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The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation by Rod Dreher

Is the answer retreat? Is today’s modern liberal culture too far gone to save? Have we invested “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor” in a project that is not worth the former two, much less the first? Perhaps this is not the exact, word-for-word argument that columnist Rod Dreher makes, but it certainly appears to be something close to it. In The Benedict Option, Dreher takes us back in time to examine the life and example of St. Benedict and his band of reclusive followers, arguing that the community they formed is exactly the kind of community in which we should participate—and the kind of life for which we should be willing to die.

Dreher begins his argument with intellectual history, describing the twin forces of reason and faith—represented by Athens and Jerusalem—as guiding the Church and society through the Middle Ages. It is within this context that the life of Benedict and his monks, living for Christ as a community rather than merely as individuals, takes place. Dreher continues his intellectual chronology with the thought and life of St. Thomas Aquinas. Coming from a Protestant background, I am compelled to concede the greatness and intellectual seriousness of the man who is likely the premier theologian and philosopher not only of his period but extending into the present day. One of Dreher’s most important strengths is his ability to appeal to authorities such as Aquinas when making the case for Christian philosophical realism. Nor does Dreher resort to blaming the typical villain of anti-Enlightenment Christian critiques, René Descartes. Although he mentions Descartes, Dreher critiques not his methodology but the thinkers who followed him. Rather than blaming Enlightenment figures directly for current skepticism, Dreher instead points to William of Ockham, the father of nominalism, as the source of the problem. Let me explain.

Dreher posits that two rival worldviews were at work during the High Middle Ages, which have since split philosophical discourse into two nearly unbridgeable camps. The first, Christian realism, is associated with Thomas Aquinas and, earlier, Aristotle. This view holds that real, discoverable truths exist and are grounded in God. In other words, a tree is genuinely real, present, and accessible to the senses, but ultimately ordered within a meaningful and purposeful reality. This was the dominant view for centuries following Aquinas’s death. In contrast, William of Ockham proposed nominalism—the view that things do not possess inherent reality, causality, or necessity. Reality becomes fragmented into isolated parts, and meaning is no longer embedded in the world but is instead fluid. While nominalism leaves room for God, it undermines the idea of God’s unchanging nature. For Ockham and his intellectual descendants, the qualities of nature are not necessary but contingent. God could have just as easily commanded Moses, “Thou shalt kill,” if He had so chosen. The key difference lies in the nature of meaning: for realists, meaning exists independently and is discovered; for nominalists, meaning is constructed. Dreher sees this shift as the catalyst for the modern struggle between objective meaning and subjective self. His argument is that once society rejected realism and embraced nominalism, the checks and balances that governed both society and meaning itself began to unravel, piece by piece.

The solution, Dreher proposes, is not political engagement. He argues that such efforts have failed. In a sense, he calls for retreat—perhaps into local communities, perhaps even into something resembling monastic life. However it is framed, engagement with an increasingly counter-Christian culture is not, in his view, the answer. The problem with this is that Christians are called to be the “salt and the light” of the earth. Classical teachings hold that Christians remain in the world as a counterbalance to evil. It is through engagement with a fallen world that redemption is pursued. Dreher overlooks this in his advocacy for intentional Christian communities. While such communities are not inherently wrong, his emphasis neglects a significant part of the broader picture.

Secondly, Dreher significantly overestimates the ability of community to preserve truth. While he is correct to reject the nominalism of William of Ockham, he veers toward the opposite extreme, failing to adequately account for the free will of individuals to accept or reject biblical mandates. Community, though valuable, cannot guarantee faithfulness. Because of human fallenness, no structure—no matter how well-ordered—can serve as a safeguard against error. Dreher himself concedes that community is not salvific. Yet by placing such weight on retreat and communal life, he effectively elevates it beyond its proper role, risking a subtle shift away from personal responsibility and active witness in the world.

The final problem with Dreher’s argument is that, although he is overly optimistic about humanity’s ability to achieve harmony within community, he simultaneously underestimates humanity’s capacity to act in accordance with natural law—especially when the survival of culture itself is at stake. His claim that the answer no longer lies in voting for political candidates risks creating a false dichotomy. The truth is that the answer never lay solely in political engagement. Both Christian theologians and the American founders understood that political involvement, while necessary, is not sufficient. We can agree with Dreher that “politics is not the solution,” but we must also insist that “retreat into community is not the solution either.” In avoiding one ditch, Dreher has driven into another. There have always been those who spread fear and predict impending collapse. Perhaps such collapse is near. But even if our systems are irredeemable, our institutions corrupt, and our world deeply fallen, the answer is not withdrawal. It is to stand and act—even if such action appears futile—so that we cannot be said to have remained silent.

