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Alexander Vvedensky, the last leader of the “Living Church”
Renovationists are people who see that the Church is out of sync with the modern world, and rather than conclude that the world needs to repent and come into line with the teachings of the Church, instead assume that the Church is what needs to be fixed. To them, the solution to this problem is to make the Church more like the world, rather than to make the world more like the Church.
In any given time or place, one can certainly find problems within the Church, and see a need to do something about those problems. And so a desire to see things change within the Church is not necessarily a bad thing. One could point to the example of the Kollyvades Fathers, or even to St. John Chrysostom, as people who saw spiritual deficiencies within the Church, and spent their lives trying to raise the general spiritual level of those around them. But the big difference between people like the Kollyvades Fathers, St. John Chrysostom, and the Renovationists is where they look for answers to problems and where they want to take things. The Kollyvades and St. John Chrysostom embraced the authentic Traditions of the Church and the teachings of the Scriptures and Holy Fathers who came before them. Renovationists look outside the Church for answers.
When Renovationists see that the Church is out of sync with the mindset of the modern world, they are embarrassed that the Church is “backward,” or “old fashioned,” or “stuck in the past.” They do not approach things by seeking to better understand the Orthodox Tradition, or to come closer to the mind of the Fathers. They have a worldly mindset, and their solutions are worldly. They do not have a belief in what the Church teaches, but perhaps have a sentimental attachment to the Church, or they may simply see using the Church to promote worldly agendas as advantageous.
Renovationism first began to appear in the Orthodox Church in the early 20th century. It was most obviously embodied in the “Living Church” in Russia, but it was also behind the agenda of Patriarch Meletios Metaxakis as seen in his 1923 “Pan Orthodox Congress,” and this also explains why he later recognized the “Living Church” schismatics as the legitimate Church in Russia, and threw the authentic persecuted Russian Church under the bus. What was their agenda? They wanted to switch to the New Calendar. They wanted to shorten the fasts, shorten the services, allow bishops and monks to marry, and priest to remarry, and to marry widows. They also wished to introduce liturgical innovations. The Living Church died off in Russia, because the faithful in Russia rejected it, but Renovationism has continued to exist elsewhere, and while all of the aforementioned issues are still on the table for them, they have added quite a few since then.
Renovationism is closely related to Protestant liberalism and its “Social Gospel.” Advocates of the Social Gospel, having lost faith in anything like the actual Gospel, seek to hitch their wagons to anything current in the culture that might make them relevant. Unfortunately, they usually are about 10 years behind the culture, and so by the time they hitch their wagon to an issue, the culture in general has moved on to the new “current thing.”
Some more current examples of renovationism are the push for the acceptance of homosexuality and transgenderism in the Church, the push for ecumenism and religious syncretism, the acceptance of abortion as an acceptable option for Orthodox Christian, the ordination of women, and pretty much any other “current thing” that is being pushed. The Ecumenical Patriarchate’s acceptance of the schismatics in Ukraine is in many ways similar to the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s entering into communion with the Living Church in Russia. The Schismatics in Ukraine are concelebrating with Uniates, and are open to the acceptance of homosexuality — which makes the Living Church look like conservative traditionalists by comparison.
And then you have Metropolitan Nathaniel of Chicago ordaining a gaggle of women readers, and challenging them to press forward and demand that they be allowed to fill even more roles in the Church.
And if you have ever seen a proper ordination of a reader, you will note that what happens here bears very little resemblance to what is found in the service books of the Church. Many more examples could be cited, but the point is, it is not a question of what the “current thing” happens to be, the issue with renovationism is the felt need to keep up with the “current thing.”
The problem for renovationists, however, is that people don’t get up early on Sunday morning, to go to stand in a service for a couple of hours, just so they can be like the world. They can stay home, and drink their coffee, and be like the world. What motivates people to actually go to Church is their hunger for something that the world can’t provide them, and that is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6). The world can only point to the wrong way, promotes lies, and lead to death.
