Our churches are beset by challenges. From the outside, they are beset by a rapidly secularizing culture. From the inside, they're being hollowed out by the departure of young people and a watered-down spirituality. Many believers are blind to it, and their churches are too weak to resist. Those who notice are often frightened, and wonder what went wrong and what they can do about these trends.

The Benedict Option is a guide for Christians under siege - a strategy that draws on the authority of scripture and the wisdom of the ancient church. The goal: to embrace exile from mainstream culture and construct a resilient counterculture. In this visionary book, Dreher urges today's faithful to be new St Benedicts, building up local churches, creating new schools and taking up practices that can help them face today's world with confidence.

Horrified by the moral chaos following Rome's fall, St Benedict - a sixth-century monk - retreated to the forest and created a new way of life. He built enduring communities based on order, hospitality, stability and prayer. His spiritual centres of hope saved not just Christianity but Western civilization.

The Benedict Option is both manifesto and rallying cry for Christians who, if they are not to be conquered anew, must learn how to fight on culture war battlefields like none the West has seen for fifteen hundred years. It's for all mere Chris tians - Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox - who can read the signs of the times. Neither false optimism nor fatalistic despair will do. Only faith, hope, and love, embodied in a renewed church, can sustain us. These are the days for building strong arks for the long journey across a sea of night.