 Profusive in its growth, and rambunctious, Tumbling down in tangles From the tops of the trees, Leaves dyed with the deep green of spring – Deep, like one sees in the sky at night – Flowers of soft yellow and purest white, Crowning oak and elm With cornets of silver and gold And covering the forest floor with a carpet For the Lord to walk upon When He comes in the cool of the evening, Scenting the breeze with sweet incense, Nectar like honey for the tongue hiding within, Adornment of the spring in Dixie, Generous gift to the Southern folk From the Hands of the Gardener Who fashioned the First Paradise of Eden, And, in these later times, The lesser garden of the South.
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 Appomattox – A day of sadness for the South, A day of rejoicing for her enemies. I was greeted today (9 April 2025) by an article at the Abbeville Institute’s blog on the ongoing eradication of Southern culture and history at the Viriginia Military Institute. This is a refrain that has grown all too familiar to traditional Southerners over the years. Yet cultural genocide is not something Dixie bears alone. Other Western countries are facing similar situations. Spain’s Christian monuments in particular are being targeted by corrupt Leftists:
But just as the lamentations of both rise together, so too can both peoples rise to overcome the barbarians by the inspiration of their shared ancestors – for Spanish blood has for centuries flowed through the veins of the Southern people. In particular, King Pelagius (Pelayo) of the Kingdom of Asturias in Spain offers an abundance of fiery hope. On the Feast Day of the Spanish Icon of the Mother of God (8 April), we find the following recounted:
That brilliant victory occurred at the Battle of Covadonga. Like the victories of the outmanned South in her battles with the Yankees, it is wonderful to read:
From the determination of one man – one man blessed by the Mother of God – a little, insignificant looking band of men was able to begin the long process of reversing the Muslims’ rout of the Christians of Spain. The faithful God-loving, ancestor-honoring peoples of Spain and the South must take heart from this. So often it is in the midst of the most terrible darkness that the light finally comes to drive away the gloom. Because of this, many are tempted to despair, to give up the fight. But they must not. The priest-monk Fr Seraphim Aldea of the Orthodox Monastery of All Celtic Saints on the Scottish islands of Mull and Iona speaks to this in an e-mail message on the subject of Lent and Holy Week (dated 7 April 2025),
O Christ God –
Find a way to save us, Dixie, Spain, and all the West, And all the peoples of this world.  Predictive programming is a technique the anti-Christian power structure uses to condition the masses to accept changes that those twisted people want to introduce into the world. It is often used by them in Hollywood TV and film productions. Star Trek is a frightfully good illustration: AI computer assistants and computer tablet reading devices were featured in this series decades ago, to give only a couple of examples from the long-running series. We have recently watched Back to the Future Part II, which features predictions about the year 2015 (the movie was released in 1989), and found the same process at work. There are hints of things to come, like the use of biometric data (to open locks on doors) and a completely man-controlled ‘weather service’ (likened in the movie to the regularity of the postal service); both biometrics and geoengineering are becoming more accepted and widespread around the world. Featured most prominently in the film are flying cars: the year 2015 was portrayed as being full of them. Well, it’s 2025, and they’re ain’t any flyin’ cars around, so we’re a little behind schedule. But the technocratic elite still want to shove as many of us as possible into flying automobiles. The news about their development is starting to trickle out. Orlando, Florida, home of Disney fantasy land, is living up to its reputation, getting ready to build a ‘vertiport’ for flying cars, which the city wants to have ready by 2028. Alef Aeronautics, which publicly ties itself to Back to the Future Part II and its flying car (predictive programming – mission accomplished!), is taking pre-orders for their own version, but it’ll cost you a few hundred thousand dollars (I think I’ll save my stash for eggs, the way prices are going). Mass production of Alef’s Model A has reportedly begun. Dr. Russell Kirk had a special hatred for the standard automobile that we have all been driving since the early 20th century, calling it a ‘mechanical Jacobin,’ since it broke up the long-established patterns of living that had grown up organically across Christendom and the rest of the world. Dixie’s own Andrew Lytle in ‘The Hind Tit,’ his essay in I’ll Take My Stand, was no better inclined towards them. We covered this matter of the motor car and other related things in an essay written about a dozen years ago. Dr. Robert Peters once referred to it as being somewhat ill-tempered. We agree. And we will now be just as ill-tempered in