I’ve been reading and re-reading this review of Dreher’s latest because it clarifies so many of the challenges and opportunities in the current state of the christian right.

Those who have ears, let them hear.

@toddgrotenhuis I’m having trouble, after several readings, not seeing Thompson's Cardus article as based on two mistakes:

1. Conflating Dreher's "day job" AmConMag blog with the book. (That blog has become very shrill; Dreher has started an independent Substack that's more edifying and, I hope, more reflective of his inner state.)
   
2. Thinking that everyone should have as their top concerns his top concerns, 24 x 7 x 365, and should not write books about anything else.

@ReaderJohn

1) gotcha, that makes a lot of sense to me

2) I see the opposite. Dreher's continued siege mentality doesn’t fully acknowledge other problems of the world, and Thompson's does. Thompson has a topic he's most focused on, sure, but it's not a filter that excludes other perspectives and knowledge, and doesn't inhibit other work. Dreher's does. Here are some of Thompson’s comments on that distinction:

“What I do intend, however, is to note the extraordinary narrowness of Dreher’s horizon of victimization.”

“In Dreher’s telling, the only victims of our heated public square are cultural conservatives like Dreher himself. They are the ones, it is alleged, who are living under a regime of terror.”

“Not only does Dreher—through valorizing himself and vilifying his enemies—claim the status of the noble victim, he does this while denying the victimization of other people.”

“The sad truth is that for Rod Dreher, when suffering happens to his enemies, he dismisses it by calling it “oppression.” But when suffering—real or imagined—happens to him or his tribe, he divinizes it by calling it “persecution.”

“My basic concern is that Dreher, like the American cold warriors before him, continues this essentially instrumental approach to the Soviet dissident tradition: evoking that tradition when it suits his personal cultural goals and setting it aside when it does not.”

“But, as with Dreher’s previous engagement with St. Benedict, his treatment of the dissident tradition struck me as strangely superficial, selective, and self-interested.”

“However, the most important—and I believe, telling—example of Dreher’s instrumental approach is found not in those whom he selectively evokes in his story, but in those whom he completely excludes from it.“

(Sorry this is long, I still don't see a good m.b mechanism for replies to show up as replies and not as posts)

@toddgrotenhuis

I happen to know that Dreher has several interests (for all I know, many interests) other than creeping persecutionism, including celebrating Walker Percy at an annual Walker Percy weekend that he organized around 2011. But he is employed at the American Conservative, a political journal, and his content mostly reflects that — to a fault for my tastes.

But it seems to me that Thompson's critique of LNBL (not Dreher's personality) is eisegetical: if Dreher doesn't write about X, Dreher doesn't care about X, whereas X is a really, really big deal. The real world, however, is full of bid deals.

Three of Dreher’s five books have reflected his interest in counter-cultural conservatism, outside of "movement conservatism." LNBL is a fairly large book about that — specifically, about preserving faith, of yourself and of your children, when living the faith gets really costly — but he didn't write an encyclopedia of all that's currently wrong with the world.

I defy Thompson to find a book that meets his implicit standard of writing about everything wrong with the world, let alone writing one.

Indeed, I defy him personally to write a book on preserving faith, of yourself and of your children, when living the faith gets really costly. But I'll try to forego accusations of his not caring about such things when he doesn’t.

(Dreher made his own response, which unfortunately does not cover him with glory.)

@toddgrotenhuis Something about LNBL must be resonating with you and Thompson that's not resonating with me. I think we’ll need to leave it there.