Live Not By Lies
New documentary on Christians facing persecution
Over at Acton, I’ve a new documentary to recommend, Live Not By Lies. Let me lead you in:
In 2025, Angel Studios is entering the culture wars with Live Not by Lies, a documentary based on my friend Rod Dreher’s eponymous report on the spiritual threat to Christians & the need to learn from those who have suffered persecution, as the title suggests, Solzhenitsyn’s most famous maxim.
The book Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents appeared in 2020. Rod has a gift for prescience. Two decades back, he was talking about “Crunchy Cons,” long before all my right-wing friends turned against seed oils, decided to go for natural food & living, for reasons of health & taste, thus shedding the demeanor of the blazer-&-slacks Republicans of the Bush era. At this point, we’ve moved so far to the “crunchy” side that RFK Jr. is running HHS. Does Rod get any credit for predicting this trend?
The Benedict Option (2017) broke news about the resurgence of faith, especially among men, in this generation, & the deeply felt need among them to return to the original sources of our way of life. Years down the road, we’re all learning that Gen Z is more religious than Millennials & that young men are especially drawn to a stricter theological & liturgical understanding of Christianity than was typical of evangelicals. Does Rod get any credit for predicting this other trend?
But Live Not By Lies was the first time Rod confronted his great fear of the modern state turning against the rights of conscience & forcing Christians to return to suffering & even martyrdom. & he turned out to be right again.
Read the whole thing. It’s something of an Easter piece, come to think of it. Read all about it.