our response to the appearance of flying cars. Conventional automobiles that roll along the ground at least have the virtue of keeping us connected to that same ground to a small degree, however much of a blur it usually is as we whiz over and by it. But flying cars, these flying Jacobins, will disconnect us from it completely, making the earth and its places even more distant and abstract to us, increasing the likelihood that we will be even less hesitant than we are today to tear it to pieces, to deconstruct and reconstruct it, for the sake of some hair-brained, Gnostic, nihilistic scheme of economic development, scientific advancement, or non-sensical entertainment. As Southerners, we must stand against the rising tide of tech. We have witnessed the deadliness of it for generations now – from women and children being mangled in the early factories to hydrogen bombs incinerating Japanese cities to suicides tied to social media. The prophetic English writer Paul Kingsnorth is helpful at this moment. He points out two paths that traditional Southerners (and other like-minded peoples) can take as it regards technology, which he calls ‘cooked asceticism’ and ‘raw asceticism.’ In his own words (from his essay ‘The Neon God’): The Cooked Ascetic
The Raw Ascetic
In that vein, Southrons should resolve to limit our uptake of new technology. No flying cars, no smart phones, no AI, etc., or at least greatly restrict our use of such things. We should do as much as we can to re-establish the agrarian ethos of our forefathers, difficult though it be in our rushed and tech-obsessed age. A story from the life of St Nikephoros of Chios (reposed in 1821), a saint from among the same Greek people Southerners have often praised over the years, shows how beautiful and beneficial the agrarian life is when practiced:
Like the Saint, let us also here at the South be tree lovers, tree planters, soil-builders, animal keepers, and so on, even to the smallest extent, and encourage our children, grandchildren, neighbors, etc., to do the same. Modern technology is turning the world into hell itself. But by practicing Christian agrarianism, we can help return some small slivers of it to the comely and abundant garden God intended for it to be.  Since the end of the War, with the Yankees in the ascendancy, the dominant ideas in the union have been mainly change, innovation, progress, and their near-of-kin. Sultan Donald the Magnificent re-confirmed this in his Inaugural Address in January: ‘And, right now, our nation is more ambitious than any other. There’s no nation like our nation. Americans are explorers, builders, innovators, entrepreneurs and pioneers. The spirit of the frontier is written into our hearts. The call of the next great adventure resounds from within our souls. Our American ancestors turned a small group of colonies on the edge of a vast continent into a mighty republic of the most extraordinary citizens on Earth. No one comes close. Americans pushed thousands of miles through a rugged land of untamed wilderness. They crossed deserts, scaled mountains, braved untold dangers, won the Wild West, ended slavery, rescued millions from tyranny, lifted millions from poverty, harnessed electricity, split the atom, launched mankind into the heavens and put the universe of human knowledge into the palm of the human hand. If we work together, there is nothing we cannot do and no dream we cannot achieve.’ That kind of thinking, in general, a Southerner cannot abide. Some of those accomplishments are noble, and we do not reject all change, of course, but making The New the center of our life, its guiding ideal, has had, and will continue to have, disastrous consequences. Man in such a system becomes rootless and falls into despair, and the creation itself, to quote St Justin Popovich, becomes ‘a slaughterhouse.’ The Kentucky agrarian Wendell Berry offers a longer counterpoint: ‘The paramount doctrine of the economic and technological euphoria of recent decades has been that everything depends on innovation. It was understood as desirable, and even necessary, that we should go on and on from one technological innovation to the next, which would cause the economy to “grow” and make everything better and better. This of course implied at every point a hatred of the past, of all things inherited and free. All things superseded in our progress of innovations, whatever their value might have been, were discounted as of no value at all.’ And once again he declaims, ‘As industrial technology advances and enlarges, and in the process assumes greater social, economic, and political force, it carries people away from where they belong by history, culture, deeds, association, and affection.’ Dixie understands that without history, traditions, customs, and the like, life is dull and meaningless. Yet such a normative worldview is attacked relentlessly in the modern United States. Examples to encourage Southrons not to abandon our heritage would be extraordinarily helpful in the midst of this maelstrom. And they do exist, thanks be to God. The first three months of the year feature some of the most beloved saints of the Celtic lands and peoples, to which and to whom the South has deep ties: St Kentigern Mungo, Patron Saint of Glasgow and a chief apostle of Scotland (13 Jan.), St Ita of Kileedy, ‘Foster-Mother of the Irish Saints’ (15 Jan.), St Teilo, a father to the Welsh (9 Feb.), St Patrick, the Enlightener of Ireland (17 March), and so forth. Among their number is also St Oncho (sometimes spelled ‘Onchu’) of Clonmore, Ireland (Feast Day celebrated 8 Feb.; he reposed near the end of the 6th century AD). A short vita of the saint shows his significance for Southerners today: ‘Saint Oncho was an Irish pilgrim, poet, guardian of the Celtic traditions, and a collector of holy relics. While pursuing his search for memorials of the Irish saints he died at Clonmore monastery, then governed by Saint Maidoc, and his body was enshrined there together with the relics he had gathered’ (Celtic and Old English Saints). Like St Oncho, Southerners faithful to our forebears are pilgrims, bards, guardians of Dixie’s traditions, and collectors of precious relics: Pilgrims, for we are not of the Yankee culture that surrounds us; Bards, for the words of some in Dixie are still lit with the apocalyptic fire of the prophets of old, revealing truth and error; Guardians of tradition, for the attacks upon our past have not ceased; and Collectors of relics, for what of our history has survived has been scattered through neglect and through malice and must be gathered again. St Oncho set out with a firm resolution and good intention, and so must Southerners also. In a longer account of St Oncho’s life, we are given the pattern and motivations to imitate: ‘The holy man formed his resolution of visiting each place, throughout our whole island, in which he thought there might be the most remote chance for discovering or procuring relics, of any Irish saints. He had hoped, that such a collection might afterwards serve to increase devotion, and preserve the memory of those pious servants of God, among the people.’ Along the way, we should not be surprised if we are visited by wonders: ‘…having nearly accomplished his original purpose, he came to the flourishing monastery of Clonmore, in Leinster, over which the illustrious Maidoc or Aidus, son to Eugenius of the Leinster family, then presided as abbot. St. Onchu received kind hospitality, and he demanded some memorial from this holy superior. Through humility, however, Maidoc refused such a request; when, it is said, his finger fell to the ground in a miraculous manner. Our saint immediately took it up, and placed it among his other relics.’ If we are diligent in our work, and should the All-Holy Trinity bless it, as we pray He will, we will be crowned with the same success as him: ‘Such purposes he accomplished; for, whatever monastery or cell, he visited, furnished some contribution to the store, he had previously acquired. Not only did he obtain memorials of the dead; but, he received even certain gifts or articles, from pious men, whose reputation for sanctity had been already established, in the Irish Church. All of these precious treasures, Onchu deposited, in the same reliquary.’ St Oncho was buried in the Monastery of Clonmore along with his treasury of holy relics. Clonmore and all of Ireland have been abundantly blessed by his efforts. Anyone willing can still visit the site and receive the Grace of God that is present in abundance because of the presence of so many saints. Will there be sites like Clonmore across the South, housing the treasures of our people? That depends on us. If we want the answer to be Yes, then may this prayer be often in our mouths and in our hearts as we labor to that end:
 The Holy Trinity In the first times Made the waters of the world – Pure and clear, untainted – In the firmament, Upon the earth, Beneath her foundations – Shimmering in sun’s light, Glimmering in moon’s glow, Pulsing through arteries Under the ground – Wholly good in the sight of God. But the first-formed man Stumbled and sinned At the behest of his wife. The waters grew cloudy And darkened, befouled by evil. They became the dwellings of demons. Water was the womb of life, Now the bearer Of calamity – Of flood and hail And deadly disease. The Logos looked With compassion On the works of His hands. In agreement With the Father and Spirit He left the heavenly realm, Born as a Babe To a Virgin Mother. Grown to a Man, He approached The incomparable John, And went down into the water. The Holy Body Of the Only Son, Ablaze with divinity, Annulled the curse, Crushed the monsters, Drove away every defilement. In their place, He left A garment of Light, That adorns all those Who follow Him in Baptism. The Master rises From beneath the river – The sky is torn open! A Voice thunders, A Dove descends, The mystery of the Trinity Revealed to mankind. The waters rejoiced! The little rivers leapt; The great oceans roared. Bitter is now sweet; What brought death, Now gives life. Day is over, Night has come. The turbulent waters Are calm and quiet. The light of stars Rests upon their surface; The Light of Christ Radiates within; While all creation, With joy, softly sings A new song in praise Of her Savior. 
