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The Benedict Option
- A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation
- Narrated by: Adam Verner
- Length: 8 hrs and 24 mins
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Publisher's summary
The light of the Christian faith is flickering out all over the West. American churches are beset by a rapidly secularizing culture, the departure of young people, and watered-down pseudo-spirituality. Political solutions have failed, as the self-destruction of the Republican Party indicates, and the future of religious freedom has never been in greater doubt. The center is not holding. The West, cut off from its Christian roots, is falling into a new Dark Age.
The good news is that there is a blueprint for a time-tested Christian response to this decline. In The Benedict Option, Dreher calls on traditional Christians to learn from the example of St. Benedict of Nursia, a sixth-century monk who turned from the chaos and decadence of the collapsing Roman Empire and found a new way to live out the faith in community. For five difficult centuries, Benedict's monks kept the faith alive through the Dark Ages, and prepared the way for the rebirth of civilization. The Benedict Option shows believers how to build the resilience to face the modern world with the confidence and fervor of the early church. Christians face a time of choosing, with the fate of Christianity in Western civilization hanging in the balance. In this powerful challenge to complacency, Dreher shows why churches who fail to take the Benedict Option aren't going to make it.
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Clear, Careful, Considerate Confrontation
- By Celia on 09-10-12
By: Brian D. McLaren
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The Next Christians
- The Good News About the End of Christian America
- By: Gabe Lyons
- Narrated by: Gabe Lyons
- Length: 4 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Turn on a cable news show or pick up any news magazine, and you get the impression that Christian America is on its last leg. The once dominant faith is now facing rapidly declining church attendance, waning political influence, and an abysmal public perception. More than 76% of Americans self-identify as Christians, but many today are ashamed to carry the label. While many Christians are bemoaning their faith’s decline, Gabe Lyons is optimistic that Christianity’s best days are yet to come.
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Ok some good points.
- By Donna on 03-07-23
By: Gabe Lyons
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The Myth of a Christian Religion
- How Believers Must Rebel to Advance the Kingdom of God
- By: Gregory A. Boyd
- Narrated by: Art Carlson
- Length: 6 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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In this sequel to his best seller, The Myth of a Christian Nation, Dr. Gregory Boyd issues a clear call to manifest God’s beauty and revolt against evil—with Jesus’ life as our example. Passionate theology and practical insight combine to create a guidebook for simple, radical, Christlike living.
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A great sequel
- By Jim H. on 01-05-22
By: Gregory A. Boyd
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Medieval Wisdom for Modern Christians
- Finding Authentic Faith in a Forgotten Age with C.S. Lewis
- By: Chris R. Armstrong
- Narrated by: Jon Gauger
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Many Christians today tend to view the story of medieval faith as a cautionary tale. Too often, they dismiss the Middle Ages as a period of corruption and decay in the church. They seem to assume that the church apostatized from true Christianity after it gained cultural influence in the time of Constantine, and that the faith was only later recovered by the 16th-century Reformers or even the 18th-century revivalists. As a result, the riches and wisdom of the medieval period have remained largely inaccessible to modern Protestants.
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A splendid introduction to Medieval faith from an Evangelical perspective
- By Daniel on 03-07-20
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Atheism for Dummies
- By: Dale McGowan PhD
- Narrated by: Paul Mantell
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Atheism For Dummies offers a brief history of atheist philosophy and its evolution, explores it as a historical and cultural movement, covers important historical writings on the subject, and discusses the nature of ethics and morality in the absence of religion. A simple, yet intelligent exploration of an often misunderstood philosophy.
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Great topic...irritating narrator
- By Duke Playbent on 10-26-14
By: Dale McGowan PhD
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God Believes in Love
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- By: Gene Robinson
- Narrated by: Gene Robinson
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From Gene Robinson, the Bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire in the Episcopal Church, the first openly gay person elected (in 2003) to the historic episcopate and the world's leading religious spokesperson for gay rights and gay marriage, comes a groundbreaking book that lovingly and persuasively makes the case for same-sex marriage. It establishes a commonsense, reasoned, religious argument, made by someone who holds the religious text of the Bible to be holy and sacred.
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He nailed it!
