The 'Benedict Option' refers to a strategy advanced by some conservative evangelical Christians who believe they have lost the Culture Wars to withdraw from society and build their own Christian cocoon in which to live free from the world. It's unlikely to work, for as atheist and ex-conservative Christian Libby Anne points out, her community and others similar to it have been effectively living the Benedict Option for years, but have nonetheless seen many people leave the faith, or embrace values diametrically opposed to those which the groups were careful to inculcate in their members. The ultimate problem with the 'Benedict Option' is that eventually, people need to leave the cocoon, and outside that environment, the conservative church simply has no way of controlling what their members can see, hear and learn:
I’m
no longer a Christian today. In fact, I no longer believe in a god. And
I’m not the only one. I’m part of a large community of Christian
homeschool alumni who have either left the faith entirely or have left
our parents’ faith to forge our own. My parents thought that
homeschooling me and raising me in Christian community would ensure that
I would become a strong, upstanding Christian in adulthood—a Christian
who would be salt and light in a dying world—but for several reasons, it
didn’t work.
For one thing, the Benedict Option left me completely unprepared for interaction with the world outside of my Christian community. Because I only socialized with other evangelical or fundamentalist children, I didn’t have the first idea about how to interact with secular kids. This was no accident. By homeschooling me and socializing me only with like-minded children, my parents sought to ensure that I wouldn’t face worldly influences from my peers until I was an adult, and thus strong enough to withstand them. The problem was that there was no exit plan to get me through the transition. I chose a secular college with my parents’ support because I wanted to start being the salt and the light, but I had no idea how to relate to the other young adults I met there.
The Christian homeschooling movement purports to raise strong, upstanding Christians who will, upon adulthood, be ready to communicate the truth of Christianity and the value of the Christian way of life to the world. The Benedict Option purports the same thing. But how is this supposed to happen if these same Christians grow up so shielded from the world that they have no idea how to interact with it? Perhaps Dreher would say that the focus should not be on interaction but rather on a second generation of solid Christian living. That’s all well and good, but what happens several generations down the line when you have a Christian community that literally does not know how to communicate with nonbelievers?
There’s another problem, too. Growing up within Christian community, I only ever heard the other side’s arguments through a sort of filter. For example, I studied evolution out of creationist textbooks which explained evolution in an incomplete way and was full of straw men of evolutionary scientists’ positions. The same was true with basically everything. I didn’t hear the other side’s argument from the horse’s mouth, as it were, until I was in college, and when I did I was surprised, because what the other side actually said didn’t line up with what I’d been taught it said. This created a crisis of faith, because I no longer felt I could trust what my parents had taught me.
Because what I call the Christian bubble filter is so common across congregations and communities, raising children under a more separate Benedict Option could potentially mean that all of their information about the world outside the bubble would be filtered and thus distorted. This is a problem because when they eventually hear something from someone outside of the bubble, unfiltered—the moment they meet an ordinary gay couple happily raising children, or learn that using entropy to argue against evolution fails on the most basic level—-it won’t line up with what they’d been told inside the bubble. And frankly, postponing this moment until adulthood spells trouble.
- See more at: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2015/10/i-grew-up-in-the-benedict-option-heres-why-it-didnt-work.html#sthash.dcI7hriJ.Ztq6NI5H.dpuf
For one thing, the Benedict Option left me completely unprepared for interaction with the world outside of my Christian community. Because I only socialized with other evangelical or fundamentalist children, I didn’t have the first idea about how to interact with secular kids. This was no accident. By homeschooling me and socializing me only with like-minded children, my parents sought to ensure that I wouldn’t face worldly influences from my peers until I was an adult, and thus strong enough to withstand them. The problem was that there was no exit plan to get me through the transition. I chose a secular college with my parents’ support because I wanted to start being the salt and the light, but I had no idea how to relate to the other young adults I met there.
The Christian homeschooling movement purports to raise strong, upstanding Christians who will, upon adulthood, be ready to communicate the truth of Christianity and the value of the Christian way of life to the world. The Benedict Option purports the same thing. But how is this supposed to happen if these same Christians grow up so shielded from the world that they have no idea how to interact with it? Perhaps Dreher would say that the focus should not be on interaction but rather on a second generation of solid Christian living. That’s all well and good, but what happens several generations down the line when you have a Christian community that literally does not know how to communicate with nonbelievers?
There’s another problem, too. Growing up within Christian community, I only ever heard the other side’s arguments through a sort of filter. For example, I studied evolution out of creationist textbooks which explained evolution in an incomplete way and was full of straw men of evolutionary scientists’ positions. The same was true with basically everything. I didn’t hear the other side’s argument from the horse’s mouth, as it were, until I was in college, and when I did I was surprised, because what the other side actually said didn’t line up with what I’d been taught it said. This created a crisis of faith, because I no longer felt I could trust what my parents had taught me.
