Kelvin Cochran of Atlanta, then our options may be few. At this point, it is not really a matter of whether you want the culture war or not; it is a matter of whether the culture war wants you.
Dreher is not wrong, then, in decrying the state of late modernity. (His book surely applies beyond Caucasian folks, by the way; see Cochran’s awful experience, or Sage Steele’s raw deal.) Neither is Dreher wrong to call for Christians and proponents of the permanent things to give greater attention to mending our own fences. I agree. I wrote a piece for The American Spectator in 2013 where I noted the promise of Christian classical schools; I value highly homeschooling, as Dreher does, and see it as a great option for Christian parents.
The Benedict Option is typical Dreher: punchy, sometimes moving, quirky, alert in many directions, and exuding a throwback sense of honor not common in popular books today. Dreher represents a growing strand of well-educated, aesthetically-minded Westerners in his wish to opt out of the homogenized forms of modern religion. He goes questing for the ancient ways, and reports that he discovers them in a Benedictine abbey, a place that exudes slow spirituality. Even if readers do not agree with Dreher’s ecumenical approach, many will resonate with Dreher’s interest in deep spiritual practices and engaged Christian witness.
A book written in sympathy with many such concerns, and endorsed by Dreher, is Anthony Esolen’s new Out of the Ashes. Esolen is a professor of English at Providence College. His approach to the state of Western culture and society is no less burdened than Dreher’s; Esolen teaches and writes with an expert’s grasp of the Western canon, a rich awareness of the harvest found in the humanities, and this impressive knowledge of the past darkens his perspective on the present.
Esolen’s often lyrical text is worth reading alone for his direct commentary on modern manhood and womanhood. This will not surprise readers of Esolen’s sterling Touchstone essays. In an unusual way, Esolen grasps the beauty of God’s design for the sexes. It is not always easy to map out exactly what Esolen sees as the way forward for those who find his vision persuasive; he acts as the critic, primarily, in Out of the Ashes. But he offers much food for thought.
I could not help but think of Chuck Colson as I read these worthy efforts from Dreher and Esolen. Colson, it seemed to me, is the figure who intuitively understood the lateness of the hour in the West. He argued tirelessly that the church must assert its voice in the political realm, it must make the case for human flourishing, and it must preach liberation to captives. But Colson also worked very hard to build out a Christian worldview amongst evangelicals who had little sense of one. His later life was a long exercise in the motto he developed with the help of his friend Richard John Neuhaus: contra mundum pro mundo.
Against the world for the world.
A little while back, I published my own take on Colson and on our present cultural fracturing (with a foreword by Eric Metaxas, a dear friend). Thomas Nelson titled my book The Colson Way, a phrase that regularly comes back to my mind because I believe that Colson’s example is instructive. Too often, evangelicals make the mistake of being either “against the world” or “for the world.” In truth, Colson shows us that the two are one. We cannot opt out of “partisan politics”; we must influence the culture for as long as we can. Neither, however, can we neglect our families, our children, and our churches.
The hour is late in the West, alarmingly late. Dreher and Esolen are right, much as some mock them for raising their voice. It is easy today to lose heart; it is tempting to think of removing oneself from the chaos at hand. I am reminded, though, of two sayings Colson clung to during his ministry career. “Faithfulness not success” was carved into a plain block of wood that sat on his desk. Colson, spectacularly successful in his worldly days, clearly knew his weaknesses, and did not fail to remind himself of the duty of the Christian. The second saying was one the prison reformer continually shared with his friends and fellow workers. “Do your duty,” he often said, “and stay at your posts.”
How simple, and how needed, are these sayings. They speak not simply to daily practices, but to the Kuyperian and Anabaptist elements in Colson’s outlook. Like him, we who love Christ’s gospel cannot choose between witness and fellowship, between public testimony in our culture and private cultivation of our homes. The two are one. Truly, we are called out of the world, even as we are called into the world.
So: pursue faithfulness, not success.
Do your duty.
And by all means, stay at your posts.