Pagans and Christians in the City: Culture Wars from the Tiber to the Potomac (Emory University Studies in Law and Religion (EUSLR)). Here Smith describes the rivalry between pagan immanence and Christian transcendence, and he reminds us that this rivalry never relented and is seeing now a newly arisen intensity.
And I wonder - in your essay you mention a search for ‘solutions’. This reminds me of something I learned from Thomas Sowell - ‘There are no solutions, only trade offs’. Does this aphorism seem useful in the context of this essay?
I'd recast Sowell's aphorism into something more Wendell Berry-ish: What we perceive as solutions are never without trade-offs. Solutions can exist, but they're never perfect.
A big problem with "Progress" is that it presumes that no matter what trade-offs occur they will always accrue to the plus column. So there is a sense in which they don't really need to be weighed.
Fabulous piece, thank you. Even a small cause for optimism. Admittedly we don't know how or where the many restless hearts will coalesce, and whether there will be enough in common to sustain a collective narrative for a society to survive. We shall see, in the meantime, keep your loved ones safe, your feet firmly on the ground and your eyes raised to Heaven.
Merry Christmas, Mr Kingsnorth - this is a very positive message for our turbulent and confused times, with much to consider for all of us as we head into a New Year.
Yup, the druid mason has been banging on about these matters for a dozen years - and the powerful magic of liturgy. He acknowledges how powerful for instance the trad Catholic version can be, and speculates a strong pull for young punters.
My experience is very limited and ignorant but almost by accident I was part of an Easter crowd in St Stephens in Vienna as it filled up one Sunday morning. The clergy just seemed to get on with it, a bit like Paul's Orthodox, but I started to notice people near to me. There was memory of grief in a woman's quiet and very private tears. The occasion got suddenly real.
Ha! I hadn't read that, no, though I have read Greer on Spengler many times before. Interesting how we converged on a similar point from different angles. Ali's essay has brought about a lot of reactions like this.
I prefer the light and witness of ordinary people (Friends) who gather together and then go out to live their lives in the power of the Spirit to that of Desert Fathers who show up well after the impact and effect and power of what is described as Christianity in Acts and the Epistles in the first centuries.. The power of the Spirit found in Paul, John, Priscilla, the daughters of Philip, Peter, Agabus, Philip, Stephen, the gifts of the Spirit described in 1 Corinthians manifested in the middle of the world among the people of God living in it. I think we need to manifest that not a renewed monastic elite.
Perhaps, but those saints had a particular mission and gifts directly from Christ and His apostles- spread the good news! While all of us are to do that, we’re not so gifted. Some of us indeed are better servers by going into deserts to pray alone, as Jesus himself did. The desert fathers (and mothers) preserved and lived the faith in the solitude of their desert hermitages because among other things they needed purity of mind away from official Constantinism (to use PK’s allusion). Today, I’m sure there are those who might move to some Appalachian skete to immerse themselves in the Holy Spirit to avoid Joyce Meyers.
I have higher hopes for the ordinary likes of you and I in the light of 1 Corinthians 1:4-9, 2:26-28, chapters 12-14 and John 14:12 and many more verses.
This is decidedly not an either/or but a both/and. It's telling that critiques of monasticism by those touting evangelism are never echoed by monastics: I don't recall ever hearing any monastic downplay evangelism. In fact many of the evangelists and missionaries in the early Church were monastics.
Also, I don't see how anyone can read the Desert Fathers and conclude that they were an "elite."
Elitist in the sense that the monastic lifestyle supposedly enabled a better knowing of God and the high road (similar to Buddhism) to spiritual attainment which I do not see in the NT. And the monastic system didn’t exist for nearly 200 years in early Christianity so I see it at best as an option not a necessity.
There exists to this day a very strong monastic component to Orthodox Christianity. And I assure you there has never been anything elitist about it. To Orthodox Christians monasticism is essential and not an option. Whether or not you find it in the New Testament. These men and women literally pray for the world every day, unceasingly.
I’ll add that there is no one more monastic than St. John the Baptist and Forerunner (and the father of all monastics). The man given the position and privilege of announcing the coming of Christ.