Because what I call the Christian bubble filter is so common across congregations and communities, raising children under a more separate Benedict Option could potentially mean that all of their information about the world outside the bubble would be filtered and thus distorted. This is a problem because when they eventually hear something from someone outside of the bubble, unfiltered—the moment they meet an ordinary gay couple happily raising children, or learn that using entropy to argue against evolution fails on the most basic level—-it won’t line up with what they’d been told inside the bubble. And frankly, postponing this moment until adulthood spells trouble.
- See more at: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2015/10/i-grew-up-in-the-benedict-option-heres-why-it-didnt-work.html#sthash.dcI7hriJ.Ztq6NI5H.dpuf
I’m no longer a Christian today. In fact, I no longer believe in a god. And I’m not the only one. I’m part of a large community of Christian homeschool alumni who have either left the faith entirely or have left our parents’ faith to forge our own. My parents thought that homeschooling me and raising me in Christian community would ensure that I would become a strong, upstanding Christian in adulthood—a Christian who would be salt and light in a dying world—but for several reasons, it didn’t work.
For one thing, the Benedict Option left me completely unprepared for interaction with the world outside of my Christian community. Because I only socialized with other evangelical or fundamentalist children, I didn’t have the first idea about how to interact with secular kids. This was no accident. By homeschooling me and socializing me only with like-minded children, my parents sought to ensure that I wouldn’t face worldly influences from my peers until I was an adult, and thus strong enough to withstand them. The problem was that there was no exit plan to get me through the transition. I chose a secular college with my parents’ support because I wanted to start being the salt and the light, but I had no idea how to relate to the other young adults I met there.
The Christian homeschooling movement purports to raise strong, upstanding Christians who will, upon adulthood, be ready to communicate the truth of Christianity and the value of the Christian way of life to the world. The Benedict Option purports the same thing. But how is this supposed to happen if these same Christians grow up so shielded from the world that they have no idea how to interact with it? Perhaps Dreher would say that the focus should not be on interaction but rather on a second generation of solid Christian living. That’s all well and good, but what happens several generations down the line when you have a Christian community that literally does not know how to communicate with nonbelievers?
There’s another problem, too. Growing up within Christian community, I only ever heard the other side’s arguments through a sort of filter. For example, I studied evolution out of creationist textbooks which explained evolution in an incomplete way and was full of straw men of evolutionary scientists’ positions. The same was true with basically everything. I didn’t hear the other side’s argument from the horse’s mouth, as it were, until I was in college, and when I did I was surprised, because what the other side actually said didn’t line up with what I’d been taught it said. This created a crisis of faith, because I no longer felt I could trust what my parents had taught me.
Because what I call the Christian bubble filter is so common across congregations and communities, raising children under a more separate Benedict Option could potentially mean that all of their information about the world outside the bubble would be filtered and thus distorted. This is a problem because when they eventually hear something from someone outside of the bubble, unfiltered—the moment they meet an ordinary gay couple happily raising children, or learn that using entropy to argue against evolution fails on the most basic level—-it won’t line up with what they’d been told inside the bubble. And frankly, postponing this moment until adulthood spells trouble. (Non-bold emphasis in the original)
The classical example of the young fundamentalist Christian who goes to university and loses their faith because of what they have learned has existed for so long that it has become a cliché, but it is no less devastating for that fact. One would imagine that even the most conservative Christian community would eventually realise the problems that come from sheltering their young people from views they regard as undesirable and only feeding them a distorted version of these views. Unfortunately, as the recent Coventry Creation Day highlighted, the response is to damn the internet and warn people off it, and tell people not to study the life sciences. It betrays a poor grasp of human nature to think that hanging a huge warning sign around the Internet and 'dangerous' university degrees will be enough to keep young people away from forbidden knowledge.
I’m
no longer a Christian today. In fact, I no longer believe in a god. And
I’m not the only one. I’m part of a large community of Christian
homeschool alumni who have either left the faith entirely or have left
our parents’ faith to forge our own. My parents thought that
homeschooling me and raising me in Christian community would ensure that
I would become a strong, upstanding Christian in adulthood—a Christian
who would be salt and light in a dying world—but for several reasons, it
didn’t work.
