Christianity Today’s Samuel James says that it presents a “surprisingly weak case.”[1] Southern Seminary’s Al Mohler offers a more favorable review: “I think it’s, if anything, an even more important book than The Benedict Option.”[2] Undoubtedly, these men put forward contrasting analyses of Rod Dreher’s newest book, Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents.[3]
I first encountered Dreherupon reading his book, Crunchy Cons, a delightful invitation to the classical conservative worldview.[4] Dreher is known also as an editor and contributor of the blog The American Conservative, as well as author of the previously mentioned Benedict Option.[5] Live Not By Lies explores the phenomenon of soft totalitarianism in part one (chapters 1–4) and practical steps to living for truth in part two (chapters 5–10). In this review, I will first summarize the book after which I will provide further commentary on some of its themes before offering a final analysis.
Summary
Dreher begins the book by introducing readers to believers who survived the horrors of communism. Their advice: Beware of totalitarianism. These believers, Dreher explains, see trends within our present culture that remind them of life in Eastern Europe before the rise of communism, such as the denial of free thought and true justice, and it gives them cause for great concern. Their unease is less about the hard totalitarianism of Big Brother as it is about the soft totalitarianism of Big Data.
Interacting with Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism, Dreher considers characteristics of pre-totalitarian cultures, finding that our own culture is ripe for the picking.[6] For example, one sign is the prevalence of “propaganda and the willingness to believe useful lies” (35), such as the (false) belief that white men founded the United States in order to preserve slavery (the 1619 Project) or that men are women (transgenderism).
Dreher observes that many in the United States have committed themselves to the pseudo-religious creed of progressivism with its “cult of social justice” (59). “Christianity and communism—which is to say, the most radical form of progressivism—are best understood as competing religions,” he says (56).[7] Regrettably, this trend is not limited just to people. Businesses too have followed suit with their surveillance capitalism, their woke capitalism, and their adoption of “aggressive social progressivism” into their policies and practices (74). Dreher mentions Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft by name. While these realities could undoubtedly get much worse in the future, these challenges evidence a genuine problem in the present.
After reviewing some the attributes of soft totalitarianism, Dreher shifts to consider how we can meaningfully respond to this concerning prospect. For one, we must value truth. In fact, that sentiment inspires the book’s title: live not by lies, an expression that he has borrowed from the Russian dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Do not simply go along to get along. “Reject doublethink and fight for free speech” (103). Second, cultivate cultural memory. The moral imagination’s exercise of historical, social, and cultural memory evidences an application of the fifth commandment: honor of father and mother.
Dreher then highlights three types of institutions that will sustain dissidents who are experiencing oppression. The first are family units, which he describes as “resistance cells” (129). Families offer divine gifts that a totalitarian order cannot give: true love, freedom, and dignity (131). The second is religion, the “bedrock of resistance” (151). “A time of painful testing, even persecution, is coming,” Dreher predicts. He recommends that Christians “dig deep into the Bible and church tradition,” because, “If you are not rock solid in your commitment to traditional Christianity, then the world will break you” (162–63). Third, Dreher points to the importance of learning to live life amid communities of people who share your beliefs and values. “The testimony of anticommunist dissidents is clear: Only in solidarity with others can we find the spiritual and communal strength to resist” (181).
Dreher ends with a chapter about suffering. Contrary to the sentiments of the majority culture, superficial unhappiness is not a form of oppression. The way of suffering is the way of Christ. Learn to suffer without bitterness. “Many of us find it difficult to be charitable to a sales clerk who is rude to us, or to someone who cuts us off in traffic,” Dreher writes. “Few of us would be able to love someone responsible for us losing our job, or worse, being blacklisted in our profession” (191). To be sure, the prospect of suffering—should it come—is not one lacking in hope. Hope is based in something substantial. Come what may, we are “God’s saboteurs,” standing for truth amid a world that would reject it.
Themes
Although many important themes emerge from Dreher’s book, I will comment only on two. First, his remarks about the “cult of social justice” are sobering:
The contemporary cult of social justice identifies members of certain social groups as victimizers, as scapegoats, and calls for their suppression as a matter of righteousness. . . . Social justice progressives advance their malignant concept of justice in part by terrorizing dissenters as thoroughly as any inquisitor on the hunt for enemies of religious orthodoxy. . . . For the social justice inquisitors, ‘dialogue’ is the process by which opponents confess their sins and submit in fear and trembling to the social justice creed (9–10, 59–60).
