An English Benedict Option

I don’t think of the Benedict Option as being a single thing. Rather, it is an approach to living an authentically Christian life in the post-Christian West, a life that must be well-rooted in Christian tradition, with particular attention to our practices, and to monastic spirituality. As I’ve said, the Ben Op will necessarily be experimental and varied, adapted to local conditions. The goal is to find new ways (usually by rediscovering very old ones) to pray, to worship, and to serve as small-o orthodox Christians, in community, in a time and in places that are alien, and sometimes hostile, to orthodox forms of Christianity.

For some — like, for example, the Catholic agrarians near Clear Creek Abbey in rural eastern Oklahoma — that means something as radical as moving out to the country. For most of us, though, such a radical move will not be possible, and may not be desirable. What can we do where we are? As I travel around talking to folks about the Ben Op, I sense among some people a desire to do something, but a strong sense of discouragement that whatever they undertake will fall short of some ideal. I disagree, emphatically! It is better to do something, and see where it goes, than to talk ourselves out of doing anything out of fear that it won’t be radical enough.

I’ve recently learned of a Benedict Option initiative in London that I’m thrilled to tell you about. It’s called the Community of Nazareth, and it’s a project of two English Benedictines and a lay Catholic named Christian Kendall-Daw. Read about its founding this autumn here.

From the Community’s “about us” page:

The Community of Nazareth is a spirituality forum inspired by the Rule of Saint Benedict and the wisdom of the Desert Mothers and Fathers. Our mission is expressed most fully in the ‘Benedict Option’ and the remembrance of ‘permanent things’.

We meet regularly at Ealing Abbey and other monasteries, bringing together people interested in developing their knowledge and practise of ancient wisdom. The forum includes monks, priests, religious, oblates, local parishioners, members of other local churches and traditions. People are also welcome to join and attend via social media.

Why “Community of Nazareth”? Says the Community:

The reason for choosing the name Nazareth is summed up in something Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, wrote in 1977:

‘The Church cannot grow or prosper if we let it ignore that its roots are hidden in the atmosphere of Nazareth. At the moment when sentimentalism around Nazareth was flourishing, the true mystery of Nazareth was discovered in a new way, in its deepest sense, without his contemporaries noticing by Charles de Foucauld. There, in a living meditation on Jesus, a new way was opened thereby for the Church. It was for the Church a rediscovery of poverty. Nazareth has a permanent message for the Church. The New Alliance does not start in the Temple, nor on the Holy Mountain, but in the little home of the Virgin, in the house of the worker, in one of the forgotten places of the ‘Galilee of peasants’, from where nobody expected anything good. It is only by starting out from there that the Church can have a new beginning and be healed. It can never provide a true response to the revolt of our century against the power of the wealthy, if at its own heart, Nazareth is not a reality, which is lived.’

This is especially interesting to me because yesterday, I listened to the podcast of the hourlong Schmemann lecture that eminent church historian Peter Brown delivered at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary — a talk recommended here the other day by Prof. Bill Tighe. In it, Brown talks about the Emperor Constantine, the church historian and bishop Eusebius, and what the future of Christianity looked like to them in the early fourth century. The chief point is that neither the first Christian emperor nor the bishop imagined that the entire empire would be Christianized. According to Brown, the most important thing that had been achieved was that the Church was now visible, and anyone who wanted to could be a Christian. Brown:

What [Eusebius] wanted was the “exaltation” of the church. His mental furniture did not include the idea of anything as grand as the eventual creation of a majoritarian Christianity through the Christianization of the Roman empire.

By “exaltation,” Brown means that Eusebius believed that all history after Christ was like the aftershock of a massive spiritual earthquake that had leveled the temples of the demon gods. The victory over the tyranny of the stars had been won; the “visibilization” of the Church was a sign of that victory, and it was sufficient that anyone who wished to share in it could come to the Church and join the community. For Eusebius, the Church was the point at which the meeting of heaven and earth, of immaterial and material, was most intense — in Brown’s words, “the charged pairing of invisible and visible, and the direct flow of the one into the other.”

For believers, it still is. The churches, monasteries, and holy places are not just forums for the recapitulation of memory and the upbuilding of morality, but forums where, if we are properly disposed, we can partake of the spiritual force unleashed by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In this post-Christian time, and especially in the spiritual desert of secularized cities and countries, it is vital that these outposts survive and thrive; the false gods of the 21st century are as powerful as any Roman deity ever was, and the liberation from captivity to them is ever-present in the Church.

The Benedict Option — and thanks to the Community of Nazareth for mentioning it (“Internationally there is interest in what is known as the Benedict Option, this movement has wide-reaching theological and philosophical implications and is of great interest to our forum”) — is about reconnecting to the spiritual thought, prayer, and practice of the ancient church, especially monastics, and bringing them to bear in the lives of Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox laypeople. It is far more powerful and durable than ersatz attempts to be “relevant,” and this is something I want people to discover. It is our common heritage as Christians, and as far as I can tell, the Nazarenes proceed in that ecumenical spirit. I am grateful to the Community of Nazareth for coming together to offer this to Londoners. Look here for some of the things they have planned in 2016. Today, I’m going to offer one of my daily prayer ropes (like an Orthodox rosary) for the Community’s success.

There is hope! And we friends of St. Benedict have a lot to learn from each other, wherever we are in this world. If you are Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox, and interested in the Benedict Option, why not get together with like-minded Christians, and start something like this? News on the book, by the way: we’re looking at a Spring 2017 publication date. But don’t sit around waiting for it, okay? Get up, let’s go!