For one thing, the Benedict Option left me completely unprepared for interaction with the world outside of my Christian community. Because I only socialized with other evangelical or fundamentalist children, I didn’t have the first idea about how to interact with secular kids. This was no accident. By homeschooling me and socializing me only with like-minded children, my parents sought to ensure that I wouldn’t face worldly influences from my peers until I was an adult, and thus strong enough to withstand them. The problem was that there was no exit plan to get me through the transition. I chose a secular college with my parents’ support because I wanted to start being the salt and the light, but I had no idea how to relate to the other young adults I met there.
The Christian homeschooling movement purports to raise strong, upstanding Christians who will, upon adulthood, be ready to communicate the truth of Christianity and the value of the Christian way of life to the world. The Benedict Option purports the same thing. But how is this supposed to happen if these same Christians grow up so shielded from the world that they have no idea how to interact with it? Perhaps Dreher would say that the focus should not be on interaction but rather on a second generation of solid Christian living. That’s all well and good, but what happens several generations down the line when you have a Christian community that literally does not know how to communicate with nonbelievers?
There’s another problem, too. Growing up within Christian community, I only ever heard the other side’s arguments through a sort of filter. For example, I studied evolution out of creationist textbooks which explained evolution in an incomplete way and was full of straw men of evolutionary scientists’ positions. The same was true with basically everything. I didn’t hear the other side’s argument from the horse’s mouth, as it were, until I was in college, and when I did I was surprised, because what the other side actually said didn’t line up with what I’d been taught it said. This created a crisis of faith, because I no longer felt I could trust what my parents had taught me.
Because what I call the Christian bubble filter is so common across congregations and communities, raising children under a more separate Benedict Option could potentially mean that all of their information about the world outside the bubble would be filtered and thus distorted. This is a problem because when they eventually hear something from someone outside of the bubble, unfiltered—the moment they meet an ordinary gay couple happily raising children, or learn that using entropy to argue against evolution fails on the most basic level—-it won’t line up with what they’d been told inside the bubble. And frankly, postponing this moment until adulthood spells trouble.
- See more at: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2015/10/i-grew-up-in-the-benedict-option-heres-why-it-didnt-work.html#sthash.dcI7hriJ.Ztq6NI5H.dpuf
For one thing, the Benedict Option left me completely unprepared for interaction with the world outside of my Christian community. Because I only socialized with other evangelical or fundamentalist children, I didn’t have the first idea about how to interact with secular kids. This was no accident. By homeschooling me and socializing me only with like-minded children, my parents sought to ensure that I wouldn’t face worldly influences from my peers until I was an adult, and thus strong enough to withstand them. The problem was that there was no exit plan to get me through the transition. I chose a secular college with my parents’ support because I wanted to start being the salt and the light, but I had no idea how to relate to the other young adults I met there.
The Christian homeschooling movement purports to raise strong, upstanding Christians who will, upon adulthood, be ready to communicate the truth of Christianity and the value of the Christian way of life to the world. The Benedict Option purports the same thing. But how is this supposed to happen if these same Christians grow up so shielded from the world that they have no idea how to interact with it? Perhaps Dreher would say that the focus should not be on interaction but rather on a second generation of solid Christian living. That’s all well and good, but what happens several generations down the line when you have a Christian community that literally does not know how to communicate with nonbelievers?
There’s another problem, too. Growing up within Christian community, I only ever heard the other side’s arguments through a sort of filter. For example, I studied evolution out of creationist textbooks which explained evolution in an incomplete way and was full of straw men of evolutionary scientists’ positions. The same was true with basically everything. I didn’t hear the other side’s argument from the horse’s mouth, as it were, until I was in college, and when I did I was surprised, because what the other side actually said didn’t line up with what I’d been taught it said. This created a crisis of faith, because I no longer felt I could trust what my parents had taught me.
Because what I call the Christian bubble filter is so common across congregations and communities, raising children under a more separate Benedict Option could potentially mean that all of their information about the world outside the bubble would be filtered and thus distorted. This is a problem because when they eventually hear something from someone outside of the bubble, unfiltered—the moment they meet an ordinary gay couple happily raising children, or learn that using entropy to argue against evolution fails on the most basic level—-it won’t line up with what they’d been told inside the bubble. And frankly, postponing this moment until adulthood spells trouble.
- See more at: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2015/10/i-grew-up-in-the-benedict-option-heres-why-it-didnt-work.html#sthash.dcI7hriJ.Ztq6NI5H.dpuf
I’m
no longer a Christian today. In fact, I no longer believe in a god. And
I’m not the only one. I’m part of a large community of Christian
homeschool alumni who have either left the faith entirely or have left
our parents’ faith to forge our own. My parents thought that
homeschooling me and raising me in Christian community would ensure that
I would become a strong, upstanding Christian in adulthood—a Christian
who would be salt and light in a dying world—but for several reasons, it
didn’t work.
