Rod Dreher is a strange man.
TAC:
“Now, what I found most interesting in Ehrett’s review, and definitely something I want to think about, is his argument that Christianity is really going to be a bystander in the coming clash between Progressivism and Atavism. You really need to read his review discussion of the idea, because I can’t do it justice by summing it up, and I want to think about it more deeply before I commit to a comment. Basically, he says that in our post-Christian civilization, the Alt-Right’s ideas, including of racial separatism, are going to mount the true challenge to Progressivism, and that the best the faithful church can do is stand on the sidelines and serve as a field hospital to care for the wounded. I hasten to add that this is not what Ehrett, a Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod) Christian, wants to happen; it’s what he sees as likely to happen. The churches cannot accept either “alien ideologies” of Left or Right, Ehrett correctly says, but it has to be prepared to be a “wartime church” to attend to the casualties to come. …
I’ve been very clear that Critical Race Theory and its various expressions are alien to Christianity. This is also true of whatever white-identity versions of the same the alt-right comes up with. Racism, whether it goes under a left-wing cover or a right-wing cover, has no place in the church. I believe, though, that the fact that left-radicals have seized all the institutions, and are pushing their ideology very hard, even violently — this is going to legitimize the same identity-politics evil in the eyes of many whites on the right.”
Rod Dreher has gotten better in recent years at developing some degree of historical awareness. He has recently admitted that he was raised on the “Dokka Kang had a Dream” racial liberalism in the 1970s. He took this nonsense for granted and assumed it was permanent. Surely, he knows that the life experience of American Gen X’ers is hardly synonymous with either Christianity or American history.
The idea that Christianity is incompatible with White identity and “racism” flies in the face of American history. White identity was normal for three centuries in the United States. America was a White Man’s Country. This was the dominant mainstream view until the post-World War II era. The American was White, Anglo-Saxon (in culture), Protestant and liberal and republican in principles. Millions of Americans were uncomfortable with Catholicism and even less comfortable with the idea that non-Whites were Americans. The vast majority of Americans once agreed that America was a White Christian country. While it is true that they believed in liberal and republican principles, it is also true that this country had a racial, religious and cultural character until World War II, which was preserved in law and custom. This ethnocultural foundation was only dismantled by liberal elites in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.
The idea that America is really based on nothing but the “American Creed” is a post-World War II vision that was fulfilled by the Civil Rights Movement. The Swedish social scientist Gunnar Myrdal developed this false opposition between the “creed” and ethnicity in his 1944 book An American Dilemma. Americanism was deracinated and turned into nothing but abstract creedal liberalism in order to fight the Soviets in the Cold War. The postwar consensus – liberalism, modernism, cosmopolitanism and antiracism – frames what Rod Dreher believes is “Christianity.” Of these four doctrines, liberalism is the oldest while the other three only became culturally ascendant in the 20th century. The Founding Fathers are currently being demonized by the Left for their lack of fidelity to antiracism which was invented in the 1920s and mainstreamed in the 1940s. America wasn’t founded on MLK’s Dream.
Does Rod Dreher believe that black identity is incompatible with Christianity? Is the African Methodist Episcopal Church compatible with Christianity? Is Korean identity incompatible with Presbyterianism? We have Korean churches in my area in Columbus, GA, Auburn, AL and Montgomery, AL. How can White identity be incompatible with Christianity, but not Korean identity or black identity? Does that make any sense? This isn’t because of “Christianity” which never troubled itself about “racism” for nearly two thousand years until the term was invented by communists in the 1920s. It isn’t because of liberalism either. It is because of modernism, cosmopolitanism and antiracism.
Rod Dreher believes in a timeless Christianity which has not been completely transformed by modern cultural trends. Was Christianity implacably opposed to “racism” and whiteness in 19th century America? How about 19th century Britain or 19th century Germany? Was Christianity always implacably opposed to German ethnicity or French ethnicity or English ethnicity or Irish ethnicity? To ask the question is to answer it. The truth is that religion and ethnicity have always been closely associated. Catholic France, for example, used to be called “eldest daughter of the church.”
