Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 321 ｜ Biblical Resistance to the Totalitarian Left ｜ Guest： Rod Dreher

00:00:00.000 hey guys happy monday oh my gosh it's the last monday before the election tomorrow's the election

00:00:17.100 are you guys nervous i'm nervous i'm not nervous about who's gonna win not that i know who's gonna

00:00:22.080 win because i i really don't i i really don't but i'm just i just have some nervous butterflies

00:00:29.320 going into the day because there's so much on the line and i'm just thinking about the reactions to

00:00:35.400 it and all the craziness that's going to ensue in the next few days no matter what the results are

00:00:41.160 tomorrow night my one prediction is that we're not actually going to know who wins tomorrow night i

00:00:46.640 hope that that's not the case i really do um but let's pray for our nation let's be in prayer let's

00:00:54.820 be in prayer for the pundits let's be in prayer for the journalists let's be in prayer for both

00:00:58.980 campaigns let's be in prayer for both candidates let's be in prayer for the church let's pray for

00:01:04.100 peace let's pray for unity uh i know that seems almost laughable right now but we have a god that

00:01:10.720 can do absolutely anything let's pray for calls to repentance let's pray for softened hearts to

00:01:16.620 believe in the gospel and to follow christ and let's pray that christians would come together and seek

00:01:22.880 the welfare of our country um and so i am even though i have nervous butterflies i am also assured

00:01:30.940 knowing that god is completely in control as we talked about on friday this conversation that i'm

00:01:35.460 about to have with author raj rare amazing person like i'm just so glad that he exists i am so glad for

00:01:42.080 the wisdom and the encouragement that he shares through all of his writing and i am so excited for you

00:01:46.940 to listen to this conversation i think it's actually the perfect conversation for you to listen to

00:01:51.440 before the election i think it just gets our perspective where it needs to be so without

00:01:56.860 further ado here is rod drear mr drear thank you so much for joining me oh it's a pleasure to be here

00:02:07.500 can you tell everyone who may not know who you are and what you do all right well i'm a writer i'm the

00:02:15.240 senior editor at the american conservative magazine but i'm also the writer of several books my latest one

00:02:20.840 is called live not by lies a manual for christian dissidents but previously i wrote the benedict

00:02:25.940 option i wrote a book called how dante can save your life and a book called the little way of ruthie

00:02:30.620 lemming i live in south louisiana in baton rouge with my wife and kids okay that is awesome um can you

00:02:37.760 tell everyone why you decided to write your most recent book live not by lies well about five years ago

00:02:45.480 i received a phone call from a physician whose elderly mother uh lived was living with him and

00:02:51.920 his wife and she had grown up in czechoslovakia under communism and had spent four years in a

00:02:57.260 communist prison for practicing her christian faith when she was young and she said son the things i see

00:03:03.180 happening in america today remind me of what happened back in my country when communism came

00:03:08.040 and i thought that was pretty alarmist you know i have an older mom who watches a lot of cable news and

00:03:13.920 gets really anxious about the world but ellie when i started talking to other people in this country

00:03:19.740 who had escaped communism and i would ask them are you seeing things that trouble you every one of

00:03:25.400 them said absolutely yes this left-wing uh social justice ideology that's rising reminds us exactly of

00:03:32.380 what we left behind and they get so angry that americans especially american christians aren't taking

00:03:39.160 them seriously can you talk about some of those examples specifically what are they seeing that

00:03:45.340 reminds them of the rise of communism and their uh former countries right well the main thing they're

00:03:53.200 seeing is a rise in the institutions of this country of a militant left-wing ideology that will

00:04:00.360 complete it is completely intolerant that will not allow you to dissent in any way that seeks to

00:04:06.620 cost you your job and your reputation if you don't toe the line uh one man told me that because the way

00:04:14.820 things happen now how fast the the line moves when something you say one day could be acceptable and

00:04:20.940 tomorrow then they want to fire you for it he said that's exactly what happened under communism

00:04:26.080 where you had to live in fear constantly that you were going to say the wrong thing and that would be

00:04:31.300 the end of you you wouldn't simply be told well you're wrong we can disagree and peacefully you

00:04:37.580 would lose your job in communism you could lose your freedom and even your life that's not here yet but

00:04:43.980 they say the signs are really clear that we that the left is moving this country into a very dangerous

00:04:50.800 and illiberal position right and how how do you explain to someone who says okay um how is that possible

00:04:59.920 when we've got a republican president we've got a republican senate we've got now a majority of

00:05:07.180 conservatives on the supreme court what are you talking about that this leftist social justice

00:05:12.420 ideology is taking over you've got conservatives in power what do you say to that oh that's a great

00:05:18.120 question and that that i think is the reason or the prime reason that so many conservatives don't

00:05:23.100 recognize the the totalitarian nature of what's happening it's because the left controls all the

00:05:29.620 institutions of american society except the political ones the left controls universities the mass media

00:05:35.820 major corporations that's a big one woke capitalism the way that's social justice so-called social

00:05:42.080 justice ideology has taken over main big corporations these are the things that set the tone for america and

00:05:50.440 we can have a republican president and a republican senate and they can only affect the politics but we have to

00:05:57.280 understand that politics is downstream from culture in in doing my book and doing the research on how

00:06:04.360 totalitarian movements start i learned that you have to pay attention to what the elites in any society are

00:06:10.480 saying and doing right now in this country the elites are all on board with black lives matter with 0.94

00:06:17.660 lgbt and all the so-called social justice intersectional movements and they are controlling the gates to join 0.99

