Crunchy Muffin
Thanks to Jon I found out about a discussion raging about Rod Dreher’s new book, Crunchy Cons, at National Review Online. Because Dreher and his wife homeschool and the title mentions “hip homeschool mamas,” I emailed the link to Izzy, who graciously posted it with a link to me, and who dug up this interesting interview with Mr. Dreher.
Put on those biblical worldview goggles (making sure to insert the specially-tinted reformed lenses, of course) and read the interview with the Roman Catholic Dreher who has some good things to say about why the conservative revolution is not doing anything to hold back cultural devastation, and may even be helping it along.
Some quotes:
I’d say that Crunchy Conservatism is nothing new. It’s a rediscovery of the kind of traditionalism espoused by Russell Kirk and Richard Weaver and others in the 1940s and 1950s. It’s a conservatism that values religion, family, and culture more than individual freedom and the free market. I’d also say it finds the overemphasis on individual freedom and economic liberty in contemporary conservatism inimical to much that we conservatives claim to treasure.
In terms of sound bites, I’d turn to the Crunchy Conservative manifesto on the back cover of the book: The institution most essential to conserve is the family. Beauty is more important than efficiency. Small, local, old and particular are almost always better than big, global, new and abstract. I’d also add that we’ve gotten to a point in our politics today where the left and the right are too quick to slap a negative label on a challenging or unfamiliar idea, so they don’t have to deal with it. For too many of us on the right, calling something liberal and making fun of it is a way of avoiding having to question our own prejudices.
And for those who reject the notion that “taking over” the corrupt and perverse cultural institutions that are busily polluting our society is a feasible solution to what ails us:
I think Alasdair McIntyre is right when he says that our culture has fragmented so much we can’t even agree on what right and wrong is as a community anymore. That can cause us to despair, but we need to look to what St. Benedict did when the Roman Empire broke down, retire to whatever our modern equivalent of monasteries are and try to rebuild culture, to not only preserve our religious, cultural and moral values, but keep them alive for a time when there is more cohesion in the culture.
My sympathy for that last bit ought not be taken to mean that I condone ostrichism. Actually, I think those who proudly wear their relativism on their sleeves are some of the most out-of-touch people I know. The real people in the real world that I inhabit may know all the names of the Simpsons and not one of the Ten Commandments, but many also know that they don’t like the moral decline they see and they often want real answers about how to stop it, not just mindless entertainment or hip music with “Christian themes.” Living large in your neighborhood and your church and your community means reaching out to give those answers with a servant’s humble heart. Pray for wisdom to know how to protect your family (and please don’t apologize for protecting them!) but also for how to reach those hurting and dying people with the water of life which is the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Meanwhile, we are definitely crunchy in many ways, though I have never worn Birkenstocks. Living in the country, avoiding Wal-Mart and McDonald’s (though we do occasionally darken the door of a Starbucks), homeschooling, no network TV or cable, local rather than central, and other curmudgeonly tendencies continue to mark us as strange ducks in this box-store society, but we stubbornly resist being put into any sort of box.
How are you crunchy?
March 8th, 2006 at 4:11 am
Chuck Colson’s commentary at pfm.org first alerted me to this term. Yup, I guess I’m crunchy….but I’m not sure which label would describe me since I dont wear Birkenstocks and my children *go* to school. However, I DO love granola and make my own! I did have the honor of taking a class (or two) from Russell Kirk, but I think I was crunchy even before that.
Peculiar in GA, Dana
March 8th, 2006 at 7:31 am
Hmm… We use a midwife, have had a homebirth, extended and tandem breastfeeding, no vaccinations, try to shop with local and family owned stores rather than corporate owned when possible, we use cloth diapers and cloth for momma, home school, prefer to use herbs, homeopathy, and other natural remedies rather than pay for expensive doctors visits and prescription medicines, we don’t trust the FDA, use alternative fabrics such as hemp, sling and co-sleep with our babies, and sympathize with those eco-warriors who aren’t afraid to use the earth but wish to be more responsible about it (though we believe their politics, science, and religion is often wrong). We aren’t afraid to shop at stores owned by pagen sinners, any more than most Christians shop at stores which willingly bow down to the States demand that they participate in the killing of innocent babies. We’ve become more willing to look at the bigger picture when deciding where to shop and what to buy, rather than just the price tag. I probably loath our “conservative” government just as much as the liberal hippie, though not for all the same reasons. And Lord willing, someday we will buy land and build our own home made from more sustainable and less toxic materials than the current norm and maybe even raise some animals.