The reason why Rod Dreher thinks Christianity is inherently opposed to whiteness, but not to blackness and supports the repression of whiteness, but not blackness is due to his own peculiar time in which multiculturalism is ascendant. A century ago, America’s liberal elites were just beginning to become cosmopolitan and modernist, but it wasn’t yet a norm. Antiracism certainly wasn’t a norm. White identity certainly wasn’t taboo. The Second Klan was a mass movement. President Calvin Coolidge could say, “Biological laws show that Nordics deteriorate when mixed with other races.”
White church, bad. Black church, good. White Christian, bad. Black Christian, good. As Rod Dreher has pointed out many times, this gigantic liberal, modernist, cosmopolitan and antiracist blind spot is why his own neighbors and even his family members have been uncomfortable around him and have switched to speaking in code at times. They look at Rod and think to themselves, “here comes Rod the sanctimonious city boy with his Modernist values. He will get offended by my real views. I can’t be too candid around this guy.” People like Rod truly believed they were “progressing” toward a colorblind utopia. It was always a delusion as anyone who drives through Selma, AL can plainly see for themselves. Rod was only “progressing” in the sense that he was steadily becoming deracinated like most White Americans. Blacks never considered abandoning their own racial consciousness at any point before or after MLK gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. No one else ever bought into “colorblindness.”
The difference between people like us and Rod is that we don’t believe the “mainstream” is legitimate. There was a time before the “mainstream” when White identity and Christianity flourished in America. Christianity has cratered under the “mainstream.” Why should we preserve these dumb taboos?
Deracinated conservative liberals who believe in modernism, cosmopolitanism and antiracism will respond by accusing us of … “identity politics.” There is nothing wrong with White people having a positive sense of racial identity though. This was normal throughout the vast majority of American history. It is WEIRD to be an antiracist, modernist, cosmopolitan like Rod Dreher and have this arm’s length relationship to your own people. It is WEIRD to think that only your own ethnic group is morally illegitimate. The charge of “identity politics” is conservative liberals whining about the unfairness of how the other side doesn’t uphold the consensus and warning dissidents not to abandon consensus antiracism.
I can’t stress enough how WEIRD this is … OR the absolute futility of conservative liberalism or conservative modernism or conservative cosmopolitanism. Mainstream conservatives like Rod Dreher are conserving all kinds of things which are inherently opposed to conservatism. We choose not to.
UPDATE: According to C. Vann Woodward, this was the Southern mainstream view on race in 1913.
Rid Dreher is one of those Vatican Eww heretics, who actually believe that the Post-Conciliar Church is NOT different from everything that went before it. In that, he is an outright heretic. His own hatred of his Race, is indicative that he hates Christ, who is the Consummate Adam of God- the White Race.
His idolatry of the non-White is a Mortal Sin which, coupled with the Bergoglian Anti-church, means that he is a foul cistern, no follower of Christ, of whom it was clearly said, ‘He will save HIS People from THEIR sins.’ Only His own people, and only Their sins are forgiven- the godless remain ‘in their sins’- from the Mischling Edomite Pharisees to the utterly damned N-word.
Every Church father and Protestant theologian except for the arch-heretics: Pelagius, Arminius, Wesley, Finney, and the Mormons up until the 1840’s, held to an Augustinian/Pauline doctrine of God’s Sovereignty and Man’s Total Depravity. Even Thomas has remnants of it.
But the false faith of the “Newchurch” of which Dreher is a member, is a godless husk. It is both Universalist, and therefore, Graceless. Anathema to them all.
“Preach the Truth as if you had a million voices. It is silence that kills the world.” – St. Catherine of Siena
Wesley believed that a man could renounce his belief in God, and, lose Salvation. That makes Wesley a heretic? Maybe in Augustine’s world? But, Augustine said a lot of things, and he may have been the world’s first African rapper, and popular with the Pope. LOL.
barely know who this (((NatRev))) cuck is. Christianity
was Christianity when it was explicitely
a.White, and
b. anti-Jew
now
it is completely Jew’d/ and thus
worthless to us.
Good piece!