This is the third part of an ongoing series by Fr. John Whiteford, reposted with his permission.
Fr. John Whiteford is the pastor of St. Jonah Orthodox Church (ROCOR) in Spring, Texas. He is the author of Sola Scriptura: An Orthodox Analysis of the Cornerstone of Reformation Theology, published by Conciliar Press, and the general editor of the St. Innocent Liturgical Calendar.
Among the many wretched, slimy and odious things that are increasingly giving me the creeps as the sands of my life’s hourglass continue to fall is the World Economic Forum: a collective of self-righteous global elites handing down virtues, values, lessons, lectures and political initiatives to us peons out here in the rest of the world.
The “Forum” is increasingly starting to resemble a globalist government, stocked with globally unelected turbo-douchebags, who have been assembling quietly in the background while no one has noticed.
One minute you’ve never heard of them - did you know the WEF has been around for about 5 decades? - the next, the “Forum” is harboring incredible influence, mostly with “useful” bureaucratic idiots on the left who are happy to take their cues on how to napalm individual rights for betterment of advancing their agendas from anyone who will help, regardless of their motivation.
WEF Founder Klaus Schwab, either giving or receiving some bullshit “Global Citizen Award”, which no normal person has ever heard of or cared about.
I’ve arrived at a point past that - a point of being sickened by watching people that in no way, shape or form represent me or the people in my life, yammer on about what my future will or won’t look like and what things I stand for are “right” or “wrong”.
The World Economic Forum is an independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas.
The truth is no matter how much each narcissistic and likely psychotic guest would love to speak on behalf of millions, or even billions of people, they simply don’t.
I don’t expect these people to understand the consequences of painting with a broad brush, nor do I think they care about them. Take the Covid vaccines as an example. Isn’t the idea of jabbing every single person on Earth, regardless of age, health status and lifestyle (lest we forget whether or not they consent to it) wildly reckless?
Of course it is. But it doesn’t matter - because someone wanted it to be done…and, with that, it was put into action.
Source: NY Times
Wild, right? This unilateral implementation of mandates during Covid, regardless of what the individual may want for themselves and their families, was authoritarian catnip to the dingleberries that assemble at the World Economic Forum every year. I’m certain it has enabled many participants to think: we did it with vaccines - we cut them off from travel, we put their jobs and their livelihoods on the line and we even arrested and jailed them - now we can do it with anything else.
I don’t need to be in Davos this week to understand how little I have in common with the people of the World Economic Forum. I know this because I was recently in Washington DC during the International Monetary Fund’s most recent circle jerk world conference.
Anybody that thinks that these are gatherings of people who live like them and represent them are sorely mistaken: I’ve never seen so many Rolexes, Bentleys, hundred thousand dollar outfits and, most importantly, armed security, as I saw within the 10 square block radius of the IMF that week.
It was a festival of global “ambassadors” that collectively looked like an amalgam of every corrupt Bond villain you’ve ever seen.
With that in mind, let’s have a look at what high quality ideas the Forum…has put forth this year to “shape global, regional and industry agendas”.
Everybody knows that fear is the best way to get people to listen up and do what you say (see: vaccinations, Covid, Fauci et. al pgs. 1-∞). With that being said, the Forum led off with some lighthearted banter, including the proclamation that “we are now facing…mass extinction” and “humanity’s future is at risk.”
The fact that today we have people openly promoting the LGBTQP agenda in the Orthodox Church is something that was unthinkable less than a dozen years ago. But here we are. They are a vocal minority to be sure, but like most leftists, they try to convince people that their opponents are the minority, and they are only motivated by hate.
