Religion and Politics in the South, Part 1 of 2

Juan Donoso Cortes, Marqués de Valdegamas in Spain in the 19^th hundredyear and a very good conservative thinker, once wrote:

“In his Confessions of a Revolutionist Monsieur Proudhon has written these remarkable words: ‘It is wonderful how we ever stumble on theology in all our political questions!’ There is nothing here to cause surprise except the surprise of Monsieur Proudhon. Theology, inasmuch as it is the science of God, is the ocean which contains and embraces all sciences, as God is the ocean which contains and embraces all things.”

Source:  Fr Seraphim Rose, Orthodox Survival Course, ‘Lecture 8: Meaning of Revolution’, p. 129, http://tinyurl.com/h8uqu66, downloaded 12 Feb. 2017

There is a deep connection between theology and politics.  The latter will flow from the former.  So when there is a change in the one, we must expect to see a change in the other, too.

This is illustrated for us in Southern history. 

The first stage, in which hierarchical Anglican Christianity dominated, from the founding of Jamestown to the time of the First Great Awakening, was accompanied by hierarchy in political life as well.  Robert Beverley, writing in The History and Present State of Virginia, expressed the mindset of this time:

        But this is nothing, if compar'd to some other Passages of that unjust Representation, wherein they take upon them to describe the People of Virginia, to be both numerous and rich, of Republican Notions and Principles, such as ought to be corrected, and lower'd in time; and that now or never is the only Time to maintain the Queen's Prerogative, and put a Stop to those wrong pernicious Notions, which are improving daily, not only in Virginia, but in all Her Majesty's other Governments. A Frown now from Her Majesty, will do more than an Army hereafter, &c.

        With those inhuman Reflections do those Gentlemen afterwards introduce the Necessity of a standing Army, the Truth of which is equal to that of the precedent Paragraph. Thus are that loyal People privately, and basely misrepresented; because they struggle against the Oppression, which this Governour practices, in Contempt of Her Majesty's Instructions, and the Laws of the Country. But I challenge the Authors of that Memorial, to give one single Instance, wherein the Inhabitants of Virginia, have shown the least Want of Loyalty to the Queen, or the least Disaffection to England.

Source:  1705 edn., p. 104, © UNC Chapel Hill, 2006, http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/beverley/beverley.html, opened 18 April 2017

In the second stage, from the First Great Awakening to the reaction against the Abolitionists beginning in the 1820s, the strongly individualistic and egalitarian Evangelical Christianity that came to dominate the South likewise gave rise to a similar political system.  St George Tucker is a good spokesman for the ghost of this era in Dixie:

But the American revolution has formed a new epoch in the history of civil institutions . . . .  The world, for the first time since the annals of its inhabitants, saw an original written compact formed by the free and deliberate voices of individuals disposed to unite in the same social bonds; thus exhibiting a political phenomenon unknown to former ages . . . .  . . . that greater power from whom all authority, among us, is derived; to wit, the PEOPLE.

Source:  View of the Constitution of the United States: With Selected Writings, Indianapolis, Ind.: Liberty Fund, 1999, p. 19

In the third stage, the 1820s to 1865, the struggle to preserve the plantation system from Northern meddling, the Evangelical denominations made an accommodation with the hierarchical social system in which they found themselves.  A hybrid of the first two political systems therefore began to come into being.  The talented Presbyterian minister Robert Lewis Dabney put it in words this way:

…one must teach, with Moses, the Apostle Paul, John Hampden, Washington, George Mason, John C. Calhoun, and all that contemptible rabble of ‘old fogies,’ that political society is composed of ‘superiors, inferiors, and equals’; that while all these bear an equitable moral relation to each other, they have very different natural rights and duties; that just government is not founded on the consent of the individuals governed, but on the ordinance of God, and hence a share in the ruling franchise is not a natural right at all, but a privilege to be bestowed according to a wise discretion on a limited class having qualification to use it for the good of the whole; that the integers out of which the State is constituted are not individuals, but families represented in their parental heads; that every human being is born under authority (parental and civic) instead of being born ‘free’ in the licentious sense that liberty is each one’s privilege of doing what he chooses; that subordination, and not that license, is the natural state of all men; and that without such equitable distribution of different duties and rights among the classes naturally differing in condition, and subordination of some to others, and of all to the law, society is as impossible as is the existence of a house without distinction between the foundation stone and the cap-stones.

