Homegrown faith & “Holy Russia”

By “Bellator Dei”

“Americans ruin Orthodoxy – especially those backwards white Southern redneck ones!” Such are the cries of the critics within and without the Church. Oddly enough, this criticism comes from two distinct and disparate camps.

The first and most insidious one are the Progressive/Leftist oriented “cradle” believers , as well as converts, who are trying to change the dogmatic teachings of the Holy Orthodox Church and conform it to the World. They manage somehow to perform mental gymnastics to justify their secularized “woke” worldview with Holy Tradition. They use a weaponized false sense of compassion and a very worldly carnal definition of “love” to do this.

Let us not forget, Progressivism is its own religion, complete with its own set of sacraments (abortion, birth control), Saints (George Floyd, Harvey Milk), and, of course, its own heretics (us, traditionally minded people, actual Patristic believing Orthodox Christians, Southrons). At the forefront this liberal-progressive assault are the ivory tower folks who fancy themselves “scholars” (Lord save us from these smug intellectual modernist academics)! Particularly odious in these dens of serpents are the dishonest leftists at the Jesuit-run Fordham University known as “Public Orthodoxy” (so-called).

Another particularly subversive entity is led by a defrocked former OCA priest, defrocked for leaving his wife and children to have a homosexual relationship with another man, known as “Orthodoxy in Dialogue.” These renovationists, in direct opposition to Holy Scripture, Patristic teachings, canonical precepts, and the very Mind of the Church (phronema) and Consensus of the Saints, which has been guided throughout the millennia by the Holy Spirit, wish to pervert and destroy all the immutable moral laws and doctrines of the Church. They are a virtual cornucopia of heresies. Liberation theology, “Social Gospel” promotion, Sodomy apologetics, feminism, and Babel-like globalist agendas are the antichrist mantras and ideologies these poor, deluded creatures peddle to unsuspecting inquirers to Orthodoxy and others unfortunate enough to run across their poisonous screeds online.

Enough about these people, however. I would link to the manure I am addressing, but others far more capable than I, like Fr. John Whiteford and Dissident Mama, have done an excellent job refuting them and their heterodox and insane ideas. May the Lord deal with them and their ilk.

On the flip side to that madness is the second camp I wish to address: the LARPers. For those who may not know this term, it stands for Live Action Role Playing. In other words, pretending to be something you are not. These folks pose a unique problem, as well, as they believe that you, as an American or Western convert, have to pretend to be Greek or Russian (or what have you) to “truly” become Orthodox.

I belong to the Russian Church Abroad. I am quite fond of the Russians I know and love the history of the Rus and what became known prior to the evil Bolshevik Revolution as “Holy Russia.” That said, I read an article recently from a site I frequent and often enjoy, that, in my opinion, basically bashed being Orthodox and able to love America.

Now, for the record, I have no love for the U.S. Establishment, our System, nor for liberal democracy in general. My particular worldview is rooted firmly in pre-“Enlightenment” traditional concepts informed by my Faith and Holy Tradition. As someone in the American South, and who happens to be ethnically very Western in descent, this idea that I have to hate my ancestors and despise my homeland, despise Dixie, and despise my spiritually astray countrymen, kith and kin, to rather pretend to be Russian or Greek, is preposterous.

It is also not the Orthodox approach. There are many Saints who speak of loving their nations, and loving their people. Often times these people weren’t Orthodox yet, but were being evangelized to. One cannot evangelize one’s people if one hates them! And one does not need to be Eastern European or from the Balkans to become a sincere Orthodox Christian.

St. John of ShangHai and San Francisco made this clear, as did the great witness of legions of pre-Schism Western Saints that we have knowledge of, with more being known of them each day – thanks, in part, to the Russian Orthodox Church actually. Local Orthodox Churches are described by ethnic and geographical descriptives for a good reason: for She enculturated all these peoples and lands and never asked them to become something they are NOT, but to embrace Holy Orthodoxy and let Her bring that “ethnos”/nation to its full potential as a nation baptized unto Christ.

The First Century Jewish Christians didn’t ask the Greeks to pretend to be ethnic Jews, in fact St. Paul settled that firmly in Acts 15. Sts. Cyril and Methodius never told the Slavs to pretend that they are Greeks. Romanians are distinctly Romanians, Bulgarians are Bulgarian, and Serbs are Serbs. Yet, we are all Orthodox, and share ourselves with each other as all members of the Body of Christ – the Orthodox Church. Our unique identities are maintained while still being united by the Chalice. Those things that were good in those cultures and edifying were baptized; those things incompatible to the Faith were discarded.

Such it has always been; today it is no different. The Classical West was Orthodox for a thousand years or better, and when the West fell to Schism, the East kept the traditional Faith lit and it is with us to this day. It has gone back and forth like this throughout the centuries and history of the Church. No matter what, the Church remains and the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against Her.

So what if we praise Robert E. Lee as a hero? So what if we love good barbecue and bluegrass, and the Divine Liturgy? This is who we are. We are not bringing, nor do we wish to bring, heterodox theology into the Church. We understand the sacrosanct nature of tradition and do not wish to tamper with the ultimate tradition – Holy Tradition! We are bringing our culture and ethnos into the Church to baptize them! Yes, people do bring their baggage into the Church at times, but solid Patristic catechesis (which is sadly lacking in many American parishes) can remedy that.

As a final thought, I just wish to say, Orthodoxy in Dixie is on the rise … and it is organic, Patristic, traditional, and gives honor to our ancestors for the Good that was in so many of them, not for their theologies. They were as pious as many of them knew how to be with what they had. Unlike Col. Philip Ludwell III, those men weren’t blessed with having or knowing the fullness of Holy Orthodoxy. Most of us are not even a fraction of the heroic men and women these valiant people of the Antebellum South were.

I don’t care what the likes of these Progressive fraudulent “Orthodox” say, or the LARPers. Orthodoxy works and grows best when it grows organically. This is what we pray for. May the Lord bless it!

Originally published February 7, 2022, at Orthodox Appalachia.