 St. Andrew painting by Jose de Ribera It would be plenty easy for Southrons faithful to Dixieland to throw up their hands in despair, as we see so many of our people identifying more with vapid, deracinated American exceptionalism or with some other ideology or idolatry (there’s a difference?) than with the traditions of their own forefathers. And yet there is room for hope, given the right conditions. The Christian island of Cyprus offers a wonderful illustration of this. In 1974 she was overrun by vicious Muslim Turks, who have remained as occupiers of the northern part of the island (the parallels with the Yankee invasion and conquest of the South are readily apparent at this point). We turn to an Orthodox priest named Fr Gerasimos Fokas for more of the story:
This, too, is familiar to faithful Southerners, who face a multitude of pressures to conform to Yankee/globalist ways, or to move away from their ancestral lands in Dixie for ‘greater opportunities’ in other States. But just when the breaking point was reached, the Lord intervened, sending the Holy Apostle Andrew with a message to the priest’s wife:
She listened to St Andrew, and things did turn out very well for the Cypriots: ‘And indeed, after five years from his appearance, the borders were opened and today, because the Apostle Andrew is the most beloved, the most popular pilgrimage site, people are lining up to venerate the Saint, to beg him to free the place and their hearts.’ Dear friends – brothers and sisters of Dixie – this message is not only for Cyprus but for us as well. Our numbers are small contrasted with those of our enemies and with the complacent and deceived, just as it was for Fr Zacharias in Cyprus. But God is almighty. The faithfulness of one priest in honoring the Holy Trinity through his love for St Andrew was enough to begin a true revival of faith and piety and a return of many Cypriots to the region of Karpasia, confounding the wicked schemes of the Muslims. The South is also a place where St Andrew has been highly venerated (various cities and churches still bear his name), so much so that at one pivotal moment his cross was chosen to adorn our Southern flag. The fervor of our love for St Andrew has cooled, but we must re-ignite it. For he has led many into the Holy Church (via a short life of the Holy Apostle Andrew):
St Andrew will not abandon us if we run to him as a loving father (which he is and always will be). No, he will instead gather us up in his arms and turn us to God, Whom he served with all his heart and soul and mind while here in this world, strengthening Dixie in the Christian Faith.
Let us, then, honor and extol him, and give our requests to him, on his Feast Day (30 Nov.), on the Feast Day of all the Holy Apostles (30 June), and on any other day it is meet so to do. And as we do this, we will see, the Lord allowing, the same kind of renewal that Cyprus has seen happening in our own land, through the gracious help of St Andrew.  Whatever good there was in paganism, the Church baptized it and made it her own. This is true of the concept of patron deities of the cities and countries of pagan antiquity. Athena, for instance, was considered the patroness of ancient Athens.1 Christians, recognizing that there was something good and right in the practice, purified it and adapted it to their own use. Thus, throughout Church history, we find nearly every Christian city and country with a patron saint, who protects his or her people from the evils that threaten them, whether spiritual or physical. From St Agatha saving Sicily from the fires of Mt Etna,2 to St Demetrios of Thessaloniki saving his city from barbarians, to St Genevieve of Paris saving her city from flood and famine – Christendom is replete with patron saints and their acts of protection and deliverance. Which makes Dixie an outlier. We boast that we are a Christian people, yet we have no patron saint. We ought to remedy that. A patron saint for the South should embody the main elements of Southern life, so that all Southrons would feel a kinship with him or her. Now, the South, considered from the viewpoint of her deepest and oldest roots, is the offspring of English culture: ‘Gifted novelist and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston underscored the common elements of white and black southern culture, calling the South as a whole “the purest English section of the United States”: ‘“What is actually the truth is, that the South, up until the 1930s was a relic of England. . . . and you find the retention of old English beliefs and customs, songs and ballads and Elizabethan figures of speech. They go for the simile and especially the metaphor. As in the bloom of Elizabethan literature, they love speech for the sake of speech. This is common to white and black.”’3 But the English culture Dixie received as her patrimony was not just any old generic English culture. Part of it does indeed come from the borderlands with Scotland. But Southern culture in the main springs from the areas associated with the Old English kingdom of Wessex in southwestern England. Professor David Hackett Fischer speaks to this. About the area from whence came the early settlers of Virginia – who were to stamp the South with her particular character – Prof Fischer says, ‘It more nearly resembled the ancient historical Wessex of Alfred and Athelred, which with its Mercian protectorate reached east as far as Canterbury, and north beyond Warwick and Northampton.’4 And again, ‘Its language and laws were those of the West Saxons [i.e., of Wessex, the short form of West Saxon--W.G.], rather