Admittedly I’m very new to Orthodoxy and Christianity in general, but I’ve discussed this notion of monasticism not being realistic with my wife who grew up in the church. She likes to think of it as a spectrum between “worldly” and “spiritual” (though there may be more accurate words for those).
Essentially you can live a more spiritual life with less connection to the earthly world as the monastics do, which brings you personally closer to God. But it inevitably brings you further from your fellow man. Whereas one could be very much in the world but then have a less personal or “pure” connection. Neither are better or worse, they just come with different trade offs.
We recently joined a new Orthodox Church, and our Father is much more “in the world” and down to earth than others we’ve known. As someone who took a somewhat similar path to Orthodoxy as Paul, this has been very helpful to me as a beginner. However he takes great inspiration from the Desert Fathers, as their experience and teachings from the more “spiritual” end of the spectrum inform his faith and ministry.
Similarly, I imagine that someone who lives an isolated life as a religious hermit, whilst being closer to God, as a result have a harder time relating to others and sharing those experiences.
Essentially, I don’t look at people like the Desert Fathers as “elite” or “superior” compared to our down to earth Father. It’s just a different way of relating to the faith. And those at one end can inform those at the other.
I know many people who are close to God living ordinary lives without benefit of monasticism which I suppose feeds my skepticism about the necessity of the monastic system as part of Christianity. For me the key is the inward gift of the Spirit available to all that is not conditioned on a particular lifestyle and rituals but is gift and faith based - Galatians 3:2-5
I’d agree it’s not necessary. I look at it as someone deciding to specialise in one path. They’ll become very good at that specific thing, and probably discover things others won’t. But at the same time they’ll miss out on other paths and discoveries. Personally my relationship with my wife and daughter has been a more powerful vehicle for my faith than anything else, and you could t convince me that a monastic path would have been better for me - even if I’ve forever missed out on certain experiences. Different paths for different people I guess. But I agree that seeing monastics on a special pedestal compared to everyone else probably isn’t a good move
I don't agree. I think that the hermits, the monastics and the ascetic saints are absolutely vital. They are the beating heart of the faith. The notion that they are an 'elite' in worldly terms is not born out by history: the best of them were often poor, ordinary, illiterate. Many great saints were peasants. Others had been aristocrats. All have to fight the same inner struggle. In doing so, they keep the flame for the rest of us, and act as guides. Most of us will never be monastics. But note how the Western churches slid into worldliness when the monastics were killed off. And note the power of the Orthodox faith. There is a reason for this.
Good point, I hadn’t meant to say that monasticism isn’t necessary at all, just that it’s not a necessary path for all Christians to walk (which reading back wasn’t clear at all). I hadn’t considered the lack of monastics without modern Western Christianity before though, that’s a really interesting point
When the Reformation jettisoned monasticism they dumped asceticism along with it. And any Christianity shorn of the ascetic will either tend to legalism or antinomianism, or the odd combination of the two that you see in some fundamentalist groups.
That's my experience. The destruction of the monasteries by Henry VIII was the end of Christianity in England and the beginning of a secularised and rationalist church. The results in today's CofE are painfully obvious.
As an illustration of this point, I wanted to share part of a beautiful poem my late grandfather, Dr. Howard Fulweiler, wrote about John the Baptist. His portrait, for me, captures both the gritty, idiosyncratic physicality of desert asceticism and the awe-some divine presence that permeates its forbidding landscape:
A homeless man was sent by God to teach
A change of heart. Bizarre in camel’s hair,
Baptizing in the Jordan he came to preach
Isaiah’s vision in the desert air.
He called out loud for a fresh start there;
Nature’s blind beginning now must yield
To the new world foretold in Isaiah’s prayer:
Don’t hurt or harm; the law of pain is repealed;
Let wolf and lamb be friends; the world’s wounds be healed . . .
(From The Christian Year, a poem cycle by Howard Wells Fulweiler, Jr.)
If you have spent time in the desert, as I have, you know that in its inhumane -- or perhaps better put, humanity-indifferent -- silence, the divine presence manifests itself as palpably as the heat and grit. We may not all be able to don the camel's hair, but the saints' voices carry far on that clear desert air when we listen.
