Here’s a link to an interview I did with Jason Sorens, founder of the Free State Project, a kind of Benedict Option for libertarians he leads in New Hampshire. Excerpt:

RD: You Free Staters already have people on the ground. I’m trying now to identify people around the country who are already living out a version of the Benedict Option. I’m meeting young Christian agrarians, classical educators, and others who not only have an argument but more importantly have a story to tell. They’re incarnating this ideal now. They’re happy, hopeful people, not miserable Bible-thumpers holed up in a bunker waiting for the end.

The thing is, so many of us today are being terribly damaged by growing up without roots of any sort, or any sense that life has a transcendent purpose, meaning, and direction. We have to get outside of our heads, and relearn that the narrative modernity hands us is not the last word, nor even the most persuasive word.

JS: That sense of ultimate, perhaps even transcendent, purpose has been vital to the success of the Free State Project as well. Those who have moved so far generally have a keen sense of justice and of the potentially historic significance of what they’re doing. People aren’t giving tens of thousands of volunteer hours a year just to better their own condition. They want to see everyone enjoy more freedom.

My guess is that, like the FSP, Ben Op communities will work best when they are not strongly hierarchical and are at least somewhat polycentric. Most people fear the commune lifestyle, and for some good reasons. Again, you can bring together a generous “salting” of committed Christians into a particular neighborhood in order to live a life more fully dedicated to God without cutting off from the modern economy or evangelism.

Mormons have done this in Utah. And while Christians will disagree with many Mormon doctrines, the evidence suggests that Mormons have done an excellent job of building communities, educating their own, sustaining their own numbers, and helping the poor. Utah is a really nice place to live. Real poverty is low, crime is low, and social isolation is low, especially if you are Mormon. But the vast majority of them don’t live in separatist communes. If anything, I wish Utahns would do more to assert their political autonomy and cultural distinctiveness.