than the Danes who settled East Anglia, or the Norse who colonized the north country, or the Celts who held Cornwall and Wales.’5 Dixie’s patron saint, then, ought to be the best representative of old Wessex culture. Is there anyone who does that sufficiently? There is, and Prof Fischer has actually already mentioned his name: King Alfred the Great of Wessex, England’s Darling (849-899). But his achievements were so momentous that their effects extended beyond Wessex, leavening all of English culture, as Father Andrew Phillips, a priest in England, reveals: ‘ . . . all that has come to pass, in the eleven hundred years and more of England since Alfred, would never have come to pass without him. Nothing can be understood without him, nothing can be seen without his presence. Yes, it is true that after the silver age of the tenth century, England would sink again under the yoke of other Northmen, but even they would never be able to erase Alfred's example, his memory and his achievements. Although the details of Alfred's English Kingdom were later modified, its structure was lasting and has never been destroyed. ‘ . . . And all the great moments of our history are Alfredian. His presence is a constant, haunting our history, a beneficent ghost down all the ages. Embodying Faith and Truth, Wisdom and the Law, Alfred is England's Darling and England's Shepherd, and his Christ is England's only Greatness.’6 St Alfred’s influence on Southern culture is therefore quite inescapable. Having established this much, let us look now more specifically at how King Alfred embodies some of the major aspects of Southern culture and history. He was born into a large Christian family, not a rarity for the pre-modern South: ‘Alfred was the youngest of five children, four sons and one daughter, of Ethelwulf, King of Wessex and his wife Osburh. Both were reputed for their piety, it is even said that in his youth Ethelwulf had wanted to become a monk in Winchester. Osburh is recorded as 'a most religious woman, noble in character and noble by birth'. Alfred was the youngest of all King Ethelwulf's six children - the King had already had by a first union a son, Athelstan, who was to die relatively young.’7 He displayed good manners, and loved and recited poems: ‘Alfred was greatly loved by his parents and indeed by all who encountered him. He was brought up at the royal court and was “more comely in appearance than his other brothers, and more pleasing in manner, speech and behaviour”. From childhood his noble mind was characterized by the desire for wisdom, more than anything else. He was a careful listener and at that time he used to learn English poems by heart, memorizing them from recitals. ‘One day his mother, showing him and his brothers a book of English poetry, said: “I shall give this book to whichever one of you can learn it the fastest”. Then aged only five or six, Alfred, was attracted by the beauty of the first letter, which was illuminated. He at once took the book from her hand, went to his teacher, and learnt it by heart. Then he took it back to his mother and recited it, thus winning the book from his brothers, who though older, did not show the same abilities as Alfred.’8 King Alfred was a skilled rider and hunter, who saw nature as a wonderful mystery rather than as something evil or devoid of meaning (as Yankees tend to see it), and he had an intense love for God: ‘Alfred showed great practical ability, skill and success in every branch of hunting. Here he learnt something of the beauty and mysteries of nature, for Alfred was spiritually gifted too. Since he had to wait until the age of twelve before he began to learn how to read and write, he also learnt the daily services of the hours and many psalms and prayers by heart. These he collected in a single book, which he kept by him day and night, into adulthood.’9 An epic poem about St Alfred, Eþandun, gives us an idea of his riding prowess. During a sudden attack by the Danes, he makes a narrow escape by skillfully grabbing hold of his horse as it races by:
Such attributes also helped him to become a fine warrior, a figure we have seen many times over the years in Dixie, including Washington, Lee, Hampton, Taylor, and many other Southern generals: ‘Here the English Christians were victorious in a skirmish at Englefield, but lost in attacking the Danes at Reading. On 8 January a major battle took place at “Ashdown” on the Berkshire hills and here too Alfred distinguished himself, and was shown to be a greater leader with more initiative and daring than his brother, King Ethelred. At Ashdown the heathen were routed by the English Christians.’11 In his war against the pagan Viking Danes who overran England, he faced an enemy with numbers that exceeded his own, like the South against the Yankees in the War (the Yankees share some Scandinavian blood with the Northmen St Alfred and his men fought, making Dixie’s war against the Yanks in a real way a repeat of King Alfred’s war against the Danes). The pillaging by the Danes is also mirrored by the Yankee ravaging of innocent Southern civilians: ‘However, in autumn 875, the heathen left their base in Cambridge and embarked on their second invasion of Wessex. They came to Wareham in Dorset and then went on to Exeter in Devon. Here they had gathered a fleet of 120 ships in order to finish off Wessex, but it was wrecked in a storm off Swanage. The heathen constantly broke their oaths to leave Wessex and slaughtered and ravaged everywhere they went. From here they crossed into Gloucester in the south of Mercia in 877 but just after Twelfth