Father Thomas Merton was a fervent defender of the monastic lifestyle, yet he was very much connected with the world. The Seven Storey Mountain, an account of his conversion, showed him as quite an idealistic young ascetic, but his faith matured later on in his life. He is so down-to-earth, humourous, he even had a love affair late in his life. You cannot accuse him of not being in touch with his fellow human beings. Yet, in his book Contemplation in a World of Action, he defends the need for monasticism so well; his analysis and critique of the modern Christian shows an exquisite understanding of the human heart.
I grew up on the Lincolnshire/Leicestershire borders. My first teacher at primary school was Mrs Robertson the Rectors wife. We had Christian pray every day and once a week a service in the village church next door to the school taken by her husband. My mother took me to church every Sunday. I now yearn for the yearly cycle of religious high days and holy days. Not just Christmas and Easter but The penitential periods of Lent and Easter. The liturgical changes of colour that marked the different periods of the year. Always seemed merging to look forward to and ordinary time to mark the difference. I can it “the tinned salmon syndrome. “ You had that at Christmas, Easter and your birthday. It was expensive and special. Hot cross buns and pancakes only on Good Friday and Shrove Tuesday. Mince pies only at Christmas. Now you can have anything you desire anytime and nothing is special or looked forward to anymore. I wish I had an Orthodox Church near me (I am a retired Anglican minister) but in mid-Wales there are none. How does one go about starting an outpost Paul?
Stephen, it might be worth contacting Orthodox Exchange in Cardiff initially. They seem to be a good source for folk new to Orthodoxy and may be able to help.
Hi Andrew, hope you're well. Do you go to the orthodox church in Westgate? I went a few weeks ago, but was a bit baffled about what was going on. It was pretty cool though. Do you fancy meeting up for a cup of tea some time in Lancaster?
Here in America, a fine orthodox priest, who is a convert wanted to start a mission church somewhere in Michigan. The Bulgarian orthodox church ended up financing it, and helping out from time to time. They are thriving now. It is wonderful to see. My daughter was the first ethnic member ever as they are all converts
It’s worth the travel time. I’m in Australia and a recent convert. My parish is far away but I am able to attend once a month and stay the night with my godmother. It was uncomfortable for me at first, being a stranger to everything but has become a home for me, irreplaceable and precious.
I have a small criticism, on one word actually. 😁 You use Constantine as a stand in for an "old school/fanatic Christian culture warrior". I think Theodosios (or, much more, Stepinac or Charlemagne) would fit there. Constantine did absolutely nothing culture-warrior-like as emperor. Instead, he kept an extremely conciliatory tone on all fronts, remained pontifex maximus of pagans, established the first form of social welfare for all etc. He did fight the persecuters of the tetrarchy to become emperor, but this wasn't to impose on them his religious beliefs: it was literally a battle Royale, the big dogs taking each other out until there was only one left. He played that game as an old school Roman military man.
Westerners getting over the "intimidation" emanating from "Byzantine" things is a key thing for the furure. You have to be able to look at history (which for Christian people intersects with church history) without fear or favor. Not everyone has to like the "Greeks", of course, but it's good to finally get out from under the libel and demonization that has been the meat and potatoes of western historical thinking, from "contra errores graecorum" to Gibbon. (Hurray for Sir Steven Runciman!)
Of course burying half of European/Christian history under a mountain of two cents "contra errors" theses opens up an opportunity too: Martin sold anecdotes of Byzantine history for their weight in gold as super awsome demigod stuff, and people hail his creativity 😄, see link https://youtu.be/0tQ-z94ZNFE?si=PgP3OOLatAB2h9qi
One thing that lingered in my mind later, though, is you seem to draw quite a sharp dividing line between Christians who are cultural activists and then - the real thing - actual believers who don’t bother with such nonsense and just go off into the woods (and turn out to actually save the world by doing so). Of course, I’m exaggerating, but you see where I’m going.
This sharp division, however, leaves no room for people like… you! Serious practitioners with an actual commitment to the knots and bolts of religious practice, but who are also called to exert a much needed spiritual influence over our culture.