- By Jamie on 12-27-12
By: Gene Robinson
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Eager to Love
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- By: Richard Rohr
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Francis of Assisi is one of the most beloved of all saints. Both traditional and entirely revolutionary, he was a paradox. He was at once down-to-earth and reaching toward heaven, grounded in the rich history of the Church while moving toward a new understanding of the world beyond. Franciscan Father Richard Rohr helps us look beyond the birdbath image of the saint to remind us of the long tradition founded on Francis' revolutionary, radical, and life-changing embrace of the teachings of Jesus.
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Richard Rohr Should Read Richard Rohr
- By Cloud Captain on 10-18-14
By: Richard Rohr
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Eraced
- Uncovering the Lies of Critical Race Theory and Abortion
- By: John K. Amanchukwu
- Narrated by: Calvin Robinson
- Length: 3 hrs and 53 mins
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Abortion and critical race theory are twin evils born of the same diabolical monster: racism. And yet, there are many in the church who want to call them good, even as America begins to unravel under their influence. In Eraced, John Amanchukwu Sr. dispels the myths surrounding abortion and critical race theory, and uncovers the Left's sinister plot to destroy the Black community and divide the church. Along the way, he brings to light important gospel truths to help all believers learn to think biblically about some of the most important and explosive issues of our day.
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Stark and eye opening
- By Jauncy on 01-14-23
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No Perfect People Allowed
- By: John Burke
- Narrated by: Tom Casaletto
- Length: 12 hrs and 36 mins
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How do we live out the message of Jesus in today’s ever-changing culture? The church is facing its greatest challenge - and its greatest opportunity - in our postmodern, post-Christian world. God is drawing thousands of spiritually curious “imperfect people” to become his church - but how are we doing at welcoming them? No Perfect People Allowed shows you how to deconstruct the five main barriers standing between emerging generations and your church by creating the right culture.
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No Perfect People Allowed
- By Robin on 04-19-09
By: John Burke
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Speaking of Faith
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In this illuminating story of her life and conversations, the host of public radio's Speaking of Faith describes her journey of spiritual exploration - a journey shared by countless others.
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Clarity of Faith
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By: Krista Tippett
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Strange Gods
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In this original and riveting exploration, Susan Jacoby argues that conversion - especially in the free American "religious marketplace" - is too often viewed only within the conventional and simplistic narrative of personal reinvention and divine grace. Instead, the author places conversions within a secular social context that has, at various times, included the force of a unified church and state, desire for upward economic mobility, and interreligious marriage.
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Our own fabrications
- By David E. Felker on 01-03-17
By: Susan Jacoby
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History
- By Theotician on 02-15-19
What listeners say about The Benedict Option
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Adam Shields
- 04-20-17
Framing is wrong. But not all bad
There have been so many good reviews and helpful critiques of The Benedict Option that I know I am not going to bring anything new to the discussion. But this is the internet and so I am going to critique it anyway.
Andy Crouch has a post about the problem of the reaction to the Benedict Option is that 90% of the complaints are about 20% of the book (increasing social and cultural hostility to the church). While 80% of the book is devoted to the problems of a lack of meaningful discipleship and how that is causing a collapse of Christian belief and practice and only 10% of the buzz about the book is reacting to that much bigger claim. This is largely true. The problem is that the 20% that is getting the strongly negative reaction fundamentally sets the stage for the 80% of the book that I think is more important. Because the assumptions are wrong, I believe the answers given are then wrong, or at least fundamentally flawed.
It is hard to completely describe what the Benedict Option is. Because after 10 years of Dreher writing about it, he still seems to say that the project as described by almost anyone else other than himself misses his point. At the very least, the Benedict Option is a means of refocusing the church on discipling the young (in both age and Christian maturity) so that they can better stand up to the cultural currents of the age that seek to unmoor Christians from true (small o) orthodox faith.
There is much to agree with in that minimal description of the purpose of the book. Every age needs to pay attention to the particular problems of the age that pulls at the church and attempts to harm the soul of the church. The problem with the Benedict Option as conceived is that he both thinks that our current age has more particular problems to unmoor the church from Christ and that he identifies threats posed by same sex marriage and acceptance as the central part of that threat (as opposed to what I think are probably more important threats like consumerism, individualism, racism and dismissal of the other, etc.).
