“The culture war as we knew it is over,” writes the conservative Christian blogger and author Rod Dreher in his new book, The Benedict Option. “The so-called values voters—social and religious conservatives—have been defeated and are being swept to the political margins.” The election of Donald Trump, Dreher argues, is no solution. “The idea that someone as robustly vulgar, fiercely combative, and morally compromised as Trump will be an avatar for the restoration of Christian morality and social unity is beyond delusional,” he writes.
Dreher sees threats everywhere—secularization, individualism, changing sexual mores, a decline in religious liberty protections—and his diagnosis is grim. He writes that “we in the modern West are living under barbarism.” Dreher's solution is a kind of civic retreat.
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