Dreher is Orthodox. The Russian Orthodox Church published a document on its social concept several years ago that makes the explicit distinction between ethnic nation and civic nation and says ethnic loyalty and ethnic patriotism are good.
“The Lord Jesus Christ Himself, the Divine Founder of the Church, had no shelter on earth (Mt. 8:20) and pointed that the teaching He brought was not local or national in nature: «the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father» (Jn. 4:21). Nevertheless, He identified Himself with the people to whom He belonged by birth. Talking to the Samaritan woman, He stressed His belonging to the Jewish nation: «Ye worship ye know what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews» (Jn. 4:22). Jesus was a loyal subject of the Roman Empire and paid taxes in favour of Caesar (Mt. 22-16-21). St. Paul, in his letters teaching on the supranational nature of the Church of Christ, did not forget that by birth he was «an Hebrew of the Hebrews» (Phil. 3:5), though a Roman by citizenship (Acts 22:25-29).”
“II. 3. Christian patriotism may be expressed at the same time with regard to a nation as an ethnic community and as a community of its citizens. The Orthodox Christian is called to love his fatherland, which has a territorial dimension, and his brothers by blood who live everywhere in the world. This love is one of the ways of fulfilling God’s commandment of love to one’s neighbour which includes love to one’s family, fellow-tribesmen and fellow-citizens.”
https://mospat.ru/en/documents/social-concepts/ii/
“Dreher is Orthodox. ” He is, NOW. But he was an RC… and his faux catholi-schism has utterly warped even his basic understanding of what he thinks is ‘Orthodox’ in the Pseduodox American ‘Church.’
Yes, you quote the Russians. But the American Pseudo-dox congregations are merely “Protestants with Prosphoras,” and NOT TRUE ORTHODOX. It’s the outworking of Fr. Seraphim Rose’s comment: It’s such a tiring mess to catalogue, but merely understand that, according to Orthodox history, the American ‘Church’ (GOA, AOC, OCA, etc.) are all JUST AS MODERNIST as Rome, post-Vatican Eww. And therefore, merely a few decades away from Bergoglian apostasy. Think of it this way. Just as a certain ‘right wing’ person supposedly ‘converted’ to Orthodoxy, but now is utterly apostate (even having joined Antifa!) yet his statement is true, while his soul is false. That man? And his quote?
“Tradition is the antidote to the poison of Modernity” – Matt Heimbach
THAT’S the state of people like Dreher. They can quote the Fathers, they know all their metanias in church, but are empty of the ‘pnevma’- the animating grace of the Holy Spirit, because, like the Pharisees of old, they are severed from the VINE: “You do not know me or my Father,” Jesus replied. “If you knew me, you would know my Father also.” [ John 8:19]
You’d need to read a WHOLE LOT of Orthodox writings, to gain (as a Westerner) even a basic concept of how FOREIGN the whole [sic] ‘canonical’ Orthodox posturing is, in these disunited states….
Because, from that bitter root, we now have all kinds of ‘fruit.’ There now are ‘gay Orthodox’ and ‘ecumenical Orthodox’ and ‘pro-abortion Orthodox’ – all sorts of other HETERODOX ‘Orthodox’ out there..coming, NOT from the ‘Ethnics’ who are the old-calendarises, but from the Novus Ordo Cacodox! That’s why I call them, “Pseudo-dox.”
Franky Schaeffer (GOA) is merely another example of the Dreher ‘rush to safety,’ that yet didn’t ‘count the cost’ of associating with these LIBERAL jurisdictions, before jettisoning the ‘faith of their youth.’
Not that either Amillennial Calvinism (Schaeffer) or a polyglot post-Tridentine ‘Catholicism’ (Dreher) are much better… but there you are.
“The heretics were totally shipwrecked with regard to the Faith; but as for the others, even if in their thinking they did not founder, nevertheless, because of their communion with heresy they are perishing.”
