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: ​

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.

​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 
 ​

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: ​

The Texas Tribune provides more objections from other people and organizations: ​

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. 
 ​

Could a Russian monk living in the remote woods of central New York State have anything relevant to say about Dixie? 
 
The answer to that question is a definite Yes. 
 
This monk was born Alexander Taushev in Kazan, Russia, in 1906, the Taushevs being amongst the nobility in pre-revolutionary Russia.  After the Soviets gained power the Taushevs were exiled, in 1920.  The young Alexander grew up in Bulgaria and was educated at the University of Sofia under a saint, Seraphim Sobolev, from which he received a degree in Theology.  He was a teacher and administrator in parts of eastern and western Europe and was tonsured a monk in 1931, receiving the new name Averky in honor of St. Averkios of Hieropolis (+167 A. D.), and was also ordained a deacon.  The next year he was ordained as a priest. 


In 1951, Father Averky arrived in New York State, where he became a professor and then rector of Holy Trinity Orthodox Seminary in Jordanville, New York, and was thereafter renowned for his commentary on the New Testament.  In 1961, he was ordained Archbishop of Syracuse and Holy Trinity.  He fell asleep in the Lord on 13 April 1976, and though he has not been officially canonized, he was regarded by his spiritual child St. Seraphim Rose (+1982) as a friend of God – a saint. 
 

What is of most interest to us for the purposes of this essay are those commentaries of the books of the New Testament.  In them, Southerners will find a startlingly clear vindication of their traditions:  honoring women by keeping them out of the grimy world of politics, a gradual end to slavery, a jaundiced view of money-getting, etc. 

 
In Archbishop Averky’s commentary on I Timothy 6, he reveals his basic principles on the idea of social revolution, always so much in fashion in various places of Yankeedom, while being mostly abhorred at the South.  He is unequivocally opposed to it: 

 
‘Chapter 6 of the epistle contains important instructions that resolve in the spirit of Christianity an important issue of social inequality, which so energizes the people in modern times.  The general meaning of these instructions is that Christianity abhors violent social upheavals.  Speaking in more contemporary language, Christianity encourages change in social relations by means of gradual development or evolution, by instructing and transforming great masses of mankind in the principles of true Christian love, equality, and brotherhood.  Conversely, Christianity condemns the path of revolution, for it is a path of hatred, violence, and bloodshed’ (Archbishop Averky Taushev, The Epistles and the Apocalypse:  Commentary on the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament, Vol. III, Nicholas Kotar, transl., Vitaly Permiakov, edr., Holy Trinity Seminary Press, Jordanville, New York, 2018, p. 132; this book is available as a handsome hardcover here). 
 

He then applies these principles directly to a subject that the South still wrestles with, slavery:  ‘This is why Paul says, “Let as many bondservants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and His doctrine may not be blasphemed” (6:1).  Christian slaves must be especially careful if their masters are also Christian.  “And those who have believing masters, let them not despise them because they are brethren, but rather serve them because those who are benefited are believers and beloved. . . .  If anyone teaches otherwise  . . .  he is proud, knowing nothing, but is obsessed with disputes” (6:2-5)’ (pgs. 132-3). 
 

Abp. Averky says further about this in his commentary on Ephesians chapter 6, ‘Then the apostle exhorts slaves to show obedience to their masters, and masters to be fair and condescending to slaves.  St Paul does not even touch the political or social issue of the legality or abolition of slavery.  The Christian Church in general has never set itself the goal to drive forward external political or social revolutions.  Instead, Christianity seeks the interior transformation of mankind, which then will naturally entail the external changes in the social or political aspects of the entire life of humanity’ (p. 73). 
 

Dixie was therefore not in the wrong for seeking a gradual end to slavery, but rather it was the Yankee abolitionists who were, who advocated precisely for the quick and violent end to slavery. 
 

The archbishop also addresses forthrightly the issue of feminism, an ideology despised by traditional Southerners and excoriated particularly well by Rev. Robert Lewis Dabney and Louisa McCord.  The collective Southern distaste for it is illustrated easily enough by the reluctance of Southern States to approve the 19th amendment (granting suffrage to women) to the Philadelphia constitution.  Abp. Averky, commenting on I Timothy chapter 2, is in accord with them:  ‘St Paul’s position that the woman must be in a subordinate position and not have pretensions to primacy is based on the Biblical account of the Fall.  Adam was created first, and then Eve; Eve sinned first, and then Adam.  In addition, in Genesis 2:18, 2:20, and 2:22, we read that the wife was created as a helper for her husband, and naturally a helper takes a subordinate position to the one she is assigned to help.  From Eve’s first sin, St Paul extrapolates that women are more likely to sin, and so they are not capable of a position of primacy.  At the same time, we must keep in mind that the apostle does not mean all men and women individually (there are always exceptions to the rule), but humanity as a whole’ (p. 123). 
 