The tactic that the Pro-LGBTQP “Orthodox” have generally taken to promote their agenda is to pretend that the only people concerned about what they are pushing are “fundamentalist” converts. The suggestion being that somehow prior to the time when Americans began to convert to Orthodoxy in large numbers, everyone in the Orthodox Church was fine with the idea that homosexuality was an acceptable lifestyle. Back then, they would have us believe, no one would have objected to embracing transgenderism, or any of the other limitless “sexual preferences” and “gender identities.” This is of course complete nonsense. Not only was no one pushing for the acceptance of homosexuality in the Orthodox Church prior to 2009, no one in the Orthodox Church was even contemplating the acceptance of transgenderism, and most had never even heard of it.
Homosexuality was considered a mental disorder by the American Psychiatric Association until 1973, when activists pushed the organization to change this designation. It was only in 1987 that homosexuality was completely removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It was in the wake of the AIDS epidemic, which began in 1981, that the acceptance of homosexuality in the wider culture began to increase from something which previously had been close to non-existent.
Fr. Alexander Schmemann is not usually thought of as a fundamentalist convert, and yet one of his students told me that around 1981, he made the statement “I refuse to be the dean of a seminary of pot-smoking homosexuals.” This was in the context of him having actually kicked a pot-smoking homosexual seminarian out of the seminary, and so these were not idle words.
I have been blogging since 2004, and the first article I have in which I felt a need to respond to the push for gay marriage was in 2009, and this was completely without reference to any dispute within the Church, because at that time, there was no such dispute. I suspect that this began in 2009 because prior to that, George W. Bush had successfully used the issue to win his second term, by ensuring that there were ballot measures in swing states that banned gay marriage. But after Obama was elected, apparently people on the left felt emboldened, and so the push began. And it was only in 2011 that I began to see Orthodox Christians who were pushing for the acceptance of homosexuality. Initially, this was mostly done anonymously, or in private discussion groups.
2013 was the year that the Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, and forced every state to allow for gay marriage. Many dismissed the significance of this at the time, but two things happened almost immediately as a result of it — this strengthened the general push for the acceptance of homosexuality, and no sooner had gay marriage been forced on the country did the push for the acceptance of transgenderism begin in earnest.
In 2015, the City of Houston tried to push through an ordinance which would have forced churches and businesses to allow men who identify as women to use women’s restrooms. Again, the Orthodox Clergy Association issued a statement against it. The ordinance was overturned by a referendum, and it was mostly Black and Hispanic churches in Houston that led the fight against it. Houston is about 44% Hispanic, 24% White (Non-Hispanic), 22% black, and 7% Asian, and so it was not a bunch of racist White people who overturned this ordinance. The vote was not even close: 61% opposed to 39% in favor.
If you look over the archives of Public Orthodoxy, you will see that it has produced a steady stream of articles that defy almost every aspect of Orthodox Christian morality, and as a matter of fact they regularly argue that while dogmatic issues (which they define as being limited to strictly theological matters) are beyond debate, moral issues are not dogmatic, and therefore up for revision. This is a completely novel approach, and one that is heretical and contrary to the clear Tradition of the Church.
Most recently, the former Chancellor of the OCA, Fr. John Jillions gave a lecture for the Orthodox Theological Society in America, in which he bemoaned those Orthodox “fundamentalists” who are unwilling to dialogue on matters such as homosexuality and transgenderism. He argues that we cannot judge such matters “before the time,” which will apparently only come when (so they hope) they finally wear everyone else down with their endless pressing of their agenda and we let them have their way. The problem is that these issues are not up for debate. Not only are the Scriptures clear on these issues, we have numerous canons from Ecumenical Councils, and the clear and unified testimony of the Fathers and Saints of the Church which leave no room for doubt as to what the Church has always taught on these subjects. In this lecture, you see the same kind of mealy-mouthed argumentation that we found in the essay by Fr. Robert Arida, but as time goes on, they are becoming more emboldened. One has to wonder how long their respective bishops will put up with this, but I think at this point, we have to conclude that at least some of the bishops in question allow this to go on because they agree with it.
