Remembrances for September – 2026

 

Dear friends, if you have time, please pray for these members of the Southern family on the day they reposed.  Many thanks.

But one may ask:  ‘What good does it do to pray for the departed?’  An answer is offered here:  https://orthochristian.com/130608.html

Along with prayers and hymns for the departed:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6je5axPodI

4 September

Bascom Lamar Lunsford, led a revival of traditional music and dance in Appalachia in the early 20^th century.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/99335539/bascom_lamar-lunsford

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/fighting-globalism-with-the-power-of-dance/

4 Sept.

General John Hunt Morgan, a very effective Kentucky cavalry leader in the War, doing much to disrupt Yankee supply lines and making an incursion deep into Northern territory.  Killed in battle in 1864.

http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-3531

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/4433/john-hunt-morgan/photo

4 Sept.

Judge Spencer Roane, one of the best judges of his day, and an unsung hero for local authority.

http://roanefamilytree.com/Judge_Spencer_Roane.html

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/mcculloch-v-maryland/

https://lawliberty.org/book-review/spencer-roane-the-forgotten-founder/

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/18472831

9 Sept.

Bill Monroe, one of the pioneers of the Bluegrass genre of music.

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/what-makes-this-musician-great-bill-monroe/

9 Sept.

Stand Watie, a Cherokee leader who became a general in the Confederate Army.  He was one of the last to surrender to the Yankees in the War.

https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=WA040

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/4506/stand-watie

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/they-came-from-the-east/

10 Sept.

Gov Huey Long, a true champion of the lower classes in Louisiana, unfortunately tainted with corruption and other problems.  He was mortally wounded in 1935 on 8 Sept., the birthday of the Theotokos.

https://texasjohnslaughter.substack.com/p/lessons-in-southern-populism-the

https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/2025/09/08/102541-the-nativity-of-our-most-holy-lady-the-mother-of-god-and-ever-vi

15 Sept.

Archibald Rutledge, a Poet Laureate of South Carolina, writer of 90 books of poetry and prose.  Descended from South Carolina’s nobility.

https://www.reckonin.com/clyde-wilson/archibald-rutledge-carolina-bard

http://www.theofficialschalloffame.com/directlink.html?id=72

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/13954774/archibald_hamilton-rutledge

15 Sept.

Robert Penn Warren, ‘at home in all the major genres–poetry, fiction, drama, and criticism–though poetry was his dominant mode. Warren was awarded three Pulitzer Prizes, a number unmatched by any other writer: one for his novel All The King’s Men (1947) and two for the poetry collections Promises (1958) and Now and Then (1978). He also received a MacArthur Prize Fellowship in 1981. The American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters awarded him its Gold Medal for Poetry in 1985. In 1986 he was named poet laureate, the first in the United States to be given that title.’

https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/robert-penn-warren/

https://www.robertpennwarren.com/

16 Sept.

James Oliver Rigney, Jr (aka Robert Jordan), the writer of a renowned series of fantasy books, The Wheel of Time, amongst other works.

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/let-the-south-ride-again-on-the-winds-of-time/

17 Sept.

Gov Pedro Menendez, the first Spanish governor of Florida who founded the first permanent European settlement in the South (the city of St Augustine).  A good military commander (though a little too quick to shed blood), he negotiated with the Native Americans to trade peacefully and worked to evangelize them as well.

https://fcit.usf.edu/florida/lessons/menendz/menendz1.htm

20 Sept.

Richard Rowland Kirkland, the famous ‘Angel of Marye’s Heights’, he tended to the Yankee wounded after the Battle of Fredericksburg.

https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/kirkland-richard-rowland/

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/4063/richard-rowland-kirkland

23 Sept.

Major Richard Dowling, the son of recent Irish immigrants, he turned back a large Yankee invasion force in Sabine Pass in 1863 with a comparatively much smaller force.  Many places in southeast Texas were named in honor of him.

https://easttexashistory.org/items/show/164

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/6813103/richard-william-dowling

https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/dowling-richard-william

24 Sept.

William ‘Singing Billy’ Walker, he helped popularize shape note/Sacred Harp singing in the South.

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/not-just-whistling-dixie/

http://originalsacredharp.com/2013/12/31/william-walker-carolina-contributor-to-american-music/

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/32607297/william-walker/photo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Walker_(composer)#/media/File:Grave_of_William_Walker_(composer).jpg

27 Sept.

Gen. Braxton Bragg, a gifted commander in certain ways, but his ornery personality usually wound up antagonizing those around him.

https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/bragg-braxton

28 Sept.

Sen. Thomas Bayard, Sr, a staunch defender of the South against Radical Reconstructionists.

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/thomas-f-bayard-sr/

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/6653371/thomas-francis-bayard

Also, to celebrate some of the saints of September from the South’s Christian inheritance of various lands, use these links:

https://southernorthodox.org/orthodox-saints-for-dixie-september/

https://confiterijournal.blogspot.com/2020/10/happy-feast-for-saints-of-september.html

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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!

‘Roman Catholicism and Hopes for Western Renewal’

 

Many conservatives often portray the Roman Catholic Church as the salvation of the West.  A healthy Roman Catholic Church (i.e., a good and faithful Pope) is the key to a spiritually healthy West in their thinking.  Examples abound, from Hilaire Belloc (via The European Conservative):

This our European structure, built upon the noble foundations of classical antiquity, was formed through, exists by, is consonant to, and will stand only in the mold of, the Catholic Church. Europe will return to the Faith, or she will perish. The Faith is Europe. And Europe is the Faith.

To Rod Dreher (speaking here about a pilgrimage of traditional Roman Catholics to Chartres Cathedral in France, via The Free Press):

The reasons for the quiet revival of Catholicism among the young vary, but they all come down to the search for meaning, purpose, stability, and identity. These new converts—or “reverts,” for the baptized who have rediscovered their faith—are drawn to ancient forms of Christianity because these traditions are more rooted, and more demanding, than the looser, therapeutic model of contemporary Christianity. They also rely much more on liturgy and beauty to incarnate theological principles—“smells and bells,” as some have it. These things have stood the test of time.

 

The road from Paris to Chartres—also a stop on the famous pilgrimage trail to Santiago de Compostela in Spain—has been well trod over the centuries. The Reformation, religious wars, and later the French Revolution discouraged the faith journeys, but they began again in the 19th century, along with Catholic revival in France. A further revival in the early 1980s saw a group of traditionalist French Catholics fall in love with the pilgrimage. Today, in the midst of another Catholic revival, it is organized with bivouacs—temporary shelters—along the route to aid pilgrims, who camp along the way.

 

 . . . Chartres stands to them as a beacon of what the world might be again. It is a prophetic manifestation of light and beauty amid the darkness of an ugly world that does not comprehend the message engraved in its walls, and proclaimed in the glow of its ruby, emerald, and azure glass. In the wonder of this medieval cathedral, a symphony of stone, they hear the Latin-chanted melodies and the beacons of bejeweled light summoning them out of the dark wood of modernity.

The Roman Catholic Church has an understandable allure, as Mr Dreher points out:  It retains many external rites that seem to point to its possession of a deep, venerable tradition that can impart stability to individuals, families, and whole societies.  It is a deception.

We will dispense with the usual rationalistic arguments, however.  For those who want a tete-a-tete argument about the fundamental differences between the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church, we would direct folks to the recent debate between Jay Dyer and Tim Gordon.

We want to focus instead mainly on the arts and the saints of the two confessions.  Roman Catholicism claims to be the straight plumb line, the measuring rod, against which all other religions must be tested.  But there is something disconcerting about, something disturbingly bent and distorted within, Roman Catholic faith and practice, and this manifests in the aforementioned arts and saints.

We begin with an image presented by the famous Roman Catholic apologist G. K. Chesterton in his book ironically named Orthodoxy, a description of the quintessential Roman Catholic saint:

No two ideals could be more opposite than a Christian saint in a Gothic cathedral and a Buddhist saint in a Chinese temple.  The opposition exists at every point; but perhaps the shortest statement of it is that the Buddhist saint always has his eyes shut, while the Christian saint always has them very wide open.  The Buddhist saint has a sleek and harmonious body, but his eyes are heavy and sealed with sleep.  The mediaeval saint’s body is wasted to its crazy bones, but his eyes are frightfully alive.  . . .  The Buddhist is looking with a peculiar intentness inwards.  The Christian is staring with a frantic intentness outwards.  If we follow that clue steadily we shall find some interesting things (Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1995, p. 138).

We shall indeed find some interesting things.  But first we must let Mr Chesterton elaborate a bit more on the meaning of this image of a Roman Catholic saint for the West:

That external vigilance which has always been the mark of Christianity (the command that we should watch and pray) has expressed itself both in typical western orthodoxy and in typical western politics:  but both depend on the idea of a divinity transcendent, different from ourselves, a deity that disappears.  Certainly the most sagacious creeds may suggest that we should pursue God into deeper and deeper rings of the labyrinth of our own ego.  But only we of [post-Orthodox western] Christendom have said that we should hunt God like an eagle upon the mountains:  and we have killed all monsters in the chase (Ibid., p. 141; bolding added).

The first thing to note is the unfortunate truth that God did indeed disappear in the West because of the Roman Catholic faith that Mr Chesterton tried so hard to defend.  In positing a God that is only a transcendent, unknowable essence rather than an unknowable essence together with its energies that are knowable and in which man and the creation can participate, and in which they are invited to unite through the Orthodox Church – in positing such a God, the Roman Catholics have expelled God from the world.  The Gothic cathedral at Chartres and the other cathedrals elsewhere in the West are a perfect reification of the Roman Catholic idea of the missing God:  The high, empty vaults inside, the tall, pointed spires directing our eyes heavenward, are a testimony that God is precisely NOT with us, that we must ‘hunt Him like an eagle upon the mountains’.  And millions in the West, faltering in that search that has been undertaken with erroneous directions from the Vatican, have given up in despair and become atheists, Muslims, and (no doubt to Mr Chesterton’s chagrin) Buddhists in a desperate effort to reconnect with the Meaning of Life that Roman Catholic theology took away and hid from them.

 . . .

The rest is at https://orthodoxreflections.com/roman-catholicism-and-hopes-for-western-renewal/.

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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!

‘Against the Prayer Mockers’

 

The statements being made by some prominent Leftist politicians in the wake of the school shooting in Minneapolis are outright satanic.  Joy Pullmann wrote a very good essay expounding on that at The Federalist.

We wanted to focus on a smaller part of that phenomenon she wrote about, the mocking of prayer as something weak and ineffectual.  The Church Fathers, who are masters of the art of prayer, who have experienced the richness of its depths, universally declare the opposite:

 

St Theophan the Recluse:

“This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.” [Matthew 17:14-23]

 

If this kind goes out by the prayer and fasting of another person, then it is even less able to enter one who fasts and prays.

 

What protection!

 

Although there are a slew of demons and all the air is packed with them, they cannot do anything to one who is protected by prayer and fasting. 

 

From the same Father:

For a believer there is nothing terrifying here, because near a God-fearing man demons only busy themselves, but they do not have any power over him. A sober man of prayer shoots arrows against them, and they stay far away from him, not daring to approach, and fearing the defeat which they have already experienced.

The objection of course is that prayer did not protect the students at the school in Minneapolis.  But this touches on the mystery of human freedom.  God does not restrain the free will of men and women; He allows us to choose good or evil for ourselves.  The prayers and worship at the Annunciation Catholic School could have guided the shooter Robert Westman to virtue, but he rejected the good things offered to him and chose to befriend Satan instead, chose to become a murderer.  This is reminiscent of Judas the Traitor, who lived nearly every day with the Lord Jesus Christ Himself for three years.  How could that not have protected him irrevocably from demonic influence?  But because of Judas’s own free will, he allied himself with the Pharisees and plotted the murder of his All-Good Master.

There is an assumption about prayer implicit in such objections, that it is little more than magic, i.e., a way to quickly accomplish the will of man in the world.  That is a tremendous misunderstanding.  The main purpose of prayer is the accomplishment of God’s will in the world (‘Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done,’ as we say in the Lord’s Prayer).  That can only happen when we deny our own corrupted, fallen will and cooperate fully with God.  Disobedience of God, self-will, acts of evil:  Each of them thwart God’s good plans for the world.

But the Holy Trinity, because He is All-Good, is not idle in the face of this resistance.  He is constantly using the evil deeds of man and the demons to bring about salvation and healing for us; He transforms evil acts into blessings for the cosmos.  Christ again is the supreme example of this:  He died a cruel death upon the Holy Cross, an apparent victory for the forces of evil.  But through His death, the most heinous act of murder and blasphemy that could be committed by men, and His resurrection, death itself was destroyed, the captives of hades were freed, the gates of Paradise were opened to us once again, and all of mankind will be resurrected at the end of time.  In the fulness of time, we may rightly expect good things to come from the sorrowful events in Minneapolis as well.

St Nikolai Velimirovich elaborates on this theme, writing poetically about why hardships should be seen as blessings:

 . . .

The rest is at https://thehayride.com/2025/09/garlington-against-the-prayer-mockers/.

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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!