It is important to avoid misrepresenting Dreher’s argument. He does not advocate burying our heads in the sand or withdrawing entirely from political life. In fact, he encourages continued support for causes such as the right to life, traditional marriage, and core tenets of Christian conservatism. Dreher is not unpatriotic, despite how his argument may sound. He clearly loves America and its people; more broadly, he values Western civilization and seeks to protect it from forces he believes are eroding it from within. The issue lies less in what Dreher explicitly argues and more in how his argument may be interpreted. He is correct to point out that many of our current solutions are ineffective. However, where he errs is not in diagnosing the problem, but in his response. Like others in the post-liberal movement, he risks rejecting the very system that allowed the problem to emerge—and that may still contain the means for its resolution. The problem is not classical liberalism or our system of government. Nor is it that we mistakenly believe politics alone is the solution. Rather, the problem lies in expecting too much from imperfect systems and people. It lies in demanding perfection from a fallen world and then abandoning it when that expectation is not met.

What, then, is the verdict? Is The Benedict Option worth reading? Yes—with important caveats. The book succeeds not so much in accomplishing its stated aim, where it ultimately falls short, but in establishing the necessary groundwork for a broader discussion. Dreher’s real contribution is that he forces readers to confront where things may have gone wrong and to consider possible solutions together. This conversation, as Dreher himself suggests, should take place within communities—but without idolizing community, dismissing political structures, or denying individual responsibility. The Church was not called to survive history by retreating from it, but by confronting it—generation after generation—not with certainty of victory, but with certainty of truth. That is where we must stand.

Review Written by C. A. Gerber

April 24th, 2026

Believe: Why Everyone Should be Religious by Ross Douthat

Believing is now fashionable for many of those in the cultural elite. In his most recent book, New York Times Opinions writer Ross Douthat makes the case for why this cultural trend should move out of the cultural elite and into the societal mainstream. This is the case for belief, belief, as it were, in the supernatural.

It is necessary at the outset for me to admit that I have enjoyed reading Douthat’s articles and have found many of his works insightful in the past. It is also quite easy to admire the purpose for which he wrote this book, namely to bring religious belief back into the public arena, not as a choice, but as a necessity. Douthat is a Catholic, and not only this, but he is quite orthodox, something which I appreciate as a conservative Protestant. Yet the problem with this book is that Douthat’s appeal is pitched too broadly.

As a book dealing with evidence of the supernatural, this one excels. Douthat takes real-life testimonies from many people, coming from all walks of life and all religious backgrounds. Taking stories of supernatural encounters from atheists as well as orthodox Christians and Catholics who have supposedly received some gift through a supernatural experience, Douthat certainly makes his point broadly and could likely convince any honest reader of the presence of the supernatural realm in everyday life. This, for the moment, leaves aside the fact that the differentiation between the natural and the supernatural realm is quite unbiblical, something which I will come to later.

In being indiscriminate in the stories which he chooses, Douthat unfortunately loses much of the moral and theological force which he would otherwise have. These are not angelic experiences alone but also include stories of electrical impulses and demonic apparitions. Douthat defines the supernatural broadly as anything which cannot be explained or explained away. Although this is a good secular definition of the word, it is not exactly one that can bear any level of Christian significance, certainly not when it is made to include experiences that border on hallucinations rather than reality. This is not to discount the reality of the spiritual realm, for Douthat does admirably in proving that such a realm must be accepted as a precondition of religious belief.

Moving on, it is necessary to touch on one important point, namely that the distinction between the natural and the supernatural is a recent one, one that would have been denied for millennia by Christian theologians and philosophers. To make that which we cannot immediately explain by the rules of nature—to be clear, reason can account for them, though the natural laws of physics cannot—unnatural, or supernatural, is to make its originator unnatural. Yet we know from the biblical account that everything that we can classify as natural proceeds from thence. Thus, even when trying to prove the existence of demonic and angelic forces, of experiences that defy explanation, and of those which cannot be accounted for except by the divine, we must be careful not to associate them with the supernatural, or the unreal. In reality, the realm of spirit is as real and as natural as the realm of matter.