March 8th, 2006 at 7:59 am
I don’t own Birkenstocks, but I would if they were a little cheaper.:)We make our own bread, homeschool, have more than 2 kids, eat dinner at home every night and we are all clueless on the latest music, TV shows and movies. So we would probably be classified as crunchy. We went without TV for a lot of years but recently got it for the Olympics. It has not been a suprise that now that the games are over we have no reason to turn the thing on.
I’m not for hiding in a monastery. The people around us need us to be a light, to reach out to them and be willing to live in this world with them. But I do see the need, of course, to be seperate. Most people see us as out of it. Our families think we are just wierd. We don’t apologize for protecting our children.
Kim
March 8th, 2006 at 8:15 am
We are crunchy because we (with 4 kiddos) put out less trash and more recycling than any other family on our street despite living in “Liberal Land” near the nation’s capital. We homeschool and eat at our own table 3 times a day with everyone present (except DH at lunch). I make 3 homemade pizzas every Friday night. My husband has 2 huge compost bins (and wants to start another!) so we collect all vegetable scraps in the kitchen. With the county’s OK, he also hauls the “deadfall” from the park across the street and splits in the back yard for our firewood. We don’t really need the wood for heat, but he loves to build a fire for “family movie(DVD)night”. We don’t have cable. We also pop our own popcorn in a saucepan with our own kernels and oil. We add finely shredded sharp cheddar cheese for flavor before serving.
I guess we are urban crunchy!
March 8th, 2006 at 8:31 am
We’re a little crunchy I guess. I used cloth diapers for all six children, we garden and compost, and we buy raw milk and eggs from a local farm.
March 8th, 2006 at 10:38 am
I hate labels of any sort. But if I must describe myself it would be similar to the way I like my yogurt creamy with a huge handful of granola. I’m in the world but not of it. Similar to the granola in the yogurt. God has put me here to live but I will never blend in.
March 8th, 2006 at 10:52 am
I read NRO regularly, so I was one of the people who emailed Rod Dreher after his original article, saying, “Me too!”
I live on the outskirts of a city, but I make most of our food from scratch (including bread, yoghurt, jam, pickles), grow all the veggies I can fit into our tiny garden, have a compost heap, gather wild food and berries (the latter mostly for wine – oh, and I homebrew as well!). We have no car – we used to walk everywhere, but recently we moved ten miles from my office, so I now take one bus and walk the last three miles (I work at night so they provide a taxi home). No TV for over ten years.
I would like to be even more crunchy – my dream is to be homeschooling SAHM on a rural smallholding, with a really big garden and livestock.
March 8th, 2006 at 11:25 am
I think I’m becoming crunchier and crunchier:) I wrote this last year
http://idylwild.blogspot.com/2005_02_01_idylwild_archive.html to kind of describe my outlook on the whole thing.
I am still convinced that the closer we can get to God’s design, the better off we are, so we aim for organic and all-natural whenever we can.
March 8th, 2006 at 12:28 pm
Our crunchiness: raw milk, home birth, Birkies, gardening, building a weird house, living in a very (conservatively) crunchy community! There’s probably more, but I guess I’d have to step out of my life in order to notice it.
March 8th, 2006 at 12:44 pm
Well, Birkenstocks are the only shoes I wear (I’m at an age where quality footwear and good undergarments matter), but I buy all my outer clothes at the thrift store or knit them. We do buy free-range/organic food as much as possible through a food co-op, and we buy from our local Piggly Wiggly two blocks from our house.