So perhaps it’s not a question of altogether shunning cultural crusaders (unfortunate word), but stressing the importance of practice and intimate experience for all the faithful, be they inclined to some kind of social outreach or not. The saint who gave Gaudiya Vaishnavism the shape it has today spent ten years in constant prayer before launching the missionary initiative we now know as the Hare Krishna movement. All of us would do well to follow his example.
I think there can be no "purely non political" version of Christianity... Worldviews inevitably "leak" to questions that are "political", at least to an extent, and it's no use trying to draw a line and "forbid" that. I think Paul above all is trying very hard to point out that he is advocating for something much more internal and quiet than typical "culture war" stuff (or that's my wishful interpretation). If it's broadly correct, I'd say he's absolutely right!
Yes, I agree to a certain extent. Although it is true that many great saints and prophets never directly touch on politics, because their mission is entirely on another level.
Also, I think your interpretation of the essay is correct and accurate. I just find that Paul often gives all the merit to those who go off into the woods, and not enough to people with a more social or even evangelising vocation. Didn’t Jesus say “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature”? It’s actually what he’s doing, and quite brilliantly for that matter.
You're very kind, though I don't feel I do this well, if I do it at all. But yes, you're right about that underlying tension. I think I emphasise the monks and hermits so much firstly because I am deeply drawn to them, and secondly because I think worldly Christianity is vastly over-emphasised in the West. We are badly out of balance. I have a feeling that the way back to our spiritual heritage lies through the mouth of a cave. I hope people will forgive my sometimes obsessive focus on this idea.
This is just where I thought, and hoped, you were going when I first encountered The Cross and the Machine and The Dream of the Rood--that is, strong shades of Christopher Dawson, whose writings are beautiful and pointed always toward hope, even at the bleakest moments/times. This is a great piece. Merry Christmas!!
In the Catholic Church, evidence of the return of young people to religion is the bitter fight raging between the older, liberal Catholics (like Pope Francis and the ageing cardinals around him) and young Catholics who crave the mystery and beauty of the Latin Mass, in Catholic practices like fasting and abstinence, and the traditional Catholic calendar. The former cling to Vatican II’s underlying philosophy - modernism (the belief that Catholic doctrine and practice must change with the times). The latter will have nothing to do with it as it has made the institutional Church a vast worldly NGO and has created chaos because there is nothing stable in a modernist church (“the centre cannot hold” as in the Yeats poem).
I’m 62 years old and I came back to the Catholic Church in 2017. I attend the traditional Latin Mass, which is increasingly hard to find after Pope Francis decided to throttle it. The Latin Mass parishes are fastest growing in the USA, with lots of young families, most of whom are younger than me. By contrast the new Mass of the 1970s is filled with people older than me (I am speaking about Novus Ordo masses in Europe and America). Even in Europe, the Latin Masses are packed and most people are under 60.
There is such a hunger for tradition, mystery, and spiritual direction among young people and even among converts and returning Catholics. I also notice a much greater interest in the Desert Fathers, in their spiritual quest and in going “out to the desert” perhaps now not the deserts of Egypt, but to the quiet places in Europe and America.
Life, or at least my life, is so full of loud demands for answers that it seems that the default response is to gather and analyze more and more information. At so many points your words evoke deep resonance and reflection. And in that inner depth I sense an invitation into the Truth and the Life - formative rather than informative.
I relate to this experience.
I was once helped specifically with the environmental elements of our modern tragedy by someone reminding me of St. Mary of Egypt.
Stripped bare of everything outward that would support her survival- she did not die but thrived.
I’m comforted also that there is divine mirth and endlessly the holy element of surprise.
How we deal with what we’ve been dealt, this is all our Creator asks of us. It’s enough.
Paul you should start doing audio version like your buddy M Shaw for the paid pieces. Merry Christmas!
I would be very pleased with that too.
That would be great, though I'm sure easier said than done. In the meantime I've been using https://www.naturalreaders.com
Not really the same thing but Substack app has audio reader built in.
This is magnificent and I will ponder it for a long time.
You might be interested in this book...