Now if people like Fr. John Jillions wanted to dialogue about how to deal pastorally with people who are struggling with these sins, in order to help them overcome their sins, that would be a dialogue worth having. But you can’t have that dialogue with people who are unwilling to concede that we are talking about actual sins. That has to be the starting premise. And to be clear, this is the point that they refuse to concede. In fact, they will almost never provide a direct answer to a direct question on whether or not these things are inherently sinful — and that is for the simple reason that to say what they actually believe would put them in an indefensible position, and would force their bishops to do something about it.
We are not opposed to the LGBTQP agenda because we hate those who have been sucked into going along with it. We are opposed to it because this agenda is destructive to these people. As St. Paul tells us, these things are contrary to God’s created order, and as such, they can only lead to great misery and the destruction of souls. St. Paul tells us that homosexuals and the transgendered (i.e. effeminate) will not inherit the Kingdom of God:
“Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate [malakoi], nor sodomites [i.e., homosexuals, arsenokoitai], nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:9-11).
Not inheriting the Kingdom of God is a pretty big deal, if you actually believe in God, and so if you love the people struggling with these issues, you would want to help them to repent and overcome them, rather than affirm them in a choice that will lead to their spiritual deaths.
I hope I am wrong, but I believe we are witnessing the unfolding of a full-blown schism. It will not just be over abortion, or over the LGBTQP agenda, or over the other issues we will be looking at, but each of these are pieces to the larger puzzle. If a schism is to be averted, it will only be averted because bishops begin to find their backbones, put their collective foot down, and put a stop to the spreading of these false and destructive teachings.
This is the second part of an ongoing series by Fr. John Whiteford, reposted with his permission.
Update:
Someone has put together a very useful video that provides an overview of what has been going on in terms of the push for the acceptance of LGBTQP ideology in the Orthodox Church, particularly in the English-speaking world:
Fr. John Whiteford is the pastor of St. Jonah Orthodox Church (ROCOR) in Spring, Texas. He is the author of Sola Scriptura: An Orthodox Analysis of the Cornerstone of Reformation Theology, published by Conciliar Press, and the general editor of the St. Innocent Liturgical Calendar.
In our passage today, Saul continues his war against David and this war spills over to his own household. And in this passage, we see how a legitimate authority acting as a tyrant can be resisted faithfully.
Listen to this sermon here.
19 Now Saul spoke to Jonathan his son and to all his servants, that they should kill David; but Jonathan, Saul’s son, delighted greatly in David. 2 So Jonathan told David, saying, “My father Saul seeks to kill you. Therefore please be on your guard until morning, and stay in a secret place and hide. 3 And I will go out and stand beside my father in the field where you are, and I will speak with my father about you. Then what I observe, I will tell you.”
4 Thus Jonathan spoke well of David to Saul his father, and said to him, “Let not the king sin against his servant, against David, because he has not sinned against you, and because his works have been very good toward you. 5 For he took his life in his hands and killed the Philistine, and the Lord brought about a great deliverance for all Israel. You saw it and rejoiced. Why then will you sin against innocent blood, to kill David without a cause?”
6 So Saul heeded the voice of Jonathan, and Saul swore, “As the Lord lives, he shall not be killed.” 7 Then Jonathan called David, and Jonathan told him all these things. So Jonathan brought David to Saul, and he was in his presence as in times past.
8 And there was war again; and David went out and fought with the Philistines, and struck them with a mighty blow, and they fled from him.
9 Now the distressing spirit from the Lord came upon Saul as he sat in his house with his spear in his hand. And David was playing music with his hand. 10 Then Saul sought to pin David to the wall with the spear, but he slipped away from Saul’s presence; and he drove the spear into the wall. So David fled and escaped that night.
11 Saul also sent messengers to David’s house to watch him and to kill him in the morning. And Michal, David’s wife, told him, saying, “If you do not save your life tonight, tomorrow you will be killed.” 12 So Michal let David down through a window. And he went and fled and escaped. 13 And Michal took an image and laid it in the bed, put a cover of goats’ hair for his head, and covered it with clothes. 14 So when Saul sent messengers to take David, she said, “He is sick.”
