Rod is available to speak on: Religion, Politics, Film and Parenting among others. Learn more »

Biography

Rod DreherRod Dreher occupies an eclectic place in the landscape of American political punditry. He is a social and religious conservative who is as suspicious of big business as he is of big government. He disdains the mega-mall consumerism uncritically accepted by many on his political side of the fence. Because he’s a traditionalist Christian, he believes that mankind has a sacred obligation to treat the earth according to the standards of good stewardship. He believes that family is the institution most important to conserve, and sees threats to the family coming from the Right as much as the Left. And though he usually votes Republican by default, he believes that neither political party understands the real crises in American life, which can only be effectively addressed by returning to faith, family and tradition. That, and good, honest food. The man does like to eat.

Rod wrote about his vision of authentic conservative countercultural renewal in 2006’s Crunchy Cons: The New Conservative Counterculture and Its Return to Roots (Crown Forum). National Review praised it as “a marvelous book: thoughtful, deeply personal, funny, energetically written.” The Wall Street Journal raved that the book is “a rousing altar call to spiritual secession from an America that Mr. Dreher sees as awash in materialism, consumerism, and ‘lifestyle-libertarian’ thinking.” And the Washington Times suggested that Rod “may be an outrider of the new counterculture.”

In his 18 years as a professional journalist, including serving as chief film critic for the New York Post and an editor at National Review, Rod Dreher has established himself as one of the most interesting commentators of his generation. His writing about religion, politics, film and culture have appeared in both National Review and National Review Online, The Weekly Standard, The Wall Street Journal, Touchstone, Men’s Health, the Los Angeles Times, among other publications. He is currently a columnist at The Dallas Morning News. Rod’s commentaries have been broadcast on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, and he has served as an analyst on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, Court TV and other networks. Rod also writes Crunchy Con, one of the most popular blogs at Beliefnet.com. He has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize multiple times.

Rod was born and raised in the South, and came to the Christian faith as an adult when he converted to Roman Catholicism in 1993. He wrote extensively in the Catholic press, but covering the Church’s child sex abuse scandal in 2002 and thereafter led him to a deep spiritual crisis, which led him ultimately to Orthodoxy in 2006. Though not bitter over his experience with Catholicism – and indeed profoundly grateful for all Catholicism gave him — the trial by fire led Rod to publish a long and penitent essay on his blog about what he discovered about the corrosive effect his own spiritual pride had on his faith, as a warning to Orthodox, Catholics and Protestants about what they stand to lose if they place their trust in princes, not Christ. That essay was widely distributed, even translated into other languages, and was praised by the leading Catholic public intellectual Father Richard John Neuhaus. He is a husband and father of three, and often writes about the need for Christian parents to be consciously countercultural to raise wise and healthy children in the mass media age.

Topics

In addition to speaking about themes in his book Crunchy Cons, Rod likes to talk about:

• My Abbot, My Dad: Why responsible parents must treat their homes as domestic monasteries when it comes to raising children in the media age.
• Islam and Us: As a former New Yorker who witnessed 9/11 with his own eyes, and who has personally seen the U.S. news media turn a blind eye to honest reporting about Islam, Rod will tell you what liberal journalists don’t want you to know about Islam – and don’t want to know themselves.
• Pride Goeth…: How one man’s love affair with the church helped him hide from Christ – and the danger that all Christians face when we place devotion to the external trappings of the faith before prayer, fasting and the practice of the presence of God.