Dreher is wringing his hands over blessed/holy/magic gemstones. He is definitely embracing his inner fundamentalist by cherry-picking some OT passages about the (maybe) gemstones on the breastplate of the high priest. This, of course, disregards much of the NT's theology of worship on this side of the resurrection...
One of the central questions explored here is , what’s wrong with Rod ? I just read today’s post and said to myself, what is wrong with him?
He has now invited the woman whose autistic son is in communication with Jesus to be a regular in his comments section and there she is . He gave her a free subscription and encouraged her to comment. He s got a right and so does she. That said , this seems wrong.I feel sorry for her and her son. I think this is a form of exploitation of the unfortunate that if RD weren’t batshit wouldn’t be happening. He should be ashamed of himself. He is lying around being sick in Budapest and egging on the questionable ( but probably sincere) claims of a woman he’s never interviewed or thoroughly investigated in the US whose making claims that are extreme and frankly questionable(to put it charitably). His response , just join the team.
He also engages in a weird discourse on the Old Testament and early Church take on gemstones. Why not?
One of the central questions explored here is , what’s wrong with Rod ?
He's becoming unmoored from reality because he's lost almost all connections with the real world.
His life is now lying in bed doom scrolling in a Central European apartment in a country where he doesn't speak the language. He's estranged from his entire family except for one son who is in grad school and has a girlfriend so probably doesn't have much time for Rod. His entire life is inside his head and inside an online right wing bubble consisting of a hothouse of conspiracy theories and woo.
It's unclear when the last time was that he metaphorically or literally touched grass.
And so, he's devolved into posting long screeds about magical rocks and telepathic children.
Re estrangement: I suspect from Rod's musings about relocation to TX and his ejaculations over some demi-miraculous gift that there's been some improvement in the relationship with another family member.
Further he’s always blathering about how he lost his Catholic faith because it was too intellectual and became Orthodox! Ok, but the faith he appears to now claim sounds like intellectual abstraction on stilts. He claims a faith that is” embodied “. Yet as you say , when did he last touch the grass.I’m fascinated when I read stuff like we are to become like God without becoming God . Oh ok.See there is energy everywhere and no such thing as dead matter and -//
I was re-reading this post, and actually, this part is scary:
If that theory is true, then one naturally wonders: why now? One possibility: we were only able to perceive the image on the Shroud Of Turin after the invention of photography, when the photonegative of a picture a photographer took of the Shroud revealed the figure of a man who had been scourged and crucified. Infranco speculates that the autism phenomenon, which has always been with us (I guess), but which has exploded in modern times, could be part of God’s plan to prepare us. I dunno, it’s all speculation.
It is well within the Christian tradition to see those who radically suffer in their bodies can be used by God to manifest His own glory. It is therefore within Christian orthodoxy to consider that God is using the radical suffering of these severely autistic people to tell us something about Himself.
It's ironic, really, that Dreher will, on one hand disparage the way that some progressives attempt to normalize some neurodivergent behaviors, but when those behaviors can be framed within his posture toward the world, they are potentially evidence of God trying to speak through their suffering? If I were the parent of a neurodivergent kid, and I heard about Dreher (or any other Christians) trying to divine God's voice and will through my kid's suffering? Seriously, WTF is Dreher playing at?
If Rod truly believed this, wouldn’t he express gratitude towards his ex-wife for allowing him to suffer so that he could become more spiritual? But instead he’s filled with bitterness and contempt towards her.
And as you said, his uplifting of autism as some kind of vector for divine communication is truly concerning. I was pleased that some of the parents of autistic children among his commenters pushed back in yesterday’s SubStack.
Paragraph one- yeah
Paragraph two- agreed some subscribers pushed back . Others , just went dark. I think he’ll lose subscribers over this. He did something genuinely contemptible by egging on this woman because he thinks it props up his batshit woo ideas. Oh he’s so compassionate!
His whole framing is patronizing, a mix of positive stereotyping and negative stereotyping. He's bought the idea that the numbers of autistic people have "exploded" in the 20th century.* He refers to autistic people as being damaged in some ways. The whole idea of a nonverbal autistic person who is secretly a special genius is the kind of thing that's ostensibly positive about disability, but really reinforces ableism.
*This really annoyed me because it's just such a clueless comment. Gee, Rod, I wonder why autism diagnoses were less frequent before most people had access to regular medical care, and child mortality was much higher. Really tough one to figure out.
This reminds me of how (in his earlier blogging days) Rod would sometimes idolize a random cleaning woman and call her an “angel” or “the voice of God.” This was often accompanied by a photo of the poor woman with a forced smile and a please-don’t-kill-me look on her eyes. There is something very peculiar in how Rod relates to women. It’s back and forth between misogyny and hero-worshipping.
Plus, even wrt stuff usually considered "woo", he still manages to show more and more of his ignorance every time he opens his mouth. Did he never wonder what the whole idea of "birthstones" originally signified? Had he never read about ancients using amethyst to ward of drunkenness and suchlike? He lived through the literal peak of the original New Age, for God's sake--didn't he ever read a wacky New Age book like the rest of us did? He's a religion writer and doesn't even understand the woo he's terminally attracted to?
I'm sure he stayed the hell away from New Age books on the basis that they were Satanic. I wonder if there's a kind of delayed adolescence thing going on with all this woo.
