A Pilgrim Story

I enjoy Thanksgiving, but can do without the “Thanksgiving Story.” The events of 1621 have been mythologized, tortured and twisted to suit particular political agendas for so many years that the real “Pilgrim story,” if there is one, lies buried somewhere underneath. Winthrop’s “city upon a hill” has long been a starting point for American politicians to launch off in any number of generally unhealthy directions. A recent manifestation has the Tea Party crowd staking claim to the national myth, casting it as a victory of capitalism over socialism (here.)

The Puritans have suffered from bad press ever since Hawthorne (and no, they did not dress all in black and white, and yes, alcohol was permitted as long as it did not lead to drunkenness.) Their perceived influence over the development of our national consciousness can be overblown at times. I pulled this from The New England Mind by Perry Miller, an old text from my colonial American history class:

The posterity of American Puritanism have devised nothing that would more shock their fathers than their inquiry into the comparative force, among motives which impelled the settlement, of the economic as against the religious….it was unthinkable that children conceived and educated in Massachusetts and Connecticut would become preoccupied, not with universal Christendom, but with provincial merchandise.

Exactly. So perhaps the Puritan ethic was determinative after all, just not in the way they intended.

The Puritans are a bit hard to warm up to, you might say. Despite their much vaunted importance to the development of representative government and all that sort of thing, and despite the industriousness by which they recreated East Anglia on the rocky shores of Cape Cod, I have never found their story to be that compelling. Give me Virginia or Pennsylvania any day.

Of course, there are alternative histories of New England. I find it unfortunate that the libertine Merrymount Commune and Thomas Morton--the early thorn in the flesh of the Massachusetts Bay Colony--have not become part of our national memory. Morton greatly preferred Algonquin society to English, and had his vision carried the day, rather than that of his Puritan neighbors, New England might have developed along radically different lines, as least as it concerned the native populations. And one might also look to the stories of people like Mary Mills, who created such a ruckus in Boston, and who also happens to be my 7th great-grandmother.

My ancestry is solidly Southern—always starting in Virginia or southern Pennsylvania, and flowing in two streams of migration—either through the Gap into Kentucky and Tennessee, or following the Piedmont through the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, perhaps Mississippi (but never Louisiana) and then on to Texas. The only exception is my paternal grandmother’s family. Her father was born in Texas, but both his parents were born in Indiana, from where their bloodlines go back to the earliest settlers of Massachusetts and Connecticut. They eagerly joined the westward migration—Ohio by 1815, Indiana by 1820, Missouri by 1840 and Texas by 1860. In Indiana, they threw off the last vestiges of Calvinism and put on Campbellism, which served the family well for 6 generations or so…that is, until I ditched it for the real thing.

Though I find myself descended from redoubtable Puritan women with names like Mehitable, Remember, Experience and Genevrah, the one that sticks out in my mind is aforementioned Mary Mills, who burst upon the Boston scene in the third Puritan generation. She was only in her teens at the time of her notoriety. The Quaker community in Boston met quietly in the homes of members. But such impertinence was not to be sanctioned in Puritan Boston. Officers would break up the meetings and demand that the Quakers attend public worship. One such meeting consisted of a group of women including young Mary Mills. And the women did attend public worship, but not as the authorities intended. With heads uncovered and hair disheveled, ashes on their faces and dressed in sackcloth, the women marched down the aisle of New South Meetinghouse, occasioning, as one observer noted, "the greatest uproar that I ever saw."

The women were jailed and tried, with execution a real possibility. Young Mary declared that she was ready to die for her beliefs. None of the women were executed, however, but they were “carted.” Stripped to the waist, they were tied to the back of a cart and pulled through the streets of Boston.

After the uproar had died down a bit, the Quaker community secreted Mary out of Boston, placing her with a young couple in Sandwich, a quiet village on Cape Cod. Here she stayed for several years, but in time her presence in the household began to cause problems. The wife charged that her husband’s affections had been transferred to young Mary.

