‘Unity in the US Comes at the Expense of Authentic Spiritual Truth and Life’

 

The Republican National Convention has ended, and to no one’s great surprise, Donald Trump laid out some big, swaggering, and ambitious goals in his acceptance speech on 18 July.

One of them is the goal of so-called national unity.  As he put it, ‘Just like our ancestors, we must now come together, rise above past differences and disagreements, and go forward united, as one people, and one nation, pledging allegiance to one great and beautiful American flag.’

This he will accomplish with the following prescriptions:

Together, we will launch a new era of safety, prosperity and freedom for citizens of every race, religion, color, and creed.

 

 . . . I will END the devastating Inflation Crisis immediately, bring down interest rates, and lower the cost of energy—we will DRILL, BABY, DRILL, which will lead to a large-scale decline in prices. 

 

I will END the Illegal Immigration Crisis by closing our border and finishing the wall, most of which I have already built. 

 

I will END every single International Crisis that the current administration has created—including the horrible war with Russia and Ukraine, and the war caused by the attack on Israel, both of which would never have happened if I were president.

One will perhaps notice that religion is not at the heart of Mr Trump’s plan to achieve unity.  Peaceful coexistence in the United States is predicated on worldly, materialistic success.

Now, there is nothing wrong with secure borders, a sound economic policy, etc.  However, it is precisely the nature of Antichrist to define life primarily in terms of material well-being, while ignoring or downplaying the importance of spiritual well-being.  St Seraphim Rose of Platina, California, is emphatic on this point:

At the beginning of the essay, Eugene [i.e., St Seraphim—W.G.] outlined the principles of the reign of Antichrist as described in Patristic writings and in the works of the Orthodox authors Soloviev and Dostoyevsky.  The religion of Dostoyevsky’s “Grand Inquisitor,” he wrote, “is the religion of earthly bread.  It has one central doctrine, and that is:  the welfare of man in this world is the only common and indispensable religious concern of all men.  . . .  The religion of the “Grand Inquisitor,” Eugene maintained, takes fundamental Christian values—peace, brotherhood, unity, love—and distorts them to be used toward the furtherance of purely earthly aims.  It does not openly do away with Christianity; it only reinterprets it, so thoroughly that sincere Christians are eventually led to work for the same goals as secular idealists who are seeking to build their kingdom of heaven on earth (Hieromonk Damascene, Father Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works, 3^rd edn., St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, Platina, Cal., 2010, pgs. 241, 242).

The last line is really the core of Americanism:  building up in ways unknown before the ‘kingdom of heaven on earth’ with its ‘religion of bread’.

Mr Trump illustrated this in his speech beyond what we have already noted:

‘America is on the cusp of a new Golden Age, but we must have the courage to seize it.’  ‘Together, we will SAVE THIS COUNTRY, we will restore the Republic, and we will usher in the rich and wonderful tomorrows that our people truly deserve.’

In other words, elect me, and you will all experience an economic bonanza.  But the Holy Apostle Paul’s words are a staggering rebuke to the worldly wealth and safety gospel of Trump, Biden, etc.:  ‘When people say, "There is peace and security," then sudden destruction will come upon them as travail comes upon a woman with child, and there will be no escape’ (I Thessalonians 5:3).

St Seraphim over and over again tried to point folks in the States in the right direction:

All of the spiritual falseness seems to me but raw material that is waiting to be exploited by the Prince of Evil for the establishment of some monstrous, deceitful “Kingdom of this world”:  . . . most of all forgetfulness of Christ and of the fact that the “problems” of our age are not external but internal, for they are the product of our turning away from the Face of that terrible God Who expects so much from us, and has promised us an eternal life that will be unbearable to men who want only to “get along in the world” (Life and Works, p. 195).

But we have not listened.  We have made spiritual things secondary, irrelevant.  It must be this way in order for there to be peace in the US.  If all the adherents of the different religions and sects living in the States were lively believers, there would be horrible levels of conflict, just as there were in the past between Roman Catholics and Protestants, and between the Protestant denominations, just as there still are between Muslims and Hindus, etc.  But the wicked, deceitful devil has found a way to calm the rage:  smothering the religious zeal of one and all by fixing their desires on material gain rather than spiritual advancement.  This is the brilliant solution of Americanism to religious strife.

 . . .

The rest is at https://orthodoxreflections.com/unity-in-the-us-comes-at-the-expense-of-authentic-spiritual-truth-and-life/.

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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!