00:06:26.380 that you would have to go through to join the professional class so you're going to get to a

00:06:30.740 situation where you can't be a teacher or a psychologist or a lawyer or a doctor unless you

00:06:35.920 tick off all the left-wing boxes i had a man tell me ali uh he's a senior physician at a major american

00:06:43.020 hospital who he grew up in the soviet union and he told me that at this hospital it's policy that if

00:06:49.840 somebody shows up wanting transgender surgery across sex hormones we have to give it to them even if we 1.00

00:06:55.900 as physicians believe that is bad for them you're not given the choice he said they didn't even do that

00:07:02.260 in the soviet union right how did we decide or how did the the left decide which ideological tenets

00:07:11.500 would be necessary and must be forced upon the nation obviously the lgbtq black lives matter like 1.00

00:07:19.220 those parts of the leftist ideology aren't reflected in you know what the soviet union believed so how

00:07:26.760 did these kinds of new uh cultural trends become so dominating in part of this pre-totalitarian world

00:07:36.560 that we now live in you know that's a fascinating question when i studied the russian revolution the

00:07:43.460 1917 bolshevik revolution uh it was fascinating to go back and read about the early bolsheviks and how

00:07:50.140 they were essentially a pseudo-religious movement this one russian american historian calls them

00:07:55.840 an apocalyptic millenarian political cult they believed that they could usher in utopia

00:08:02.440 through revolutionary violence and they decided that the good people were the workers and the peasants

00:08:09.440 the bad people who deserved to be killed were the capitalists and the bourgeoisie and they had an

00:08:15.980 essentially religious fanatical view of the world but it was just their god was marx well fast forward 0.61

00:08:23.220 to what we have in the 1960s our uh left-wing radicals stopped seeing the world in terms of class division

00:08:31.600 and started seeing it in terms of identity politics so uh in my book live not by lies i i quote something

00:08:38.160 that one of the secret police heads in 1918 and russia said when he was instructing uh bolsheviks to go

00:08:46.220 out and mat do mass murders of people who were opponents of the communist he said don't look at

00:08:51.520 them individually and see what their guilt is said rather look and see what social class they belong to

00:08:58.200 and punish them on the basis of that that he said is the essence of red terror well now in our society 1.00

00:09:05.540 we have the left not the old-fashioned liberal left they have been defeated by these militants we have

00:09:11.400 the militant left uh dividing people in terms of their sex in terms of their race and uh their gender

00:09:19.660 preference and so on and so forth uh but it's the same mentality the idea that guilt is inherent in your

00:09:27.620 identity uh not in individual in terms of your individual uh character or the the actions you make as an

00:09:35.000 individual and this is what's so dangerous about this sort of thing that you know we we don't

00:09:39.280 understand that what is happening now in this mentality that's taking over our schools our

00:09:43.900 corporations and our media is profoundly un-american and profoundly illiberal because and it's profoundly

00:09:51.180 against what dr martin leo king said to be honest because he said we should judge people on the content of

00:09:55.480 your character that man was a christian pastor he knew his bible what we have now is something very

00:10:01.760 different how did this become so popular it seems especially in the past five to ten years we hear

00:10:09.500 a lot from the left that conservatives have become radical that we've moved far to the right but

00:10:14.140 actually we talked about on this podcast several studies by pew research that look at how the left

00:10:20.420 has very tangibly quantifiably moved to the left on several issues especially when it comes to race

00:10:26.600 especially in how they see victimization of certain groups in this country how did that happen and

00:10:33.980 become so popular in just the last decade alone yeah it was the last decade in fact in my book i talk

00:10:40.640 about some research done by a grad student at georgia tech i believe zach goldberg in which he went back

00:10:46.760 and looked at all the um the the nexus lexus research database of all the words published in the american

00:10:53.440 media in any given year and he found that around 2013 at the beginning of the first obama term

00:10:58.900 that's when suddenly all this left-wing social justice jargon just went through the roof i think

00:11:05.580 the trayvon martin killing had a lot to do with it and of course black lives matter arising out of 0.98

00:11:10.700 ferguson but i think also a different generation coming into the universities had a lot to do with it

00:11:16.980 you know smartphones debuted in this country in 2007 and one thing i learned in researching this book

00:11:23.840 is the way that technology that particular technology formats us neurologically and formats us to

00:11:31.220 be very very anxious about the world always seeking those new dopamine hits of likes on social media and so

00:11:38.440 forth so i think what you have what we've seen is a new generation that has come of age in their

00:11:44.380 their adolescent teenage years on social media and they've become incredibly fragile and and sensitive

00:11:51.720 to anything that they consider to be harm you know i'll tell you an interesting story i learned when i

00:11:57.280 was working on the book i went to uh boston on business and met with a friend of mine who was

00:12:03.300 finishing grad graduate work at harvard and this guy's a european and i said so what did what did you

00:12:08.740 learn here at the greatest university in the world what's the most important lesson you learned

00:12:13.120 ali he said how fragile the american elites are i said wow what do you mean by that he said it's

00:12:19.920 unbelievable to us europeans we're sitting in these classes and professors at harvard would say

00:12:25.480 we're not going to talk about this topic this topic and this topic in this class because some of you

00:12:30.280 have come to me ahead of time and said uh it would trigger you it would be too difficult emotionally to

00:12:35.620 talk about it the european guy said this is unbelievable to me because these people these elites these american

00:12:42.680 elites have no doubt that they're they're born to lead the world but they cannot handle reality they have

00:12:48.920 been rendered so fragile by american culture and he said i'm really i'm worried about the kind of future