Steven D. Smith
Pagans and Christians in the City: Culture Wars from the Tiber to the Potomac (Emory University Studies in Law and Religion (EUSLR)). Here Smith describes the rivalry between pagan immanence and Christian transcendence, and he reminds us that this rivalry never relented and is seeing now a newly arisen intensity.
And I wonder - in your essay you mention a search for ‘solutions’. This reminds me of something I learned from Thomas Sowell - ‘There are no solutions, only trade offs’. Does this aphorism seem useful in the context of this essay?
“Solutions” are a left-brain fallacy that only exist within mathematics
I'd recast Sowell's aphorism into something more Wendell Berry-ish: What we perceive as solutions are never without trade-offs. Solutions can exist, but they're never perfect.
A big problem with "Progress" is that it presumes that no matter what trade-offs occur they will always accrue to the plus column. So there is a sense in which they don't really need to be weighed.
Well said…!
It's on my shelf!
Fabulous piece, thank you. Even a small cause for optimism. Admittedly we don't know how or where the many restless hearts will coalesce, and whether there will be enough in common to sustain a collective narrative for a society to survive. We shall see, in the meantime, keep your loved ones safe, your feet firmly on the ground and your eyes raised to Heaven.
Odds are they coalesce within another totalitarian narrative similar to COVID.
Probably true! But we live in hope. Happy Christmas!
😊
Merry Christmas, Mr Kingsnorth - this is a very positive message for our turbulent and confused times, with much to consider for all of us as we head into a New Year.
Spot on Paul!
Have you secretly been reading essays by druids again?😉
https://www.ecosophia.net/the-return-of-religion/
Yup, the druid mason has been banging on about these matters for a dozen years - and the powerful magic of liturgy. He acknowledges how powerful for instance the trad Catholic version can be, and speculates a strong pull for young punters.
My experience is very limited and ignorant but almost by accident I was part of an Easter crowd in St Stephens in Vienna as it filled up one Sunday morning. The clergy just seemed to get on with it, a bit like Paul's Orthodox, but I started to notice people near to me. There was memory of grief in a woman's quiet and very private tears. The occasion got suddenly real.
Ha! I hadn't read that, no, though I have read Greer on Spengler many times before. Interesting how we converged on a similar point from different angles. Ali's essay has brought about a lot of reactions like this.
I prefer the light and witness of ordinary people (Friends) who gather together and then go out to live their lives in the power of the Spirit to that of Desert Fathers who show up well after the impact and effect and power of what is described as Christianity in Acts and the Epistles in the first centuries.. The power of the Spirit found in Paul, John, Priscilla, the daughters of Philip, Peter, Agabus, Philip, Stephen, the gifts of the Spirit described in 1 Corinthians manifested in the middle of the world among the people of God living in it. I think we need to manifest that not a renewed monastic elite.
Perhaps, but those saints had a particular mission and gifts directly from Christ and His apostles- spread the good news! While all of us are to do that, we’re not so gifted. Some of us indeed are better servers by going into deserts to pray alone, as Jesus himself did. The desert fathers (and mothers) preserved and lived the faith in the solitude of their desert hermitages because among other things they needed purity of mind away from official Constantinism (to use PK’s allusion). Today, I’m sure there are those who might move to some Appalachian skete to immerse themselves in the Holy Spirit to avoid Joyce Meyers.
I have higher hopes for the ordinary likes of you and I in the light of 1 Corinthians 1:4-9, 2:26-28, chapters 12-14 and John 14:12 and many more verses.
This is decidedly not an either/or but a both/and. It's telling that critiques of monasticism by those touting evangelism are never echoed by monastics: I don't recall ever hearing any monastic downplay evangelism. In fact many of the evangelists and missionaries in the early Church were monastics.
Also, I don't see how anyone can read the Desert Fathers and conclude that they were an "elite."
Elitist in the sense that the monastic lifestyle supposedly enabled a better knowing of God and the high road (similar to Buddhism) to spiritual attainment which I do not see in the NT. And the monastic system didn’t exist for nearly 200 years in early Christianity so I see it at best as an option not a necessity.