Relief came in the form of an elderly, but prosperous, sea captain. Mary Mills found herself married off to William Gifford, 45 years her senior. Within 4 years, the captain was dead, leaving Mary a young widow with 2 small sons. She never remarried and remained in Sandwich, where her family prospered and became substantial citizens. The youngest, James, went to sea like his father, but kept a family at Sandwich. His granddaughter, Deborah, was the first of the line to head west. I have visited her grave, on a knoll behind a cornfield, 40 miles south of Cleveland.

Years ago, I visited in Sandwich. The old town cemetery there is chock-full of jumbled tombstones of Tobey and Ellis and Perry and Burgess and Bassett, all my people. The old Quaker burial ground, where Mary and the Giffords repose, is another thing altogether. An ancient rock wall encloses a perfectly manicured lawn, without a single marker, stone or rock to denote a burial. For that was the way of the early Quakers. I understand the point they were making—modesty, humility, a stark recognition of “ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” etc. And this simplicity impresses me more than the overly ostentatious “weeping Angel” monuments of America’s wealthy elite of later generations. But the Quakers were wrong, on this as on any number of things. For there is no rock which one can stand before and cry “Memory Eternal.”

Memories of Svaneti

I recently came across this BBC production on Georgia, focusing mostly on Svanetian polyphany. This music is not for everybody, but it sure works for me--and it makes me yearn to go back one day. Once I can afford to travel again, a return to Georgia has moved to the top of my list.

Help St. Michael the Archangel Monastery

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Looking for a monastery to help?

Here's a deserving candidate--St. Michael the Archangel Monastery in Canones, NM.

This from Steve Robinson at Pithless Thoughts:

St. Michael's is under "reconstruction" by Mp. Jonah....Fr. Silouan from St. John's was sent by Mp. Jonah (who was Fr. Silouan's Abbot at St. John's for years) to be the Superior and re-establish order and rebuild the Monastery.

The monastery has basic infrastructure. There are small three cells that were built several years ago. They have no water or electricity to them and are heated by a wood burning stove by design....The original buildings on the property are over 80 years old and were built "al ojo" (by the eye). None of them are insulated and need major repairs and upgrading.

Here is the need: They have basically no money. Fr. Silouan is overwhelmed just keeping up with the day to day needs of the monastery (he was digging a trench to fix a broken drainage pipe last Sunday to try to get it done and reburied before the freeze that night).... If you can donate toward a "construction fund" for the Monastery it would go a long way to easing some of the pressures of trying to prioritize what to fix and when.

Please read Steve Robinson's post for much more information and on how to help.

(On a personal note, Fr. Ephroysnos has been a guest in my home. I am very pleased to learn he is now at St. Michael's.)

"The Left's delusion over Islam is baffling to Middle Eastern Christians"

h/t to Byzantine Texas for this.


Ed West has a great piece in The Telegraph, here, regarding the European Left's steadfast denial of the on-going extermination of Middle Eastern Christians--in Iraq today, perhaps Egypt tomorrow. He points to a recent article in The Guardian as a prime example of the attitude. A few gems from their article amply prove West's point:

One article in Foreign Policy went so far as to suggest the church attack might spell “the end of Christianity in the Middle East” altogether. Yet such generalisations play into the hands of radicals wanting to perpetuate the clash-of-civilisations myth. Though anti-Christian feeling may be rising on the extreme radical fringe of some Arab societies such as Iraq, this should not obscure the harmony that has long been a characteristic of other parts of the Arab world.

In fact, large parts of the Arab world remain tolerant and display deep inter-communal harmony. The fact that most of Iraq’s displaced Christians have fled not to the west but to other Arab states, notably Syria and Jordan, seems to illustrate this.

However, the Arab world in general remains a place where Christians and Muslims have lived side by side for centuries, and look certain to continue doing so. Perhaps we should be celebrating this fact rather than exaggerating the extent to which the whole region is suddenly becoming anti-Christian.

To this rot, West drolly observes--"Yes, cynical old British media. There we are focusing on the one unfortunate incident where dozens of people happened to be slaughtered in a church, when we could have focused on literally dozens of Iraqi churches where no one was murdered by Islamists that weekend."

