His commentaries have been broadcast on National Public Radio's All Things Considered, and he has appeared on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, Court TV, and other television networks.

Four years later, Dreher published a book expanding on the themes of this manifesto, Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, Gun-Loving Organic Gardeners, Evangelical Free-Range Farmers, Hip Homeschooling Mamas, Right-Wing Nature Lovers, and Their Diverse Tribe of Countercultural Conservatives Plan to Save America (or At Least the Republican Party).

[12][13] During this time, Dreher worked as an editorial writer and columnist for The Dallas Morning News, which he left in late 2009 to become the publications director for the John Templeton Foundation.

David Brooks of The New York Times called it "the most discussed and most important religious book of the decade"[7] while also expressing concern that "by retreating to neat homogeneous monocultures, most separatists will end up .

"[28] Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote that the prominence the book gives to "same-sex relations", as opposed to "poverty, racism and war", "reinforces the common perception that the only ethical issues that interest traditional Christians are those involving sexual matters."

Nonetheless, Williams suggested, "The book is worth reading because it poses some helpfully tough questions to a socially liberal majority, as well as to believers of a more traditional colour.

"[29] Russell D. Moore, the president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, called Dreher's book "brilliant, prophetic, and wise".

[30] Alan Levinovitz, a religious scholar at James Madison University, called it "spiritual pornography," the soul of which "is not love of God; it is bitter loathing of those who do not share it.

The Reformed philosophical theologian James K. A. Smith, for instance, has written a number of critical responses to the idea,[37][38][39][40] including one in which he argues that the world Dreher laments the loss of "tends to be white.

[42][43][44][45] The Catholic writer Elizabeth Bruenig has argued that Dreher's strategy of "withdrawing from conventional politics is difficult to parse with Christ's command that we love our neighbors".

[50] 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 told The New Yorker's Andrew Marantz in 2022.

Dreher also argued that the U.S. Republican Party 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.

[57][58] Dreher has published numerous articles expressing alarm at the growing visibility of transgender people in American society, which he sees as part of a "technology-driven revolution in our view of personhood.

[18][69][70][60] In 2001, Dreher published an article mocking the funeral celebrations of the African-American singer Aaliyah, and subsequently reported receiving threatening phone calls from people with "black accents".

[71] After the Christchurch mosque shootings of March 2019, Dreher strongly condemned the shooter's actions and aspects of his ideology, but also said the shooter had "legitimate, realistic concerns" about "declining numbers of ethnic Europeans" in Western countries; as a result of these comments, multiple scholars criticized the University of Wollongong's Ramsay Center for Western Civilization for inviting Dreher as a speaker.

But he has also referred to the "valuable" and "prophetic" lessons that can be drawn from the work, including from Raspail's argument, which Dreher presents as potentially correct, that "the only way to defend Western civilization from these invaders [non-Western immigrants] is to be willing to shed their blood."

[107] While many international observers believe that Orbán's premiership has eroded democracy, human rights, an independent judiciary, press freedom, and the rule of law in Hungary,[111][112][113][114][115] Dreher commented, "I was there about ten days before I realized that eighty, ninety per cent of the American narrative about the country just isn't true.

"[110] Dreher has played a key role in encouraging the American conservative movement to engage with Hungary and look toward Orbán's political strategy and governance as a model.

After Carlson replied that he was already considering a visit but that the trip had become entangled in red tape, Dreher personally spoke to Hungarian government ministers and one of Orbán's closest advisers to assure them that "Tucker was somebody who could be trusted."

[122] In 2022, speaking to Andrew Marantz of The New Yorker he said, "Seeing what J. D. Vance is saying, and what Ron DeSantis is actually doing in Florida, the concept of American Orbánism starts to make sense.

I don't want to overstate what they'll be able to accomplish, given the constitutional impediments and all, but DeSantis is already using the power of the state to push back against woke capitalism, against the crazy gender stuff.

[129][130] In the 2015 and 2019 Louisiana gubernatorial elections, Dreher voted for Democrat John Bel Edwards, citing his views on abortion, guns, and economics.

"[132][133][134][135][136][137] The movement has been defined in connection with a manifesto titled "Against the Dead Consensus," published in First Things in March 2019, which Dreher was a signatory to, and which argues that the "pre-Trump conservative consensus failed to retard, much less reverse, the eclipse of permanent truths, family stability, [and] communal solidarity," and "too often bowed to a poisonous and censorious multiculturalism"; the manifesto argues for a conservatism of national, communal, and familial solidarity.

[citation needed] Covering the Catholic Church's sex abuse scandal, starting in 2001, led him to question his Catholicism, and on October 12, 2006, he announced his conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy.

[7][166] At the time, Dreher had argued that the scandal was not so much a "pedophile problem," but that the "sexual abuse of minors is facilitated by a secret, powerful network of gay priests," known as the "Lavender Mafia.