15 Then Saul sent the messengers back to see David, saying, “Bring him up to me in the bed, that I may kill him.” 16 And when the messengers had come in, there was the image in the bed, with a cover of goats’ hair for his head. 17 Then Saul said to Michal, “Why have you deceived me like this, and sent my enemy away, so that he has escaped?”
And Michal answered Saul, “He said to me, ‘Let me go! Why should I kill you?’ ”
18 So David fled and escaped, and went to Samuel at Ramah, and told him all that Saul had done to him. And he and Samuel went and stayed in Naioth. 19 Now it was told Saul, saying, “Take note, David is at Naioth in Ramah!” 20 Then Saul sent messengers to take David. And when they saw the group of prophets prophesying, and Samuel standing as leader over them, the Spirit of God came upon the messengers of Saul, and they also prophesied. 21 And when Saul was told, he sent other messengers, and they prophesied likewise. Then Saul sent messengers again the third time, and they prophesied also. 22 Then he also went to Ramah, and came to the great well that is at Sechu. So he asked, and said, “Where are Samuel and David?”
And someone said, “Indeed they are at Naioth in Ramah.” 23 So he went there to Naioth in Ramah. Then the Spirit of God was upon him also, and he went on and prophesied until he came to Naioth in Ramah. 24 And he also stripped off his clothes and prophesied before Samuel in like manner, and lay down naked all that day and all that night. Therefore they say, “Is Saul also among the prophets?”
1 Samuel 19:1-24 NKJV
The Lesser Magistrate: Jonathan Protects David (19:1-9)
Saul orders Jonathan and all his servants to kill David. But Jonathan loves David and, if you’ll remember, has made a covenant with him. It seems he has done this because he has figured out that God delights in David and has made him the replacement for Saul. So he tells David that his father seeks to kill David. He arranges to have David hide in a secret place so he can overhear the conversation between Saul and Jonathan.
In that conversation, Jonathan promotes David to Saul and rebukes his father, saying he should not sin against David because David has not sinned against Saul. And not only that, he has done great works, such as killing Goliath, and has ministered to Saul faithfully. He asks his father why he would sin against innocent blood.
That last part is vital because sinning against innocent blood is a very significant charge in the Law. The Law demands that anyone who sheds innocent blood be put to death because that sin pollutes all of Israel. Jonathan is not only protecting his father but his father’s kingdom. Saul relents and swears an oath that David shall not be killed. Jonathan relays this information to David and brings David back into the court.
But it was not to last. David goes to war against the Philistines (what Saul should be doing) and wins a great victory (that Saul should have won himself). And just then, the distressing Spirit from Yahweh returns. Instead of going out to war with a spear, Saul sits in his house with a spear and attacks David as he ministered to him. But like his heir, Jesus, many centuries later, David was able to slip away from those who meant to kill him miraculously.
Deceiving the Tyrant: Michal protects David (v. 10-17)
After David escaped Saul, he sent messengers to watch David’s house and kill him when he went out the following day. But Michal, David’s wife, knew of it and told him to flee. She lets David down through a window. This should remind us of Rahab helping the spies escape Jericho in Joshua 2. But there is another earlier biblical story with obvious parallels to this one. Michal took a household idol. (where she got this or why the king’s daughter had one are important questions that foreshadow the future of Israel’s kings). And what did Michal put on it? Goat’s hair. That’s a curious detail to include. Details such as these are never random, there is usually a purpose to them. Who else had a woman cover him in goat’s hair to deceive a tyrant abusing his authority? Jacob. Whose wife used a household idol to deceive another tyrant? Jacob. Who escaped a tyrant and was pursued by that tyrant? Jacob, who fled from Laban. Saul asked his daughter why he had been deceived, just as Laban asked Jacob and Rachel why he had been deceived. Just as Rachel lied to her tyrant father without sinning, so did Michal, who said David had threatened to kill her. The Biblical types from the very beginning chapters of Genesis, The Bride, the Chosen Seed, and the Seed of the Serpent are all represented here.
