‘One day Saint Polycarp saw the ruler sitting in his chair and watching as the blood of Christians flowed like water.’—From the life of Martyr Polycarp of Alexandria (+4th century)
The murder of six innocent Christians at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, by a deranged young woman in the grips of the demonic ideology of transgenderism seems to have opened the eyes of many to the reality of the spiritual warfare going on here in the States, that the forces of Good and evil are locked in a battle for the souls and bodies of the people we see all around us.
Much of the ruling class and many Blue States and cities agree with President Biden, who put out a statement on April 1st that reads in part,
‘Transgender Day of Visibility celebrates the joy, strength, and absolute courage of some of the bravest people I know — people who have too often had to put their jobs, relationships, and lives on the line just to be their true selves. Today, we show millions of transgender and nonbinary Americans that we see them, they belong, and they should be treated with dignity and respect. Their courage has given countless others strength, but no one should have to be brave just to be themselves. Every American deserves that freedom. Transgender Americans shape our Nation’s soul . . . .’
In a situation so unprecedented, so at odds with traditional mores, is there anything in the Southern tradition that can possibly help us here in Dixie to reestablish our feet on solid ground, to help us regain our bearings?
Deo Gratias, we have not been left without such help. Another one of Virginia’s great sons, the Rev. Robert Lewis Dabney, provides us with a diagnosis and a cure for the madness that is overwhelming society. In his book The Sensualistic Philosophy of the Nineteenth Century Considered, he foresees clearly the effects of rejecting traditional Christian teaching about God and man and accepting in its place various materialistic and atheistic theories. He begins an exceptional string of passages by explaining the motivations of modern man for denying God:
‘We saw that the practical effect of Darwin’s speculations was to make man one among the beasts. But Huxley and his comrades would end by reducing both man and beast to the level of the clod. Why is it, that any mind possessed even of the culture displayed in these ill-starred speculations, does not resent the unspeakable degradation which they inflict upon mankind? Men would not thus outrage their own natures, without an interested motive. That motive is, doubtless, in many, the craving for license from moral restraints, and release from that accountability to a holy God, which remorse foreshadows. In the more decent it is probably a semi-conscious vanity of intellect, itching for a place apart from the common crowd of thinkers, and a semi-conscious craving for liberty of an irresponsible self-will. They wish not to have this Christ to reign over them. To the sinful mind viewing its destiny superficially, it may seem a fine thing to have no omniscient Master; to be released from the restraints of law; to be held hereafter to no account for conscious guilt. But let us see whether even guilty man has any motive of self-interest to say in his heart, “There is no God,” whether atheism is not at least as horrible as hell.’
This describes very well the transgender crowd – seeking liberty from moral restraint, freedom from accountability to God. But there is a price to be paid for these actions. Following this rebellion, he says, comes profound sadness:
‘Some materialists have professed to believe in immortality. But should it be that man is immortal, and yet has no God, this itself will be eternal despair. For no materialistic theory can then expel from the man those immutable realities, sensibility, hope, fear, sin, guilt, accountability, remorse . . . . But now, if the materialist-theory is true, there is no remedy for these miseries. There is no God omnipotent to cleanse and deliver. There is no Redeemer, in whom dwell the divine wisdom, power, love, and truth, for man’s rescue. The Bible, the only book that ever professed to tell fallen man of an adequate salvation, is discredited. Providence and Grace are, banished out of the existence of helpless, suffering man. There is no object to whom we can address prayer in our extremity. In place of a personal God and Father in Christ, - the fountain and exemplar of all love and beneficence, to whom we can cry in prayer, on whom we may lean in our weakness and sorrow, who is able and willing to wash away guilt and heal depravity, who is suited to be our adequate portion through an eternal existence, - we are left to confront this infinite Nature, material, impersonal, reasonless, heartless.’
And now he pours out words of heart-breaking eloquence that capture the despair that is crushing the hearts and souls of so many people, and leading them to commit horrific atrocities:
‘There is no supreme, rational, or righteous government over man [in the materialist scheme—W.G.]; and when the noblest sentiments of the soul are crushed by wrongs so intolerable, that their perpetual triumph is felt to be more hateful than death; there is not, nor shall there ever be, to all eternity, any appeal to compensating justice! But our only master is an irresistible, blind machine, revolving forever by the law of a mechanical necessity; and the corn between its upper and nether millstones is this multitude of living, palpitating, human hearts, instinct with their priceless hopes, and fears, and affections, and pangs, writhing and bleeding forever under the remorseless grind. The picture is as black as hell itself. He who is “without God in this world,” is “without hope.” Atheism is despair’ (Christopher Coldwell, edr., Naphtali Press, Dallas, 2003, pgs. 152, 153-4).
Without Christ, without hope, drowning in their pain and fear, people like Audrey Hale have no reason to refrain from lashing out at those whom they believe are mistreating them.
To the question, then, that inevitably follows these abominable evils – What must we do to prevent them from happening again? – the answer, vis-à-vis Rev. Dabney, is not difficult to discern:
. . .
The rest is at https://identitydixie.com/2023/04/11/a-southern-response-to-the-nashville-school-shooting/.
A slightly different version is here:
https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/a-southern-response-to-the-nashville-school-shooting/
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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!
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