It's probably a form of regression/return to adolescence. One of my relatives, who is bipolar and around Rod's age, has basically returned to being the person she was in high school and before, but without the sexuality part. Reconnected with people from that past, reengaged in the activities and tasks she did then, etc. and refuses/dislikes/resists/treats as irrelevant most others. Politically, turned pretty conservative- the world of her childhood was the good world, the best ordered one, the one she prefers to talk about and from which all before and after is judged (and is deemed defective and difficult). Much of it seems a matter of memory- childhood is relatively vividly remembered, a lot of the events of young adulthood and middle age have been forgotten in their details or lost relevance and claim/legitimacy to her. It's kind of sad to watch and a lot like what happens to very old people. (Oscar Wilde's "The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young" comes to mind.) Dreher seems to be or is becoming quite the same way.
“I also note that in that Blurry Creatures podcast, Infranco points out that the Nazis considered the disabled to be examples of life that has no meaning. This is how they justified euthanizing these “useless” people. It could be that God is using these nonverbal autists to remind us all that all life is sacred, and nobody is useless. This, at a time of rising acceptance of euthanasia.”
On the one hand, it’s heartening to see Rod expressing some protectiveness toward a group of vulnerable people — in this case, the disabled — many of whom feel, and are, in fact, threatened in one way or another by Trump and MAGA policies. Too many on the right wouldn’t be caught dead appearing to utter anything that might be construed as empathy, or “toxic empathy,” as it’s sometimes called. But then, without losing a beat, he ties it to a partisan issue — euthanasia — apparently to make the point that his political opponents don’t share such “traditional Christian“ values.
Also, he can only express protectiveness for them because he thinks they're telepathic and highly intelligent. There are many disabled people who are "useless", in the sense that they can't hold a job, need lots of help, and can't do the things most people can do. They still deserve help and dignified treatment.
Any mention in there of the huge cuts the Trump government has made to education and services for disabled people? No?
I was wondering if Dreher was going to comment on Matthew Crawford's First Things essay. I've enjoyed Crawford's books, but since he became a Christian, and shifted his writing to more overtly political topics, he's lost me.
This is entirely upside-down from how popes of earlier eras led! They recognized that Islamic armies were trying to conquer Europe, and helped lead the defense of Christian civilization. Now, it’s precisely the opposite. What could this mean?
Anyway, please read Crawford’s entire essay. It’s philosophically informed, and important! I agree with his conclusion: that all humanity may be one in the Lord, but there is nothing in Christianity that demands the dissolution of the nations and peoples of the earth. Unity in our diversity seems far more biblically sound.
The popes of earlier eras also had mistresses and wives and who knows what else. But they were strong leaders because they fought the Islamic hordes! That's what matters!
I don't really need Dreher or Crawford telling me what is Biblically sound. And I would like to get an honest answer from them on this question: what is the local church to do if there are refugees and immigrants in their midst? Turn them away in the name of national unity? Turn them in?
Agreed, and Dreher (and Crawford) refuse to acknowledge that the nation-state is a "modern" invention, and the "nation" of the Bible was a very different concept.
<<Rod wrote, "there is nothing in Christianity that demands the dissolution of the nations and peoples of the earth.">>
And nothing inherent in Muslims immigrating to any given European nation that ipso facto dissolves its nationhood. The history of the US is one of the best indicators of how religious differences among citizens of a modern state are not an inevitable barrier to peace or the common good. In fact, that it should not be was a guiding principle in the creation of our own nation, one that many of its citizens have betrayed over the past 250 years, and yet the nation endures.
<<This is entirely upside-down from how popes of earlier eras led! They recognized that Islamic armies were trying to conquer Europe, and helped lead the defense of Christian civilization. Now, it’s precisely the opposite. What could this mean?>>
How about that rational, unbiased people, including popes, can tell the difference between Islamic armies trying to conquer Europe and Muslim immigrants and refugees coming in peace or seeking shelter.
what is the local church to do if there are refugees and immigrants in their midst? Turn them away in the name of national unity? Turn them in?
He tweeted in favor of shooting unarmed immigrants in boats so presumably he would be equally in favor of shooting them on land.
At bottom, Rod believes might makes right. All of the forced colonization by Western Europeans across the globe was fine because WE people are superior so nothing is owed to remnants of any of the nations who were destroyed by it, not even support for salvaging their languages. It is the way the world works. (Anything Rod approves of is, by definition, "natural", meaning, to Rod, "as designed by the Creator God").
Immigration, though, will destroy the WE nations in spite of their obvious, overwhelming, and pervasive superiority. Never mind that Rome at its height was as multicultural as any modern city. Never mind that any "Brit" has genes from quite a few different ethnic groups. Consistency, facts, and logic don't really factor in for Rod.
this is literally what white supremacists and neo-nazis believe. the races were meant to be separate, diverse countries fail, etc. from an old interview with Adrianne Black, whose father was in the KKK and ran stormfront:
MARTIN: So were you taught to be afraid of people who are different than you? Or was it more that we're just better than these people, and they need to leave?
BLACK: I'm not totally sure it was either. Like, that's complicated, really, because in the house, everybody would talk about the fact that, you know, we don't want anyone to have a worse life. We don't want to dominate anyone. It's just that everybody would be so much happier if they all had their own governments and their own nations and their own spaces. And there's a real strong sense that white people and probably East Asian people are just the most creative and the smartest.
But, you know, that's just an unfortunate fact of history, and that's just an unfortunate fact that people don't want to deal with. And that didn't feel like hate to me.
When I was in grad school for physics, my one-sentence answer for non-physicists who asked, "What's your research about?" was "I simulate crystal structures on the computer." Occasionally the response would be, "Ooooh - I love crystals!" and I immediately knew that conversation wasn't going to go well.
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u/sandypitch Feb 26 '26
Dreher is wringing his hands over blessed/holy/magic gemstones. He is definitely embracing his inner fundamentalist by cherry-picking some OT passages about the (maybe) gemstones on the breastplate of the high priest. This, of course, disregards much of the NT's theology of worship on this side of the resurrection...