West articulates a number of points that need to be said, again and again.

Christians in Jordan and Syria are protected. But despite the Left’s “myth of the myth” of the clash of civilisations, the simple fact is that almost nowhere in the Islamic world are Christians free in the same way Muslims are free in Europe.

Deniers of this essential truth usually fall back on historical arguments about Islam’s famed tolerance, but this is deceptive. During the high middle ages, the Islamic world was far more tolerant than Christendom, but it couldn’t be otherwise. North of the Alps Europe was 95-99 per cent Christian, so minorities faced persecution; the “Muslim world” had enormous Christian minorities throughout this period and in some cases majorities, and this goes for modern-day Iraq, Syria, Egypt (probably majority Christian until the 18th century), Lebanon and Palestine. That they slowly became Islamic was largely down to two facts of life which make a mockery of the tolerance myth: Muslims could not generally become Christians, and Christians had to pay a special tax, and so the class of people who subsidised the rest of the population gradually shrank over generations...

In the West...Muslims practice their religion in freedom, and maintain thousands of mosques. Moreover, they are free to spread their religion, and openly celebrate each new convert. In contrast, Christians in the Muslim world are arrested for allegedly trying to spread Christianity, and a Muslim who converts to Christianity may face the death penalty.

Even Arab Muslims do not believe the Left’s shtick about Islamic tolerance.

Despite such articles as the one in The Guardian, there are some signs that the crisis is beginning to register in the minds of British citizens. Not so in this country, we are too busy keeping up with who was eliminated from Dancing with the Stars.

And in a parallel universe, a bit closer to home, the Bush gang was gathered together again at the groundbreaking of the Bush Library in Dallas. In remarks at the ceremony, he who made possible the current bloodbath in Iraq--former Vice President Cheney--remarked that "history is beginning to come around." Lord, have mercy on us all.

Thumbing through the Eighth Day Books catalog, I came across the following quote from Walker Percy. It's a keeper, I think.

The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.

"We are not leaving"

This dismal plight of the Middle East's ancient Christian communities is a recurring topic of this blog. I have not addressed the subject lately, perhaps somewhat out of discouragement, as the news--outside of Syria and Jordan--remains unremittingly bleak. The recent slaughter of the faithful in Baghdad's Sayidat al-Nejat Cathedral is as horrific as anything that has been reported since the American invasion of 2003.

Robert Fisk is a columnist and commentator for The Independent. He has been based in Beirut for many years, and his writing on the region is some of the most perceptive available to Western readers. I consider Fisk's The Great War for Civilisation to be essential reading. Two of his recent columns address the worsening Christian position: Exodus: The Changing Map of the Middle East and Only Justice Can Bring Peace to this Benighted Region. A few excerpts, below:

Across the Middle East, it is the same story of despairing – sometimes frightened – Christian minorities, and of an exodus that reaches almost Biblical proportions. Almost half of Iraq's Christians have fled their country since the first Gulf War in 1991, most of them after the 2004 invasion – a weird tribute to the self-proclaimed Christian faith of the two Bush presidents who went to war with Iraq – and stand now at 550,000, scarcely 3 per cent of the population. More than half of Lebanon's Christians now live outside their country. Once a majority, the nation's one and a half million Christians, most of them Maronite Catholics, comprise perhaps 35 per cent of the Lebanese. Egypt's Coptic Christians – there are at most around eight million – now represent less than 10 per cent of the population.

Yet nowhere is the Christian fate sadder than in the territories around Jerusalem. As Monsignor Fouad Twal, the ninth Latin patriarch of Jerusalem and the second to be an Arab, put it bleakly, "the Israelis regard us as 100 per cent Palestinian Arabs and we are oppressed in the same way as the Muslims. But Muslim fundamentalists identify us with the Christian West – which is not always true – and want us to pay the price." With Christian Palestinians in Bethlehem cut off from Jerusalem by the same Israeli wall which imprisons their Muslim brothers, there is now, Twal says, "a young generation of Christians who do not know or visit the Holy Sepulchre".