This passage presents David to us as a new Jacob, the Chosen Seed, who wrestled with the tyrants God placed in his path, and Michael as the Bride who turns the Serpent’s weapon (deception) back against the Seed of the Serpent, her father, King Saul.
The Triune God Intervenes: The Holy Spirit Protects David (v. 18-24)
David fled to Samuel at Ramah and told him that Saul wanted to kill him. They both then fly to Naioth. Spies report this to Saul, and he sends his messengers there to get David. But as soon as the messengers get there, they see Samuel prophesying among the prophets, and the Spirit comes upon them, and they begin prophesying. Saul sends a second group of messengers, and the same thing happens to them! Saul sends a third group, and the same thing happens a third time! Finally, Saul goes himself and the same thing happens to him. Despite the Spirit departing him after he had grieved the Spirit, Saul is overtaken by the power of the Holy Spirit and no longer in control of himself. He begins prophesying. Upon reaching Samuel, he strips off his robes and appears naked before him. And we should note here, as has been said before, Saul’s robe being stripped of him is very important symbolically. The Spirit is taking away Saul’s authority as king. It isn’t just that the Holy Spirit is making Saul act like a lunatic. The Spirit is shaming him by the removal of his royal robe. He was made naked like Adam in the Garden and removed from kingship.
The last line is also crucial as it is a bookend for the Spirit’s interaction with Saul in 1 Samuel. Easrlier in 1 Samuel, when the Spirit was with Saul, he prophesied and was faithful, and the people said of him sincerely “is Saul also among the prophets?” That phrase, as it is used in this chapter, now takes on a mocking tone since Saul had gone mad and had the kingdom taken from him. Saul’s madness, from this point on, spirals out of control. Sin has completely taken hold of him.
Conclusion
Very few passages in the Bible are more directly relevant to God’s people in 2023 than these. The faithful have not had a coherent political theology for the last century. Much less have we had a theology of political resistance. Have you ever heard, in your entire life, a pastor preach about resisting tyranny? Yet this was a ubiquitous subject for Christians from the 1500s to the 1700s. You can find all sorts of sermons on justified resistance to oppressive authority from the Reformation Era, Puritans, or early colonial America. But since the 20th century, pastors have been seemingly forbidden from preaching on this subject. The only political theology we are allowed is rooted in the postwar liberal democratic consensus. It all just boils down to argumentum ad hitlerum. “The Nazis were terrible, so resisting them is okay, but any political act by anyone who fought the Nazis is ipso facto legitimate (because they are not Nazis); therefore, opposing that in any way is therefore immoral.”
But the Postwar Liberal Consensus is not the Bible or Christian theology. It is instead a particular flavor of secular humanism. God’s Law is the standard of right and wrong, not “whatever liberal democracies think is okay.” And we have seen the most egregious examples of tyranny in our lifetime just in the last few years. The idea that you would be forbidden from going to work to feed your family if you didn’t participate in a medical experiment is something out of the Soviet Union or North Korea. It should astonish us that this was even attempted in a “free country.” Much less locking everyone in the country in their homes for months. The tyranny we experienced over the last two years is something our forefathers would have rightly revolted against. But we do not have the tools for such resistance. Chiefly, we lack the spiritual tools to empower us to fight tyrants.
So with that in mind, look at how we can apply the lessons from this passage. Jonathan rebuked his father, the king, so that he would not commit abominable sins against his nation and his God. We should not fear to criticize our leaders, especially from the pulpit. Those who are ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ have a duty to declare to kings and those with political authority what God says is good and evil, just like the prophets of old. It is to our everlasting shame that the typical pastor in America is not a herald of Christ’s righteousness in the public square, but reduced to a hireling chiefly concerned with effectively marketing his church.