There exists to this day a very strong monastic component to Orthodox Christianity. And I assure you there has never been anything elitist about it. To Orthodox Christians monasticism is essential and not an option. Whether or not you find it in the New Testament. These men and women literally pray for the world every day, unceasingly.
I’ll add that there is no one more monastic than St. John the Baptist and Forerunner (and the father of all monastics). The man given the position and privilege of announcing the coming of Christ.
Admittedly I’m very new to Orthodoxy and Christianity in general, but I’ve discussed this notion of monasticism not being realistic with my wife who grew up in the church. She likes to think of it as a spectrum between “worldly” and “spiritual” (though there may be more accurate words for those).
Essentially you can live a more spiritual life with less connection to the earthly world as the monastics do, which brings you personally closer to God. But it inevitably brings you further from your fellow man. Whereas one could be very much in the world but then have a less personal or “pure” connection. Neither are better or worse, they just come with different trade offs.
We recently joined a new Orthodox Church, and our Father is much more “in the world” and down to earth than others we’ve known. As someone who took a somewhat similar path to Orthodoxy as Paul, this has been very helpful to me as a beginner. However he takes great inspiration from the Desert Fathers, as their experience and teachings from the more “spiritual” end of the spectrum inform his faith and ministry.
Similarly, I imagine that someone who lives an isolated life as a religious hermit, whilst being closer to God, as a result have a harder time relating to others and sharing those experiences.
Essentially, I don’t look at people like the Desert Fathers as “elite” or “superior” compared to our down to earth Father. It’s just a different way of relating to the faith. And those at one end can inform those at the other.
I know many people who are close to God living ordinary lives without benefit of monasticism which I suppose feeds my skepticism about the necessity of the monastic system as part of Christianity. For me the key is the inward gift of the Spirit available to all that is not conditioned on a particular lifestyle and rituals but is gift and faith based - Galatians 3:2-5
I’d agree it’s not necessary. I look at it as someone deciding to specialise in one path. They’ll become very good at that specific thing, and probably discover things others won’t. But at the same time they’ll miss out on other paths and discoveries. Personally my relationship with my wife and daughter has been a more powerful vehicle for my faith than anything else, and you could t convince me that a monastic path would have been better for me - even if I’ve forever missed out on certain experiences. Different paths for different people I guess. But I agree that seeing monastics on a special pedestal compared to everyone else probably isn’t a good move
I don't agree. I think that the hermits, the monastics and the ascetic saints are absolutely vital. They are the beating heart of the faith. The notion that they are an 'elite' in worldly terms is not born out by history: the best of them were often poor, ordinary, illiterate. Many great saints were peasants. Others had been aristocrats. All have to fight the same inner struggle. In doing so, they keep the flame for the rest of us, and act as guides. Most of us will never be monastics. But note how the Western churches slid into worldliness when the monastics were killed off. And note the power of the Orthodox faith. There is a reason for this.
Good point, I hadn’t meant to say that monasticism isn’t necessary at all, just that it’s not a necessary path for all Christians to walk (which reading back wasn’t clear at all). I hadn’t considered the lack of monastics without modern Western Christianity before though, that’s a really interesting point
When the Reformation jettisoned monasticism they dumped asceticism along with it. And any Christianity shorn of the ascetic will either tend to legalism or antinomianism, or the odd combination of the two that you see in some fundamentalist groups.
That's my experience. The destruction of the monasteries by Henry VIII was the end of Christianity in England and the beginning of a secularised and rationalist church. The results in today's CofE are painfully obvious.
As an illustration of this point, I wanted to share part of a beautiful poem my late grandfather, Dr. Howard Fulweiler, wrote about John the Baptist. His portrait, for me, captures both the gritty, idiosyncratic physicality of desert asceticism and the awe-some divine presence that permeates its forbidding landscape:
A homeless man was sent by God to teach
A change of heart. Bizarre in camel’s hair,
Baptizing in the Jordan he came to preach
Isaiah’s vision in the desert air.
He called out loud for a fresh start there;
Nature’s blind beginning now must yield
To the new world foretold in Isaiah’s prayer:
Don’t hurt or harm; the law of pain is repealed;
Let wolf and lamb be friends; the world’s wounds be healed . . .
