Posted on: April 15th, 2007 Benedictine Crunchy Con?
I had the joy and honor of hanging out with Rod Dreher yesterday at a conference in Indianapolis. I have yet to read his Crunchy Cons (but I have read the book which seems like original voice of which this book is the echo, Bobos in Paradise by neocon David Brooks). Rod’s wife, Julie, is an old friend of Bouquet’s and mine from the University of Texas.
The primary discussion I had with Rod was basically, "In just what sense are you a conservative, and why do you like to think of yourself as a conservative?"
The next time I speak with him I also want to ask him if, in light of his conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy, he considers himself an evangelical.
I also wonder if crunchy conservatism is anything more than another in a long string of "special interest," demograpic permutations of our postmodern, radically pluralistic culture. (It is the subtitle of the book which makes me wonder about this.)
Suffice to say that I am thrilled to meet Rod and consider him to be one of the best Christian leaders around. Thanks be to God.
The most radical, and the most encouraging, part of his lecture was about the Benedictine approach to community building, something which he also discusses in his book, and something about which I will be blogging in the near future.
