Live Not by Dreher Alone: Soviet Dissidents, the Church, and Our Transhumanist Moment

Common Places

A lecture with Q&A by Davenant Institute Vice President, Colin Redemer entitled "Live Not by Dreher Alone: Soviet Dissidents, the Church, and Our Transhumanist Moment." Writers such as Jordan Peterson and Rod Dreher have popularized the comparison of our society to that which immediately preceded the the USSR. In place of "hard totalitarianism", we supposedly live under "soft totalitarianism". Many have therefore begun looking to believers who survived under this oppressive regime for guidance. Names such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Vaclav Havel, and Vaclav Benda are becoming common currency among some Western Protestants. These men and others left behind a great legacy, not least of all in their writings. Yet we are in danger of an engagement with these dissidents which is only skin deep. Their inspiring example is at risk of being little more than an aesthetic. If we are to truly learn from them, we must engage them not simply as exemplary saints, but as profound intellectuals in their own right. We must cry "ad fontes!" and return to the sources for ourselves - to the texts of penetrating insight, formed in the intellectual crucible of Soviet totalitarianism. In this lecture, Colin Redemer will seek to engage in depth with the thought of these Christian dissidents, providing a basis for attendees to go away and grapple with their work first-hand. In doing so, we can begin to truly think like them for ourselves. Colin's Soviet Dissidence Reading List: Live Not By Lies by Solzhenitsyn Harvard Address by Solzhenitsyn Power of the Powerless by Havel The Captive Mind by Milocz In The First Circle by Solzhenitsyn Live Not By Lies available here: https://www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/live-not-by-lies