Further, Jonathan did not simply rebuke the tyrannical king as our spiritual leaders ought to be doing, he rebuked him from the position as a prince with his own authority in the kingdom. In Protestant theology there is a concept called “the doctrine of the lesser magistrate.” This is where the concept of nullification and secession had their origin. The lesser political authority has a duty to stand in the way of the tyrant if and when he is able to, and in doing so he is not committing the sin of rebellion, but rather is fully justified in the sight of God. Jonathan was acting as a “lesser magistrate” here as well.
And suppose you are not able to persuade them by your rebuke, or do not have the political power to fully resist the tyrant. In that case, deception is on the table as well. Particularly if it is a grave sin that they are committing, such as depriving you of employment for refusing a dangerous medical experiment. You have to look at life in America today as not the country you love that you grew up in. You are living in something much more like the Soviet Union than you realize. In some ways even worse! And if you lived in the Soviet Union, forging papers, bribing officials, passing samizdat, etc., was simply a way of life required for survival. I’m not saying Michal’s courageous action justifies cheating on your taxes so you can buy a bigger boat. “Well he’s a tyrant so I can lie to him about anything” is not supported by this passage. But instead, if the circumstances are truly grave, if it is a matter of life and death or the potential of severe harm, deceiving tyrants is absolutely on the table.
Lastly, the Spirit of God was the most important weapon against the tyrant Saul. We have Him at our disposal as well, and he can pierce the hearts of the tyrant, or He can drive them mad. This kind of war is not merely against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers and the dark hosts of the heavenly places. You can see clearly in this passage the Holy Spirit acting and the demon who afflicted Saul. Ours is a spiritual war; victory is found through faithful worship on the Lord’s Day and regular prayer, fasting, and singing of psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.
God has placed us in a momentous time. We live in the time that we do for a reason. And the reason is this: to faithfully wage war against tyrants just as the saints of old did. So pick up your spiritual weapons and go to war. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen!
Andrew Isker is the pastor of 4th Street Evangelical Church in Waseca, MN. He is a graduate of Minnesota State University and Greyfriar’s Hall Ministerial Training School, and he has served churches in Missouri, West Virginia, and Minnesota. He is the author (with Andrew Torba) of Christian Nationalism, and the author of the forthcoming book, The Boniface Option. Andrew, his wife Kara, and their five children reside in his hometown of Waseca, MN. He can be found on Gab @BonifaceOption.
We are told that soon we shall have nothing and yet somehow we'll be happy. How does that work?
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Life is a war. Sometimes we win our battles, sometimes we don’t. We fight against the world to keep the faith, to hold families together, to pay bills, and to keep vehicles running. Often it seems that the war of a man’s life is simply an unending fight against entropy, Chaos, and decay. Especially if one drives an older vehicle.
Trying to start a homestead is another battle against entropy. God commanded Noah to take dominion over the Earth and commanded Adam in a similar fashion. Taking dominion means imposing order on the chaos, putting things into their proper place. The first acts of the Creation were acts of imposing order. Light was created, then separated from darkness. Sky, Earth, and Water were then separated from each other.
Homesteading is about order, and it’s also about creation. Turning wild grass into gardens, turning hillsides into terraces, turning trees into houses. It’s common to think of nature as being full of life, and it is, but it’s chaotic and unproductive life. It’s the job of the homesteader to rule that land, to impose order, and set boundaries so that life can flourish in a good way.
In ancient times, the word “symbolon”, from which we get “symbol”, referred to a practice by which an agreement was written on pottery and then broken. This was done so that each party had a piece of the “symbol” and the pieces could be rejoined to show that the agreement existed. “Symbols” bring things together to show an agreement and a relationship.
In Orthodoxy, we use ikons as symbols. The ikon represents a saint or event and thus helps to link us to our history, the saints, and to God. We don’t venerate painted wood any more than a soldier saluting his flag is paying respect to colored cloth. An ikon may be imbued by God with His Grace and do something miraculous, such as stream myrrh, but it’s never the wood itself that does it.