James KA Smith particularly has called out Dreher for his alarmism. And after initially complaining about the attack, Dreher embraced the label during his book release panel discussion (which is worth watching if you have 2 hours.) The problem is that the alarmism is overblown, even if Dreher thinks he is a voice shouting into the void, I am completely turned off by quotes like this,
“The light of Christianity is flickering out all over the West. There are people alive today who may live to see the effective death of Christianity within our civilization. By God’s mercy, the faith may continue to flourish in the Global South and China, but barring a dramatic reversal of current trends, it will all but disappear entirely from Europe and North America.”
The church is not going to disappear in this life time. And saying that it is, missed our reliance on Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit for the stability of the church. Yes, we should think about how to best disciple people into Christian faith. Yes, we should pay attention to the weakness of our current age. No, we should not fear and end to the church in this or any other age. (After all the church lived through the fall of Rome, the persecution of Muslims and Mongols in the East, colonialism, slavery and the Civil War and Jim Crow in the US and a whole host of other significant internal and external forces that threatened to tear it apart.)
Dreher’s focus is on small and local. That is good. Our age has a tendency to want to be big and efficient in its response to problems. Mass evangelism, large (often government led) poverty and disaster relief, and political or cultural backlash are just a few examples of where we tend to go big. The problem is that Dreher focuses on the nuclear family as the center, not the church. He identifies threats to the family from same sex marriage and economic pressures as a result of taking theological positions against same sex marriage as a center point of that threat, so again, he seems to miss the answer because he misidentifies the problem.
I do think he is right that we need to help people think differently about how to be community and how to live as a family in counter cultural ways. Consciously choosing to take lower paying jobs so that we can be more active in our community or so that we can care for aging parents or so that we can illustrate good family life is to be encouraged. But we should be encouraging that type of counter cultural behavior out of love of neighbor, not fear.
I am not sure anything illustrates my frustration with the book more than his section on education. He calls for a completely withdrawal of Christians from public education because public education is, ‘neither rightly orders, nor religiously informed, nor able to form an imagination devoted to Western civilization.’ And he thinks that most Christian schools are no better and in some ways may be worse because they can inoculate children to the real gospel. The best method of education in Dreher’s opinion is Christian Classical education, and if you can’t find a local Christian Classical school or coop in your area, or you can’t afford it, then home schooling is an acceptable alternative.
As you likely noticed, part of Dreher’s objection is to a lack of focus on Western civilization within public schooling. This is another example of the problem of the book. It is more focused on the lack of strength of historic western culture than on upholding the church universal. That focus on historic western culture I think is at least partially responsible for the biggest hole in the book, the Black Church. Dreher spends a fair bit of time interviewing people and traveling in Europe (both east and west) and looking at what has and has not worked in Europe’s church. And largely I think that the look at Europe is helpful, although there are different cultural trends that were at work in Europe than in the modern United States (communism, a reaction against the church as a state power, the devastation of two world wars, etc).
But if the problem that Dreher thinks we are facing is a lack of cultural authority, the need to organize our lives differently because we may be economically ostracized, and that we may be politically alienated because of who we are, then the Black church is an example in this culture of someone that has gone before us and can show us the way based on their previous experience. However, the Benedict Option has not a single quote or story from an American person of color, in spite of the fact that this absence has been noted for years in response to Dreher’s blogging about the Benedict Option.
My first example would be John Perkins and the Christian Community Development Association. John Perkins has been focused on local efforts, local economic empowerment and conservative political and cultural values. He has stood up to powerful community discrimination and recreated alternative institutions when necessary and worked with local government and culture when possible. Essentially, I can’t think of someone that more embodies a positive view of the Benedict Option as I understand that it can be than John Perkins. Which has been noted by Matt Loftus and others. Jamar Tisby rightly notes that it is hard to take the Benedict Option seriously if you cannot start by learning from those (African Americans) that have gone before.
One final example of how Dreher’s view on education illustrates my problems with the book is that it shows a difference is understanding of the concept of Common Good. As a Christian, I think that while I have a unique responsibility toward my children because they are my children, I do not have a particular responsibility toward my children in a way that excludes my concern for the children of my neighbors. Dreher hints at agreeing with this in a number of places, but overwhelmingly the illustrations within the book dismiss the concerns with common good.
