Rod Dreher has spent more than 20 years saying that community, faith and farms keep us connected to what matters more than political fads and digital advancements ever could.
Dreher has helped intellectually lead the charge in seeing these obvious facts. So it isn’t surprising that Dreher would care about telling the truth, or as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn puts it in a 1974 essay, “[living] not by lies.“
That singular instruction is at the center of Dreher’s book “Live Not By Lies,” even more so than in his other works “Living in Wonder,” “The Benedict Option” and “Crunchy Cons.”
Angel Studios brings a four-part series on the subject to screens this week.
What comes across in “Live Not By Lies” is the stripped-away fact that falsehood leads to devastation and why humanity has an important challenge to tell the truth.
Angel Studios president Jordan Harmon described the response to the docuseries by its Angel Guild members as “nothing short of extraordinary.”
The series “speaks to the heart of human struggle and triumph.” It “dives deep into the lived experiences of survivors of Soviet totalitarianism, translating their stories into a powerful narrative about resilience, faith, and the timeless battle against oppression,” states an Angel Studios press release.
“The series aims to not only recount the harrowing realities of past totalitarian regimes but also to explore how these lessons can be applied to the modern-day challenges of what Dreher describes as ‘soft totalitarianism’ in the West.”
The series has even gained the attention of Vice President J.D. Vance
EXCLUSIVE: VP @JDVance will give remarks Tuesday at a new docuseries premiere on Christian dissidents in Soviet-era Russia.
The event at @Heritage hosted by Angel Studios will feature the show based on @roddreher‘s “Live Not By Lies.”https://t.co/pqgiQhUEn6
— Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell (@TheElizMitchell) March 31, 2025
A common yet grievous experience for many Americans is for opinions that they earnestly want to share to be silenced on social media platforms.
That censorship paves the a way for propaganda, a practice that has support in select government bodies. The First Amendment, rather than being universally celebrated, is seen by some communications officials as an “obstacle.”
Hundreds of millions of tax-payers’ funds have been allocated to fighting “misinformation” and “disinformation”–as conceived by officials–and producing propaganda to promote extra-Constitutional federal government agendas.
Reflecting on history, Dreher suggests that people who value telling unfettered truth ought to cultivate friendships and communities at a scale, big enough but not too big, to preserve it as a value no matter what may happen to a civilization that embraces the false.
As smaller village living grows more popular, the author of “The Benedict Option” says Americans need not be left out of having a sense of tight-knit, high-trust community for sharing speech even when living “on-grid.” Neighborhood, church and online groups are fertile practice grounds for speaking truth to others.
The Mennonite parents of multiple children, one of whose life was lost at a hospital, recently gave an interview to correct news media smears of their family. Their words further uncover links between truth and community in the face of distortions.
Why must the ethic of truth-speaking stop at the property line of any particular like-minded community? Living not by lies is the basis for a shared society that can inspire those with the inclination to spread truth like wildfire.
The on-the-ground production company for “Live Not By Lies” is Root/Cause, with Isaiah Smallman directing. RJ Moeller and Dave Jacobson are the series’ producers.
Dreher serves as Executive Producer, stating, “This documentary series is not only about remembering the past but about equipping ourselves for the future. The voices of those who have seen the darkest aspects of totalitarian life must not be lost; they offer us a beacon of truth in challenging times.”
The filmmakers are taken, according to the press release, “from the streets of former Soviet territories to the homes of those who survived one of the deadliest centuries in history.”
“Live Not By Lies” is now available on the Angel Studios’ platform. It plays out in four episodes, with new installmens dropping each week.
The post It’s About Time to ‘Live Not By Lies’ appeared first on Hollywood in Toto.
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