Night in January 878 they moved in a surprise attack to the royal estate in Chippenham in Wiltshire. As usual they pillaged the churches, destroyed opposition and the people of that area submitted to their authority. Wessex had all but collapsed.’12 At a difficult moment in his war with the Northmen, like Francis Marion and his army in South Carolina, St Alfred and his men hid amongst the swamps to regroup and fight the enemy anew: ‘After Easter, in late March 878, Alfred and his company retreated through the alder forests and reedy marshes to the strategic island of Athelney, meaning the “island of the princes”. This may have been a hunting-lodge of the princes of Wessex, or it may have taken its name from that time, when Alfred made it into a family stronghold for the princes of the Royal House. For on this island, a low hill of some thirty acres, surrounded by marsh and thicket with a well-protected causeway, Alfred built a fortress. This was to be the ark of salvation for Christian England.’13 Like Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia, St Alfred did not wage total war against the Vikings, but fought as a Christian ought: ‘Alfred pursued the heathen to their stronghold at Chippenham and seized all that they had, horses and cattle, and then laid siege. After two weeks the heathen, cold, hungry and fearful, made a peace-treaty. They swore that they would leave the Kingdom at once. In victory Alfred now showed his true greatness. He did not slaughter his former enemy like the murderous Charlemagne, but he fed them. Wisdom took the place of the sword; Alfred had defeated his enemies, but did not make enemies. He had overcome barbarism without becoming barbaric. Showing true Christian virtue and statesmanship, Alfred knew that the only real conquest is the conquest of the heart. As Churchill, emulating Alfred, said over a thousand years later: “In war, resolution; in defeat, defiance; in victory, magnanimity; in peace, good will”. ‘Three weeks later at Aller in Somerset together with some thirty of his leading men, Guthrum, the Danish King, received baptism taking the noble English name “Athelstan”, with Alfred standing as his godfather. After eight days, as is the tradition, he had the holy oil or chrism removed at the nearby royal estate at Wedmore and King Alfred, his conqueror and godfather, feasted with him and honoured him with gifts.’14 As with many Southern gentlemen, so also with St Alfred – he learned a classical language; in his case, Latin: ‘Showing great curiosity in the acquisition of new religious knowledge, Alfred wished to restore learning in general. He set an example by personally learning Latin over a period of about five years between 887 and 892. This began on St Martin's Day, 11 November 887. Then aged thirty-nine, Alfred was beginning an apprenticeship. As we shall see, eventually aided by his scholars, he was to become a translator from Latin into English of essential works from the early Church for the benefit of the faithful.’15 In the Southern aristoi were many lawyers; St Alfred also showed a deep interest in law: ‘Between 890 and 893 Alfred drew up a great law-code, which has led many to give him the title, “Alfred the Lawgiver”. He wished to restore the rule of law, enforcing justice, wherever law and order had broken down because of the heathen invasions and the breakdown of church and monastic life. His laws were based on the Ten Commandments of Hebrew Mosaic Law, on the best of the traditional English laws of Kent, Mercia and Wessex, and on Roman government. Much was based on the Ten Commandments, given to Moses, fulfilled and interpreted by the love and compassion of Christ, continued by the teachings of the Apostles and handed down through the ordinances of the Church Councils down the ages. In it Alfred emphasised the importance of the Golden Rule of St Matthew (Matt 7, 12): “Do as ye would be done by”, which he enshrined in his laws as: “Judge as ye would be judged”.’16 King Alfred recognized that there is a hierarchy among men, that they are not all the same, as modern theories of equality teach. Southerners have likewise always abhorred an abstract, theoretical equality. St Alfred, in his translation of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, describes the three basic classes of men in society as ‘praying men, fighting men and working men.’17 In order to know one’s place in the hierarchy, a man needs to have knowledge of his ancestors. Such knowledge was once prized in Dixie, and St Alfred, as one of the nobility, would also have had a keen grasp of it. Mr Carpenter illustrates this cleverly in Eþandun, as King Alfred recites his lineage while he cuts firewood in the early morning while hiding in the forest from the Danes, thus keeping the memory of his ancestors strong in his heart:
