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Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents by [Rod Dreher]

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Rod Dreher

Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents Kindle Edition

by Rod Dreher (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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The New York Times bestselling author of The Benedict Option draws on the wisdom of Christian survivors of Soviet persecution to warn American Christians of approaching dangers.

For years, émigrés from the former Soviet bloc have been telling Rod Dreher they see telltale signs of "soft" totalitarianism cropping up in America--something more Brave New World than Nineteen Eighty-Four. Identity politics are beginning to encroach on every aspect of life. Civil liberties are increasingly seen as a threat to "safety". Progressives marginalize conservative, traditional Christians, and other dissenters. Technology and consumerism hasten the possibility of a corporate surveillance state. And the pandemic, having put millions out of work, leaves our country especially vulnerable to demagogic manipulation.

In Live Not By Lies, Dreher amplifies the alarm sounded by the brave men and women who fought totalitarianism. He explains how the totalitarianism facing us today is based less on overt violence and more on psychological manipulation. He tells the stories of modern-day dissidents--clergy, laity, martyrs, and confessors from the Soviet Union and the captive nations of Europe--who offer practical advice for how to identify and resist totalitarianism in our time. Following the model offered by a prophetic World War II-era pastor who prepared believers in his Eastern European to endure the coming of communism, Live Not By Lies teaches American Christians a method for resistance:
  •  SEE: Acknowledge the reality of the situation.
  •  JUDGE: Assess reality in the light of what we as Christians know to be true.
  •  ACT: Take action to protect truth.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn famously said that one of the biggest mistakes people make is assuming totalitarianism can't happen in their country. Many American Christians are making that mistake today, sleepwalking through the erosion of our freedoms. Live Not By Lies will wake them and equip them for the long resistance.

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256 pages
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English
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Sentinel
Publication date

29 September 2020
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4683 KB
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"As a new cultural revolution aims to institutionalize a tyranny of ideological clichés, Dreher renews Solzhenitsyn's great call to 'live not by lies.' I cannot imagine a more timely and urgent book, or one with a more enduring spiritual, political, and cultural message."--Daniel J. Mahoney, coeditor of The Solzhenitsyn Reader

"In this remarkably prescient book, Dreher sets Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's timeless appeal to 'live not by lies' as the cornerstone of his own bold warning. His suggestion of a dawning post-Christian, 'pre-totalitarian' society is impossible to dismiss in light of the patient case he builds for his passionate, if provocative, thesis."--Ignat Solzhenitsyn, conductor and pianist

"With characteristic foresight, Rod Dreher has written an invaluable compendium of how to live fearlessly under totalitarianisms, old and new. Better still, the book is a counsel of hope and joy for even the bleakest days--and an encouragement we need, especially today in this time of cascading crises."--Patrick Deneen, author of Why Liberalism Failed

Live Not By Lies will cement Rod Dreher's reputation as the most important Christian thinker of our age.--Crisis Magazine

"Christians who care about the future of the gospel in America should give heed to Dreher's manual. Live Not by Lies is a timely, perhaps even prophetic book.--Touchstone Magazine --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

About the Author

Rod Dreher is a senior editor at The American Conservative. He has written and edited for the New York Post, The Dallas Morning News, and National Review, and his commentary has been published in The Wall Street Journal and the Weekly Standard. He is the bestselling author of The Benedict Option, The Little Way of Ruthie Leming, Crunchy Cons, and How Dante Can Save Your Life. --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B088F2ZYTV
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Sentinel (29 September 2020)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 4683 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 256 pages

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Lord Erik

A Good Read--But Certainly Not a "Manual for Christian Dissidents."

Reviewed in the United States on 4 November 2020

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My buddy and I do a men's Christian book club. While waiting for the pandemic to blow over, I read Dreher's "Live Not by Lies." Here is my review.

I very much enjoyed reading the book. The author covers Christian suppression and persecution in the former Soviet Bloc during the Cold War. He interviews many survivors of those regimens and then draws parallels to current concerns around the world for those following the Christian faith. Timely, thought-provoking, and interesting. Unfortunately, that is about it.

When an author writes a book, they take upon themselves an IOU from the reader. That debt must be paid in full by the author by the last page. When a book has a title "Manual for Christian Dissidents" it clearly and loudly proclaims that indeed it a manual for use by dissidents of the Christian faith. In Dreher's book, there are general guidelines such as build alternate societies, build up allies, families and communities are the resistance structures, and accept suffering as a part of faith. That's good...but the content was vague and the treatment was purely academic. It was very much the book of a seminarian not a conscientious resister. The IOU was never paid off.

A "manual" for Christian dissent and resistance must include vital information for believers under oppression. This should include topics such as: history of Christian dissent, trends past and present in persecution, why do nation states suppress churches, what strategies and tactics were used in the past and used today to oppress believers, when should a Christian resist, how should a Christian resist, ways that Christians can resist, operational security, what to expect and how to handle arrest and interrogation, developing allies both in the faith and across the spectrum, and other topics. None of these topics were covered. Again, the word "manual" equals "how-to." A plumbing manual means a book on how to fix plumbing. An auto manual means a book on to how to work on cars. A manual on Christian dissent...should be a book instructing one on about how to be a Christian dissident.