Ultimately, the problem with Douthat’s explanation of the supernatural centers not on using the wrong word, a word which has by now been engraved on the social imaginary, but on treating religious experiences as universally valid. Obviously, his purpose in writing the book is not to promote a partisan religiosity, although he makes clear his own Catholic beliefs, but rather to draw everyone nearer to belief in some sort of deity. Therein lies the problem, for Douthat does not recognize, at least in this work, the fact that some belief is divine and some is deceptive. Truth gets mixed with error, the God of the Bible with the God of the mystics. Although Douthat proves that something is out there, he does not give an answer as to what is out there beyond a testimony of his personal belief.

As a book which will certainly be sold in nonreligious bookstores and will likely form a significant part of the cultural conversation for quite some time, this book is both useful and necessary to properly understand the movement toward belief in the divine. For those who are agnostic, atheist, or simply uninterested in religious experience, this should be a book that remains on their bookshelves. However, if you are searching for a book that offers not only a case for religion, but a case for the Religion, then this, unfortunately, is not it. Although perhaps a useful tool, one that indeed should be used, this book is limited in scope to the realm of inclusivity. By broadening the audience, Douthat has, alas, narrowed its sharpness as a weapon to cut down the lies of the enemy, although he has certainly provided a bulwark from which we may now launch our arrows of truth.

Review Written by C. A. Gerber

March 15th, 2026

Masculine Christianity by Zachary M. Garris

There is a crisis in the Western church, and Zachary M. Garris is not interested in beating around the bush. In Masculine Christianity, Garris makes the case that the church's slow accommodation to feminist ideology has not been a neutral cultural adjustment; it has been a theological surrender, one with consequences that ripple outward from the pulpit into the home and society at large. It is a bold argument, and one that deserves to be taken seriously.

Garris’s central contention is straightforward: God has not left men and women without direction. Scripture speaks clearly about the distinct roles, responsibilities, and authorities given to each sex, and the church’s drift away from these teachings has not made it more loving or more relevant; it has made it weaker. Masculine Christianity is, at its core, a call to recover what was never supposed to be lost.

What makes this book worth reading is that Garris does not treat masculinity as a cultural preference or a personality type. He roots it in theology. The authority a husband exercises in his home, the leadership a man provides in his church, and the responsibility he bears in society—these are not artifacts of a bygone era to be quietly retired. They are divinely ordained structures, and abandoning them has costs. Garris is right to press this point, and he does so with clarity and conviction rather than apology.

The book is also refreshingly honest about the scope of the problem. This is not merely a matter of a few liberal congregations going astray. Garris identifies the embrace of feminist assumptions as widespread across evangelical and even ostensibly conservative church culture. The softening of male headship, the sidelining of male leadership, and the reframing of biblical gender roles as culturally conditioned rather than scripturally grounded—these trends have touched nearly every corner of the Western church. The diagnosis feels accurate, and that accuracy is itself valuable. You cannot address a problem you are unwilling to name.

On the positive side of the ledger, Garris is equally clear. The alternative to a feminized church is not a caricature of domineering men barking orders; it is men who take their God-given responsibilities seriously—men who lead their families with love and intentionality, men who step into their churches not as passive attendees but as engaged shepherds and servants, and men who understand that authority and sacrifice are not opposites but are bound together in the biblical vision of manhood.

The principles he articulates—the complementarity of the sexes, the headship of the husband, the importance of male leadership in the church, and the social consequences of getting gender wrong—are not novelties. They are historic Christian beliefs, confessed and practiced across centuries and traditions, before the present moment of confusion set in. Garris’s project is essentially restorative, and there is something deeply sensible about that. The answer to theological drift is not innovation; it is return.

Readers looking for a thorough academic treatment of every relevant passage or a deep engagement with opposing scholarship will want to supplement this volume with additional resources. But that is not entirely what Garris is after. Masculine Christianity functions more as a clarion call than an exhaustive systematic treatment, and on those terms it succeeds. It is direct, blunt, and readable, and it arrives at a moment when directness is badly needed.

The church does not need another round of accommodation. It does not need to find more comfortable language for timeless truths or more palatable framings for unpopular doctrines. What it needs is what Garris is calling for: the willingness to take Scripture at its word, to trust that God’s design for men and women is not a liability but a gift, and to build accordingly. Masculine Christianity makes that case with urgency and conviction.

For readers who sense that something has gone wrong in how the modern church talks about men, women, and gender—and who suspect the answer lies not in further revision but in faithful recovery—this book is well worth your time.