There is more that could be said. The reader will have to seek it out on his own, however, in the sources given below, and elsewhere. But the significance of St Alfred for the South today cannot be overstated. Fr Andrew assesses the situation of England – and by extension the South – quite well: ‘Let us say that if the question of Alfred's holiness is coming up now, over a thousand years since he lived, it is no coincidence. It seems to us that at the present time Alfred's England is going through a process of repaganization. . . . ‘As a result of the assault on Christian values, English national identity is under threat. We cannot forget that England and the English only exist as a nation because of the Church which brought the light of Christ to our forebears, the early English, from 597 on, bringing to her people a single national organization and then unity of government. It was in the last half of the ninth century that Christendom was threatened by the heathen Vikings. England almost disappeared then. The same thing appears to be happening now - England as a Christian country is now disappearing. And heathenism is one and the same, in its old form or its new one. We believe that we need Alfred now. He was the first real King of the English and our only true “Defender of the Faith”. For this reason there are those who dare to call out: ‘“Holy and Righteous Alfred, pray to God for thy land and thy people!’”19 The South is experiencing this same retrograde shift away from Christianity and back toward paganism, and, because of that, toward disintegration as well. We, like England, need the prayers of an intercessor before the Throne of God in Heaven. We need a strong spiritual warrior to help us overcome our foes and enlighten them with the Christian Faith. Many of the States are placing their hopes in politicians, some of whom are nominal Christians at best – Harris, Trump, Kennedy, etc. Let us here at the South choose a different path. Let us deepen our bonds with Christendom by at long last taking a patron saint for our land and people. Let us seek help from a true Christian, from one of God’s friends, from one of our own ancient kinsmen, St Alfred the Great. Thus will Dixie obtain deliverance from her woes from one who in his own life delivered England from many troubles – invaders, ignorance, lawlessness, impiety, etc. May this October 26th, the day of St Alfred’s joyful appearance before Christ in 899, and every year on that day hereafter, be amongst us Southrons a mighty celebration in honor of our fatherly Patron Saint, a day of unity for the South, blessed brotherly unity after so many decades of strife and division – ‘Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity!’ (Psalm 133:1) – praising him and the God Who made him great, and all together asking him to pray for us unworthy sinners, that we might live holy lives in imitation of his own and receive the bliss of God’s Grace. To that end, we offer pages containing much additional information about King Alfred,20 a service in his honor,21 and an icon22 that can be added to the pictures of the other honored dead in our homes and churches. And finally, as we part, full of warmth towards one another and towards the All-Holy Trinity and His faithful servant Alfred, may this prayer uttered by our patron be always on the lips and ever-resounding in the hearts of all the faithful of Dixie, that this tender-hearted warmth would always remain amongst us: ‘O Lord God Almighty, Maker and Ruler of all creation, in the name of Thy mighty mercy, through the sign of the Holy Cross and the virginity of Holy Mary, the obedience of Holy Michael and the love and merits of all Thy Saints, I beseech Thee, guide me better than I have deserved of Thee; direct me according to Thy will and the needs of my soul better than I myself am able; strengthen my mind for Thy will and the needs of my soul; make me steadfast against the temptations of the devil; keep foul lust and all evil far from me; shield me from my enemies, seen and unseen; teach me to do Thy holy will, that I may inwardly love Thee above all things with clean thought and chaste body. For Thou art my Maker and my Redeemer, my life, my comfort, my trust and my hope. Praise and glory be to Thee now and forever and unto the endless ages. Amen.’23 Notes:1 Thomas Martin, ‘The Characteristics of the City-state (Polis)’, https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0009%3Achapter%3D5%3Asection%3D1.
2 Hieromonk Makarios, ‘The Life and Veneration of the Holy Virgin Martyr Agatha’, https://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2015/02/the-life-and-veneration-of-holy-virgin.html. 3 Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene Genovese, The Mind of the Master Class: History and Faith in the Southern Slaveholders’ Worldview, New York, NY, Cambridge UP, 2005, p. 6. 4 Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America, New York, NY, Oxford UP, 1989, p. 241. 5 Ibid. 6 ‘In Praise of the Great Alfred’, http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/athip.htm. 7 Fr Andrew Phillips, ‘The Life of the Holy and Righteous King of the English Alfred the Great’, http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/athlifea.htm 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 10 William Carpenter, Eþandun: Epic Poem, Saint Paul, Minn., Beaver Pond Press, 2021, p. 47. 11 Fr Andrew, ‘The Life’. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 Alfred the Great: Asser’s Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources, Keynes and Lapidge, translators, New York, NY, Penguin Books, 2004, p. 132. 18 Carpenter, p. 67 19 Fr Andrew, ‘The Life’. 20 http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/zathelney.htm. 21 http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/pdf/servs/Alfred.pdf. 22 https://www.uncutmountainsupply.com/icons/of-saints/by-name/a/icon-of-st-alfred-the-great-1al15/. 23 ‘A Prayer of the Righteous Alfred, King of the English’, http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/athapray.htm.  Texas’s State legislators deserve a lot of praise for consistently writing and passing legislation, especially over the last few years, that aims to strengthen the Christian Faith in their State. It is precisely these efforts that have caused the anti-Christian opposition to reveal itself so completely. The Texas chapter of the ACLU, for instance, has raised objections to the following bills, which are not radical proposals for a predominantly Christian nation like Texas:
Most of these folks who object to the Texas State government’s attempts to reintroduce Christianity into the public school curriculum extol multiculturalism. Because Texas isn’t monolithically Christian, they argue, she shouldn’t advocate for one faith over another. Per the Tribune:
There are two things that should be taken into account on this point. First, those who are new arrivals in a place with an established culture (and Texas does have a long-established Christian culture, as we shall see) are expected to conform to the culture of the place into which they are settling. The Muslims, Buddhists, and others who want Texas to scrap her Christian school proposals are demanding the opposite, that the host conform to their demands. It is an immoral demand, but in the age of Revolution it is not too surprising to see it made. Second, we have a duty not simply to do justice to the present generation, but to the past generations as well. To use the worn-out secular Enlightenment terminology, that means that the dead also have ‘rights’ that we must respect. Texas’s ancestors established a Christian culture; their descendants are bound by a commandment of the Lord Himself (‘Honor thy father and thy mother’—Exodus 20:12) to uphold the good things their forefathers raised up and passed on to them as a precious inheritance. The newcomers ought not to demand that Texans break this commandment of filial piety and love for the sake of their false multicultural utopian ideal. The beginnings of Texas’s origins lie in the Spanish explorers and settlers of the 16th century. One of their principal aims in coming to North America was to plant the Christian Faith on this continent. One can see with just a cursory glance at place names in Texas that this is what they did. Some of those names include Saints’ names (San Augustine, San Patricio, San Saba), but there are other Christian references, too (San Angelo, referring to the holy angels, and Corpus Christi, that is, the Holy Body of Christ that is consumed at the time of Holy Communion by Christians, and the feast day established in Its honor). All subsequent generations of Texans have supported this culture, but now they are told it is an evil act to do so. They should ignore such calls per the foregoing. But there is another reason Texans should support their Christian culture, and it is the most important one – because Christianity is the True Faith. Joseph Pearce, writing at The Imaginative Conservative, elaborates:
Texas, as a part of Western Christendom, has found the Fulfilment of the ages, the Pearl of Great Price, in Christ Jesus. Those who now ask her to throw Him away for some other faith or ideal (such as religious neutrality or religious pluralism) are quite literally asking her to commit suicide. Mr. Pearce continues, and what he says of Islam can be applied to any religion aside from Christianity:
The Texas State government seems unwilling to deny Christ, for the most part, though there are some troubles on the horizon. Some folks within it are trying to water down Christ’s divinity (via the Tribune story linked above; bolding added):
The Church Fathers who fought so valiantly against heretics like Arius and Nestorius who denied the full divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ would be sickened by reading a phrase as careless as the one used by the Texas Education Agency: ‘a man named Jesus’.
Others in her government are trying to pander to the growing Asian population in Texas (also from the Tribune story): ‘A fourth grade poetry unit includes Kshemendra, a poet from India who “studied Buddhism and Hinduism.”’ Be such things as they may, the overall trajectory of Texas’s project to strengthen her Christian culture is generally positive, one that she will hopefully not abandon, for the sake of her own people and for the sake of other Western countries, who might be encouraged to repent of their own betrayal of Christ by her good example. The one thing that could derail all of this is Texas’s own constitution, which includes provisions that forbid the State government to place any force whatsoever on the human conscience as it relates to what religion one practices (especially Article 1, Section 6). This is an unfortunate holdover from the deistic/atheistic ‘Age of Enlightenment’. But the world, including the West, is moving away from the strict rationalism and religious skepticism of the Enlightenment; a rather wild and chaotic rush back towards religions of all kinds is now taking place. Texas could do herself and Christendom an act of great kindness by getting out in front of this trend, and rewriting the sections on religion to favor Christianity specifically for the sake of protecting her citizens from all the false and harmful religions and cults out there. Freedom of religion wouldn’t have to be abolished completely; other religious faiths could co-exist with Christianity, but if any of their tenets promoted anything that conflicted with Christian morality, such things would be declared illegal. Without such a proactive step, Texas faces a religious future that resembles the Wild West of her past. In such an environment, Texans will not flourish, and their culture will enter a phase of steep decline that Germany, France, and other Western European countries are currently undergoing for making that same fateful decision, for extolling religious pluralism/relativism instead of being faithful to Christ. |