To be clear, Dreher distinguishes the traditional Catholic conception of social justice from the progressive one. However, it is this latter vision that characterizes the spirit of our age. Dreher argues that “Christians cannot endorse any form of social justice that denies biblical teaching,” whether abortion, same-sex marriage, or identity politics (65). Live not by lies.
The second theme I will comment on is that of memory. Dreher writes, “Christians must understand this not only to resist soft totalitarianism but also to transmit the faith to the coming generations. . . . Without collective memory, you have no culture, and without a culture, you have no identity” (113–14). Yes, the Christian’s identity is ultimately in Christ, but Dreher’s point, which is consistent with the Hebrew-Christian tradition writ large, is that Christ necessarily forms us within the context of particular cultures and traditions. “History is in the stories we tell ourselves about who we were and who we are. . . . History is culture—and so is Christianity. To be indifferent or even hostile to tradition is to surrender to those in power who want to legitimate a new social and political order” (126). Although soft totalitarianism peddles falsehood galore, it cannot finally make us after its own image if we would but remember. Again, live not by lies.
Analysis
I began this article by referencing two reviews of Dreher’s book. Christianity Today’s Samuel James asserts that reality is not as bad as Dreher makes it out to be, titling his review, “Contra Rod Dreher, Not All Signs Point to a Woke Dictatorship in America.” James argues that Dreher “makes a surprisingly weak case for an impending woke totalitarianism,” but then remarks that Dreher’s argument is “not without support” before finally saying that it is “not finally persuasive.”[8] By contrast, Mohler speaks to the book’s significance and identifies it as one that thinking Christians should read. My takeaway is more akin to that of Mohler’s.
Perhaps my issue with James’s review is his framing. Contra Samuel James, Dreher is not saying that all signs point to a woke dictatorship. Neither is he necessarily saying that woke totalitarianism is imminent. However, Dreher does take seriously the warnings (and advice) of those dear brothers and sisters who survived the hard totalitarianism of communism and who are saying that the signs of our time give them pause for concern. To that extent, Dreher’s book is an exercise in honoring our forebears and respecting our elders.
But surely there is something going on in our culture that is disquieting. More specifically, if the treatment of Ryan Anderson or Brendan Eich or J.K. Rowling or Abigail Shrier—as well as the myriad other victims of “cancel culture”—is any indication, these brothers’ and sisters’ warnings about the soft totalitarianism of the progressive left is not unwarranted. If Christians were wise, they would heed the advice of their spiritual fathers and mothers, preparing for what could come but praying that it does not. Or as I heard as a kid, it’s better to be safe than sorry.
Much within our culture prompts us not to live by the truth. Dreher’s message is straightforward and simple: Live not by lies. Undoubtedly, that will require conviction and courage and prudence. But it is all that the true Christian can do.
[1]Samuel D. James, “Contra Rod Dreher, Not All Signs Point to a Woke Dictatorship in America,” Christianity Today, December 21, 2020, https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2020/december-web-only/rod-dreher-live-not-by-lies-woke-dictatorship.html, accessed April 12, 2021.
[2]Albert Mohler, “Live Not By Lies: A Conversation with Author Rod Dreher about Moral Resistance in a Secular Age,” Thinking in Public, October 28, 2020, https://albertmohler.com/2020/10/28/rod-dreher, accessed April 10, 2021.
[3]Rod Dreher, Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents (New York: Sentinel, 2020).
[4]See Rod Dreher, Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature . . . America (or at least the Republican Party) (New York: Crown Forum, 2006).
[5]See “Rod Dreher,” The American Conservative, https://www.theamericanconservative.com/author/rod-dreher/, accessed April 10, 2021; and Rod Dreher, The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation (New York: Sentinel, 2017).
[6]See Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Schocken, 1951).
[7]See Phillip T. Morgan, “What Concord Hath Christ with Marx: Can Socialism and Marxism Be Christianized?” Helwys Society Forum, June 12, 2019, http://www.helwyssocietyforum.com/what-concord-hath-christ-with-marx-can-socialism-and-marxism-be-christianized/, accessed April 10, 2021.
[8]James.
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