Review Written by Gabriel Herrmann

March 30th, 2026

Live Not By Lies by Rod Dreher

It can’t happen here; it can’t happen now — or can it? In Live Not by Lies, cultural commentator Rod Dreher answers the age-old question of how we should act in the face of falsehoods, and how we should respond to the increase of totalitarianism in our culture. Elucidating, firstly, how totalitarianism in any of its forms can take root in society, Dreher argues that while Eastern culture was threatened and devastated by an Orwellian totalitarianism that controlled everything, including the thoughts and words of its citizens, we, living in the modern Western hemisphere, are in danger not of an Orwellian system, but a Huxleyan one.

Drawing heavily on the writings of dissidents Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Vaclav Benda, as well as information received through extensive interviews with survivors, or children of survivors, of the Communist regimes, Dreher recounts the stories of courageous individuals who “lived not by lies.”

Arguing that “the ideal subject of a totalitarian state is someone who has learned to love Big Brother,” Dreher shows how the loss of belief in a transcendent moral order left the culture of Eastern Europe susceptible to a communist takeover, and how, more terrifyingly, the loss of this transcendent order in the West, where the very ideal of moral transcendence was founded, is leaving us open and vulnerable to the soft totalitarianism of Huxley’s Brave New World. Indeed, communism answered, and still answers, “an essentially religious longing,” which is why Dreher argues that we must understand that we are fighting not against a rival economic system, or even a political one, but rather against a completely different and uncompromising religion. This soft totalitarianism demands loyalty in every aspect of life; it demands conformity to all its dogmatic teachings; and it demands, above all, the surrender of Truth. For it, “there is no such thing as objective truth — there is only power.”

The author devotes several chapters to examples of how soft totalitarianism has become the norm in our own culture. At times, this can become overly speculative; his warnings about the PATRIOT Act — though he doesn’t mention it by name, he clearly implies it — as conducive to a totalitarian society, and his dismissal of the state as a vehicle of security maintenance, feel overly influenced by libertarian extravagance. Cultural pressures, social media outrage, and corporate conformity are real phenomena, but Dreher occasionally presents them as more unified and monolithic than they actually are. His examples are persuasive in principle but, at times, exaggerated in scope.

Dreher also proposes a solution to the hard times that we are sure to face. If the thesis were only about the fact that we, as Westerners, are in trouble, and that the totalitarianism of the previous century is rising — indeed, that it has even risen in our midst in a new and deadly form — it would be a book ending in despair. Yet through the examples of brave dissidents and Christians from the past, we too can learn how to live the truth in a culture of lies. Using quotes from Romanian pastor Richard Wurmbrand, and the stories of incarceration from multiple Christians, the author shows that suffering is not necessarily a bad thing; indeed, it can bring the community together like never before. As a reader, it was highly appreciated that Dreher did not simply make these points as statements to be accepted at face value, but rather interviewed dozens of men and women who possessed firsthand experience. This lends a level of credibility to this book that is simply not present in other political manifestos.

Central to Dreher’s argument is the concept articulated by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his famous essay Live Not by Lies: the refusal to participate in falsehood. Totalitarian systems survive not merely because of the power of the state, but because millions of ordinary people repeat, affirm, and publicly comply with things they know to be untrue. The lie becomes truth, and the truth becomes unknowable. “Let the lie come into the world,” is the rallying cry. “Let it even triumph…,” but, Solzhenitsyn concludes, “not through me.”

A must read.

Review Written by C. A. Gerber

March 12th, 2026

On Democracies and Death Cults by Douglas Murray

What can people do in the face of a culture that worships death?

This is the question that journalist Douglas Murray sets out to answer in his journey through the horrific events of October 7 and their aftermath. With stunning clarity, chilling precision, and bone-shattering honesty, Murray exposes the truth about Hamas and the culture of death that it—and its devotees on the left—engender. The story of Israel is the story of the defense of civilization, he proposes. The Israeli government is not perfect, Murray makes clear—what government is?—but unlike Hamas, the Israeli government operates with the goal of preserving innocent life. Thus, it has gone to lengthier, costlier, yet more life-preserving methods than any other military in recent history, dropping leaflets on buildings before bombing them, thus giving the terrorists a chance to escape but, more importantly, trying to save the lives of innocent civilians caught in the crossfire. Murray also exposes the one-sided antisemitism of the international community, including the media, the United Nations, and governments around the world, which hold Israel to standards that no one else ever has or ever will achieve. The double standard is stunning: No Jews, no news. The author clearly backs up the claims he makes with evidence from intelligence agencies, human rights institutions, and governmental departments, filling the pages with statistics, interviews with prominent Israeli politicians and the families of the hostages, as well as personal details, having traveled both to Israel and the Gaza Strip. He does not exclude gory details—this is not always a good thing—but writes down all the evidence he finds. Pleasant or unpleasant, it remains true.

