Review on: Rod Dreher. The Benedict Option. A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation. New York: Sentinel, 2017

Abstract

Rod Dreher's book is strong, clear and motivating. This is a true benchmark of missionary (in the secular sense of the word) literature. A vivid preface is followed by a rather voluminous, but not at all boring excursion into the history of Western European philosophy, in which this very history is gradually formed into a linear scheme. According to the author, from the late Middle Ages to the present, Western European (and, as a derivative of it, American) society has been moving exclusively along the path of moral degradation and departure from religion. But this is not the eschatological picture of the "cooling down of love" of which Christ the Saviour spoke (Matthew 24:12). We are talking about the alleged crisis of one of the human cultural models, quite surmountable by human efforts.