The Lebanese journalist Fady Noun, a Christian, wrote a profound article from Rome last week in which he spoke of the Christian loss as "a great wound hemorrhaging blood", and bemoaned both Christian division and "egoism" for what he saw as a spiritual as well as a physical emigration. "There are those Christians who reach a kind of indifference... in Western countries who, swayed by the culture of these countries and the media, persuade eastern Christians to forget their identity," he wrote.

And while Western Christians routinely deplore the falling Christian populations of the Middle East, their visits to the region tend to concentrate on pilgrimages to Biblical sites rather than meetings with their Christian opposite numbers.

Americans, so obsessed by the myths of East-West "clashes of civilisation" since 11 September 2001, often seem to regard Christianity as a "Western" rather than an Eastern religion, neatly separating the Middle East roots of their own religion from the lands of Islam. That in itself is a loss of faith.

In fact, I'm wondering if our governments don't need this terror – to make us frightened, very frightened, to make us obey, to bring more security to our little lives. And I'm wondering whether those same governments will ever wake up to the fact that our actions in the Middle East are what is endangering our security.

The West is powerless to help those fearful Christians. The actions of "faith-based" politicians – the Christian faith, of course – has brought about a new Christian tragedy in the Middle East. (The fact that I met several Americans in California recently who thought Christianity was a "western" religion rather than an eastern one probably says more about America than Christianity.)

I'm afraid it's the same old story. Justice will bring peace – not intelligence wars against "world terror". But our leaders will still not admit this.


At Coffee Hour today, I had a pleasant, but serious conversation with a Syrian couple visiting from Aleppo. The husband, Ibrihim, is a quiet-spoken and dapper man who teaches high school mathematics. His wife, a bit more voluble, teaches music. He spoke with pride of their 5 children--a son here, another in Phoenix, and 3 daughters in Syria. Three of the children are doctors. We talked about Aleppo, the Orthodox Church there, the follies of American involvement in the region, and the general situation of Christians in Syria--the best in the Middle East. At the last, though, I noticed that his jaw clenched a bit, as he said:

"We are not leaving. We are not leaving."

Neo-Conservatism on Crack

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My voting is never driven by domestic "issues." We have an entrenched, self-perpetuating Establish- ment Party that is both Democratic and Republican. In terms of foreign policy, however, there can be real differences, and oppor- tunities to inflict damage that will last for generations. One example of what.should.not.be.done. is the advice of Sen. Lindsay Graham (Rep. SC), here, who suggests that if push comes to shove, we "neuter" Iran. As Reza Aslan observed, "this isn't Iraq, this isn't Afghanistan...some sort of fake country put together." He's right. This is Persia, with a 3,000 year-old civilization behind it.

The Great Disparager

In the current issue of The American Conservative (not yet online,) George Scialabba writes of T. S. Eliot, whom he characterizes as a "great disparager." I am not as well read in Eliot as I should be, and this article is certainly an encouragement to learn more. Scialabba writes:

He praised Baudelaire, who, in an age of "programmes, platforms, scientific progress, humanitarianism, and revolutions," of "cheerfulness, optimism, and hopefulness," understood that "what really matters is Sin and Redemption" and perceived that "the possibility of damnation is so immense a relief in a world of electoral reform, plebiscites, sex reform, and dress reform...that damnation itself is an immediate form of salvation--of salvation from the ennui of modern life, because it gives some significance to living."

And this from Eliot:

To me, religion has brought at least the perception of something above morals, and therefore extremely terrifying; it has brought me not happiness, but the sense of something above happiness and therefore more terrifying than ordinary pain and misery; the very dark night and the desert. To me, the phrase 'to be damned for the glory of God' is sens and not paradox; I had far rather walk, as I do, in daily terror of eternity, than feel that this was only a children's game in which all the contestants would get equally worthless prizes in the end....And I don't know whether this is to be labeled 'Classicism' or 'Romanticism'; I only think that I have hold of the tip of the tail of something quite real, more real than morals, or than sweetness and light and culture.