He says a little more on this subject in his commentary on I Corinthians chapter 11:  ‘St Paul found this [women attending worship services with their heads uncovered—W.G.] to be improper for Christians and required that women keep their heads covered as a sign of their subordinate state relative to their husbands.  . . .  This head covering is then a sign of her modesty, submissiveness, and subordination to her husband.  But lest the man consider himself greater than his wife and abuse his position, Apostle Paul reminds the Corinthians:  “Nevertheless, neither is man independent of woman, nor woman independent of man, in the Lord.  For as woman came from man, even so man also comes through woman; but all things are from God” (11:11-12)’ (p. 34). 
 

It isn’t a stretch to say that the world would be a better place without Kristi Noem and Kamala Harris, Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi, and their like strutting about the political stage, giving orders to all and sundry, but rather making sure their own homes are in order, while their husbands deal with matters of the polis. 

 
Lastly, Abp. Averky opposes the love of money, one of the pre-eminent Yankee vices that traditional Southrons never much cared for, while also laying bare its causes and the guises with which it is often cloaked.  Writing once again about I Timothy 6, he says, 
​

‘Knowing that, most of the time, discontent with social status is based on the passions of love of money, avarice, and envy for the rich under the guise of evangelical principles of brotherhood, equality, and freedom, St Paul warns against avarice and exhorts all to be content with little:  “And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content” (6:8).  External material riches are inherently dangerous, for they often lead to many sins and misfortunes [Traditional Southerners seemed to understand this at a deep level, as they were always quick to give away money to those in need, even to their own detriment—W.G.]:  “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil” (6:10).  St Paul teaches Timothy to be a model of unselfishness and freedom from possessions, and to exhort the rich to hope not in riches, but in God’ (p. 133). 
 

Abp. Averky closes his commentary on I Timothy with two crucial sentences:  ‘“O Timothy!  Guard what was committed to your trust,” that is, the tradition.  This is how the epistle ends, with an emphasis on the importance of the apostolic tradition for the faith preserved by the Church (6:20)’ (p. 133).  Guarding the Apostolic tradition unchanged is vital for maintaining the Church, he says, but as Southerners we should also see something else here:  We must receive it as an exhortation to preserve the Southern tradition intact.  This is a normal action for any ethnos, and Southrons, whether European or African, will find it much more vivifying and fulfilling than loyalty to the shallow, deformed ideology of Americanism. 
 

Southern culture intersects with the world in many unexpected ways, as we have seen here in the life of a Russian monk on the run from the Soviet communists, whose Biblical commentary overthrows some of the tired criticism aimed at it still today.  Glory to God for these surprising gifts! 

 
Thus, as we part, it is well to echo once more those words of the Holy Apostle Paul to his spiritual son St. Timothy that Archbishop Averky thought were so essential:  ‘O Southron!  Guard the tradition of your forefathers committed to your trust!’  May that sentiment never cease to resound in our hearts. 
 

Noah Webster of Connecticut, with not atypical New England Yankee arrogance, proclaimed in the preface to his spelling textbook (published in 1783), ‘Europe is grown old in folly, corruption and tyranny—in that country laws are perverted, manners are licentious, literature is declining and human nature debased.  . . . American glory begins to dawn at a favourable period, and under flattering circumstances.  . . . a durable and stately edifice can never be erected upon the mouldering pillars of antiquity’ (Merrill Jensen, The New Nation: A History of the United States during the Confederation 1781-1789, Northeastern University Press, Boston, Mass., 1981, p. 105).  From the outset, the United States have had an inclination away from reverence for the past and tradition and toward innovation (the South has done better in this regard, particularly before the War, but has lost her way lately). 
 
This is obvious in the attitude of US leaders towards Christianity.  For them, redemption of the world from the Fall was not to be achieved by uniting man and the creation with the Holy Trinity once again via the Church, but primarily through the work of political theories and systems.  Three authors uncovered some striking material in this regard, from amongst which is this crucial paragraph: 
 
‘This transference of religious fervor to national ideals became the heart of American civil religion.  Christians began to suggest, as the Congregationalist John Mellen did in 1797, “that the expansion of republican forms of government will accompany that spreading of the gospel . . . which the scripture prophecies represent as constituting the glory of the latter days.”  This shift greatly strengthened the American republic, endowing it with a new sense of lofty purpose.  The nation rather than the church easily emerged as the primary agent of God’s activity in history’ (Mark Noll, Nathan Hatch, George Marsden, The Search for Christian America, Expanded Edition, Helmers & Howard, Colorado Springs, Col., 1989, p. 114; bolding added). 
 
Despite their Christian exterior, United States citizens interiorly are remarkably post-Christian.  The Church has been debased, and the union of States, particularly its political system, exalted.  God is no longer a Person with Whom they seek communion, healing from the brokenness of the Fall, and so forth; he is more of an impersonal deity who interests them only insofar as he/it will ‘bless’ their enterprises:  ‘God Bless America,’ as the old song goes, though it resembles more a magical incantation (i.e., a command directed at God) than a traditional Christian song or hymn.  Such a god has a very strong resemblance to the pagan, philosophical Greek conception of the divine:  ‘Ancient Greek philosophy developed a highly systematic theology governed by logic.  Logic defined God’s existence as necessary, but his existence remained a theoretical hypothesis.  God is empirically inaccessible, but must exist because logic demands a first cause.  We conceive of this first cause as an abstract essence, as the sum of the attributes which the first cause must have to be truly divine’ (Christos Yannaras, Orthodoxy and the West: Hellenic Self-Identity in the Modern Age, Chamberas and Russell, trans., Holy Cross Orthodox Press, Brookline, Mass., 2006, p. 25). 
 
