The 13 colonies of England gained their independence at an inauspicious time. Christianity was at a low ebb in much of the world: In western Europe, Roman Catholics and Protestants were continuing to have violent quarrels. The Orthodox Christians of eastern Europe, the Middle East, and northern Africa were under the heavy yoke of the Muslims, while the Orthodox in Russia were being oppressed by Empress Catherine II.
All of this together helped create a spiritual vacuum in the West, which was filled by new atheistic and humanistic theories (i.e., the Enlightenment). Among them was the one that has become central to the United States, that the unhindered exercise of freedom here in the world is the sine qua non of human existence, that history unfolds as the quest of humanity towards greater, more expansive liberty.
But Christianity teaches us something different. St. Seraphim Rose of Platina, California, says in the first lecture of his Orthodox Survival Course:
If you read the Old Testament, you will find a remarkable history which is different from the history of any other country. In other countries there are rulers [who] rise and fall: there is tyranny, there are democratic paradises, there are wars, sometimes the righteous triumph, sometimes the unrighteous triumph; and the whole of history is extremely sceptical. Historians will tell you their chronicle of crimes and savagery — and no meaning. And what happens to come out is some chance event which no one can see any meaning for. But in the History of Israel we see a very deep thing which is the history of the chosen people of God which is now following God’s commandments, and now falling away; and its history depends upon how it is, whether it’s following God or falling away from Him. . . .
The whole history of Israel is this history between belief and unbelief, between following God and turning away from God. And the history of Israel becomes in the New Testament the history of the Church, the new Israel. And the history of humanity from the time Christ came to earth until now is the history of the Church and of those peoples who either come to the Church or fight against the Church, or come to the Church and fall away from it. World history, from that time to this, makes sense only if you understand there is some plan going on, which is the plan of God for the salvation of men.
History, according to the Church, is about the peoples of the world accepting or rejecting the salvation made available to man through the incarnation, birth, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ, the God-man. This is actually the essence of what it means to be human – to be united to the Lord Jesus and to His Church, to acquire fully the Grace of the Holy Spirit, not simply the exercise of freedom.
But since the peoples of the States have divinized human freedom, they have also necessarily divinized the political system in which that freedom is exercised. This has led to an interesting reversal: When Christian faith was strong, adherence to the teachings and traditions of the Holy Apostles was paramount, and every deviation was strongly contested. Hence the intense doctrinal debates from the 4th to the 8th centuries, that led to the Seven Ecumenical Councils, those gatherings of the bishops from throughout the Christian world that established the dogmas of right belief about the Holy Trinity and other matters. But now when Christian faith is weak and humanistic faith is strong, adherence to the proper political traditions has become paramount, with corresponding anathemas and denunciations of heretics who hold to this or that ‘false teaching’ about constitutional matters; meanwhile, one may believe whatever he likes about religious matters with hardly a care by anyone.
Thus we have created in a real sense in the States a substitute church for that of Christ’s, and we diligently preach the gospel of this church around the world: not that of Christ crucified for our sins, but of mankind’s liberation from tyranny through constitutional government, with its holy trinity of legislative, executive, and judicial branches, man’s salvation being in the mutual antagonism (rather than mutual love) of these three towards one another.
George W. Bush admitted as much in his second inaugural address in 2005:
. . .
The rest is at https://thehayride.com/2024/04/garlington-building-on-a-foundation-of-sand/.
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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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