Murray, an atheist, but one who is, like Agrippa, almost persuaded to believe, ends his work with this Bible verse from Deuteronomy: “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live.” In this age of darkness, argues Murray, with Hamas and the evils of radical Islam and radical progressivism, which wholeheartedly support this genocidal clan, the only choice left to us is to choose life.

While the details in this book are often gruesome, and Murray’s conclusion—despite the Bible verse—is largely secular and bounded by time and space rather than the transcendental, the points he makes are ones that everyone should seriously consider. Once more, Murray has delivered a breathtaking work of immense scope and one that should be required reading for all who seek to share their opinions on the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

Review written by C. A. Gerber

February 27th, 2026

The Swastika in the Sanctuary by Jarod Murphey

Our country is in danger, argues author Jarod Murphey, and the danger lies not in the traditional bogeyman we have become so used to seeing on the left.

Rather, the enemy lies to our right, in the increasingly antisemitic rhetoric of individuals christening themselves “conservatives” but who, as Christ warned us, are in reality wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Taking a deep dive into what is wrong with the conservative movement and how a group of neo-Nazi propagandists have hijacked it, Murphey digs up quotes, speeches, and claims made by these individuals and shows clearly and precisely the danger of these baseless accusations, which are, at their root, nothing short of a betrayal of Christian principles and the foundational principles of Judeo-Christian morality. Murphey supports his argument with extensive citations from speeches, podcasts, and social media posts, though at times the volume of quotations risks overwhelming the narrative flow.

For the first time, we have someone who is both a conservative in his own right and a dedicated Christian, as well as someone who sees the danger, diagnoses the problem, and proposes the solution without fear of attacking those “on our side.” The solution proposed by many who claim there are “no enemies to the right,” though perhaps noble-hearted, is insufficient, argues Murphey, for when you declare that to the right there is no wrong, the devil will make sure to whisper lies in your ear from the right.

This is a heavy book, a short read that feels much longer because of the heavy, nauseating material Murphey exposes. The Swastika in the Sanctuary remains, nonetheless, a necessary read for all of us who intend to engage our culture with a Christ-like response and stand firm even when faced with threats from both sides. We must follow the straight path and remain faithful in the face of withering fire, falling into the arms of neither enemy, but remaining, as always, with our eyes fixed on the eternal hope.

Review Written by C. A. Gerber

February 27th, 2026

The Desecration of Man by Carl R. Trueman

The Hour of the Madman has arrived.

Carl Trueman once again delivers a stunning, accurate portrayal of the problems facing modern humanity. “We have killed God,” declared Nietzsche, yet we still want to be subject to His laws. No, he urges, we have unbound the earth from the sun, and we must face the consequences of our actions. If we have killed God, we must become gods ourselves. The limits, ends, and obligations given to us by this Higher Being are no longer applicable, but the only way to prove this is to desecrate Him. We must desecrate the holy, trample underfoot the limits, create our own ends, and leave unfulfilled all the obligations that have bound us to each other and to a higher purpose. Only then can we create our own sense of purpose, our own ends, limits, and obligations.

This is such an accurate portrayal of the modern age. Why is it that there has been such a viciously anti-Christian surge in recent years? Why has that which was held sacred for generations now become commonplace, even vulgar? Why does modern culture deny the basic facts of reality when they are in plain black-and-white letters, staring it in the face?

Yet when we do this, when we defy the sacred and desecrate God, Trueman argues, the end result is very simple: we desecrate ourselves as well. The limits we seek to triumph over are still limiting us. Death is an unavoidable conclusion, a fact of life; biological sex is binding, however much modern culture seeks to claim otherwise. And the cost of denying this is great. We become like the madman; we end up insane, just as Nietzsche did. We reach the bottom, the pit of nihilistic despair.

By desecrating the sacred, we have desecrated ourselves, and the only answer is once more to sanctify the God of our fathers. By doing so, we will find the answer to the question of the ages, the anthropological question: what is man?

The choice is simple. Trueman makes it clear that there is no third route, no alternative. Many have tried, but all have failed. We must either embrace the reality of the Creator of the universe, along with His teleology, or we must go the way of Nietzsche. If we deny the former, we necessarily choose the latter, and in doing so, the madman becomes the only man among us with any sanity.

Review Written by C. A. Gerber

February 27th, 2026

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