00:12:54.600 we're going to see in this world the the the europeans though have also experienced a rise of leftism why is it

00:13:04.980 that the american brand of leftism has left its adherence seemingly more fragile than it's left

00:13:12.360 the adherence elsewhere that is a really good question and i i think it's probably because in

00:13:18.720 europe they have a long tradition of leftism that is based in class conflict right and a class analysis

00:13:26.080 they had until fairly recent times they had a strong socialist movement in western europe we've never

00:13:32.780 had that here in america we have never really thought about our own divisions in class terms in this

00:13:38.460 country so when the left looks for something to to worry about some way to to bring the revolution

00:13:46.080 they naturally go towards identity politics and have since the 1970s as we were talking about earlier

00:13:52.540 but uh it is really amazing some of the the leftists in this country i think bernie sanders was one of

00:13:57.920 them he gets really frustrated with the way so much popular leftism is so focused on identity politics

00:14:04.760 because sanders believes it is blinding people to the fact that we have a lot in common economically

00:14:10.460 and we should have to build these bonds these political bonds and alliances economically but i don't think

00:14:15.740 bernie is going to get very far when you have such hysteria on the left over matters of race and gender

00:14:23.100 and identity and i think we're kind of seeing a convergence too um between those two views that

00:14:29.300 there's a lot of class conflict but there's also a lot of racial conflict and gender conflict we're

00:14:34.260 seeing that convergence in people like bernie sanders who does talk in the language of identity

00:14:39.040 politics and so does aoc and ilhan omar the self-proclaimed democratic socialists and so what we're seeing

00:14:45.880 is just a complete deconstruction and division of every segment of society to try to convince us that we have

00:14:51.880 more that divides us than actually unites us what is what is the end goal of that though because the

00:14:59.660 same people that divide people by their demographics and socioeconomic status and all of that say that

00:15:05.140 they want unity say that they want peace is that just a common communist trope throughout history or

00:15:12.280 are american communists different like what what's the aim there well it actually is this is the way all

00:15:19.820 totalitarian governments come to power they divide people and then offer themselves and their ideology

00:15:25.880 as the only thing that can unite us can get us back to back together and find purpose you know in the

00:15:33.000 book i write about hannah arendt the great political theorist of the 20th century who did a study in 1951

00:15:39.840 called the origins of totalitarianism and she herself was a refugee from nazi germany a german jew

00:15:45.580 and she wanted to find out what it was about germany and russia that made both of those countries

00:15:51.040 open themselves up to totalitarianism of the 20th century because she wanted to understand how this

00:15:56.360 happens in any society and to read the origins of totalitarianism today and to think about where we

00:16:02.340 are in america is really frightening and helped me to understand why so many of these people who

00:16:07.120 escape communism are worried today the main thing arendt found that a pre-totalitarian society has

00:16:14.200 is mass loneliness and social atomization when people feel disconnected from each other disconnected

00:16:21.180 from their institutions their traditional ways of life they are sitting ducks we have that in spades in 0.96

00:16:28.660 this country i was doing some research in some social science research frankly and looking up the

00:16:34.040 the statistics and polls and so forth american people have never felt so lonely and as covet has just sent

00:16:41.920 that through the roof so what we're going to have i believe is a totalitarian movement of the left

00:16:47.540 move in very softly and say look let's come together we can bring us together if we just get rid of these

00:16:54.200 bad people these deplorable people who are dividing us and i think too it's not going to come ali by

00:17:00.920 gulags secret police coming to our doors it's going to be much softer it's going to be something more

00:17:07.060 like the chinese social credit system which works by they take all the data that everybody generates

00:17:14.600 from their smartphones from their laptops and so on and they use it to rate people and if you have a

00:17:20.180 higher social credit rating that is that the government approves of what you're doing you have

00:17:24.140 more privileges if you have a lower social credit rating for doing things like going to church

00:17:28.460 the chinese communist party gives you a lower rating and you suddenly find you can't travel your kids

00:17:34.620 can't get into college things like that we have all the all the things in place now in this country

00:17:39.840 to make that a reality here the government's not collecting this data major corporations are

00:17:46.240 and whenever i see corporations declining to do business with people with conservatives on some

00:17:51.920 woke ground like we're not going to going to uh to do business with haters i think this is how the

00:17:59.320 social credit system is going to come to this country

00:18:01.620 okay guys gotta tell you about simply safe you've heard me talk about simply safe before they're one of

00:18:11.940 my favorite sponsors because they're such an awesome company and they have worked so well for us this

00:18:18.900 is like the easiest and most effective security system the thing that i love about simply safe

00:18:24.040 security systems is that it's so easy to install you do it yourself like you don't have to worry about

00:18:28.340 a technician coming into your house you don't have to worry about uh you know a hassling salesperson 0.91

00:18:34.340 you get it in the mail you set it up there's little adhesive strips on the back and you put the

00:18:39.160 sensors on your door and you put uh the keypad up and you can have all you can deck out your house

00:18:45.860 with their security system we have motion sensors and we also had a little uh a leak sensor that we

00:18:53.120 put under our sink just to you know tell us if there was a link and we a leak and we didn't know

00:18:57.280 about it and it actually it did it worked and we were able to fix the leak without having to pay a

00:19:03.300 ton of money a ton of money without realizing that we had just been leaking water for months and months

00:19:07.380 so they really are so awesome uh you just know that you and your family are always safe and always

00:19:13.920 taken care of it gives you that peace of mind uh they monitor your home around the clock with

00:19:19.300 security professionals who are there in case of an emergency to immediately send help to your home

