Rod Dreher Is the Combative, Oversharing Blogger Who Speaks for Today’s Beleaguered Christians

By Karen Heller
Washington Post
October 29, 2017

http://www.bishop-accountability.org/AbuseTracker/goo.gl/Sbwq7A

Rod Dreher’s life is an open book. Several, actually. “The Little Way of Ruthie Leming,” about his late sister. “How Dante Can Save Your Life,” about his love of the Italian poet. His latest, “The Benedict Option,” is a call to beleaguered Christians to divorce themselves from the increasingly secular American mainstream.

But really, every work by this conservative Christian writer is a literary act of confession, a quest for purpose and a purge of disillusionment. An influential and prolific blogger for the American Conservative — he averages 1.3 million monthly page views on his blog — Dreher is credited with helping introduce J.D. Vance of “Hillbilly Elegy” to a larger audience. He founded the “crunchy con” ideology — another book, back in 2006 — wedding cultural and moral conservatism with an organic, co-op-and-Birkenstock lifestyle.

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He was raised a “Christmas-and-Easter Methodist,” but yearned for more faith in his life. He became a devout Catholic, converting in 1993.

But the priest sexual-abuse scandal wrecked him, “like having my faith pulled out of me by my fingernails.” In 2006, he and his family joined the Eastern Orthodox Church.