Rod Dreher

An American writer and editor living in a self-imposed exile in Budapest, Hungary. He was a columnist with The American Conservative for 12 years, ending in March 2023, and remains an editor-at-large there. He was named after his father, Ray Oliver Dreher, a local landowner. FBI documents uncovered in 2022 named Ray Dreher as a leader (Exalted Cyclops) of the Ku Klux Klan. Ray Dreher Sr. and his brother Murphy Dreher, Jr., were close to local Congressman and noted Klansman John Rarick; all three men belonged to the same Masonic lodge and Murphy served as Rarick's campaign manager. According to the FBI, Rarick worked with the Silver Dollar Group, a Klan splinter organization responsible for the deaths of at least eight black people along the Louisiana-Mississippi border between 1964 and 1967. Rod Dreher has acknowledged his relatives "participated in an extrajudicial lynching of a black man who, it came out later, had been falsely accused of a crime." 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). He says Christians should try to form intentional communities, such as the Bruderhof Communities, or the School for Conversion. Dreher's experience as a 2021 fellow at Hungary's Danube Institute and his observation of Viktor Orbán's government persuaded him that Christian conservatives could in fact still win and wield substantial political power. "Orbán was so unafraid, so unapologetic about using his political power to push back on the liberal élites in business and media and culture," Dreher said in 2022. "It was so inspiring: this is what a vigorous conservative government can do if it's serious about stemming this horrible global tide of wokeness." He argued that the U.S. GOP needs "a leader with Orbán's vision—someone who can build on what Trumpism accomplished, without the egomania and inattention to policy, and who is not afraid to step on the liberals' toes." Dreher holds to what he describes as biblical Christian teaching on sexuality and gender, including on the sinfulness of same-sex sexual relations and the naturalness of male–female difference. During SCOTUS confirmation hearing for Kavanaugh Sept, 2018, he tweeted: "I do not understand why the loutish drunken behavior of a 17 year old high school boy has anything to tell us about the character of a 53 year old judge." Dreher has expressed support for various conservative and neo-nationalist governments and parties in Europe. In 2021, Dreher was given a paid fellowship by the Danube Institute, a conservative think tank based in Budapest and funded by Orbán's government. Dreher has played a key role in encouraging other members of the American conservative movement to engage with Hungary and to look toward Orbán's political strategy and governance as a model. In 2021, Dreher invited Tucker Carlson, whom Dreher calls "the most important conservative figure in America," to visit Hungary. The American Conservative Union hosted its first conference in Europe, CPAC Hungary, in Budapest in May, 2022, with Dreher in attendance. Endorses the American Solidarity Party. Raised a Methodist, he converted to Roman Catholicism in 1993, and on October 12, 2006, he announced his conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy