A Christian Country Will Have a Christian King

As the heat of the sectional strife between North and South grew stronger in the years leading up to the War of Northern Revolution, the traits peculiar to each began to show forth more and more clearly, as metal purified in a furnace of its dross.  In governlore (politics), the North tended toward a totalitarian democracy with the President as dictator, a scene still being played out today in the Union of Captive States because of the North’s victory in the War. 

Þe South, meanwhile, became ever more devoted to hierarchy, culminating in the desire by more than a few for the establishment of a king in the South (Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene Genovese, The Mind of the Master Class, Cambridge UP, 2005, pgs. 700-6).  While the argument went both ways (for and against), the fact that such a discussion was had at all, and is still had among Southerners today (see, e.g., Dr Donald Livingston’s essays here http://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/review/david-hume-republicanism-and-the-human-scale-of-political-order/ and in Rethinking the American Union for the Twenty-First Century), together with her continued focus on hierarchy in general (Richard Weaver, Andrew Lytle, Fred Chappell), is yet more evidence that the South longs for something better than the politics of the Satan-inspired Western European Revolution, however much she has tried to associate herself with the latter.

This is a good instinct of hers, reaching out for the true Christian social order:

In the Christian order politics too was founded upon absolute truth. We have already seen, in the preceding chapter, that the principal providential form government took in union with Christian Truth was the Orthodox Christian Empire, wherein sovereignty was vested in a Monarch, and authority proceeded from him downwards through a hierarchical social structure. We shall see in the next chapter, on the other hand, how a politics that rejects Christian Truth must acknowledge "the people" as sovereign and understand authority as proceeding from below upwards, in a formally "egalitarian" society. It is clear that one is the perfect inversion of the other; for they are opposed in their conceptions both of the source and of the end of government. Orthodox Christian Monarchy is government divinely established, and directed, ultimately, to the other world, government with the teaching of Christian Truth and the salvation of souls as its profoundest purpose; Nihilist rule--whose most fitting name, as we shall see, is Anarchy---is government established by men, and directed solely to this world, government which has no higher aim than earthly happiness.

Source:  Eugene Rose (before he was ordained Fr Seraphim), Nihilism, http://www.oodegr.co/english/filosofia/nihilism_root_modern_age.htm

Salvation:  This is the one great end any leod (people) are to work toward and ought to be so noted in any constitution they draw up.  Everything else is secondary.  Did not our Lord say that the soul is worth more than all else (Mark 8:36)? 

But since the Great Schism of 1054, when the Bishop of Rome broke troth with the Orthodox Church for the sake of building a worldly empire, the salvation of man (and all the creation) in Christ has been overshadowed by other ends.  From Magna Carta to The Communist Manifesto Western man (Roman Catholic, Protestant, and atheist) has become obsessed with how best to organize a government of ‘the people’, with property and rights and other earthly cares.  This sort of thing will find its fulfillment in the reign of Antichrist (e.g., St Ignaty Brianchaninov, On Miracles and Signs, Holy Trinity Monastery, 1997, p. 18).

But the best form has already been made manifest; it appeared early in the Church’s life - the symphony between church and state, bishop and king.  St Nikolai Velimirovich writes about this in the context of his homeland of Serbia, but it is true of all Orthodox lands:

Serbian history never knew of any struggle between Church and state. There were no such struggles, but bloody wars have filled the history of Western nations. How does one explain the difference between the two cases? The one is explained by theodulia, the other by theocracy.

Let us take two tame oxen as an example, how they are both harnessed to the same yoke, pull the same cart, and serve the same master. This is theodulia. Then let us take two oxen who are so enraged with each other that one moment the ox on the left pulls himself out from the yoke and gores the other one, goading him on to pull the cart alone, while the next moment the ox on the right does the same to his companion on the left.

This is theocracy: the war of the Church against the state and the war of the state against the Church; the war of the pope against kings and the war of kings against the pope. Neither ox wished to be yoked and serve the Master; each of them wanted to play the role of the Master and drive his companion under the yoke. Thus the Master's cart has remained stationary and his field uncultivated and eventually has become completely overgrown with weeds. This is what happened in the West.

Source:  The Serbian People As a Servant of God, http://www.sv-luka.org/library/ServantOfGod.html, ch. 29, accessed 1 Sept. 2015

It is fitting for us to dwell on these things today, for yesterday, 31 August, was the Feast Day of Halig (Saint) Aidan, from Ireland, whose cooperation with St Oswald, king of the English Kingdom of Northumbria, is a wonderful picture of symphony at work among Dixie’s forefathers:

Saint Aidan of Lindisfarne (651)

Around AD 635, Saint Oswald (5 August), King of Northumbria, appealed to the monks of the Monastery of Iona to send missionaries to his mostly-pagan kingdom. (An earlier mission had ended with the death of St Edwin in 633).) The fathers of the monastery chose St Aidan and consecrated him bishop. He founded a monastery (and his episcopal seat) on the island of Lindisfarne, and undertook missionary journeys, always on foot, throughout the kingdom, with King Oswald often accompanying him and serving as his interpreter. He lived in great poverty, using all the gifts he received as alms for the poor or to buy back captives and slaves. He was the spiritual father of St Hilda (17 Nov.), and founded the first women’s monasteries in Northumbria. He reposed in peace in 651, and was buried at Lindisfarne.
Note: Northumbria was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom in what is now northeastern England and southern Scotland.

Source:  John Brady, http://www.abbamoses.com/months/august.html, entry for 31 August, accessed 1 Sept. 2015

Fighting about constitutions is a dead end.  Fighting about Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, and Bernie Sanders is a dead end.  Fighting about rights is a dead end.  What matters is salvation:  ‘But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you’ (Matt. 6:33 KJV).  And the conditions for salvation are best in countries ruled by an Orthodox Christian king.

‘Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls’ (Jeremiah 6:16 KJV). 

Ask for the old paths, Souðron.