Perhaps in the “growing inward and facing outward” formula, we need to focus a bit more, for a time, on growing inward: a more local, church-focused Christianity wherein faithful communities rediscover their heritage, clarify their theology, and learn to love their identity, however freakish that identity looks to the surrounding culture.
This likely means adopting the sort of engaged alienation that Russell Moore calls for in Onward, a call that “preserves the distinctiveness of our gospel while not retreating from our callings as neighbors, friends, and citizens.” It may mean we follow some iteration of what Rod Dreher terms the Benedict Option, which is not a “head for the hills!” retreat as much as a commitment to building a more historically rooted, non-forgetful Christianity where believers are less susceptible to the winds of contemporary culture. This option, as Carl Trueman recently argued, recognizes that the greatest priority in a secularizing society is de-secularizing the church.
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