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Rod Dreher

Yesterday I was discussing with a colleague the role religion has in guiding moral behavior among individuals and groups. Is it possible to demonstrate empirically that religion lowers rates of crime and anti-social behavior? My thought was that the question is too broad, that the more interesting and precise question is: What kind of religion…

As some of you who have tried to friend me, or otherwise engage me on Facebook know, I’m definitely not much of an FB user. I almost never check my page, mostly because I am already overburdened with more information than I can manage, and am skittish about privacy concerns. For example, I hate that…

Here’s a favorable review in today’s NYTimes of a new book, “The Trauma Myth,” by a Harvard psychologist. Here’s the book’s gist: For a graduate research project at Harvard in the mid-1990s, the psychologist Susan A. Clancy arranged to interview adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse, expecting to confirm the conventional wisdom that the more…

Reader Anna e-mails a link to Nick Kristof’s column Sunday, in which he profiles a relatively well-off family that downsized its life to a more reasonable level so they could give more to the needy. They even sold their big house, moved to a smaller one, and donated the difference to an African charity. Interestingly,…

It might be good to restate the comments policy of this blog, even though I should say how grateful I am that I’ve had to do far, far less unpublishing of comments since I started the new, non-political, non-culture-war blog. Nevertheless, here are some important things to keep in mind: + I welcome diverse and…

Via Science & Religion Today, we learn of a two-day Royal Society conference in London in which scientific big thinkers speculate on what alien life is likely to be like, if it indeed is ever discovered. A piece in New Scientist catalogues some educated guesses (none of them involving sexy, lanky Na’vi babes, alas). Simon…

The Stuff White People Like klaxons are sounding over news that some couples are having to seek marital counseling because they can’t agree on how green to be. This is wild. Excerpt: As awareness of environmental concerns has grown, therapists say they are seeing a rise in bickering between couples and family members over the…

From one of Andrew Sullivan’s readers. Excerpt: There’s one other factor in rural drug use. There’s nothing to do in small towns. Growing up in New Mexico, we were bored. When you’re a teenager, you can only watch so much TV. My best friend and I would get high on meth and drive around all…

I never, ever thought I would live to see the day that the New Orleans Saints would make it to the Super Bowl. But now it’s for true! What an incredible game that was — and let me say that if the Vikings had pulled it out, they would certainly have deserved the honor, because…

When we knew we were moving back to the Northeastern part of the U.S., we anticipated some culture shock. True, we spent the first five years of our marriage in New York City, and we loved it, but it took some time to adjust to the ways of the locals. As Southerners, Julie and I…
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