罗德·德雷尔

Ray Oliver Dreher Jr. (born February 14, 1967), known as Rod Dreher, is an American conservative writer and editor. He was a columnist with The American Conservative for 12 years, ending in March 2023, and remains an editor-at-large there. He is also the author of several books, including How Dante Can Save Your Life, The Benedict Option, and Live Not by Lies. He has written about religion, politics, film, and culture in National Review and National Review Online, The Weekly Standard, The Wall Street Journal, and other publications.

Dreher was a film reviewer for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and chief film critic for the New York Post. His commentaries have been broadcast on NPR's All Things Considered, and he has appeared on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, Court TV, and other television networks.

Early life and education

Dreher was born on February 14, 1967, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He was named after his father, Ray Oliver Dreher, a local landowner, parish sanitation official, and member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Dreher was raised in the small town of St. Francisville, the parish seat of West Feliciana Parish north of Baton Rouge. He attended the Louisiana School for Math, Science and the Arts in Natchitoches, where he was part of the school's first graduating class in 1985. In 1989 he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in journalism from Louisiana State University.

Career

Dreher began his career as a television critic for The Washington Times and later worked as chief film critic for the New York Post and editor for National Review. In 2002, Dreher wrote an essay that explored a subcategory of American conservatism he defined as "granola conservatism", whose adherents he called "crunchy cons". He defined these people as traditionalist conservatives who believe in environmental conservation, frugal living, and the preservation of traditional family values, but are also skeptical about aspects of free-market capitalism. He portrayed "crunchy cons" as generally religious (typically traditionalist Roman Catholics, conservative Protestants, or Eastern Orthodox). Four years later, Dreher published a book expanding on the themes of this manifesto, Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, Gun-Loving Organic Gardeners, Evangelical Free-Range Farmers, Hip Homeschooling Mamas, Right-Wing Nature Lovers, and Their Diverse Tribe of Countercultural Conservatives Plan to Save America (or At Least the Republican Party).

From 2006, Dreher maintained a Beliefnet blog called "Crunchy Con"; the blog was renamed "Rod Dreher" in 2010, with a shift in focus from political to cultural topics. During this time, Dreher worked as an editorial writer and columnist for The Dallas Morning News, which he left in 2009 to become the publications director for the John Templeton Foundation. On August 20, 2011, Dreher announced on Twitter that he was leaving the Templeton Foundation to return to full-time writing. In 2013, Dreher published The Little Way of Ruthie Leming, a book about his childhood in Louisiana and his sister's battle with cancer. In 2015, Dreher published How Dante Can Save Your Life, a memoir about how reading Dante's Divine Comedy helped him after his sister's death. Dreher began writing a blog for the American Conservative in 2008; in 2017, the blog received on average more than a million page views per month.

In March 2023, funding for Dreher's blog at The American Conservative was withdrawn. According to Vanity Fair, the departure was prompted by a withdrawal of support for Dreher by philanthropist Howard Ahmanson Jr., who single-handedly funded Dreher's salary at the website in an unusual arrangement that also allowed Dreher to publish without an editor. Ahmanson had become dissatisfied with the tone of Dreher's posts, calling them "too weird", citing as the prime example a post where Dreher reminisced about a Black elementary-school classmate of his who had an unusual-looking uncircumcised penis that Dreher described as a "primitive root wiener". Dreher said he intended to continue blogging and might also contribute to The American Conservative with editorial oversight.

The Benedict Option

From 2015 to 2021 Dreher wrote about what he calls the "Benedict Option", the idea that Christians who want to preserve their faith should segregate themselves to some degree from "post-Obergefell" society, which he sees as drifting further away from "traditional Christian values" (particularly those regarding sex, marriage, and gender). Dreher says that Christians should try to form intentional communities, such as the Bruderhof Communities or the School for Conversion. The phrase "Benedict Option" was inspired by Alasdair MacIntyre's 1981 book After Virtue and refers to the sixth-century monk Benedict of Nursia. Dreher's book on the subject, The Benedict Option, was published by Sentinel in 2017.