We try to buy most of what we use from the small, independent, local businesses, but we also shop over the internet and have seen the inside of Wal-Mart and Home Depot more than a few times! We walk to most of our destinations, and recently moved to “Mayberry” (a.k.a. “Smalltown,” Alabama) so that we could live at a slower pace and give our children a small-town childhood.
We are Christians who believe that we are to be salt and light and an influence on those around us, not cloistered away in a commune or monastery. We vote, but believe that local government is more important to our lives than federal government, so we try to meet and get to know those who want to represent us at the county, city, and eventually, state levels.
We homeschool. We watch some TV together as a family, but we prefer to read! We read blogs and use email, but we also like to write letters and ship packages and love to write letters to the editor of the small weekly paper, or thank-you notes to city employees who work so hard to make our lives a little smoother.
March 8th, 2006 at 3:27 pm
Some resources for the “crunchy” in you…
Free seeds-
http://www.wintersown.org/wseo1/Free_Seeds.html
Raw Milk Info
http://www.realmilk.org
Heirloom Seeds
http://www.rareseeds.com
March 8th, 2006 at 3:43 pm
I forgot to add that my last two births were homebirths with a wonderful midwife. I kind of forget that’s not considered mainstream.
March 8th, 2006 at 4:19 pm
Well, I suppose I am crunchy in that we have homeschool our children since day one, we attend a family intergated chuurch, daddy is totally in charge, we are traing our children to stay home until they are spiritually, financially as well as physcially mature. Our daughter will NOT go to college or have a “career”, but will instead learn to be an intelligent and industrious homemaker. Momma does not work outside of home, we eat mostly whole foods, hate eating out, and the women in our home only wear dresses. We hate Wal-Mart, love shopping at the local farmers market and live in a small home so we can afford to live on one income.
FYI…Carmon take note of my new blog address
March 8th, 2006 at 4:31 pm
“I forgot to add that my last two births were homebirths with a wonderful midwife. I kind of forget that’s not considered mainstream.”
LOL. Our two hospital births were due to God’s providence, though we had planned for homebirths. For our family homebirth is “normal” but in America it is very rare today, despite the fact that if we look outside ourselves, we would take notice of the fact that something like 90% of all people living were born at home.
March 8th, 2006 at 5:26 pm
If I was looking around for a label, I guess maybe I’d be conservative crunchy. We home birth, breast feed, homeschool, walk everywhere possible,recycle, shop as locally as possible, can often be found at U-picks, can, pickle and buy our meat from local farmers. We use herbs and homeopathy, chiropractors, acupuncture, try to wear natural fibers, and though I can’t afford Birks I used to wear them constantly, now I wear the most comfortable shoes I can find. I bake bread and we like sprouts and tempeh. And I gladly shop at the best natural food stores I can, when I can, which isn’t often since we moved out of Portland. I am very proud of the fact that I have never been in a Walmart in my whole life!
(Though I have been to Target a couple times. I guess that’s about as bad.)
Though as soon as you pick up a label, people expect you to be consistent and so I guess I’d hesitate. I don’t use cloth diapers because my husband hates the way the diaper bucket smells. I have a small house and I just don’t have a good place to put it. We live in town and most of my garden is flowers. We don’t have any immediate plans to move to the country and I even kind of miss Portland. I like Oreos and Cheetos. So, there ya go. Maybe I’m just confused.
March 8th, 2006 at 9:17 pm
Maybe I represent a minority among us readers, but we use disposable diapers-bought at Sam’s Club(!) My husband frequents Home Depot, and I do appreciate the accessability of our regional superstore Meijer. We live in the ‘burbs of a big city, so I find that I have only taken my children berry picking on an actual farm once so far, etc. However, we do recycle, I labor naturally and nurse all our babies, I cook about all our food from scratch, we have a big bucket of wheat berries that are ground in our grain mill, and we’ve prepaid on some organic beef at a farm an hour north of the city. My husband loves his Birkenstock-like sandals, but they have a different name starting with M…?, and I aspire to finally have a vegetable garden this summer. I rarely shop at Target as they, at least originally, were owned by the ultraliberal Dayton family and contribute money to abortions. Kohls doesn’t give money to murder babies, so I do shop there quite a lot.