Source:  Boyd Cathey, http://www.unz.com/article/robert-lewis-dabney-and-his-attack-on-progressivism/, opened 18 April 2017

With the fall of the South to the North at the end of the War of Northern Aggression, slavery came to an end in the South and with it the last remnants of the old, pre-Modern Christian hierarchy.  For there is no real affinity between Evangelical Christianity and hierarchy, as Allen Tate noted in ‘Remarks on the Southern Religion’:  The Old South ‘was a feudal society without a feudal religion’ (I’ll Take My Stand, Baton Rouge, La.: LSU Press, 2006, p. 166).  Without a religious foundation, the social structures of the Old South vanished for the most part like smoke in the wind.

So since that time, individualism, though attenuated by the inertia of a strong cultural past, has been the dominant ideology in the South.  This is beginning to bear baneful fruit.  A full 45% of Southerners polled in 2014 are now in favor of same-sex ‘marriage’ (46% opposing), and the percentage who say homosexuality should be accepted has risen from 40% in 2007 to 55% in 2014.  (All poll numbers from http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/region/south/, opened 18 April 2017.)  This has not yet caused much of a social change (so-called conservatives and moderates still outnumber so-called liberals by about 70% to 20%), but as the ideology of modern individualism, of ‘freedom from . . .’ rather than ‘belonging to . . .’ Church, kin group, gender, etc. (to use Alexander Dugin’s words), continues to grow stronger in the South, it will.  A land full of people who share Texas gal Maren Morris’s idea of religion (something akin to Rousseau’s religion of subjective feelings) is a society that will begin to unravel fairly quickly.

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

Anathema to the Union!

Offsite Post: ‘Can These Bones Live?’

An essay on the resurrection of the South.  Our thanks again to the folks at Katehon for hosting it.  It begins,

[1] The hand of the LORD was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the LORD, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones,
[2] And caused me to pass by them round about: and, behold, there were very many in the open valley; and, lo, they were very dry.
[3] And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live?

Ezekiel 37:1-3, KJV

These weather-worn stones are some of the remnants of the remarkable Orthodox civilization that thrived in Ireland before the dreadful forces of the Vikings, the Roman Catholics, the Protestants, and then the secular liberals visited their devastations upon it (a like pattern of events occurred in nearly every Western European country).

If these bleak landscapes are all that remain of true Christian culture in Western Europe, where the Orthodox Faith once flourished, what hope is there for the South, which has only ever breathed the less than wholesome air of post-Orthodox Europe?

But all is not lost, for the Orthodox Church is a living reality.  It is not dead.  The holy saints who created and sustained the Orthodox culture of Ireland, England, Spain, etc. through their union with God are very much alive and waiting for their kinsmen at the South to call out to them for help.  They are their bridge and their gateway back into the Christian civilization of their forefathers that so many admire but who also seem to believe (or at least act as though they believe) is lost forever.

And the South must return to that Orthodox civilization or else she will remain trapped between the crushing pillars of appetite-driven mass democracy on one side and ruthless science-empowered dictatorship on the other (Richard Weaver, The Southern Tradition at Bay, edrs. Core & Bradford, Regnery Gateway, 1989, pgs. 376-8).

 . . .

The rest is here:  http://katehon.com/article/can-these-bones-live

--

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

Anathema to the Union!

Holy Guthlac: The Saint of the Swamps

Even in the Golden Age of Faith in England

You shone brighter than most Blessed Guthlac.

But who in the South can see and love you?

A brigand who repented?

‘That is laudable.’

A monastic at Repton?

‘How distasteful!’

An admirer of the Desert Fathers?

‘They hid the light of the Gospel

And practiced works righteousness.’

A follower of their ways

All alone on Crowland isle?

‘That is unbiblical.’

He fought against demons

And overcame them with the Cross,

The Psalms, and prayers to St Bartholomew?

‘He ought to read our pastor’s

PowerPoint sermon notes instead.’

A miracle worker, a prophet,

A friend of swallows?  A death

Attended by uncreated Light,

The sweetest of smells, and angelic singing?

‘But he did not talk in tongues,

So he is false, and Pega his sister-saint.’

O meek, heroic Guthlac, be not wroth with the South.

Remember the age in which she lives;

That for many years, true Faith was hidden from her.

But as a loving father, guide her back

To the Sheepfold of the Good Shepherd.

