Man, my own writing’s been bogged-down lately with I don’t know what internal dynamics of confusion and self-sabotage: a paper on the great Ralph Ellison I’ve been working on is taking forever. Some of that is a reflection of Ralph’s depth, but some of it’s just some kind of a funk. So apologies for the light blogging.

Anyhow, one blogger who’s been on fire lately is Rod Dreher, over at The American Conservative. Today he’s got a must-read piece on his “Benedict Option” idea. A taste:

People don’t want to hear it, but it’s clear that if you are part of a religious community that does not define itself strongly against modern secularist culture, you are all going to lose yourself in it — if not yourself, then your children likely will. It’s just too strong.

If you’ve little patience for reading about Alasdair MacIntyre, and how what he said about the Benedict Option relates to what Dreher makes of it, I can at least sympathize. But what you should read this piece for is the way Rod captures the sense, the worry, present throughout the late aughts and Obama years, but I think to a number of observers becoming particularly vivid over the last three years, that we are in a season of rapidly increasing secularism and abandonment of Christianity (and Judaism). I’m hesitant to use grand terms like “post-Christian culture” or “secular era,” but something does seem to have shifted. I’ve always basically agreed with the quote above, particularly intellectually, so that as a Christian I’ve always said “amen” to that sort of sermon; but worrisomely, it feels like I have to agree with it more strongly today that just a few years ago, and feels not like some intellectualized radicalism-longing idea I might take away from my luxury reading of guys like Kierkegaard, but like something that is just immediately obvious.

But what do you say?