St. Theodore the Studite, Patrologia Graeca 99, 1164
“This is precisely the means by which many, from of old, have been deceived and persuaded to follow those who have led them off the steep precipice of impiety; believing that there is some middle ground between the two teachings that can reconcile obvious contradictions, they have been exposed to peril.” – St. Mark of Ephesus ,Encyclical Letter
” Basically, he says that in our post-Christian civilization, the Alt-Right’s ideas, including of racial separatism, are going to mount the true challenge to Progressivism, and that the best the faithful church can do is stand on the sidelines ”
Wouldn’t be the first fucking time. See the Spanish Civil War.
Looks like the Left, with its Critical Race Theory, took that 1913 C. Vann Woodward statement and just changed Negro for White. Total mirror image.
As most commentators here know Dreher wrote “The Benedict Option” in which he saw society crumbling and suggested Christians should escape urban centers and form self-sustaining rural communities.
He cannot deny that what he is proposing is primarily about race without being dishonest.
People are always whining about “Christian Zionism” here in the US like it’s a new thing. I recently read Simon Sebag Montefiore’s “Jerusalem: The Biography” and it was actually a big deal back in the 1800s as well!
Whites should look at Israel as the model for a future White-majority ethnostate. I’ve been there and loved it. I’m not Jewish.
James Bong- “Whites should look at Israel as the model for a future White-majority ethnostate. I’ve been there and loved it. I’m not Jewish.”
That’s like saying Christians should model heaven after the Seventh Level of HELL.
The Modern [sic] Jewish state is a SOdom-friendly, shrill whining Bitch state, with a bunch of evil looking Golems of Satan pretending to be humans, while worshiping the Devil, and stating the fact quite clearly in their missives to the rest of the World…. oh, and they’re SUPREMACISTS on Steroids, too!
Sorry, but I’ll pass. And pray for the destruction of Jerusalem in my lifetime- just like Christ said we should, whenever the Deicides prosper.
You should go there and check it out. Yes, they have a big fag/leftie movement, but also a large religious movement (a vast belief spectrum); they are united by kinship, a unity forged under the shadow of war. Exhibits some strong fascistic elements – in the “Starship Troopers” sense.
Oh, Friar Tuck….you’re just a big hypocrite(like the Israelis themselves), but too dumb to realize it.
Yes Christianity and White Identity are a good match. However the Church stopped talking about race 100% and is now more and more liberal. The big thing that destroyed the Church was believing that God’s Chosen People are Jews. That destroyed the Church being focused on Christianity and caring anything about White People. All the End Times nuts cares about is the Jews oh the little Jews in Israel but care NOTHING about America. The Alt-Right / Nationalists are the only opposition vs the Liberals. The Conservatives and Republicans are more interested in cutting taxes and regulations than caring about White People. Just look at every Big City in America where Antifa and Black Lives Matter have destroyed since June. What has the Church done? Nothing but hide like always. What the Churches don’t understand is the Liberals aren’t just hating on the South and White People. The Liberals hate God more than anything and the Liberals will delete Christianity, Christians, and all Churches in the future if the Church don’t stop being cowards and join us. Deo Vindice !
Christianity, traditional and modern, is incompatible with a naturalistic Darwinian worldview. Christ called everyone to love one’s enemies and to never resist an evil man. The message of the gospel is for persons to deny their selfish desires in this world to reap benefits in heaven: the otherworldly realm for which there is conveniently no empirical evidence. Christ was a jewish rebel who sought to overthrow roman dominion in Judea through nonviolent activism. In many ways, he is similar to Jewish antifa activists who seek to end the US government. The Christian tradition of equality of all men before God, either spiritually or physically, evolves into an egalitarian humanism that denies basic differences among hominid populations. The woke concept of white privilege can be seen in the idea of original sin as the Frenches love to point out. The church will be nothing but a stumbling bloc that promotes a maladaptive moral system. This moral system involves loving the other or non-kinship group member as one loves one’s self. This altruism is pathological and was birthed out of Christianity. The person who takes the sermon on the mount seriously which is literally will never advance the cause of European survival.
Yet Europeans were most powerful when we were most Christian. Our greatest achievements were inspired by Christianity (Da Vinci, Caravaggio, Bach, Dostoyeksy, etc.) and/or by Christians (Volta, Faraday, Newton…).