Then with hearts’ eyes uplit, she will know you,

And seek you, and sing you worthy hymns of praise.

Ikon from http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/78881.htm, opened 11 April 2017, St Guthlac’s Day

St Guthlac, pray that the swamps and bayous of the South would be filled with monastics and hermits as once the bogs were in England.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everglades#Ecosystems, opened 11 April 2017

--

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

Anathema to the Union!

The South and Syria

The South was the first to taste the steel of the Northern military machine bent on universal conquest during the War between the States (do not take this as a general revilement of all Northerners; we know there are many good people there, and that there are plenty of scalawags in Dixie).  She was not the last.  Syria is just the latest victim, and is further proof that if the South wants to live her life in peace and quiet (as much as can be had in this veil of tears) as a Christian country, she needs to stop trusting in Washington, D.C., and simply leave the Union.  Peaceful secession is always an option, and has been exercised quite a lot the last few tenyears as in Brexit and the former Soviet republics.  Catalonia, Venice, and Scotland are now giving it a try. 

Please keep all this in mind as Appomattox Day approaches for the South:

http://confiterijournal.blogspot.com/2017/04/appomattox-day.html

And pray for the return of the Orthodox Tsar in Russia, he who restrains lawlessness/the Antichrist.

On the Syria bombing:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46801.htm

http://www.globalresearch.ca/syria-chemical-weapons-red-flags-and-false-flags/5583616

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/this-isnt-the-foreign-policy-trump-campaigned-on/

http://www.globalresearch.ca/pentagon-trained-syrias-al-qaeda-rebels-in-the-use-of-chemical-weapons/5583784

http://www.globalresearch.ca/trump-has-surrendered-will-putin-be-the-next-to-surrender-the-chemical-attack-is-a-washington-orchestrated-event/5583859

http://www.events.orthodoxengland.org.uk/syria/

--

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

Anathema to the Union!

‘Dirt Dobber’

In Fairbanks as a boy

Our car porch had two cars, yes,

But something else was there more harmonious:

Row after row of your long archèd nests,

Like batter drizzling gently down and hardened,

Some longer, some shorter, some all alone.

Us you didn’t seem to mind,

Happ’ly living on the rough wooden boards,

But Daddy and wife thought your presence impolite.

How many times did we watch Momma

With the broomhandle, arm outstretched,

Ready to break the wonesteads you worked

Tirelessly to make?  We waited, we crouched

In a runner’s position.  Were we breathing?

The blow!  All is commotion as out you poured,

Bewildered, and off we dashed to shelter.

Thirty years hence, the quest of Science

To alter nature has grown intense.

We mark its vict’ry by your absence.

And looking at the outline of your last

Desolated home, I long to hear you hum again

And to see your works adorn our walls.

--

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

Anathema to the Union!

Appomattox Day

This Sunday, the 9^th of April, marks another year of the South’s subjugation to Yankees, globalists, and other destructive forces:  It is the day in 1865 on which the main army of the Confederate States, Gen Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, surrendered to Gen Grant at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia.  Since then, countless evils have been visited upon the South:  the demonization of our heroes and way of life, the murder and exploitation of our countrymen, the inbringing of many foreign ideas and abstract rights - Jim Crow, abortion, Fundementalism, transgenderism, etc. - and all the rest of that horrible list.

But Dixie is not alone in suffering such things, and we should learn how others have dealt with them so that we too might emerge after the dark days of captivity are over with our traditions intact.

One thing we can do is to keep the day of calamity as a solemn day of fasting and prayer, and encourage all other Southerners to do likewise.  The Old Testament Jews did this to commemorate the destruction of Jerusalem and their exile under the Babylonians (see Zechariah ch. 8).  The Serbians still do this in remembrance of the Great Martyr Tsar Lazar and all the martyrs of Kosovo who suffered at the hands of the Turkish invaders on 15 June 1389, and some even fast every Tuesday, the day of the week when the battle took place.

https://orthodoxwiki.org/Lazar_of_Serbia

(Ikon from https://oca.org/saints/lives/2017/06/15/101734-right-believing-prince-lazarus-the-great-martyr-of-serbia, 4 April 2017)

For more than 600 years the Serbs have been faithful to their fallen brethren, but the South has mostly rejected ours after only 150. 

