‘A Soviet Refugee Affirms the Southern Tradition’

 

Could a Russian monk living in the remote woods of central New York State have anything relevant to say about Dixie?

The answer to that question is a definite Yes.

This monk was born Alexander Taushev in Kazan, Russia, in 1906, the Taushevs being amongst the nobility in pre-revolutionary Russia.  After the Soviets gained power the Taushevs were exiled, in 1920.  The young Alexander grew up in Bulgaria and was educated at the University of Sofia under a saint, Seraphim Sobolev, from which he received a degree in Theology.  He was a teacher and administrator in parts of eastern and western Europe and was tonsured a monk in 1931, receiving the new name Averky in honor of St. Averkios of Hieropolis (+167 A. D.), and was also ordained a deacon.  The next year he was ordained as a priest.

In 1951, Father Averky arrived in New York State, where he became a professor and then rector of Holy Trinity Orthodox Seminary in Jordanville, New York, and was thereafter renowned for his commentary on the New Testament.  In 1961, he was ordained Archbishop of Syracuse and Holy Trinity.  He fell asleep in the Lord on 13 April 1976, and though he has not been officially canonized, he was regarded by his spiritual child St. Seraphim Rose (+1982) as a friend of God – a saint.

What is of most interest to us for the purposes of this essay are those commentaries of the books of the New Testament.  In them, Southerners will find a startlingly clear vindication of their traditions:  honoring women by keeping them out of the grimy world of politics, a gradual end to slavery, a jaundiced view of money-getting, etc.

In Archbishop Averky’s commentary on I Timothy 6, he reveals his basic principles on the idea of social revolution, always so much in fashion in various places of Yankeedom, while being mostly abhorred at the South.  He is unequivocally opposed to it:

‘Chapter 6 of the epistle contains important instructions that resolve in the spirit of Christianity an important issue of social inequality, which so energizes the people in modern times.  The general meaning of these instructions is that Christianity abhors violent social upheavals.  Speaking in more contemporary language, Christianity encourages change in social relations by means of gradual development or evolution, by instructing and transforming great masses of mankind in the principles of true Christian love, equality, and brotherhood.  Conversely, Christianity condemns the path of revolution, for it is a path of hatred, violence, and bloodshed’ (Archbishop Averky Taushev, The Epistles and the Apocalypse:  Commentary on the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament, Vol. III, Nicholas Kotar, transl., Vitaly Permiakov, edr., Holy Trinity Seminary Press, Jordanville, New York, 2018, p. 132; this book is available as a handsome hardcover here).

He then applies these principles directly to a subject that the South still wrestles with, slavery:  ‘This is why Paul says, “Let as many bondservants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and His doctrine may not be blasphemed” (6:1).  Christian slaves must be especially careful if their masters are also Christian.  “And those who have believing masters, let them not despise them because they are brethren, but rather serve them because those who are benefited are believers and beloved. . . .  If anyone teaches otherwise  . . .  he is proud, knowing nothing, but is obsessed with disputes” (6:2-5)’ (pgs. 132-3).

Abp. Averky says further about this in his commentary on Ephesians chapter 6, ‘Then the apostle exhorts slaves to show obedience to their masters, and masters to be fair and condescending to slaves.  St Paul does not even touch the political or social issue of the legality or abolition of slavery.  The Christian Church in general has never set itself the goal to drive forward external political or social revolutions.  Instead, Christianity seeks the interior transformation of mankind, which then will naturally entail the external changes in the social or political aspects of the entire life of humanity’ (p. 73).

Dixie was therefore not in the wrong for seeking a gradual end to slavery, but rather it was the Yankee abolitionists who were, who advocated precisely for the quick and violent end to slavery.

The archbishop also addresses forthrightly the issue of feminism, an ideology despised by traditional Southerners and excoriated particularly well by Rev. Robert Lewis Dabney and Louisa McCord.  The collective Southern distaste for it is illustrated easily enough by the reluctance of Southern States to approve the 19^th amendment (granting suffrage to women) to the Philadelphia constitution.  Abp. Averky, commenting on I Timothy chapter 2, is in accord with them:  . . .

The rest is at https://www.reckonin.com/walt-garlington/a-soviet-refugee-affirms-the-southern-tradition.

--

Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!