In John Burger’s piece, What is “The Benedict Option” and Why Might It Be Coming to Your Neighborhood?, he discusses the growing movement called “The Benedict Option” or BenOp for short. The movement centers around the idea that by forming smaller communities of people who can keep the faith in the “new dark ages”, much as Benedictine monasteries do.
He wrote of a small community growing around a monastery in Clear Creek, OK:
Father Anderson said that there are 37 households living near the abbey now. Pudewa and his wife and family have been there since 2009. They always sought out places that fostered a sense of community and had lived in several places around the country and abroad, including some experimental communities. “When we came to visit it looked like this could meet all of our requisites—a Christian community, rural, a relatively safer part of the country, conservative, and a place where it’s easy to grow a business and thrive,” he said. “What I would kind of see as our village idea, in a way, isn’t to just escape the ugliness of worldliness—because you can’t really ever escape that, no matter how far out you go—but it is to cultivate a life of peace and faith and community that can nurture people who may then go out into the world and do things.”
The idea of living quaintly in an age of technological wonders is intriguing and prompts us to ask:
And today we celebrate...