[40] And he cometh unto the disciples, and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, What, could ye not watch with me one hour?
[41] Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

St Matt. 26:40-1, KJV, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/k/kjv/kjv-idx?type=DIV2&byte=4510061, 4 April 2017

Southerners must be more watchful.  We must fast and pray as best we can on April 9^th this year, though it is Palm Sunday, a day when fasting is usually relaxed somewhat - and every year.  We ought to consider prayers and fasting of some kind every Saturday as well, the day of the week when the surrender happened.

For prayers, some here would be useful for this occasion with some slight changes:

http://www.orthodox.net/services/rite-chanted-in-time-of-attack-by-aliens.html

This one in particular from that site is very good (opened 27 Oct. 2016):

O Master, Lord our God, unto Thee do we pray, and Thee do we sinners, Thine unworthy servants, beseech, that Thou regard the entreaty of us sinners, Thy useless servants, and have mercy upon us: for our iniquities and sins have gone over our heads, O Master, and we have become an object of reproach for the nations, and of mockery and derision for the ungodly [enemies] who beset us;

and we have been humbled even unto death because of our sins and iniquities, and our blasphemies.

  Who will not weep over us who are brought so low?Who will not lament this our captivity?For all of this hath come upon us because of our sins, and iniquities and blasphemies.

Wherefore, though honored children of Sion, we have been reckoned as a potter’s vessels;

wherefore, gold hath tarnished and good silver hath corroded;

wherefore, though Nazarites of Sion who shone forth more brightly than snow, we have become black as coal;

though whiter than milk, we have become darker than ink;

though we are clad in fleece, we have been clothed in shame, and our iniquities have been magnified beyond the iniquities of Sodom;

wherefore, though children of the day and of the light, we have become children of the night and of darkness;

wherefore, though children of the kingdom, we have become slaves of iniquitous enemies and infidel nations: for we have sinned, we have committed iniquity, we have dealt unrighteously, breaking the commandments of our Lord God.

Yet forsake us not utterly, for the sake of Thy name, O Lord, and break not Thy covenant, and take not Thy mercy away from us, for the sake of Thy compassions, O our Father Who art in the heavens, and for the sake of the lovingkindness of Thine only-begotten Son, and the mercy of Thy Holy Spirit;

neither remember Thou our iniquities and sins.

But let Thy compassions go quickly before us, O Lord, for we are become exceeding poor.

Help us, O God our Savior, for the sake of the glory of Thy name.

Accept the confession of us sinners, Thine unprofitable servants, for the sake of the precious and holy Blood of Thy Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, which He shed for the life of the world;

for the sake of His holy apostles and the martyrs who struggled to shed their own blood for His holy name;

and for the sake of the holy prophets, fathers and patriarchs who strove to be well-pleasing to Thy name.

Spurn not our entreaties, O Lord, neither depart not utterly from us;

for we place no hope in our own righteousness, but in Thy mercy, wherewith Thou dost acquire our generation.

Wherefore, we beseech and entreat Thy goodness: Turn us not away from Thy face, neither disdain our unworthiness;

but have mercy upon us according to Thy great mercy, and according to the multitude of Thy compassions overlook our iniquities and sins.

Yea, O omnipotent Master, hearken to the entreaties of us sinners, and help Thy people, and strengthen our army in time of war, and render it powerful and mighty.

As Thou gavest strength against the adversaries to Joshua son of Nun and to David Thy prophet, so, O Lord Jesus Christ our God, do Thou strengthen and help Thy people, who call upon Thy holy name, for we know none other God than Thee, and we call upon Thy name;

for Thou art He Who worketh all things in all men, and from Thee do we seek help.

Wherefore, look down from heaven, O Lord, and direct Thy gaze from the holy house of Thy glory.

Where is Thy zeal, and where Thy strength? Where is the magnitude of Thy mercy and Thy compassions?For Thou art our God, and Thy name is upon us.

Reconsider, O Lord, for the sake of Thy servants, for the sake of Thy Holy Church, for the sake of all Thy saints from ages past.

Our opponents have trampled upon Thy holiness;

and we have become as we were in the beginning, when Thou didst not exercise Thy dominion over us;

for we have all become unclean;

all our righteousness is like a filthy rag, and we have fallen like leaves because of our iniquities;

and there is no-one who calleth upon Thy name and remembereth Thee, that Thou mightest help us.

And Thou hast turned Thy face away from us and abandoned us for the sake of our sins, and iniquities and blasphemies, the enemies, the prideful and the infidel nations puffing themselves up.