Speaking of abortions-It’s amazing to me that many animal rights activists, fighting to preserve the babies of endangered species, seem to be the first to promote killing baby humans. Mind-bogglingly preposterous.
March 8th, 2006 at 9:20 pm
Oh yeah-we homeschool and use chiropractic as well. I opt for vitamins and juicing before medications. I purposefully vaccinate our children, but this hot button was discussed on Carmon’s blog about a year ago
!
March 8th, 2006 at 10:32 pm
Mephistos, Molly?
http://www.mephistowebstore.com/normal.html
(My husband, who has chronic and often-debilitating foot pain {but does not have heel spurs} and has seen numerous doctors, has had MRIs and X-Rays, has had to wear night splints, has had excruciating injections, etc. bought some of these in an attempt to help his feet heal.)
And by the way, Molly, Target no longer gives to Planned Parenthood. If you need verification of this, contact Mr. Doug Scott of Life Decisions International.
http://www.fightpp.org/
March 9th, 2006 at 8:56 am
I like green jelly beans:) Does that make me crunchy?
March 9th, 2006 at 12:16 pm
Re-reading some of the comments, I think there may be a little misunderstanding of monasteries (just as some people think that strong Christian agrarian families with no TV are too separated from the world to have any influence). Yes, monks and nuns live cloistered or semi-cloistered lives, but monasteries are not places to “hide awayâ€: as a whole monasteries are meant to be a source of spiritual strength for the communities surrounding them and the people drawn to them. Rod mentions the Rule of St Benedict in the Godspy interview – Benedictine monasteries have an explicit apostolate of hospitality and there are constantly people coming to them and going away refreshed and edified (there’s one I go to regularly). Many orders run schools and hospitals. A Poor Clare nun founded the Catholic television network, EWTN. Many monastic orders have so-called “third orders†or oblates – affiliated people who seek monastic spiritual formation while living in the world. Even the most cloistered have had tremendous influence – a Carmelite nun who entered the cloister at age 15 and never, ever left it until her death at 24 became through her writing (and no doubt her prayers!) spectacularly influential. Monasteries are meant to be salt and light! I think Rod Dreher’s comments should be understood in this context.
March 9th, 2006 at 3:41 pm
Please don’t take this in the wrong way, ladies! I would just like to interject that I had my baby in a hospital (and God blessed the entire experience), buy my bread at Trader Joe’s, have never worn Birkenstocks, and watch “American Idol” with my husband. Does that make me not “crunchy”? Maybe not in the sense that this article means…but as a homeschooled, Christian wife and mother, I seek every day to be salt and light as God has called each of us to be. So if “crunchy” means, as one lady put it, “In the world but not of it. Similar to the granola in the yogurt,” then, yes, I am (by God’s gracious hand) crunchy.
I think I prefer “salty”, though.
March 9th, 2006 at 6:58 pm
Dear Kate,
The point I was trying to make about being “crunchy” (a silly play on words taken from the granola-eating hippie subculture) is that many conservative and Christian people don’t fit into a box…many of the things they do may be what are considered “liberal” by others. There is a definite trend among Christians to more carefully evaluate why we do what we do, and to live more “simple, separate, and deliberate lives to the glory of God and the building of His kingdom.” This is part of a desire to be salty as we take every thought captive.
The homeschooling movement is an outgrowth of this, and the same desire to be in charge of our children’s education has led people to ask what other things in their lives they might change, rejecting the pre-packaged culture that society insists is important and being willing to create a family culture as people once did. Different people will be convicted differently in this area. We recently got rid of our Tivo as we became frustrated with the barrage of garbage (you can rhyme those words if you wish
) that it brought, even on the “old” movie channels. We have better things to do with our time. There are so many distractions in today’s society which vie for our time, attention, and can even be harmful to our children’s souls if we aren’t careful.