Logic likewise makes some sort of deity necessary for the post-Christian American Experiment, and like the ancient Greeks, they have imbued it with the attributes they think it needs to have in order to be of use to them, attributes which have shifted over the years, from a cold, distant creator and governor found in the Declaration of Independence, to the pantheistic god of Thoreau and Emerson and the other Transcendentalists, to the god of retribution and judgment of Lincoln and Julia Ward Howe, to the indulgent god of Oprah and George W. Bush. 
 
But in deconstructing the True God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – in this way, they have likewise deconstructed themselves, who are made in the image of the All-Holy Trinity.  If they feel that they are trapped in an oppressive bureaucratic machine-world (and many do), to borrow some imagery from Paul Kingsnorth, it is because they have made their primary god a political system of mechanical checks and balances that operates according to the laws of physics, with a philosophically and logically constructed deity of lesser importance that stands behind it. 
 
Making a secular political system their god means that the Trinitarian model of a community of Persons living in humility and love has largely been lost in the States, which results not only in the present oppressive technocratic structure of society – ‘This denial not only invalidates the mode of existence taught in the Gospels,’ Yannaras says, ‘but also destroys human life as community.  Bureaucratic and authoritarian structures dominated social life, and freedom was mortgaged to officialdom’ (p. 42) – but also in the erosion of the idea of the human person itself:  ‘ . . . their suffering was the result of the denial of personhood, of life as personal communion and relation, which diminished not only the Gospel’s transformation of sin and death into a loving self-denial and faith, but also our power to attain to the full stature of human maturity implied by risk and freedom’ (Ibid.). 
 
A purely political solution to this problem of an ontologically crippled and dissolving man does not exist, either in the US or anywhere else.  There must be an inward metanoia, a turning, away from the false gods, political and otherwise, they have set up and a return to traditional Christianity, to the Church, to the Holy Trinity, in which and in Whom we will find the means to reestablish ‘personal otherness and freedom as manifested in beauty, love and poetry – the logos of personal uniqueness’ (Ibid.). 
 
If folks of good will in the States feel that ‘the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak’ (St. Matthew’s Gospel 26:41), they need not fear, for they have a multitude of intercessors in heaven before God’s throne – the saints of their ancestors in Africa and Europe, and the more recent saints of North America, men and women and children who have acquired true personhood through their cooperation with God’s Grace – who are ready to help them if called upon, part of the ‘great cloud of witnesses’ (Hebrews 12:1) watching ardently the drama of salvation unfolding in the US and in all the other countries of the world. 
 
Noah Webster’s insult intended for Europe, that she has ‘grown old in folly, corruption and tyranny,’ now ironically applies to the United States themselves.  It is difficult to lay aside beliefs that have been part of one’s society for hundreds of years, but for the peoples of the States – no matter which cultural kin-group they belong to:  New England, Dixie, Great Plains, Rocky Mountains, and so on – their future hinges on whether they can muster the wherewithal to do exactly that if they wish to stop their descent into the post-Christian abyss.  A truly good life can be found and experienced and enjoyed only in a union with the True God, and not in overzealous attachments to political declarations and constitutions, or in self-anointed missions to regenerate the world. 
 
This does not mean that Christians in the States should ignore politics.  That would be counter to the meaning of the Incarnation.  Jesus Christ the God-man has taken on human nature in order to heal it, all of it.  Thus, it is the duty of Christians to sanctify all human endeavors with the Grace of God, including politics.  In those countries throughout history where Christianity has been adopted by the people and their rulers, the Christian leaven will be seen at work even in that sphere.  The law code of Athelstan, King of England from 924-939 A.D., is but one of many examples.  The opening section deals mostly with tithes for the Church.  But rather than being simply a dry list of legal requirements, there are parts that are also religious meditations: 
 
‘2. Let us remember how Jacob the Patriarch declared “Decimas et hostias pacificas offeram tibi,” (I will offer you tithes and peace offerings) and how Moses declared in God’s Law “Decimas et primitias non tardabis offerre Domino.” (You shall not be slow to offer tithes and firstfruits to the Lord). 
 
‘3. It suits us to remember how terrible is the declaration stated in books; “If we are not willing to render tithes to God, he will deprive us of the nine [remaining] parts, when we least expect it, and moreover we shall have sinned also.”’ 
 
Nonetheless, it is not the primary duty of the Church to conquer the sphere of politics but to proclaim the Good News to all men, baptizing them and making them ‘new creations’ in Christ (II Corinthians 5:17). 
 
When a Great Feast of the Lord other than Easter or Christmas, the one celebrating His Ascension for instance, garners as much attention and enthusiasm as a presidential election day, the peoples of the States will know they are beginning to make progress in properly orienting their affections.