(From The Christian Year, a poem cycle by Howard Wells Fulweiler, Jr.)
If you have spent time in the desert, as I have, you know that in its inhumane -- or perhaps better put, humanity-indifferent -- silence, the divine presence manifests itself as palpably as the heat and grit. We may not all be able to don the camel's hair, but the saints' voices carry far on that clear desert air when we listen.
Father Thomas Merton was a fervent defender of the monastic lifestyle, yet he was very much connected with the world. The Seven Storey Mountain, an account of his conversion, showed him as quite an idealistic young ascetic, but his faith matured later on in his life. He is so down-to-earth, humourous, he even had a love affair late in his life. You cannot accuse him of not being in touch with his fellow human beings. Yet, in his book Contemplation in a World of Action, he defends the need for monasticism so well; his analysis and critique of the modern Christian shows an exquisite understanding of the human heart.
I grew up on the Lincolnshire/Leicestershire borders. My first teacher at primary school was Mrs Robertson the Rectors wife. We had Christian pray every day and once a week a service in the village church next door to the school taken by her husband. My mother took me to church every Sunday. I now yearn for the yearly cycle of religious high days and holy days. Not just Christmas and Easter but The penitential periods of Lent and Easter. The liturgical changes of colour that marked the different periods of the year. Always seemed merging to look forward to and ordinary time to mark the difference. I can it “the tinned salmon syndrome. “ You had that at Christmas, Easter and your birthday. It was expensive and special. Hot cross buns and pancakes only on Good Friday and Shrove Tuesday. Mince pies only at Christmas. Now you can have anything you desire anytime and nothing is special or looked forward to anymore. I wish I had an Orthodox Church near me (I am a retired Anglican minister) but in mid-Wales there are none. How does one go about starting an outpost Paul?
Stephen, it might be worth contacting Orthodox Exchange in Cardiff initially. They seem to be a good source for folk new to Orthodoxy and may be able to help.
Most grateful for the information. Much appreciated 🙏👍
Hi Andrew, hope you're well. Do you go to the orthodox church in Westgate? I went a few weeks ago, but was a bit baffled about what was going on. It was pretty cool though. Do you fancy meeting up for a cup of tea some time in Lancaster?
Here in America, a fine orthodox priest, who is a convert wanted to start a mission church somewhere in Michigan. The Bulgarian orthodox church ended up financing it, and helping out from time to time. They are thriving now. It is wonderful to see. My daughter was the first ethnic member ever as they are all converts
It’s worth the travel time. I’m in Australia and a recent convert. My parish is far away but I am able to attend once a month and stay the night with my godmother. It was uncomfortable for me at first, being a stranger to everything but has become a home for me, irreplaceable and precious.
An exquisite, profound essay. 👌
I have a small criticism, on one word actually. 😁 You use Constantine as a stand in for an "old school/fanatic Christian culture warrior". I think Theodosios (or, much more, Stepinac or Charlemagne) would fit there. Constantine did absolutely nothing culture-warrior-like as emperor. Instead, he kept an extremely conciliatory tone on all fronts, remained pontifex maximus of pagans, established the first form of social welfare for all etc. He did fight the persecuters of the tetrarchy to become emperor, but this wasn't to impose on them his religious beliefs: it was literally a battle Royale, the big dogs taking each other out until there was only one left. He played that game as an old school Roman military man.
Westerners getting over the "intimidation" emanating from "Byzantine" things is a key thing for the furure. You have to be able to look at history (which for Christian people intersects with church history) without fear or favor. Not everyone has to like the "Greeks", of course, but it's good to finally get out from under the libel and demonization that has been the meat and potatoes of western historical thinking, from "contra errores graecorum" to Gibbon. (Hurray for Sir Steven Runciman!)
Of course burying half of European/Christian history under a mountain of two cents "contra errors" theses opens up an opportunity too: Martin sold anecdotes of Byzantine history for their weight in gold as super awsome demigod stuff, and people hail his creativity 😄, see link https://youtu.be/0tQ-z94ZNFE?si=PgP3OOLatAB2h9qi
Read it yesterday, and loved it as usual.