And now, O Lord our God, be Thou not utterly wroth, for if Thou wilt open heaven, the mountains will tremble at Thy presence and will move from their place, and fire shall consume our adverse and iniquitous foes, and Thy name shall be awesome to those who oppose Thee.

All this time we have not lifted our eyes to any other god.

Wherefore, O Master, look down now from heaven, and see, and save us for the sake of Thy holy name, and deliver us from our ungodly enemies, and free us from their wiles, plots and snares;

and deprive us not of Thy mighty aid, for we are not strong enough to prevail over those who assail us, but Thou hast the power to save us from our adverse and unbelieving foes.

Strengthen Thy people and our army, and make it steadfast, powerful and mighty in time of war;

and cast down, and break in pieces and set at nought the ungodly and unbelieving barbarians, our . . . foes, and grant glory to Thy holy name, lest the nations say: Where is their God? Through the supplications and entreaty of our most glorious Mistress, the Theotokos, and of all Thy saints.

For Thou art our help and strength, and we send up glory unto Thee—the unoriginate Father, Thine only-begotten Son, and Thine all-holy, good and life-creating Spirit—now and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

Amen.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us sinners at the South!

--

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

Anathema to the Union!

‘Why Israel Matters’

A new documentary praising Israel has been made by Evangelicals (Christians in Defense of Israel, to be precise): Why Israel Matters.  Here is what one of the main people behind the series, Mat Staver, had to say regarding this project:

There are three critical reasons Israel matters to every one of us. Two of them are temporal. The third and most important is spiritual. And it is time for our voices to be heard.

•First, Israel matters because it is the only stable democratic nation in the Middle East. This is more important than ever as we watch regimes totter and fall across the region. And Israel has long been a faithful friend and ally of the United States.

•Second, Israel matters because of the enormous economic and scientific contributions it makes. Though Israel is a tiny nation with just a few million people, it is a world leader in developing new technology. Some of the most important advances we now take for granted — the flash drive, the pill camera, and robotic technology — were birthed in Israel.

•But the most important reason Israel matters is because it matters to God! The promises of God to the Jewish people have never been revoked. Israel is at the very center of God’s plans for our world today … and tomorrow.

Source:  http://libertycounsel.com/why-israel-matters-cidi/, opened 30 March 2017

Let us look briefly at this list.

First, the praise of democracy.  This is based on a faulty metaphysical notion that the free, autonomous individual actually exists, and that he is the foundation of good civil society.  But he is neither.  The extended family would make for a better floor on which to build.  Thus, a government made up of the heads of the various clans/extended families of the country would be a better model than a democracy of atomized individuals with no allegiance to anything other than their own narrow self-interest (ironically, this is also close to the model Israel followed in the Old Testament, but secular, Enlightenment Modernity is her rule nowadays). 

These patriarchs would have a natural tendency to work for the good of their families as opposed to the representatives of invented, make-believe districts whose duty to uphold abstract ‘constitutional values’ withers quickly before the heat applied by corporate lobbyists, deep state operatives, and such.

So, hierarchy, not democracy, is to be preferred.  This is something the South understood in her better days, and hopefully will once again.

Second, technology.  Here are some of the benefits of the ‘robotic technology’ Israel has given the world:

When one or more robots was introduced into the workforce between 1990 and 2007, it led to the elimination of an average of six jobs.

During those years, robots accounted for the loss of about 670,000 manufacturing jobs, and this is expected to rise in the coming years as robots continue to take over tasks previously performed by people.

The report, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, estimated that one more robot per thousand workers reduces wages by 0.25-0.5 per cent.

Between 1993 and 2007, the authors of the report wrote that ‘the stock of robots in the United States and Western Europe increased fourfold’.

It explains that industrial robots are ‘fully autonomous machines that do not need a human operator and that can be programmed to perform several manual tasks such as welding, painting, assembling, handling materials or packaging’.

 . . .

Source:  https://www.prisonplanet.com/six-jobs-are-eliminated-for-every-robot-introduced-into-the-workforce-new-report-reveals.html, opened 30 March 2017

Third, God’s supposed continuing covenant with Old Israel.  This is the Dispensationalist heresy.  Listen to what St John Chrysostom (+407), one of the Orthodox Church’s greatest teachers, had to say about the Jews.  His words will seem harsh to some, but they are necessary to help the misguided get back onto the right path:

 . . .