For one thing, the Benedict Option left me completely unprepared for interaction with the world outside of my Christian community. Because I only socialized with other evangelical or fundamentalist children, I didn’t have the first idea about how to interact with secular kids. This was no accident. By homeschooling me and socializing me only with like-minded children, my parents sought to ensure that I wouldn’t face worldly influences from my peers until I was an adult, and thus strong enough to withstand them. The problem was that there was no exit plan to get me through the transition. I chose a secular college with my parents’ support because I wanted to start being the salt and the light, but I had no idea how to relate to the other young adults I met there.
The Christian homeschooling movement purports to raise strong, upstanding Christians who will, upon adulthood, be ready to communicate the truth of Christianity and the value of the Christian way of life to the world. The Benedict Option purports the same thing. But how is this supposed to happen if these same Christians grow up so shielded from the world that they have no idea how to interact with it? Perhaps Dreher would say that the focus should not be on interaction but rather on a second generation of solid Christian living. That’s all well and good, but what happens several generations down the line when you have a Christian community that literally does not know how to communicate with nonbelievers?
There’s another problem, too. Growing up within Christian community, I only ever heard the other side’s arguments through a sort of filter. For example, I studied evolution out of creationist textbooks which explained evolution in an incomplete way and was full of straw men of evolutionary scientists’ positions. The same was true with basically everything. I didn’t hear the other side’s argument from the horse’s mouth, as it were, until I was in college, and when I did I was surprised, because what the other side actually said didn’t line up with what I’d been taught it said. This created a crisis of faith, because I no longer felt I could trust what my parents had taught me.
Because what I call the Christian bubble filter is so common across congregations and communities, raising children under a more separate Benedict Option could potentially mean that all of their information about the world outside the bubble would be filtered and thus distorted. This is a problem because when they eventually hear something from someone outside of the bubble, unfiltered—the moment they meet an ordinary gay couple happily raising children, or learn that using entropy to argue against evolution fails on the most basic level—-it won’t line up with what they’d been told inside the bubble. And frankly, postponing this moment until adulthood spells trouble.
- See more at: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2015/10/i-grew-up-in-the-benedict-option-heres-why-it-didnt-work.html#sthash.dcI7hriJ.Ztq6NI5H.dpuf
For one thing, the Benedict Option left me completely unprepared for interaction with the world outside of my Christian community. Because I only socialized with other evangelical or fundamentalist children, I didn’t have the first idea about how to interact with secular kids. This was no accident. By homeschooling me and socializing me only with like-minded children, my parents sought to ensure that I wouldn’t face worldly influences from my peers until I was an adult, and thus strong enough to withstand them. The problem was that there was no exit plan to get me through the transition. I chose a secular college with my parents’ support because I wanted to start being the salt and the light, but I had no idea how to relate to the other young adults I met there.
The Christian homeschooling movement purports to raise strong, upstanding Christians who will, upon adulthood, be ready to communicate the truth of Christianity and the value of the Christian way of life to the world. The Benedict Option purports the same thing. But how is this supposed to happen if these same Christians grow up so shielded from the world that they have no idea how to interact with it? Perhaps Dreher would say that the focus should not be on interaction but rather on a second generation of solid Christian living. That’s all well and good, but what happens several generations down the line when you have a Christian community that literally does not know how to communicate with nonbelievers?
There’s another problem, too. Growing up within Christian community, I only ever heard the other side’s arguments through a sort of filter. For example, I studied evolution out of creationist textbooks which explained evolution in an incomplete way and was full of straw men of evolutionary scientists’ positions. The same was true with basically everything. I didn’t hear the other side’s argument from the horse’s mouth, as it were, until I was in college, and when I did I was surprised, because what the other side actually said didn’t line up with what I’d been taught it said. This created a crisis of faith, because I no longer felt I could trust what my parents had taught me.
Because what I call the Christian bubble filter is so common across congregations and communities, raising children under a more separate Benedict Option could potentially mean that all of their information about the world outside the bubble would be filtered and thus distorted. This is a problem because when they eventually hear something from someone outside of the bubble, unfiltered—the moment they meet an ordinary gay couple happily raising children, or learn that using entropy to argue against evolution fails on the most basic level—-it won’t line up with what they’d been told inside the bubble. And frankly, postponing this moment until adulthood spells trouble.
- See more at: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2015/10/i-grew-up-in-the-benedict-option-heres-why-it-didnt-work.html#sthash.dcI7hriJ.Ztq6NI5H.dpuf
