July 4th brings a very contradictory image to the eyes of those living in the United States, though most do not think it so: churches wrapped in various layers of American flags and other related paraphernalia. Truth be told, these two – the dominant ideology of individual liberty (Americanism) and the Christian Church – are at war with one another. Christians in the United States rightly want God’s blessing on themselves and their fellow citizens, but it will not (and cannot) happen by trying to reconcile these two opposing camps. The Church’s embrace of Americanism is an existential threat to her existence, the thrusting of a dagger straight into her heart.
Traditionally, a nation, tribe, people, kingdom, etc., is the outgrowth of communal devotion towards, and worship of, a divine being, which includes a deep connection with the land. Dr. Russell Kirk described it this way in ‘What Does Culture Mean?’: ‘Our English word culture is derived from the Latin word cultus, which to the Romans signified both tilling the soil and worshiping the divine. In the beginning, culture arises from the cult: that is, people are joined together in worship, and out of their religious association grows the organized human community.’
Orthodox Armenia provides an example of this:
‘Today, on July 1, the Armenian Church celebrates the Day of Remembrance of the Holy King Trdat, Queen Ashkhen and Virgin Khosrovidukht, reminds Qahana.am .
‘The Armenian king Trdat Arshakuni was the first in the world to adopt Christianity as the state religion of his country (301). Next to his name, history also mentions the names of Queen Ashkhen and his sister, the virgin Khosrovidukht.
‘It was thanks to a dream that Khosrovidukht dreamed that St. Gregory the Illuminator was released from imprisonment in the monastery of Khor Virap and began to spread the light of Christ on the Armenian land. As Agafangelos testifies, together with the king of the Thirties, Queen Ashkhen and the Virgin Khosrovidukht go out to meet St. Gregory the Illuminator, returning from Caesarea, and receive baptism in the waters of Aratsani. In the future, they participate in the construction of the Holy Etchmiadzin.
‘The Armenian Church celebrates the Day of Remembrance of the Holy King Trdat, Queen Ashkhen and Virgin Khosrovidukht on the fourth Saturday after Pentecost.’
The ideology – let us be more precise: the competing religion – that has risen to dominance in the United States overturns that order of things:
‘ . . . American society . . . is a very individualistic society and very liberal in all senses. It is strictly coeval with European modernity. It was born modern. . . .
‘The only root of American society is the modern concept of the individual. There is nothing that lies beneath the individual. There is no pre-modern dimension to it and no deep roots. . . .
‘The landscape is the living image of the country and the people that dwells there. The soil is sacred for deep identity as the most basic, vegetative level of the soul. The soil of Europe is a kind of visible, material manifestation of its culture. The German archeologist and anthropologist Leo Frobenius used to say, “Culture is the Earth manifesting itself through man.”
‘Deep identity is linked to the soil. It is the dimension of eternity, of everlasting stability and immutability.
‘ . . . From the beginning, America was a mobile, highly dynamic society of nomads moving about on the surface of a minimized, almost non-existent space. There is no such thing as American earth. There is no earth there, there is only America, the country without soil, without roots, open to all and allowing no one a place to exist – only a place to keep moving, endlessly and always, developing, progressing, and changing. It is a pure dromocratic society (Paul Virilio), a successfully realized rhizomatic smooth surface, as was dear to Gilles Deleuze.
‘Therefore, the space of America doesn’t allow roots to grow. It is an asphalt world’ (Alexander Dugin, Eurasian Mission: An Introduction to Neo-Eurasianism, John B. Morgan IV edr., UK, Arktos, 2014, pgs. 118, 119-20).
A devastating switch has been made in the US. Freedom in the context of the holy Apostles and Fathers of the Orthodox Church means primarily freedom from sin. But in the new American context it means primarily freedom from any and all authority over an individual.
This American individualistic ethos is therefore poison for the Church. It is in fact lethal to anything that savors remotely of tradition, self-sacrifice, and so on. The individual’s all-consuming, all-American ‘pursuit of happiness’ will make him reject any restraints that he believes hampers this quest of his – marriage, children, loyalty to his ancestors and to his birth place; especially traditional Christianity – embracing instead whatever brings him pleasure: in the most advanced cases, even things like murder (unborn babies inclusive), transgenderism, transhumanism, psychedelic drugs, and suicide.
. . .
The rest is at https://orthodoxreflections.com/americanism-vs-christianity/.
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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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