The way that the church should be known a positive conception of caring for the other. Slightly altering Jesus’ statement, what good is it if you care for other Christians and support them only, even pagans can care for their own. I do think that Dreher is right that we as a culture have lost the value of religious freedom. But the real problem is that the church as a whole has lost the value of religious freedom for those that are not a part of the Christian church. Part of the problems for Russ Moore right now in the SBC, is that Russ Moore has been advocating for religious freedom for Muslims in the US and some within the SBC view that as betrayal of his Christianity instead of important work of the church.
If we want to uphold the values of the church and disciple the young well, we do that not by internalizing our struggles and creating new institutions (although that may end up being part of our work) but by making caring for others and their concerns central to the way we disciple the young. We have a struggle to break out of culture. But the struggle is more about our individual cares and our relational isolationism than some unique cultural persecution that we are facing.
There really is more in the book that I agree with than I thought there would be after reading the first couple chapters. But the alarmism of the first section, which sets the wrong tone against the wrong problem, really does carry through the book. I think the vast discussion of the Benedict Option really has been helpful. But it should be clarifying of the problems of the conception of the church more than illustrating the way out of our current situation.
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- GJW Sr.
- 03-31-17
Wrong narrator, Right book.
This is an important text for Christians in the 21st century.
It's too bad the reader hammed up every sentence and tried to make every line inspiring.
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- David
- 12-21-17
Good ideas
Overall I like this book. It provides some background, some of which I believe is mis-applied (hence a 4-star rating) which is useful in tracking with Rod Dreher's thesis: The Christian church needs to establish protected strongholds to maintain the faith in times of cultural struggle and antagonism (my summary, not his). I believe Dreher has some good ideas, but misses the point that we can not isolate ourselves (Christians) from the world. Christians need to be able to understand and interface with the world while still maintaining their integrity and faithfulness to God, but we can't completely protect ourselves by segregating ourselves from the world. The key, which I think Dreher makes well, is that the Christian church needs to train and ground younger generations in the Word and its reliability. When they have that anchor, dealing with and witnessing to the world is both much more effective and also safer for those younger generations. Younger generations have more empathy and understanding of culture than older ones and that needs to be strengthened and used and not hidden away. Read and extract the good ideas and put them to good use.
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- Austin Barker
- 10-19-20
Alarmist, but not alarmingly so
This book has been on my list for some time, because I have been "accused" of pursuing the Benedict Option by friends. I guess they meant that I was seeking to surround myself with the type of Benedictine community Dreher describes. Guilty as charged.
I am a fundamentalist Protestant Evangelical, but I find a deep hunger for a missing liturgy in my faith tradition. I told my wife that I am craving liturgy, and like-minded community. I am not one to insulate myself from the broader population, but like Dreher recommends, I have for several years been trying to position myself to be better prepared to live in an increasingly post-Christian (and increasingly anti-Christian) culture.
His prescriptions were unsurprising and, to a lifelong homeschooler, not a stretch.
Get your kids out of public school.
Classical Christian education.
Build tight support networks by hiring and patronizing fellow Christians in business and commerce.
Forge alliances with people, both like-minded and not.
Reconsider materialistic reasons for employment decisions. Consider the value of manual labor and the trades.
These and more are Dreher's prescriptions for preparing for what he repeatedly calls "the dark days ahead."
I am not as pessimistic as Dreher, but I do see Christians being increasingly marginalized, and it is a short step from marginalized to demonized, then criminalized.
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- Robert N. Driscoll
- 03-18-17
Challenging but insightful.
A book that will fuel many important discussions among Christians. Dreher's realistic assessment of modern culture can tend towards pessimism, and in some ways it is a declaration that the war is over, we lost, and what are camps in the hills going to look like.
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- Andy_Becky
- 05-18-18
Poignant read for our age
This was an excellent book, though I did feel it got a little editorial near the end. Overall it was very entertaining and provided a lot of good information that was applicable.
The reader however was a bit too dramatic and I felt like his presentation was a little too theatric for most of the book. That being said this should definitely be a read for you to help you through this current age.
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- Kathleen
- 06-21-17
A must read for every Christian
This book delivers prophetic words that need to be heard by every Christian. The author is insightful in his assessment of the re-paganization of America and how Christians will be able to survive during the largest social experiment in history that eventually will cave in on itself.