00:19:24.380 no contract no hidden fees no installation costs uh you can go to simply safe that simply with an i at

00:19:31.040 the end simplysafe.com slash ali get a free security camera plus a 60 day risk-free trial with any new

00:19:37.380 system order there's really nothing to lose but there's a lot to gain and i can tell you that from

00:19:41.960 personal experience go to simplysafe.com slash ali that is simplysafe.com slash ali

00:19:48.480 do you think that you talked about uh someone coming in and saying look we're so divided and

00:19:59.460 we're in a bad economic spot we're in a bad public health spot my ideology is what is going to bring

00:20:05.520 us together well that sounds to me like joe biden's pitch are are you making the case that that is what

00:20:11.500 the democratic party is already doing that they are trying to bring in that soft totalitarianism by

00:20:16.680 taking advantage of our vulnerable uh position right now i don't think they're aware that they're

00:20:21.800 doing it but they're doing it i mean look we all want to be united as a country you know many of us

00:20:27.840 live through the time of 9-11 and how great it felt to be one country then all united with love and

00:20:35.420 brotherhood for each other that was a wonderful moment and we all wish for that but what biden and

00:20:41.140 the democrats are doing in my view is trying to unite us by by stigmatizing and demonizing

00:20:49.360 traditional people and conservatives and the so-called deplorables they i think they're with

00:20:54.780 the with the collaboration of the media they are going to try to achieve unity by saying the only

00:21:00.920 thing that stands between us and unity and justice in this country are conservatives and in particular

00:21:07.120 conservative christians i can remember a few years ago when david gushy he is a baptist ethicist he

00:21:14.840 used to be a conservative he became a liberal he wrote a column back in 2016 i think it was when he

00:21:21.100 came out in favor of lgbt marriage and he said openly that conservative christians are the only thing

00:21:28.320 standing in the way of full lgbt equality and acceptance in this country i think after this election

00:21:34.640 however it goes we're going to see the major media we're going to see universities and even

00:21:40.520 corporations ramping up the demonization of conservatives especially conservative christians

00:21:45.740 and i wrote this book uh to get advice from people who lived under hard totalitarianism in the soviet

00:21:53.160 bloc christians who stood up to it to get them to tell us what can we do to get ready for it because

00:21:59.680 it is coming and if we sit back and pretend it's not happening then we're just going to be that much

00:22:05.340 more vulnerable when they come for our jobs and they come for our churches and christian schools

00:22:09.440 and i want to talk about specifically what some of those uh tips are and what we can do because i

00:22:16.520 know people are listening to this right now and that's what they're thinking they're like oh my gosh

00:22:20.840 okay i get it this is bad now what do i do but before i ask that question there are a couple

00:22:25.960 questions i want to ask specifically um in relation to how the church is reacting to the social justice

00:22:33.020 movement i think a portion of the church is reacting very badly by accepting it by accepting the idea of

00:22:40.200 what you said earlier that okay social justice ideology is the only thing that's going to bring us

00:22:45.520 together and i see that most specifically when we're talking about something like white privilege or

00:22:50.560 systemic racism or critical race theory there are some even evangelicals who have bought into the idea

00:22:56.660 that okay the gospel biblical unity is not actually enough to bring christians together we also need

00:23:03.040 critical race theory we also need to be reading robin d'angelo and ibram x kindy and the the white

00:23:09.220 evangelical church is just going to continue to be race uh racist and prejudiced until they adopt 0.97

00:23:14.800 this kind of critical race theory social justice intersectionality um ideology how do you think

00:23:22.660 and obviously i totally disagree with that and i think that you do too um how do you think that

00:23:28.400 has happened that an ideology that is obviously so hostile to biblical christianity so hostile to the

00:23:36.120 gospel so hostile to the church has been accepted by christians who say that they they care about living

00:23:44.280 biblically and doing justice and loving mercy well it's it's genius frankly the way the the devil has

00:23:52.060 worked here uh there's a really great thinker named renee gerard a frenchman one of the most brilliant

00:23:58.260 minds of the 20th century he died a few years ago and uh he was a christian he wrote a book called i i saw

00:24:05.460 satan fall like lightning and it sounds like maybe uh uh a a book you would find in a in the cheap rack at a

00:24:12.640 christian bookstore but in fact he was a scholar at stanford who uh was a member of the academy

00:24:17.560 francaise and gerard said this he wrote back in 2000 that the antichrist will come uh by pretending

00:24:26.160 to be more more christian than christ and gerard identified this again this was 20 years ago he

00:24:33.640 identified this rise on the left of uh of sacred victimization of people on the left saying that

00:24:41.020 you know we're taking the christian concern for victims which is proper and thoroughly christian

00:24:46.260 and concern for those who have been treated unjustly and marginalized and we will make them into the gods

00:24:52.740 as opposed to christ himself so gerard said what was happening is we were this was turning into a

00:24:58.760 totalitarian cult uh the the cult of the victim but it was using christian language and it was using

00:25:06.640 christian concepts and i think that the church was a sitting duck when this thing came in into in the

00:25:13.700 past couple of years came knocking at the door of the church and insisting that we all have to accept

00:25:19.840 this because all christians all decent christians are against racism we don't want to see anybody

00:25:24.560 mistreated on the basis of race but that does not mean that we have to accept this lie this flat-out

00:25:30.680 lie of critical race theory but so many white christians are completely susceptible to it because

00:25:36.260 they don't they can't think their way through it and they don't want to be thought ill of

00:25:40.760 i think that that is one of the biggest ways that soft totalitarianism is going to take over in this

