Tag: Rod Dreher
-
‘Spotlight’ The News
Let me second Rod Dreher’s considerations of Spotlight in light of the Harvey Weinstein and Roy Moore sexual harassment scandals: It was even better than I remembered it. One aspect of the movie stood out in sharp relief: the way so very many people in Boston knew for years that there was something horrible going…
-
On Living in the Messy Middle
I can’t tell you how much I was nodding along to David Brooks’ column “What Moderates Believe”. The whole thing is quote-worthy, but here are some highlights: Politics is a limited activity. Zealots look to the political realm for salvation and self-fulfillment. They turn politics into a secular religion and ultimately an apocalyptic war of religion…
-
Saint Benedict in Technopoly
Perhaps it was because I had just finished reading Neil Postman’s 1992 book Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology when I started in on Rod Dreher’s latest, The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation, but I was detecting a subtle yet strong Postmanian vibe throughout the book. Then, when Dreher actually quoted Technopoly, I realized…
-
Crunchy Cons
In Station Eleven, survivors of a global pandemic and subsequent post-apocalyptic chaos decamp to an abandoned airport in Michigan and eventually establish a Museum of Civilization, comprised of assorted artifacts from life before “year zero,” when the pandemic paralyzed the world and rendered much of the stuff that had comprised their lives useless. The Museum…
-
Seeing In Black And White
Rod Dreher recently wrote about Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson’s comments about, essentially, how happy he believed Black Southerners were in the 1950s before the civil rights movement. To Dreher, Robertson’s comments demonstrate the power of narrative, of the stories we tell ourselves and how they affect how we see the “truth” of our own situations, even when…
-
Information In The Little Way
Rod Dreher, in his new book The Little Way of Ruthie Leming, writes about his sister Ruthie’s fight with lung cancer and about his complicated relationship with his family and small-town life in Louisiana. After her diagnosis, Ruthie told her doctors and loved ones not to tell her specifics about her condition, nor even how long…