The opposing word to “symbolon” is “diabolos”. It means to separate things. It’s where we get the word “devil”, by the way. It’s also pretty much the devil’s MO: He separates us from God, from each other, and from the natural order of things. Adam was evicted from the Garden of Eden and forced to live on cursed earth. Mankind slowly disintegrated from one couple living in harmony with each other, nature, and God to billions of people who ignore each other on the street and occasionally throw fission bombs around.
Of course, the only real antidote to Chaos is to draw close to Christ, and to be of one mind with each other, as Christ and the Father are of one mind. In a monastic setting, the monks choose to be strictly obedient to their Abbot, while married laity are supposed to be strictly obedient to each other. A marriage counselor will speak endlessly about the necessity of good communication, but that’s only a means to the end of one being fully in step with the other.
I’m wrapping this up a week later in a different Walmart. I ended up troubleshooting the fan belt issue to a failing power steering pump. That repair work led to noticing a screw embedded in a tire, so it feels like I’ve come full circle.
Over the last 15 years, I’ve developed a strong foundation of mechanical skills that allows me to handle a lot of vehicular chaos. God has blessed me with some excellent teachers, and a vehicle that’s not really that hard to work on. With practice, experience, and a lot of research, I’m pretty confident in my ability to keep our vehicles running.
If only I’d spent the same amount of effort developing a spiritual foundation. My profession has forced me to develop my mechanical skills, but I never focused on spiritual discipline in the same way. I often feel like I’m, if not spiritually adrift, then only anchored with a fishing line. I mostly rely on the people around me to keep me on the right path, but if they’re not around, my life falls into Chaos really fast.
I can learn just about everything about turning wrenches or building a homestead from the internet. There’s almost certainly a book on whatever I need to know, and there’s probably a walkthrough video on YouTube. So I spend a LOT of time and effort doing just that, and yet all that knowledge wouldn’t help me unless I went out and applied it to my vehicle with my hands. And it is to my shame that the exact same things are true about Orthodoxy. There are thousands of books to read, endless lectures to listen to, and videos to watch. But all that knowledge rattling around in my head won’t matter unless I put in the effort to apply it to my own life.
Liberalism, as Met. Jonah phrased it at last year’s Orthodox MontaNiKa conference, is “anti life.” It has not simply infected the modern world, it created it. The systematic destruction of the family, of the religion-centered social order, of the God-ordained monarchies, all of it led not to an improved order, but more and more Chaos. And in every form, Chaos leads to death.
God isn’t simply pro-life in the Abortion debate, God is pro-Human Life. A full, healthy, Eternal life, lived in full communion with not only God, but each other, and with nature. There are numerous historical saints who lived in communion with the local wildlife, and in some cases, the local wildlife lived peacefully with each other at monasteries.
It’s up to us to return to that life. We’re the ones who have to repent and return to God. And not just in some hippy-dippy (Satanic) “Jesus loves you just the way you are” way, but by taking up our crosses and applying what we know at every opportunity until that Faith truly becomes our foundation. It’s up to us to resist the modern world and all of the chaos that comes with it.
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Godfrey Bloom is a libertarian author with six books published on both military history & Austrian School Economics. He worked in the City of London where he won an international prize for fund management. He represented Yorkshire & Lincolnshire in the European Parliament. During his term of office he attracted over sixty million views on his chamber speeches exposing State bank & tax malpractice on Facebook & You Tube. Thought to be an all time record. He brought experience if not influence to the mainly lay EU Parliamentary Monetary & Economic Affairs Committee, putting both members & European Central Bank President under unaccustomed pressure. Godfrey Bloom is holder of the Territorial Decoration & bar, Sovereign’s Medal, Armed Forces Parliamentary Medal & European Parliamentary silver medal. He is married to one of Europe’s leading equine physiotherapists.