00:25:45.720 country because so many middle-class people nice sweet middle-class people who have been raised in

00:25:52.120 a christianity that says all god wants you to do is to be nice and to be happy and to get along with

00:25:56.860 people they're not going to have any defense when these people come to them and say if you don't

00:26:02.740 then the need to this theory then you're a bad person who's going to be cast out yeah they seem

00:26:08.600 to have more hostility towards people who say that something's unbiblical than someone actually

00:26:14.680 saying or doing something that is unbiblical they are more concerned with someone like me calling out

00:26:23.340 something that i believe is wrong than someone actually doing or saying something that is wrong

00:26:28.500 for the very reason that you just articulated i think that's so fascinating what you said about

00:26:33.840 the antichrist pretending to be more like christ than christ himself that's exactly what i'm seeing

00:26:40.540 you are seeing people who according to the bible who uh are enemies of god they're they're not

00:26:46.320 christians they're dead in their sin they're apart from christ trying to preach to christians what

00:26:51.460 human dignity actually looks like what the sanctity of life really looks like what justice really is what

00:26:56.300 morality really is and so they're using our language and i think well-meaning but um not well-versed

00:27:03.580 christians are falling into it and saying well you know i'm called to be just i'm called to love i'm

00:27:09.320 called to have empathy and compassion i guess i'm gonna let the world define those terms for me

00:27:14.900 um and i do think i think it's dangerous and my question for you is do you think that the christians

00:27:21.300 that are kind of buying into this do you think eventually what we're going to see is a large

00:27:25.260 chunk of those christians just say you know what i'm not a christian anymore this doesn't serve me

00:27:29.020 anything or do you think hopefully at some point you'll see a lot of those christians realizing oh 0.96

00:27:34.180 what did i what did i get myself into this ideology is completely hostile to my faith

00:27:38.420 right i mean we're in a great sorting right now a time of testing i mean it's something that uh that

00:27:44.720 you and i probably grew up with hearing that was going to come one day well guess what we're here

00:27:49.020 and those christians who want the respect of the world who want to be liked by the world who want

00:27:55.180 to have this inner sense of calm and serenity when they're called racist or bigoted or whatever

00:28:00.920 those christians are going to fall and they're going to fall into this trap they're going to replace 1.00

00:28:06.780 the gospel with uh social justice politics and their faith will not withstand it and certainly they

00:28:13.160 won't be able to pass it on to their children i i think the the trick is going to be for those

00:28:17.780 christians who can see this alive for what it is and how and see it for the destructiveness 1.00

00:28:23.220 within this ideology the trick for us is going to be how to hold on to what we know to be true

00:28:28.660 without hating our enemies this is one of the things i talked to the people in eastern europe about the

00:28:35.020 christians who came through communism they not only had to stand on the gospel even when some of those

00:28:41.680 around them were capitulating and surrendering to the state but they also had to be willing to

00:28:47.340 accept imprisonment and even torture without allowing hate to consume their hearts i mean

00:28:52.920 that that's an incredible thing it it's sainthood you know but this is what god calls us to do this

00:28:58.400 is what christ calls us to do and you don't just cultivate these qualities in your heart overnight

00:29:03.880 you've got to start doing it right now before the persecution starts

00:29:08.100 why does it seem like the rise of totalitarianism and the shrinkage of the influence of christianity

00:29:14.280 have a direct relationship and always have it seems like leftism communism increases in influence and

00:29:21.480 popularity when there is a larger number of people who no longer identify as christians it seems like

00:29:29.060 that has happened at the same time over the past 10 years in america would you agree

00:29:33.080 oh completely and in fact if you look at the statistics uh your generation ali is the first

00:29:40.320 generation in american history in which the majority are not going to be affiliated with any church

00:29:45.000 and it's no surprise then that uh your generation is also by far the most uh left-wing socially left-wing

00:29:52.820 generation and uh the most militantly secular uh it as you say it's no coincidence uh nazism and

00:29:59.880 communism both came to germany and russia in countries where the church was really weak i mean

00:30:07.180 we think of russia for example as being it's been orthodox it's been christian since uh for over a

00:30:12.680 thousand years but by the time the bolsheviks came to power the church was very weak i remember last year

00:30:19.500 i was sitting at dinner just about a year ago precisely in moscow at the home of a christian family

00:30:24.380 and i'd spent the previous three days interviewing people some of whom had been into prison under

00:30:30.360 communism for their faith and i blurted out at dinner i said i don't understand how anybody in

00:30:35.760 russia could ever have believed what the bolsheviks were saying the father looked at me and said you

00:30:40.820 don't understand then he went back 300 years in history and started telling stories about how

00:30:46.240 the rich oppressed the poor uh in that country and how the church itself was part of that and by the

00:30:53.200 time he got to the late 19th century he said yeah when the bolsheviks came along you know of course 0.99

00:30:58.180 they were telling us lies but our people had been oppressed and put down for so long and the church

00:31:03.380 had not spoken out for them that people were ready to believe anything that gave them hope it was a false

00:31:09.520 hope what the bolsheviks said but if the church had been uh better had had dealt with the the decadence 0.99

00:31:16.720 the spiritual decadence within its own ranks perhaps they could have stopped the bolshevik revolution

00:31:21.360 and i think that's something that we in the american church have to think about now if we're losing so

00:31:26.320 many of our young people why is that is it now some people have said that but i i think they've like

00:31:34.720 someone like jamar tisby would say that that reason is because the church didn't adopt critical race

00:31:40.320 theory earlier or he would say you know the church didn't deal with racism and jim crow like they should