The book was a good read...but the title should be "Faith behind the Iron Curtain--Survivor Memoirs of the Persecuted Church." As far as a manual for Christian dissidents--the non-committal vague content and cursory academic treatment kills its usefulness and application in that regards. Good reading, good theory--no execution.

732 people found this helpful

Mooncarrot the Hare

More Manichean than Manual.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 October 2020

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A populist leader stages a peaceful demonstration in the capital city of his country. Hundreds march with him and thousands receive him. The leader espouses the same form of ethics as the managerial elite of good people who govern the country. The only difference is that he says that because the good people think they are right they have become hard-hearted. In certain respects, the elite’s application of these ethics causes harm rather than good. This managerial elite of good people engineer a plebiscite, and the people reject the popular leader in favour of another populist leader, a man of action.

Has this happened in the twenty-first century? No, this is the account given in the in the Bible in the gospels. The elite are the Pharisees. These people are members of the leading council of the nation. They are members of the missionary sect of their religion. They are earnest, competent, and responsible. They hold the highest ethics of the day. Like the most famous of their number, Saul of Tarsus, they lived morally unimpeachable lives.

In the first half of this book the author outlines the features of a totalitarian society and how to recognise one. He intersperses this with interviews he has held with people who lived under Soviet totalitarianism. In this narrative the author isn’t careful enough to make it clear that, while this totalitarianism had the same philosophical origins as the one he calls ‘soft’ that now exists in the West, it is not the same in terms of the immorality of the Soviet version.

The high ethics of the good people who form the managerial elite of the West is more like that of the Pharisees. They are earnest and tenacious but are not brutal and are not going to have people tortured. Saul of Tarsus didn’t harry the followers of the Way because he was bad but because he was good.

The author’s descriptions of the harrowing judicial murders under the Soviet regime sit uneasily in his narrative of the soft totalitarianism because he does not clearly acknowledge that the brutal form of utopia practised by the Soviet totalitarians was never going to recommend itself to the middle classes of the West. A different form had to be devised and has been.

Nor does he acknowledge the part that Christianity itself has played in the development of this ‘soft’ totalitarianism. Everything from the notion of equality, through the feminist demand that men curb their lusts and their power over women, individual freedom, to the birth of science itself, owe their existence to the outworking of Christian theology and practice over the centuries (see in particular, Dominion, by Tom Holland).
There is nothing in any of this that doesn’t have its antecedents in some part of scripture. (e.g. St Paul’s announcement of freedom from the law, and Jesus and the account of the woman caught in adultery).

Even Soviet iconoclasm is that of the Old Testament prophets, and atheism could only have developed in a society thoroughly permeated by Christianity as the final expression of the throwing down of idols. The positivism that the author describes as being the belief that only science embodies the truth could be regarded as that truth that the Holy Spirit is to lead people into. ‘Soft’ totalitarianism is a high ethical totalitarianism.

In short, Christianity is fighting its own legacy, one that is far more effective in works.

This is the deficiency of the first half of this book. The second half is offered by the author as a guide to living in truth. And the deficiency of it is much the same. How do you convince a good person that there is something wrong with what they are doing?

Just as the high ethics of the good people who were the Pharisees, when combined with the belief that they were right, resulted in them becoming hard hearted (note their disdain for the ‘scum outside the law’ is the same as that directed today to those described as the ‘basket of deplorables’), so can the good people of the present day become hard hearted. The maximalising of the freedom of the adult has resulted in the diminution of that of the child, especially the unborn child. It takes a journey on a road to Damascus for a good person who thinks that they are right to realise this.

27 people found this helpful

ComGen

Time to end the church's naivity.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 December 2020

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I've not finished the book yet, but I'm considering who I'm going to buy copies for. I can't exaggerate the importance of it, especially to Christians. It's time for the church to stop being so trusting of the political authorities and so naive about the world around us. The Truth will set you free.

17 people found this helpful

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Dire

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 25 January 2021

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This book is without question - dire. Well researched, well-intentioned (I hope) but woefully ignorant. This book fails to recognise that Christianity is an ideology which, if this author got his way, would be a soft totalitarianism of its own.

It is without question that communism and marxism have caused terrible atrocities, and I am not a promoter of wokeism in the slightest. However, this book uses these terrible events to justify his own beliefs. Dreher makes claims without justification and then the next page is meticulously researched. Inconsistent and misinformed. DO NOT BUY.

10 people found this helpful

Ebenezer

A timely book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 April 2021

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Although written primarily for the US market it applies equally well to the UK. I found the book to be very informative about the changes in our culture and about the experiences of European Christians under totalitarianism. Quite sobering implications for the future.

7 people found this helpful

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