I’ve just begun reading Rod Dreher’s “The Benedict Option,” which New York Times columnist David Brooks called “the most discussed and most important religious book of the decade.”
Dreher believes America has become a post- Christian nation. What once influenced nearly all our institutions – government, media, education, business, entertainment – is now an afterthought. Christianity is no longer at the head of the table; in some ways, it’s gone entirely from the room.
“There are people alive today who may live to see the effective death of Christianity within our civilization,” he writes.
Dreher, senior editor for The American Conservative, reads the tea leaves of a culture he sees lost in the decadence of materialism and a runaway sexual revolution. Pornography, once taboo, is commonplace. The idols of consumerism dominate the land, and there is both a crudeness and sadness, a shrugging-off of joy and beauty as well as responsibility, all part of a mature spiritual life.
Recently, I saw two grown men wearing T-shirts that made me do a double-take.