One thing that lingered in my mind later, though, is you seem to draw quite a sharp dividing line between Christians who are cultural activists and then - the real thing - actual believers who don’t bother with such nonsense and just go off into the woods (and turn out to actually save the world by doing so). Of course, I’m exaggerating, but you see where I’m going.
This sharp division, however, leaves no room for people like… you! Serious practitioners with an actual commitment to the knots and bolts of religious practice, but who are also called to exert a much needed spiritual influence over our culture.
So perhaps it’s not a question of altogether shunning cultural crusaders (unfortunate word), but stressing the importance of practice and intimate experience for all the faithful, be they inclined to some kind of social outreach or not. The saint who gave Gaudiya Vaishnavism the shape it has today spent ten years in constant prayer before launching the missionary initiative we now know as the Hare Krishna movement. All of us would do well to follow his example.
I think there can be no "purely non political" version of Christianity... Worldviews inevitably "leak" to questions that are "political", at least to an extent, and it's no use trying to draw a line and "forbid" that. I think Paul above all is trying very hard to point out that he is advocating for something much more internal and quiet than typical "culture war" stuff (or that's my wishful interpretation). If it's broadly correct, I'd say he's absolutely right!
Yes, I agree to a certain extent. Although it is true that many great saints and prophets never directly touch on politics, because their mission is entirely on another level.
Also, I think your interpretation of the essay is correct and accurate. I just find that Paul often gives all the merit to those who go off into the woods, and not enough to people with a more social or even evangelising vocation. Didn’t Jesus say “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature”? It’s actually what he’s doing, and quite brilliantly for that matter.
You're very kind, though I don't feel I do this well, if I do it at all. But yes, you're right about that underlying tension. I think I emphasise the monks and hermits so much firstly because I am deeply drawn to them, and secondly because I think worldly Christianity is vastly over-emphasised in the West. We are badly out of balance. I have a feeling that the way back to our spiritual heritage lies through the mouth of a cave. I hope people will forgive my sometimes obsessive focus on this idea.
This is just where I thought, and hoped, you were going when I first encountered The Cross and the Machine and The Dream of the Rood--that is, strong shades of Christopher Dawson, whose writings are beautiful and pointed always toward hope, even at the bleakest moments/times. This is a great piece. Merry Christmas!!
Thank you for a very interesting and thoughtful piece. Apparently Spengler isn’t dead and irrelevant after all. Merry X-mas!
In the Catholic Church, evidence of the return of young people to religion is the bitter fight raging between the older, liberal Catholics (like Pope Francis and the ageing cardinals around him) and young Catholics who crave the mystery and beauty of the Latin Mass, in Catholic practices like fasting and abstinence, and the traditional Catholic calendar. The former cling to Vatican II’s underlying philosophy - modernism (the belief that Catholic doctrine and practice must change with the times). The latter will have nothing to do with it as it has made the institutional Church a vast worldly NGO and has created chaos because there is nothing stable in a modernist church (“the centre cannot hold” as in the Yeats poem).
I’m 62 years old and I came back to the Catholic Church in 2017. I attend the traditional Latin Mass, which is increasingly hard to find after Pope Francis decided to throttle it. The Latin Mass parishes are fastest growing in the USA, with lots of young families, most of whom are younger than me. By contrast the new Mass of the 1970s is filled with people older than me (I am speaking about Novus Ordo masses in Europe and America). Even in Europe, the Latin Masses are packed and most people are under 60.
There is such a hunger for tradition, mystery, and spiritual direction among young people and even among converts and returning Catholics. I also notice a much greater interest in the Desert Fathers, in their spiritual quest and in going “out to the desert” perhaps now not the deserts of Egypt, but to the quiet places in Europe and America.
I’ve observed the same thing in my parish in Alexandria VA.
Praise God, and welcome home.
Thank you for this essay.
Life, or at least my life, is so full of loud demands for answers that it seems that the default response is to gather and analyze more and more information. At so many points your words evoke deep resonance and reflection. And in that inner depth I sense an invitation into the Truth and the Life - formative rather than informative.