Of course, baking bread and having babies at home is not a mark of personal holiness! But everything we do is to be done to the glory of God, and as we live in this world we might ask how our families can best use our precious time and our resources to build a culture of righteousness, in every area of our lives, to pass on to future generations. Gracie bakes bread for our family because it’s healthy and cost-effective for our large crowd. Sometimes I buy bread at Trader Joe’s, too
. I have babies at home because I’m concerned about the intrusive nature of hospitals (having had several hospital births) and because I think that home is generally a safer place for a normal birth. Not everyone agrees with this, and that’s fine.
One way I’m crunchy is that I believe Christian homes can and should be centers of productivity and ministry. This is saltiness at its best! Crunchy and salty go well together, don’t you think
?
March 9th, 2006 at 7:53 pm
Kate… everything that Carmon said, and we shop at Wal-Mart, eat at McDonalds and microwave many of our meals, I couldn’t cook a loaf of bread or grow a garden for anything and my children watch way too much tv. As I said previously, I have had two hospital births and they were the last two, not the first – it was God’s providence and we gladly went when complications arose. One of the reasons we don’t vaccinate is because of the severe reaction my husband had to them as a child. According to the true “crunchy” momma’s and their lists of do’s and do-not’s, I don’t qualify and neither do the vast majority of other women I consider “crunchy” because we might use a stroller sometimes, or a crib or a pacifier or circumcise our sons or spank. When I use the word “crunchy” it is only laughingly because after the birth of my son at home, my friend who is an OB called me “granola” and it is often assumed that many of my lifestyle choices, which are become more common in the Christian community, are made only by grungy, strung out, hippies who don’t have much money or education.
March 9th, 2006 at 10:55 pm
I am a big crunchy wanna-be. LOL! My husband was raised very liberal and he seems to be the most rebellious over it all now so I have to tone things down a bit. I am trying to introduce some of my wacky ideas a little at a time. If I had my way I’d do the organic gardening, more vegetarian meals (with the big juicy steak from a happy raised beef occasionally!), and other crunchy things. Of course, I admit some of it is a lack of a good work ethic. Gardening is hard work and it’s hard to be a lazy crunchy con.
I’m working on that.
March 9th, 2006 at 11:11 pm
Oh, and Kate, I’ve only had hospital births too but if my daughters ever want homebirths, I’ll be in full support. (But I’m a music snob and I cannot stand American Idol. LOL!) I do LOVE to make bread when I’m not being lazy but I can’t afford good Birkenstocks. Walmart is strongly avoided but not completely banned necessarily – McDonalds too. There is homemade granola in my cupboard right now and I’ve been buying free trade, organic coffee lately. That’s pretty crunchy and that alone probably makes up for liking hospital births.
March 9th, 2006 at 11:25 pm
Guess what we’re having for breakfast tomorrow?
Mini muffin #3 made granola for the munchkins. Easy to make and much less expensive than store-bought. Anyone want the recipe?
March 10th, 2006 at 3:36 am
I would love to see your recipe for granola. I posted mine, too. Perhaps they should be added to the prairiemuffin cookbook site
March 10th, 2006 at 11:53 am
Oh, and Cheryl, I must say, it was a relief to hear a ballad sung on the show last Wed. Although the other singers (and songs) make for a lot of jokes and mirth in the evenings!
Recipes are *always* welcome.
March 10th, 2006 at 3:07 pm
We make homemade granola, but it’s instant, practically, as it’s made on the stove top and done in minutes. does that count?=)
June 2nd, 2006 at 10:31 am
As crunchy as it gets. For baby, or should I say, 4 babies, cloth diapers, safety pins, rubber pants, breastfeeding, bottles, spanking, etc. I think you get my point. Recycling, reusing, reducing, etc. Hippy style, I think so.
June 2nd, 2006 at 11:24 am
Hi, Debbie!
I’m reading Dreher’s book now. It doesn’t have much I didn’t already know or think about, but I’m enjoying it. I’m more of a homeschooling “purist” than he is, and I don’t agree at all with his simplistic analysis of the so-called global warming threat (esp. since we are friends with Dr. Arthur Robinson, who has written extensively on the junk science behind the scare), but he has some lucid thoughts about thinking through what our goals should be for our families and the inevitable consequences of modern lifestyles.