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- Mark Grannis
- 10-23-18
95% Twaddle
I would never have read a third book by Rod Dreher except my book club keeps picking them. This time, I must admit that I do not know how he manages to keep making each book worse than the last. His “Little Way of Ruthie Leming” managed to make his sister’s illness all about him. After I finished his similarly self-absorbed book on Dante, I shut the cover and said, “Well, that’s it. The worst book in the Universe. The search is over.” And now this. Oy.
I can’t even list all the big problems with this book in a way that does them justice, but let me briefly describe three.
First, homophobia. I hasten to acknowledge that many people misuse that word by applying it to situations in which someone condemns homosexuality without any hint of fearing it. But this book struck me as literally homophobic. Dreher really contends that legal recognition of a right to gay marriage was the last straw that broke the back of Christianity in the West. Is it really plausible that something that has been quite common in every age could provoke catastrophe in ours? Or that the decisive difference is that we don’t judge others as harshly for it as Christians sometimes have in the past? Would more condemnation make us more Christian?
Second, Dreher is either a very bad reader of philosophy texts or else he is none too scrupulous in how he summarizes them. His attempt to co-opt the work of Alasdair McIntyre was the first to raise my eyebrows, as I happen to have reread that book just a month or two again, and Dreher’s summary bore little resemblance to the original. But Dreher was just getting started. He portrays the Enlightenment as a response, a reaction, to the European wars of religion, a search for a new basis for peaceful coexistence. Sorry, but that’s just not what Copernicus or Vesalius or Galileo or Kepler or Newton or Harvey were doing. Hobbes and Locke, maybe, but they were writing about politics rather than science, and that was only a small part of the Enlightenment. Also, Dreher says it actually all went off the rails several hundred years earlier, with the nominalism of William of Ockham. Huh. Who knew that Ockham was such a triumphant philosophical figure, sweeping away the realism and commitment to truth more characteristic of that lunkhead Thomas Aquinas, whom nobody read after the 14th century? I wish Siri could tell me quickly how many high schools and colleges are named after St. Thomas. I’m pretty sure there is not a single Ockham High. The alleged triumph of Ockham and his nominalism is pure paranoid fantasy parading as an informed analysis of the root causes of the Decline of Christendom.
Third, Dreher seems to have an unhealthy obsession with top-down control of individual behavior through the political order. Instead of diagnosing the problems in orthodox Christianity as a lack of connection with our Creator in all God’s transcendence, he says the problem is that we don’t know the rules and we don’t condemn people harshly enough for breaking them—and on this view the major problem with society today is that our laws fail to reinforce traditional Christian ethics. (Neither did the laws of Jesus’ time, of course.) Dreher similarly decries the decline of sacramental thinking not because it leaves us with less awareness of God’s presence but because it undermines our ritual. At each turn, he is obsessed with rule-following rather than love. This is the attitude of a compliance officer, not a spiritual guide. And it is this obsession with controlling behavior that makes the overtly political discussions in the book so tedious. Can he really fail to distinguish between recognizing gay marriages and attacking the Church? Mr. Dreher, sacramental marriage between a man and a woman is still perfectly legal. Stop writing as if the law now makes homosexual union compulsory.
Our society has big problems; our Church has big problems. The problems are much too serious to be solved by rabbit-hearted critics who counsel us to run for the hills just because men who were already having sex with each other can now be legally married. Contrarian paranoia may sell books, but what we need right now is courage.
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- Eddie
- 06-21-17
Live a Christian life
A good start to a Christian life. If you are not sure about what living in Christ's image in today's world looks like, this book gives you a pretty good outline and a sense of the right direction.
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- andrew
- 05-17-17
Not about the Rule of St. Benedict
Has The Benedict Option turned you off from other books in this genre?
No. I'll still listen to books like this, but I'll be more careful in what I purchase. I might have to start going to the library for books like this, or talking to church members.
Would you be willing to try another one of Adam Verner’s performances?
I can't fault the reader.
If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from The Benedict Option?
entire chapters
Any additional comments?
I wrote a MBA paper about the Rule of St. Benedict in business, and had wanted to read/listen to some more books about it. This book is nothing like what I used for reference material....this is an opinion piece that strays from the meaning of the rules completely.
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