(4) And so I wanted again today to engage in that contest. For if the enemies of the truth never have enough of blaspheming our Benefactor, we must be all the more tireless in praising the God of all. But what am I to do? Another very serious illness calls for any cure my words can bring, an illness which has become implanted in the body of the Church. We must first root this ailment out and then take thought for matters outside; we must first cure our own and then be concerned for others who are strangers.

(5) What is this disease? The festivals of the pitiful and miserable Jews are soon to march upon us one after the other and in quick succession: the feast of Trumpets, the feast of Tabernacles, the fasts. There are many in our ranks who say they think as we do. Yet some of these are going to watch the festivals and others will join the Jews in keeping their feasts and observing their fasts. I wish to drive this perverse custom from the Church right now. My homilies against the Anomians can be put off to another time, and the postponement would cause no harm. But now that the Jewish festivals are close by and at the very door, if I should fail to cure those who are sick with the Judaizing disease. I am afraid that, because of their ill-suited association and deep ignorance, some Christians may partake in the Jews' transgressions; once they have done so, I fear my homilies on these transgressions will be in vain. For if they hear no word from me today, they will then join the Jews in their fasts; once they have committed this sin it will be useless for me to apply the remedy.

 . . .

Many, I know, respect the Jews and think that their present way of life is a venerable one. This is why I hasten to uproot and tear out this deadly opinion. I said that the synagogue is no better than a theater and I bring forward a prophet as my witness. Surely the Jews are not more deserving of belief than their prophets. "You had a harlot's brow; you became shameless before all". Where a harlot has set herself up, that place is a brothel. But the synagogue is not only a brothel and a theater; it also is a den of robbers and a lodging for wild beasts. Jeremiah said: "Your house has become for me the den of a hyena". He does not simply say "of wild beast", but "of a filthy wild beast", and again: "I have abandoned my house, I have cast off my inheritance". But when God forsakes a people, what hope of salvation is left? When God forsakes a place, that place becomes the dwelling of demons.

(2) But at any rate the Jews say that they, too, adore God. God forbid that I say that. No Jew adores God! Who say so? The Son of God say so. For he said: "If you were to know my Father, you would also know me. But you neither know me nor do you know my Father". Could I produce a witness more trustworthy than the Son of God?

(3) If, then, the Jews fail to know the Father, if they crucified the Son, if they thrust off the help of the Spirit, who should not make bold to declare plainly that the synagogue is a dwelling of demons? God is not worshipped there. Heaven forbid! From now on it remains a place of idolatry. But still some people pay it honor as a holy place.

 . . .

I could have said more than this, but to keep you from forgetting what I have said, I shall bring my homily to an end here with the words of Moses: "I call heaven and earth to witness against you". If any of you, whether you are here present or not, shall go to the spectacle of the Trumpets, or rush off to the synagogue, or go up to the shrine of Matrona, or take part in fasting, or share in the Sabbath, or observe any other Jewish ritual great or small, I call heaven and earth as my witnesses that I am guiltless of the blood of all of you.

(2) These words will stand by your side and mine on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. If you heed them, they will bring you great confidence; if you heed them not or conceal anyone who dares to do those things, my words shall stand against you as bitter accusations. "For I have not shrunk from declaring to you the whole counsel of God".

 . . .

(4) Do not think, then, that you are doing your brothers a favor if you should see them pursuing some absurdity and should fail to accuse them with all zeal. If you lose a cloak, do you not consider as your foe not only the one who stole it but also the man who knew of the theft and refused to denounce the thief? Our common Mother (the Church) has lost not a cloak but a brother. The devil stole him and now holds him in Judaism. You know who stole him; you know him who was stolen. Do you see me lighting, as it were, the lamp of my instruction and searching everywhere in my grief? And do you stand silent, refusing to denounce him? What excuse will you have? Will the Church not reckon you among her worst enemies? Will she not consider you a foe and destroyer?

 . . .

Source:  Against the Jews, Homily 1, http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/chrysostom_adversus_judaeos_01_homily1.htm, opened 25 Feb. 2017

But Evangelicals are going straight in the opposite direction expressed by St John:  They are mixing with all kinds of Jewish customs, and their hero, Donald Trump, and those close to him are falling right in line:

(JTA) -- Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was gifted a traditional Jewish prayer shawl by a pastor during a visit to a black church in Detroit.

Bishop Wayne Jackson of the Great Faith Ministries in Detroit draped the tallit around Trump’s shoulders after the candidate finished addressing the congregation.

