Rod Dreher on America’s post-Christian culture war [CORRECTED]

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Vox Media Podcast Network

Society & Culture, News, Politics, News Commentary, Philosophy

4.6 • 10.8K Ratings

🗓️ 8 July 2019

⏱️ 112 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

[A quick note about this episode - we have fixed an error that caused some listeners to hear overlapping audio in the first portion of the show. Thank you for your understanding, and we're sorry for the issue] In 2017, Rod Dreher published The Benedict Option, a book arguing that America has grown so hostile to Orthodox Christian practice and morals that believers need to retreat into sealed communities to wait out the cultural storm. It’s a window into a mindset that is increasingly powerful in politics but befuddling to those who don’t share its premise: How have so many white Christians come to feel like America’s most persecuted class? Dreher writes about the monastics, but he lives the engaged life. He’s a senior editor at the American Conservative, where he writes a popular blog confronting American politics and culture from an Orthodox Christian perspective. I asked him on the show to try to see the world through his eyes and better understand some of the debates splitting the country. How can a country so suffused in Christian culture seem so hostile to Christians? Why does the Christian right focus so much on sexuality rather than poverty, lust rather than greed? How can a religion built around such radical openness to strangers embrace Trump’s approach to borders and migrants? What is the line between protecting religious liberty and accepting widespread discrimination? And do blogs like Dreher’s, which trawl the culture for the stories meant to make Christians feel persecuted and appalled, just drive a deeper wedge into our politics? Dreher is thoughtful, eloquent, and open, and this is a conversation that left us both questioning some premises. A lot of the points we differ on can’t be settled by debate, but that doesn’t mean there’s no room for understanding. Book recommendations: The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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1:06.0	There is going to be no peace in a culture war. I completely concede that religious conservatives, social conservatives have lost the culture war.
1:14.0	The other side is just bouncing the rubble and it seems that they will not be satisfied until they grind my side into the dirt.
1:34.0	Hello and welcome to the Zorklanshow on the Vox Media Podcast Network.
1:38.0	I've been exploring recently this idea that has become central among many Christian conservatives that America is a post-Christian society,
1:45.0	and that within that post-Christianity, Christians and particularly white Christians of a conservative inclination are becoming persecuted.
1:52.0	They are the persecuted ones and in certain ways politics is no longer available to them.
1:57.0	They are being written out of polite society, sort of the only thing that will not be tolerated is their views.
2:03.0	I talked a bit about the demographics of this change, sort of what is underlying it in the Robert Jones episode behind the Panic in white Christian American.
2:10.0	I do recommend listening to that. I think that's a pretty important context for this conversation.
2:15.0	But this conversation was about what it feels like. And I think it's particularly important to listen to it if it makes no sense to you at all.
2:24.0	If you hear the idea that Christians are the persecuted ones, that American society is changing against them,
2:30.0	and you think that just sounds like nonsense, like what could be a more privileged position than the white in Christian,
	...

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