We have theology, and we have psychology, and we have philosophy, and we have, for some, Jack Daniels. But nothing quite works like stories.
Rod Dreher in “How Ordinary People Live Their Lives”
May 2nd, 2013
February 25th, 2013
Twice in the past few weeks, I’ve heard people who identify as Christians say, in all sincerity, that they didn’t see why anybody needs to go to church, that they can “find God” on their own. I hear some version of that a good bit. With that comes an entire worldview. It’s the complete liberation of the individual from any authority other than his or her own conscience and judgment. Outside an authoritative interpretive community in which one anchors one’s own understanding, the search for God really becomes a search for oneself, and the deification of one’s own attitudes and desires.
Rod Dreher in “The Past as Bathwater”
February 22nd, 2013
‘Look, Mom, I can detect oppression narratives in 19th-century New England literature while bringing myself to orgasm atop a pogo stick!’ the Allegheny liberal arts graduate can say, from the comfort of her parents’ basement.
Rod Dreher in “Lenten Observance At Allegheny College”
February 8th, 2013
The christening of Europe seemed to all our ancestors, whether they welcomed it themselves as Christians, or, like Gibbon, deplored it as humanistic unbelievers, a unique, irreversible event. But we have seen the opposite process. Of course the un-christening of Europe in our time is not quite complete; neither was her christening in the Dark Ages. But roughly speaking we may say that whereas all history was for our ancestors divided into two periods, the pre-Christian and the Christian, and two only, for us it falls into three—the pre-Christian, the Christian, and what may reasonably be called the post-Christian. This surely must make a momentous difference
C.S. Lewis, qtd. by Rod Dreher in “Danish Church Seeks Dinosaur”
January 29th, 2013
Nobody believes in a god because it is good for them, or good for society. If they do, they will believe in that god only to the extent that he or she reflects their own desires. A god that ratifies your own sentiments and sanctifies your own desires is no god at all, but a divine butler. This god certainly has no power to bind and instruct.
Rod Dreher in “The (Ever More) Naked Public Square”
November 2nd, 2012
It occurs to me that all the books I’ve bought to read on my iPad’s Kindle app will not be available to my children to read one day when they are grown, or my grandchildren, in the way that all the old books on the shelf at my mom and dad’s house are available to us.
Rod Dreher in “How You Like That Kindle Now?”
October 24th, 2012
I suspect that in whatever cold, dark, miserable, Gollum-y place she now inhabits, Ayn Rand is throwing up.
Rod Dreher in “Why They Crowned Mary Margaret”
September 16th, 2012
[T]h post-Enlightenment attempt to supplant Christianity with secularist orthodoxy has, on evidence of collapsing birthrates, failed to create a social system that can reproduce itself.
Rod Dreher in Crunchy Cons
September 14th, 2012
If you ask me, ‘small-o’ orthodox religion is the only kind that makes sense. A god whose commandments conform perfectly to the views and desires of an early twenty-first-century middle-class America is not God at all… To be blunt, a god that is no bigger than our own desires is not God at all, but a divinized rationalization for self-worship.
Rod Dreher in Crunchy Cons
September 11th, 2012
If the only contact a typical American Catholic has with Catholic teaching and thought is what he hears at mass, he will remain a self-satisfied ignoramus. It’s amazing how hard priests have to work these days to avoid saying anything of consequence from the pulpit.
Rod Dreher in Crunchy Cons