“Let me just put this on you,” Jackson said as the congregation burst into applause.

 . . .

Source:  forward.com, via Julia Duin, https://www.getreligion.org/getreligion/2016/9/8/donald-trump-and-the-telltale-tallit-jewish-media-shed-lots-of-heat-but-little-light?rq=donald%20trump%20prayer%20shawl, opened 31 March 2017

The Yom Kippur appeal was not White’s [Prosperity Gospel preacher Paula White, Pres Trump’s main ‘spiritual advisor’--W.G.] first foray into mixing Jewish symbols with evangelical Christianity. In a 2012 episode of her nationally syndicated TV talk show, “Paula White Today,” preserved on YouTube, White allowed herself to be wrapped in a Torah scroll by a Messianic “rabbi” named Ralph Messer, a “coronation” ceremony that she explained embodied being “wrapped in the Word of God.”

Source:  forward.com, via Julia Duin, https://www.getreligion.org/getreligion/2016/10/27/does-megachurch-pastor-paula-white-deserve-to-be-trashed-yes-says-the-forward, opened 31 March 2017

There is a realpolitik dimension to all this as well:

 . . .

The release of the email followed a March visit to the United States by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He addressed a joint session of Congress on the supposed nuclear threat posed by Iran. Netanyahu was invited to speak by Republicans who did not consult with the White House.

“Let me be frank. The speech by Netanyahu was the speech of a demagogue. And from the outset he spoke of Persians attacking Jews millennia ago. This is a sort of a religious fanaticism that is a parallel with the religious fanaticism of Islamic fundamentalists who engage in terrorism. In fact Israel has bombed many neighbors in the Middle East,” Norman Solomon, the Director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, told RT on March 4.

Not only has Israel bombed its neighbors, it has also used its nuclear arsenal to blackmail the United States.

In 1991 the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh published The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal an American Foreign Policy. The book reveals how a nuclear warhead was developed in an underground facility in the Negev Desert in the 1960s with technology acquired from France. During the Yom Kippur War in 1973, Israel blackmailed Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon. It threatened to use a nuclear weapon against Egypt and Syria during the war if the United States did not ship ammunition and spare parts.

“It was nuclear blackmail, but it worked,” writes Daniel Goldstein. “President Richard Nixon was enraged by the Israeli atomic ultimatum, and at Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s strategy, described by then–U.S. Defense Secretary James Schlesinger as allowing Israel to come out ahead but making sure it bled. ‘By the evening of October 9th,’ Kissinger wrote in his memoir, ‘Israel had been assured [by the U.S.] that its war losses would be made up. Relying on this assurance, it stepped up its consumption of war materiel,’ as dozens of U.S. C-5 and C-141 cargo planes began roaring into Tel Aviv’s airport with replacement tanks, missiles and spares.”

Israel has routinely betrayed the United States. The Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, the FBI and the National Counterintelligence Directorate held classified briefings that revealed “Israel spies on the United States more than any other ally does and these activities have reached an alarming level…The main targets are US industrial and technical secrets.”

In 1967 Israel attacked the USS Liberty in international waters with aircraft and torpedo boats, killing 34 sailors and wounding 171. “Instead of determining whether the attack was deliberate, the Navy blocked all testimony about Israeli actions,” writes James M. Ennes Jr. Congress has all but ignored demands the attack be investigated and the Israelis punished.

 . . .

Source:  Kurt Nimmo, http://anotherdayintheempire.com/state-department-establishment-media-silent-israels-200-nukes/, opened 31 March 2017

Christopher Pisarenko wrote a good passage that shows just how deeply the mania over Israel has rooted itself in the Evangelical heart:

If we consider the evangelicals, support for Israel is the central tenet of their religion – it is not Jesus or God or the Holy Spirit, and it is certainly not any of the teachings of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. Support for Israel is the most fundamental idea behind evangelical Christianity or what could also be called Christian Zionism. And evangelicals will continue their support for Israel no matter what heinous atrocities that that illegal terrorist state continues to perpetrate against the indigenous non-Jewish peoples of the region. Evangelicals and Christian Zionists in general simply do not care. They evaluate the righteousness or unrighteousness of someone by the degree to which that person supports Israel.  . . .

Source:  http://katehon.com/article/roots-american-christian-zionism-part-2, opened 31 March 2017

May they wake up soon.

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

Anathema to the Union!