00:31:46.280 have and that's why we're having this great reckoning now and the white evangelical church needs to be called

00:31:51.340 out obviously your position is different than that so can you distinguish between the critics who say

00:31:56.940 yeah you're absolutely right the church has always been racist we're just trying to make the church not

00:32:00.720 racist right and and your critique of where the church has failed yeah thank you for the question

00:32:06.180 uh in my book the benedict option which came out 2017 i trace what happened in the 20th century

00:32:11.920 to uh not only to our civilization but to the church uh around the 1960s there was a really important

00:32:19.360 thinker named philip reef who he was a secular jew but he said that the greatest revolution of the

00:32:25.360 20th century was not the bolshevik revolution but rather the therapeutic revolution what he meant by

00:32:31.060 that was here in the west we have come we cease to believe in religion and the idea that there are

00:32:37.400 transcendent values or a transcendent god to which we should uh look to for ultimate value and to tell us

00:32:44.240 what to do and instead we we traded religious man for psychological man and for psychological man

00:32:51.360 the the way we deal with our anxiety is just to do anything that we have to do to make it go away so

00:32:58.640 making ourselves happy became the ultimate god became our god well this really took over in the 1960s

00:33:06.320 became big in popular culture reef writing in 1966 said this is already at the churches but pastors

00:33:13.880 don't know it well over the next 50 years what we saw is the rise of in the church the rise of what

00:33:20.240 uh the sociologist christian smith calls moralistic therapeutic deism it is uh an abandonment of the

00:33:27.780 gospel with its strict standards and with its deep teaching its prophetic teaching and rather the

00:33:33.300 substitution of middle class comfort uh under the mtd as smith calls it all people really are called to

00:33:40.260 believe is that we're god wants us to be happy he wants us to be nice and he's there to help us

00:33:45.420 achieve the things we want to achieve other than that we don't really have to call on him this is has

00:33:51.100 something this is a parasitic form of christianity that has taken over almost every denomination

00:33:55.500 according to christian smith's work i think this is what has left us so vulnerable i remember ali a few

00:34:02.300 years ago i was giving a benedict option lecture at a conservative evangelical college and i talked about the

00:34:08.100 importance of spiritual disciplines and discipleship and at the end of my talk a young lady stood up a

00:34:14.440 student at the back raised her hand and said sir i don't understand why these spiritual disciplines

00:34:19.740 are important why why isn't it enough just to love jesus with all our heart the way our parents taught

00:34:24.640 us and i explained to her that we have to start with the love of jesus but if we don't have

00:34:29.640 disciplines you know which is where discipleship comes from then we will be blown away by the winds of

00:34:36.420 the world when you know when the when the hurricane comes we're not gonna be on built on firm ground

00:34:41.000 she couldn't tell what i was talking about i could see she was confused a professor came to me

00:34:45.160 afterwards and said the way that young lady spoke is how 99 of our students here think they were brought

00:34:51.900 up in youth group culture which said jesus was only relational jesus is my best friend and when they get

00:34:58.560 off this campus and get into a world where more people are hostile to their christianity they

00:35:03.480 completely collapse because they don't want to be seen as mean that ally that's a long long roundabout

00:35:09.620 answer but i think that is the the where the church has failed is we have failed to make disciples of

00:35:16.180 christ we have made instead friends of jesus admirers of jesus instead of disciples of our lord

00:35:22.100 and i think that people outside of christianity they would say the opposite i've heard people on the

00:35:27.200 left say oh that's the reason why people are leaving the church is because y'all are too

00:35:31.460 y'all are y'all are too set on your stance on on marriage or sexuality or morality or whatever it

00:35:38.400 is and i always say no no no i i don't think that's the case at all i think it's because a large portion

00:35:43.740 of the church is not offering really anything different than the secular self-love just be happy

00:35:49.580 world is is offering and if that's the case you know you can go to brunch on sunday you don't need to

00:35:54.880 spend time in the pews you don't need to waste your time if you are getting the same thing the world is

00:35:59.720 offering you but what i started realizing as you were talking is that now we have this social justice

00:36:05.200 religion that is actually giving the spiritual dis the spiritual disciplines that as you have stated

00:36:13.240 the church has not taught its its adherence for so long now in social justice christian or social

00:36:20.900 justice ideology we're hearing okay like these are the books that you have to read this is the work

00:36:26.840 of anti-racism uh this is how you show empathy that is like the fruit of the spirit for social

00:36:33.340 justice ideology here are the things that you have to do and the work that you have to do in order to

00:36:38.480 be sanctified in order to be holy and it just makes me wonder if people are clinging to that because when

00:36:43.040 they look to christianity a large portion of it is just fluff and it doesn't mean right there's no

00:36:48.960 there there you're exactly right about that this is a substitute religion and it is a disciplined

00:36:54.300 moral community the social justice warriors we believe that they're wrong but they really take

00:37:00.560 seriously what they believe in you know when i was researching my book and reading about the history

00:37:05.460 of the bolshevik party uh the czar in russia the leader of russia sent so many of them into exile in

00:37:11.900 siberia in the late 19th century what did they do in exile they got together and they studied the the

00:37:19.120 tomes of marxism they talked with each other about what they were going to do and they were willing

00:37:24.800 to offer their suffering for the sake of the revolution now i think this was satanic but we

00:37:29.900 have to at least give them this much they were willing to suffer for their cause like the people

00:37:35.360 who are trying to defend the society were not in the same way when i again when i'm talking to all

00:37:40.660 these christians who suffered under communism they all told me ali that go home and tell americans if you