Washaterias and Watchtowers

In the course of my career, I have been involved in a number of enterprises "on the side." One of the most colorful endeavors was the broom-making business that my brother-in-law talked me into about 25 years ago. The business, if you want to call it that, consisted of a broom-making machine, a wizened little alcoholic from South Louisiana who knew how to operate it, and a broken-down van to transport said brooms. My brother-in-law owned the old cotton gin in town, and he set the operation up inside. He would handle "marketing," as well as keeping our key employee sober enough to operate the machine. My job was to deliver the brooms to our wholesale customers. As could be predicted, the operation broke down on all fronts. I couldn't keep the van running, and my brother-in-law couldn't keep the broom-maker sober.

As part of a convoluted trade this summer, my family and my nephew found ourselves as the new proprietors of a washateria in a neighboring county. I feel good about it, actually (or at least it has more possibilities than making brooms.) Washaterias are simple and honest--they provide a much-needed service at a reasonable cost. Early every Monday morning, I drive over, collect the quarters and fill up the change machine. I sweep the floor and bag the trash that has accumulated since the last cleaning. Invariably, the Jehovah's Witnesses have left reading material scattered around the laundromat. Generally, I gather it all up and into the round file it goes. Yesterday, however, I stuck a Watchtower in my back pocket to read later on.

I've had a good bit of experience with the JW's, as my favorite aunt is one. Back when that happened, my cousins maintained that whoever knocked on their front door that particular day would have had her. It just happened to be the Witnesses. For many years, my aunt would send us the books and reading material, but that has dropped off in recent years. At its core, the JW sect is just straight-out Arianism dressed up for the modern age. With many of their more noted beliefs oddly peculiar to themselves, the age-old heresy at its heart is sometimes obscured. I thought their Arianism might even be nuanced somewhat in the Watchtower, just as the Mormons do not hit you with the looney stuff until much later on. Most of the issue I read was devoted to knowing God by the "right name" (an argument they seem keen to have,) and various articles about being nice and helpful. But at the end, there is an article with this sentence: "Just think: Jesus Christ, the myriads of angels in heaven, and mankind on earth all have a beginning because of being created." As heresies go, you can't state it any plainer. At least on Mondays, I will suffer no qualms about consigning such publications to the trash can.

William Barnes (1801-1886)

I am enjoying The Rebirth of England and English: The Vision of William Barnes, a short read by Fr. Andrew Phillips. Frankly, this is my first introduction to Barnes. He was primarily noted for his poetry, mostly written in the dialect of his native Dorset. More interesting to me, however, was his work as a philologist. Barnes' particular passion was the study of Anglo-Saxon England. I am anxious to read his A Philological Grammar and Early England and the Saxon English. As the author observes, "Barnes was a polymath and a polyglot, familiar with some seventy languages, modern, ancient and oriental, and fluent in fourteen of them; he was interested in everything. This self-taught man from a rural backwater, loving husband and father, priest, poet, teacher extraordinary, writer, linguist of genius, was also draughtsman, engraver, painter, art-collector, mathematician, mechanic, carpenter, gardener, cabinet-maker, clock-maker, political economist, musician, antiquarian, historian, inventor and archaeologist."

A representative example of his Dorsetshire poetry:

The Hwomestead

An' I be happy wi' my spot
O' freehold ground an' mossy cot,
An' shoulden get a better lot
If I had all my will.
I'm landlord o' my little farm,
I'm king 'ithin my little pleace;
I don't break laws, an' don't do harm,
An' ben't afeard o' noo man's feace.

His poetry written in "national" English is said to be inferior to that penned in dialect. But I find the following poem to be very good, indeed.

The Cost of Improvement

For aught that's nice
You pay a price...
The higher has become your speed
The stronger are your calls for haste;
Wealth's quicker streams in more ways waste,
The more you have the more you need.
Your fathers trode on English dust,
And while you, o'er the world, will roam,
The more you roam, the more you must,
From irksomeness of any home.
Whatever changes you may choose,
And something gain, you something lose...
Fell woods, your shield from wind and heat,
And you must meet the weather's strokes;
Or turn the oak-grove to a street,
And smoking tuns will cost the oaks.
Give night with day to toil for wealth,
And then your gain will cost your health.
To buy new gold
give up some old.

Relics of St. Maximos the Confessor

Frontier Orthodoxy links to a fascinating bit of Orthodox news coming out of the Republic of Georgia. Apparently, the bodily relics of St. Maximos the Confessor have been discovered in Tsageri, located in the extemely remote region of Svanetia. Hopefully, more details will be made known in coming days. This is just one more reason to return to Georgia. The original article, here.

One step forward...








And one step back.







A new sort of cultural Yalta is being established in practice: in the East, the monopoly of a single religion which grows more and more intolerant, Islam. In the West, pluralism, tolerance, and secularism. This Yalta, like the other one, will cause a cold war, to not say even more. Thus it is necessary, without hesitation or complacent weakness, to defend the rights of the Christians of the East to exist. (h/t to Arab Orthodoxy, here.)

And:

Not for a second do I believe that modern Islam is our greatest threat. Secularization and unbelief are far more threatening and perilous....But Kristof is suggesting that Islam is something that it is not – that it is a humane religion happy to co-exist in the neighborhood. It is certainly not this. It is not tolerant of the existence of other traditions. "Islam" does not mean "peace" by a long shot: it means, as we all used to be taught, "surrender." One cannot equate it with Christianity's general ethical record in history: there is no contest in this regard.

Say anything you'd like about Islam representing "The Other" – but it should be kept in mind that the concern for "The Other" is made possible only in the pale of the Christian legacy (just as all liberalism and humanism, and even atheism, require the safe harbor of Christendom – despite the relentless ingratitude of these derivative -- and retrogressive -- traditions).

The God of Islam is not at all the Holy Trinity. Since the Incarnation, knowledge of God can only be Triune and Christological.

We do not have to be afraid of Islam. But Islam can be mean, and has nothing in common, theologically, with Christianity. (h/t to Second Terrace, here.)

Buy Mary Alice's Book

I have just ordered my copy of Community of Grace, the story of the Orthodox community associated with St. John's Orthodox Cathedral in Eagle River, Alaska. The author, Mary Alice Cook, is a native East Texan who has lived in that state since 1976. Raised Southern Baptist, she and her family became Orthodox Christians in 1992. Mary Alice occasionally returns to Texas, and on those occasions, visits our mission, about an hour and a half away. Someone noted that this may very well be the first Orthodox book published by an East Texan.

Mary Alice is an interesting person and a great conversationalist. I really look foward to reading what she has to say.

Evangelicalism's Fads and Fixtures

I recently came across this interesting article by Joe Carter, a self-described evangelical. He does not concern himself with passing fads, such as the WWJD, but rather with "faddage that becomes a fixture." He observes--correctly, I think--that once fads become fixtures, they remain unquestioned. Carter has a list of 10, all good.

An excerpt:

#5 Testimonies. Several years ago, during a job interview for a Christian organization, my prospective employer asked me to tell him my “testimony.” The fact that I was a Christian apparently wasn’t enough. I had to have a good conversion story to go along with my faith.

Now you may have a great story about how “the hound of Heaven” chased you down and gnawed on your leg until you surrendered. No doubt your story would make for a gripping movie of the week on Lifetime and lead to the making of numerous converts (see #1). But the harsh truth is that as compelling, and even useful, as your story may be, it is not the most important story you could tell.

You are only a very, very minor character in the narrative; the starring role goes to the Divine Protagonist. In fact, he already has a pretty good story, so why not just tell that one instead?

Buy Milton's Book

My good friend, noted mystery novelist and scourge of the com boxes, Milton T. Burton, is coming out with his latest offering Nights of the Red Moon. The prestigious Kirkus Review spoke highly of the upcoming release. More importantly, last week's Publishers Weekly gave an enthusiastic review, including a red star, as follows:

Nights of the Red Moon
Milton T. Burton, Minotaur, $24.95 (304p) ISBN 978-0-312-64800-8
Set in East Texas, Burton's rip-snorting third mystery will appeal to fans of Bill Crider, Ben Rehder, and Kinky Friedman. When the bullet-ridden body of Amanda Twiller turns up in front of her pastor husband's Methodist church, Beauregard "Bo" Handel, the Caddo County sheriff, investigates. While Rev. Bobby Joe Twiller isn't a suspect, Amanda, who was addicted to prescription painkillers, left him three months earlier for Emmet Zorn, the flamboyant co-owner of the Pak-a-Sak liquor store. Emmet's link to a reputed Houston mobster takes Bo and his team, including Carla Wallace, Bo's female deputy and love interest, on a thrill ride of surprises that becomes more intense after the shooting death of doper Doyle Raines, the prime suspect in Amanda's murder. Bo's rowdy "good ole boy" zeal may verge on the outrageous at times, but Burton (The Sweet and the Dead) has a created a cowboy hero that readers will want to see more of. (Dec.)

The release date is December 7th. Look for it in your favorite bookstore.

(Milton's books occupy a coveted spot on my bookshelf--wedged as they are between Robert Burns and Willa Cather. I think he would approve.)

"Two Fantasies of Democracy"

One of the best takes on our current situation, here.

An excerpt:

So, we now careen between the two parties, the one promising to solve our problems, the other promising to get Government out of our lives. We love and hate them both: two years ago we longed for a savior to deliver us from Bush’s incompetence and put the nation back on the footing of hope and change; today we fear socialism and long for morning in America.

Our hatred of Washington is a hatred of ourselves, above all for our contradictory longings that we refuse to face. We pine for a time of accountability and responsibility, but fear the burdens of sacrifice and self-government. We ache for a government that can make America great again, and suspect that any effort in that direction will further impoverish subsequent generations. We long to be self-sufficient, but fear a world without safety nets.

Anti-Washington fever will rise to dizzying heights in coming days. The chattering classes will conclude that Americans have a firm idea of their destiny, choosing one party over another in coming days. Few will understand that the source of our loathing will be the division within ourselves. The divided government we will embrace is the division in our souls: two versions of democracy. In the one version, democracy is rugged individualism. In the other, democracy is a gentler concern that no one should be left behind. Both are fantasies born of bad modern anthropology. Our country oscillates between two fantasies of democracy – a downward spiral that is self-perpetuating and mutually reinforcing. The election is no more than a radar blip in the erosion of self-government. The more deeply we hate ourselves, the louder our denunciation of Washington will resound. The din of self-loathing will soon be deafening.

Young Lifers

It is funny the things we remember sometimes. My local newspaper's religion section carried a puff piece on the new Young Life director here. I haven't thought of this organization in years. In fact, I was amazed that they were still around. Reading through the article made me revisit, if ever so briefly, what is generally the black hole in my memory--the horror of my high school years. One of the great consolations of real life is that it generally turns out to be nothing at all like high school.

I was a textbook-case misfit in high school. My family lived out in the country, by choice. But I went to school in town, and unfortunately, I lived in the snotty high school district. I had no chance of fitting in with the cool kids--we were not members at Willowbrook Country Club, nor the Petroleum Club, nor the Marina, not even the Tennis and Swim Club. We obviously did not live in the right neighborhoods. And my family did not attend the big social Methodist Church downtown. I did not play sports, so I could not hang out with the jocks. I was too timid and self-conscious to join the smokers at breaks out under the trees. Nor did I have the consolation of being a brain. Other than English and History, my grades were decidedly average. Needless to say, I had trouble finding my niche. But I did have several friends, and I especially remember the kindness shown me by those who did not have to do so. I hope I was not so busy feeling sorry for myself that I failed to show kindness as well.

Young Life was big, really big, at my school. Several acquaintances urged me to come along to one of their meetings. Religiously, I was something of a blank slate. My much older sister and her husband were Southern Baptists. I was sent along with them sometimes, but managed to escape when I was 14. So, I approached Young Life reluctantly, for I was not the least bit interested in Christian pep rallies. My bigger concern was trying to figure out a way to be cool. I don't remember much about the meetings other than there was a lot of rah-rah, some sing-songing, some skits, and then we all sat Indian-style and listened to the Young Cool Dude director share with us. I attended another, smaller venue in the home of one of our town's society leaders. To me, it just seemed like something South Tyler Methodists did. And at all these functions, I simply remember thinking--I do not want to be here. My distaste was not rooted in the content, but in the company. For I knew that all these kids acting all Christian-y at Young Life would be the same ones who wouldn't give me the time of day the next day at school.

The picture below of local Young Lifers accompanied the arti
cle in question. Even after all these years, the names may have changed, but the faces are exactly the same.

A Modern Day Stylite

The story on a modern-day stylite in Georgia, here. Be sure and check out the other photographs in this collection.

Aaron D. Wolf on our Exceptionalism

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America is special. America has a mission. America is a beacon of liberty. America, God shed His grace on thee.

We call it American exceptionalism—the belief that, from among the countries of the world, the United States of America has been uniquely called by God to be X. In this equation, X equals whatever you think America stands for.

The Shining City on a Hill, the New Jerusalem, Manifest Destiny, the Sacred Union, the Great Society, the protector of God’s chosen people—X has many incarnations, some of them draped with Geneva gowns or encased in sidewinder missiles.

Harsh realities have pulled Christians back from the brink of this idolatry—half a million dead here, a generation lost to a sexual or unitarian revolution there—causing believers to remember that Stone that smashed the idol of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, or that line from Kipling about being one with Nineveh and Tyre. Maybe we’re not so special after all. Or just as special as, say, those Iraqi Christians recently liberated from their homes and churches.

Aaron D. Wolf takes on American Exceptionalism and one of its offspring--Mormonism--in "Mormon Apocalypse," found here. This is the first of a proposed 3-part series. So far, so good. It looks to be interesting.

If there is one thing I have learned from my various travels, it is this: we ain't so great. And it is this idea that is met with awkward silences and disbelieving looks in my back-home conversations.

On Orthodox Demographics

In a post of American Orthodox demographics, here, there is the following comment by Christopher Orr:


Abba Poemen,

...we haven't proven we are a viable long term entity given the rate of apostasy by cradles and converts and both their children. That isn't because of innovationism or traditionalism, language use (English or non-English), conciliar or monarchical, etc. It's something deeper and more dangerous, and we haven't yet come to terms with it.


The deeper and more dangerous is the many forms of idolatry we set up in the Church in place of the Church, Antichrist. For some, the idol is ethnicity and culture, this is sometimes tied up with politics - all this is possible for converts as well as immigrants and their heirs; for some, the idol is byzantine pomp and playacting, the desperate psychological need to retreat to Empire uber alles, pre-Islam, pre-Communism, pre-modernism and post-modernism - retreat to a time without struggle, which is really just a flight from the Cross and to each of the Devil's desert offers (cf. Dostoevsky's "Grand Inquisitor"); for some, the idol is esotericism bordering on a gnostic bifurcation of the elect and the plebes - prizing academic learning and honors in the Academy are a more worldly form of this; for some, the idol is being alternative, purposefully not mainstream, so the exoticism of Orthodoxy is attractive as a distinctive; for those born to the faith or who have long sojourned in her, the idol is comfort and riches and the American dream - this leads to laziness in prayer, fasting, the virtues, struggle with the passions and our children learn that however much we vociferate about Orthodoxy (and its accoutrement), in reality we do not believe and do not care; for some, the idol is the benign, deistic neglect of God the Clockmaker or perhaps an assumed liberality in God that will overlook all and accept all regardless - yes, it's crypto-watered down Protestantism of a certain kind.

In short, we are dying for lack of saints and an abundance of strange gods. (emphasis mine)

I agree.