‘Lee and Orthodoxy’

 

(The following essay appears as a foreword to the novel With Lee in Virginia by G. A. Henty, published by Contra Mundum Press.  It is presented below with the publisher’s permission.)

The South holds a unique place in modern Western history.  While most Western countries in recent centuries were discarding Christianity and other traditional norms, the people of Dixie were doing the opposite:  defending an hierarchical view of the cosmos with the Holy Trinity reigning over all; defending Christianity, as well as traditional notions of marriage and family as found in the Holy Scriptures and in ancient Greek and Roman society; looking distrustfully upon rapid mass industrialization; upholding the slower, more humane agrarian economic system in its stead, believing that the creation is suffused with meaning and with the presence of God Himself, that it serves a sacramental function, rather than being simply ‘dead matter’ to be transmuted by factories into consumer goods and monetary profits.

While not identical in content, the South’s defense of traditional living is yet very similar to what was going on in the Orthodox world at the same time – with St. Athanasios Parios and the Kollyvades Fathers of Mount Athos, for example, or with Ivan Kireevsky, Alexei Khomiakov, and the other Slavophiles in Russia.

The closeness of Dixie to Orthodoxy may be seen in other ways as well:  in keeping the fasts before Easter and Christmas, even forbidding weddings during those times, celebrating Christmas on its Old Calendar day of 6 January, and honoring St. George at Eastertime.  There were also Southern converts to the Orthodox Faith like Philip Ludwell III as well as Orthodox settlements in the Old South, such as the Greek community in New Orleans.

There are plenty of reasons, then, for the Orthodox to be interested in the South, and vice versa.

Throughout her 417-year history, a number of Southerners have exemplified Dixie’s traditional Christian ethos:  from William Berkeley, Robert Byrd II, and Robert ‘King’ Carter I, to Flannery O’Connor, Donald Davidson, and Andrew Lytle – but the greatest exemplar of them all remains Robert E. Lee.

Robert Edward Lee was born on January 19^th, 1807, into the squirearchy of Virginia, his father the famous Light Horse Harry Lee, a general in the War for Independence from Great Britain, and his mother Ann Hill Carter Lee, of the renowned Carter family.  He would marry into another distinguished Virginia family, the Custises, when he was wed to Mary Custis in 1831, the great-granddaughter of George Washington’s wife, Martha; their marriage was a fruitful one, bringing seven children into the world.

Lee was a devoted Christian from his early years, attended the West Point military academy as a young man, and spent much of his adult life in the United States Army, mostly in the Corps of Engineers, but he would experience combat in the Mexican-American War in 1847 as well as at Harper’s Ferry in 1859 to quell the insurrection of John Brown.  After Virginia seceded on April 17^th, 1861, Gen. Lee resigned his commission with the U. S. Army on 20 April and was made on May 14^th a Brigadier General in the Confederate Army, in which he served with gallantry and distinction until the end of the War with the Yankee invaders on April 9^th, 1865, the day he surrendered himself and his Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses Grant of the Union Army at Appomattox Court House, Virginia.

After the War, Gen. Lee made it his primary mission to promote reconciliation between the States and to work for the common good and upbuilding of them all.  To that end, he accepted the office of President of Washington College in Lexington, Virginia (later to be renamed Washington and Lee University) in October 1865.  There he busied himself for five years, forming the minds and characters of the young men who attended the College.  On September 28^th, 1870, while at a vestry meeting at Grace Episcopal Church in Lexington, he suffered a stroke.  He passed from this life to the next shortly thereafter, on 12 October 1870, to the great sadness of his Southern countrymen.  His final words were ‘Strike the tent.’

More than 150 years have passed since Robert E. Lee left this world.  Life has changed significantly over that time.  Can anyone, particularly Orthodox Christians, benefit at all from a closer look into his life?

Another exceptional Southerner, Richard Weaver (reposed on 1 April 1963), whose writings portray especially well the essence of Dixie’s way of life, answers in the affirmative in his essay ‘Lee the Philosopher’.  He notes that it is common to exalt Gen. Lee as a great military leader, a model husband and father, and an embodiment of Southern culture.  These are not unimportant in the present age of barbarism and promiscuity.  But, he says, there are more important things to note about Lee.  And in the characteristics that he notes, we will see how they correspond well with truths proclaimed by the Orthodox Church.

 . . .

The rest is at https://www.geopolitika.ru/en/article/lee-and-orthodoxy.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!