00:37:47.200 are not willing to suffer for the faith then you're going to lose they're going to roll right over you

00:37:52.100 rediscovering the ability to suffer and join that suffering to christ is the key to resisting soft

00:37:59.560 totalitarianism it doesn't mean that we're going to win in the short term it might mean that we get

00:38:04.740 sent to prison it might mean that our schools are shut down and it might mean that we're we're even

00:38:09.320 made martyrs but that is not the first time that's happened in christian history but we will have

00:38:14.540 shown by our ability to suffer that it is possible to live not by lies to live in truth to live in the

00:38:21.080 truth of jesus christ and to not bend the knee at what the world is demanding of us i have two more

00:38:28.160 quick questions for you and the last one is going to build build off that i probably have a million

00:38:33.000 more questions for you but one that i keep thinking is the difference between fascism and communism

00:38:38.560 because the communists that are in the streets right now i think most of them probably identify

00:38:42.440 as communists or socialists um they say that they're anti-fascist and that you know you and i

00:38:47.760 are are fascists and all conservatives are are fascists why is that wrong and are fascism and 0.88

00:38:55.020 communism really that different right i don't think they're that different frankly the the one

00:39:00.080 difference i would say is communists at least try at least say that they're doing what they're doing

00:39:05.880 to help the poor and fascists don't even make that pretense but i think that this is a distinction

00:39:11.920 without a practical difference they call us fascist but that is a complete misuse of the term the term

00:39:18.240 totalitarianism in fact was invented in the 20th century by bedino mussolini the founder of the

00:39:23.880 italian fascist party and by totalitarianism he meant that uh the entire and all of life must be

00:39:31.000 politicized he said the state exists and there's nothing that exists outside the state well the communists

00:39:37.460 we're the same way and this is one big difference between authoritarianism and totalitarianism and

00:39:42.780 authoritarianism you have all the political power concentrated in one leader or one party but outside

00:39:48.480 of politics itself they don't care what a society does a totalitarian society has the same belief but

00:39:56.160 they believe there's no escaping politics so you see now in our country i mean it's almost a joke but

00:40:02.500 it's not really funny oreo cookies has come forward with a gay pride oreo um and it's just things like

00:40:10.580 that the cultural politics of the social justice movement they are they're even in cookies so uh again

00:40:17.040 we laugh at that but they there's nothing that they can't and won't politicize sports girl scout cookies all

00:40:25.220 of it and uh so that is if we stand up to that it doesn't make us fascist it just makes us sane and

00:40:31.960 it makes us actually probably classical liberals who want to live in a society where people are free to

00:40:38.220 believe what they want you know within within reason and to say what they want without being punished for

00:40:43.740 it and i i do agree the importance of standing up what i what i see though with these organizations

00:40:50.180 and corporations is that they don't tend to kowtow to conservative resistance and conservative

00:40:57.340 pushback i just saw girl scouts for example they tweeted you know congratulations to amy coney barrett

00:41:04.980 the the fifth woman to be on the supreme court nothing partisan about it well the left-wing mob came 1.00

00:41:11.400 after them and they ended up taking the tweet down and apologizing well you can go back through their

00:41:16.400 timeline and see that they've got lots of tweets that are praising complimenting sotomayor or kagan

00:41:22.460 or rg or rbg and so it seems like it seems like even if we do stand up that the corporations and the

00:41:33.220 people in power really don't care it seems like the influence that conservatives have i mean there

00:41:39.340 were a lot of conservatives that had a problem with cuties on netflix it's still on netflix and so to

00:41:45.780 the christians who are discouraged who want to stand up and want to have a voice what is your what is

00:41:50.980 your advice to them when it seems useless well i would say two things first of all we're not going

00:41:56.900 to win this in the short term because the cultural left controls all the cultural high ground uh in the

00:42:03.700 corporate suites uh it has taken over in fact the thing that sparked this book live not by lies the

00:42:09.840 thing that caused the old czech woman's son to come to to call me up was seeing the way big business 0.99

00:42:16.120 came down 100 with like a ton of bricks on the state of indiana for trying to pass a state version

00:42:22.520 of the federal religious freedom restoration act that was the first time that had ever happened in

00:42:26.980 this country that big business sided so clearly and so heavily with uh any side in the culture war this is

00:42:33.860 what we're going to have to live with but i would say to ordinary christians is to understand that the

00:42:40.140 culture is against us the mainstream culture the whether it's universities corporations whatever

00:42:45.520 it it is against us it hates us uh and we have to be serene about that we have to figure out how to

00:42:52.920 resist knowing that we're not going to turn it back and no politician we elect can turn it back

00:42:58.080 what i've done in my family what i encourage people to do is control the areas of your life that you

00:43:03.360 can control get rid of netflix for example or make sure your kids don't have smartphones you have to

00:43:10.220 talk to your kids about the way things really are in this world you have to prepare them to be to

00:43:15.340 suffer for christ if it means they have to change their career path because christians are not going to 0.93

00:43:20.920 be allowed to work in good faith in major corporations or in medicine or whatever so be it we have to learn

00:43:27.880 from people from christians who've grown up in cultures where they were persecuted for their beliefs

00:43:32.920 and we're going to have to learn how to imitate them it's just there's no no way out of that but

00:43:38.660 one thing we have to learn too is to find joy with each other ali you know when i was in bratoslava the

00:43:46.760 capital of slovakia a christian there a church historian took me into a room that was under the

00:43:53.900 ground we had to go into a secret tunnel to get there in the 1980s the underground church in slovakia

00:44:00.480 printed samizdat that is to say illegal prayer books catechisms hymn books things like that

00:44:07.360 to serve the underground church if the communists had found them out they would have all gone to jail

00:44:11.920 the man who took me down there to show me that was himself as a college student part of the underground

00:44:17.940 church doing this work again knowing that he would go to prison at any moment he told me that just

00:44:23.300 doing that kind of risky work for the church as a college student with a small cell of other college

00:44:29.860 students gave him so much of a sense of hope and a sense of mission he said being with my my brothers

00:44:37.300 in christ taking this risk to serve god and to serve the church gave me courage and built me up so years

00:44:44.980 years later when the underground church called for the first mass demonstration in communist

00:44:49.300 czechoslovakia since 1968 he said i had the courage to go out on the square and protest and that was the

00:44:55.700 protest that began the process that led to the fall of communism so be of good cheer that that we know how

00:45:02.300 this is going to end in the way in the how this is going to end ultimately the lord will be victorious

00:45:07.400 but in the meantime we have to come together in small groups to pray and to to strategize together

00:45:14.720 and to control the things that we can control and to build a resistance because it's going to get a

00:45:20.660 lot worse before it gets better and any more any more advice that you got from christian dissidents

00:45:27.140 for uh how we in america can push back on this and in a way that i mean is loving is kind is glorifying

00:45:36.600 to god is not the same as the left-wing so-called resistance that we see um how do how do we do that

00:45:42.900 well two things uh first i want to talk a very short bit about uh kamila bendova she is a 0.99

00:45:49.760 uh she's a grandmother now in prague she and her late husband vatslav were the only christians in

00:45:55.460 the inner circle of vatslav havel who was leading the anti-communist opposition there and uh she and

00:46:01.340 vatslav raised six children who all grew up to be adults and kept their christian faith and their

00:46:06.880 grand her grandchildren are also christians which is really unusual because the czech republic is the most

00:46:11.920 most atheist country in europe and i asked her what are some of the things they did she said not

00:46:17.960 only did they talk about the bad things of the world the things that their kids had to avoid

00:46:22.240 but she said i read to them two hours every day uh so what did you read to them she said i would read

00:46:29.380 to them the classics i would read to them myths and you know good stories things that are good true

00:46:34.180 and beautiful i poured that into their moral imaginations so they would have not just something

00:46:38.520 bad to be against something to be uh to be good for she even said to me i read a lot of tolkien to

00:46:44.920 them said tolkien why tolkien she looked at me and said because we knew that mordor was real

00:46:50.960 so i would say that that is one important strategy for christians to do is to not just talk about the

00:46:57.560 bad things in the world but feed your kids with things that are feed their imaginations with things

00:47:01.820 that are good true and beautiful secondly one of the heroes of my book is a man i was not able to

00:47:06.920 meet he died in 2013 dr sylvester kuchmeri he was a catholic a young man when he was thrown into

00:47:13.180 prison in 1951 for his faith and he was brutally tortured but he said in his prison memoir that as

00:47:19.600 soon as he got into prison he knew that he could never feel sorry for himself and he could never

00:47:24.000 allow himself to hate his captors he said because to do that would give satan the victory he said rather

00:47:29.960 he he thought of himself in his suffering as god's probe as someone who is there to serve the lord

00:47:35.880 and to find out what god wanted him to know about himself and about the world so uh even under his

00:47:41.880 his brutal persecution and beating and interrogation he witnessed other people he prayed with them and

00:47:48.580 he went deep inside himself to find out exactly who what god wanted him to do there's another man in the

00:47:55.720 in the book who had uh it was in the soviet prison who was so despairing an angel came to him one night

00:48:02.040 and over a succession of nights and gave him a vision where the lord showed him that the people

00:48:06.600 the men in that prison the hardened criminals to whom he had witnessed and brought the gospel

00:48:11.100 went to heaven after they were executed because he was there to witness to them so and the man must

00:48:17.560 cry when he told me this in russia last year so all of that uh ali is simply to say that we have

00:48:23.660 to try to find joy and meaning in our sufferings not despair because christian hope is not the same as

00:48:30.000 optimism an optimist thinks that everything is going to work out for the best well that might

00:48:34.640 not happen you know we might even be called to be martyrs but christian hope believes that even if we

00:48:40.200 are called to give the ultimate sacrifice for our lord that it has ultimate meaning and the lord can use

00:48:45.540 it to bring about the redemption of the world amen thank you so much can you tell everyone where they

00:48:51.760 can purchase your book and anywhere else that you want to send them to sure um the book is called

00:48:57.160 live not by lies um a manual for christian dissidents you can get it at amazon.com barnes and noble or

00:49:04.980 you can even buy a copy at eighth day books eighth day books.com it's a little christian bookstore in

00:49:10.480 wichita kansas and they're the exclusive vendor of uh of signed copies eighth day books.com and i blog all

00:49:17.760 the time at the american conservative.com awesome well thank you so much for taking the time to talk to

00:49:24.460 me i i could ask you a million more questions because you're just uh you're such a great resource

00:49:29.080 and i know people are going to love to follow you and are going to love this book so thank you again

00:49:33.740 well thanks ali and you know what we're going to probably be talking a lot more over the years to

00:49:37.920 come because like i said it's not going to get better um anytime soon but that's no reason to be

00:49:44.020 despairing uh the lord gives us hope and we need to find hope and finding the lord in each other

00:49:49.280 amen amen amen thank you so much thank you

00:49:52.780 you

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - November 02, 2020

Ep 321 ｜ Biblical Resistance to the Totalitarian Left ｜ Guest： Rod Dreher

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript