0 Comments
Middle March, And the sun is shining full bright. Middle March, And we have supped once more with Saint Patrick. Middle March, And spring is blossoming all around – The ants their hilly mounds are building, The crawfish their crenelations. Tender, silver-green leaves have appeared On the muscadine vines, Near as thin as the wings On the new hosts of hovering dragon flies; Bumble bees bustle in the azalea blooms, The broad leaves of the fig tree spread out, The little flowers of the blueberry bush droop down. Lord, where are You in this world? Are You not here, amidst the beautiful things You have made? Reading a little bit of history is instructive. For instance, one can learn about what Christians experienced living under Muslim rule. A new martyr from Epirus in Greece named Nicetas was tortured horribly for criticizing Islam: ‘He departed to the villages surrounding the towns of Serai and Drama, where he castigated the villainous Ottomans, declaring his faith in Christ and condemning the false religion of the sordid Mohammed. Apart from this he distinguished between the mystery of the incarnation of Christ and the falsehood of the prophet Mohammed. Since the blessed one taught all these things, he was put in jail. There they burned him in the abdomen with fire; they put a crown of thorns on his head; they stuck reed splinters under his fingernails; they hung him upside-down and scorched his private parts. Then they led him away, thrashing and striking him, until they finally hanged him. He met his end on February 19, 1809.’ It is written that he underwent these trials because he ‘was troubled by his thoughts. He always recalled that his ancestors were secret Christians, but on the surface they pretended to be Moslems. For this reason he resolved to be a martyr for Christ’ (Slain for Their Faith: Orthodox Christian Martyrs under Moslem Oppression, Leonidas Papadopoulos, Ellensburg, Wash., 2013, p. 181). Such was life under Muslim blasphemy laws (and so it remains). Thankfully, such an oppressive system does not exist in the United States. Or does it? Since Lincoln’s unholy war, the United States have acquired a fanatical civil religion whose faithful members are quite ready and eager to spread it around the world and stamp out what they consider evil at home and abroad with all manner of coercive and destructive tools and methods. The sociologist Robert Bellah has written some notable things about it: ‘In 1967, Robert N. Bellah, an internationally known scholar on religion, published an article entitled “Civil Religion in America.” In it, he argued that the United States has a civil religion that is separate from any one specific faith system. General hallmarks of the faith include the idea that there is a God (or Divine Power) to whom we are accountable for our actions and that we have a (divine) purpose to fulfill. “The American civil religion,” Bellah says, “is not the worship of the American nation but an understanding of the American experience in the light of ultimate and universal reality.” Bellah goes on to argue that American civil religion has its own saints (e.g. George Washington), martyrs (e.g. Abraham Lincoln), holy days (e.g. Memorial Day), and symbols (e.g. the flag).’ This American civil religion underlies what Dr Clyde Wilson describes as the Proposition Regime: ‘Lincoln defined America as a Proposition and defended his war of conquest as the means of preserving the government that was allegedly upholding that Proposition. He was not speaking for traditional American constitutionalism and republicanism or for the America that had been known up to that point. He appealed most strongly to the revolutionary agendas of three particular groups among Americans: profiteers who stood to benefit from a protected market and a highly centralized capital-friendly government; New Englanders, who, from their very beginning as a self-proclaimed Shining City Upon a Hill, had endowed America with a unique and sacred missionary role in history, under their direction; and German immigrants and other national unification state-worshipers, bastard offspring of the French Revolution, who had achieved a considerable ideological transformation of the North during the 1850’s. ‘Together, they created the Proposition Regime—resting upon appealing inventions about an America of endless prosperity and progress, and uniquely virtuous violence in stamping out the grapes of wrath. These types are still in power today.’ Is it right, though, to equate life under this Regime to life under a Muslim theocracy? A social observer as astute as Alexis de Tocqueville seemed to point toward similarities, and this before Lincoln’s war: ‘Fetters and headsmen were the coarse instruments which tyranny formerly employed, but the civilization of our age has perfected despotism itself, though it seemed to have nothing to learn. . . . Such is not the course adopted by tyranny in democratic republics; there the body is left free, and the soul is enslaved. The master no longer says, “You shall think as I do, or you shall die”; but he says, “You are free to think differently from me, and to retain your life, your property, and all that you possess; but you are henceforth a stranger among your people. You may retain your civil rights, but they will be useless to you, for you will never be chosen by your fellow-citizens, if you solicit their votes; and they will affect to scorn you, if you ask for their esteem. You will remain among men, but you will be deprived of the rights of mankind. Your fellow-creatures will shun you like an impure being; and even those who believe in your innocence will abandon you, lest they should be shunned in their turn. Go in peace! I have given you your life, but it is an existence worse than death.” ‘ . . . But the ruling power in the United States [i.e., the numerical majority—W. G.] is not to be made game of. The smallest reproach irritates its sensibility, and the slightest joke which has any foundation in truth renders it indignant; from the forms of its language up to the solid virtues of its character, everything must be made the subject of encomium. No writer, whatever be his eminence, can escape paying this tribute of adulation to his fellow-citizens. The majority lives in the perpetual utterance of self-applause; and there are certain truths which the Americans can only learn from strangers or from experience’ (Democracy in America, Book I, XV, edited and abridged by Richard Heffner, Signet Classic, New York, New York, 2001, pgs. 117-8). De Tocqueville has aptly described the unspoken blasphemy laws that citizens of the United States live under today: often not strictures that lead to physical harm – though the latter does happen at times – but what Rod Dreher calls soft totalitarianism, when life is made increasingly difficult as one is cut off from various necessary institutions like banks or schools because of the opinions one expresses and/or the beliefs one lives by. How much like St Nicetas’s life, then, is the Southern experience in this regard! How many of us, or our parents, etc., like his parents, mouth devotion to the idol of Yankee Americanism while we secretly live as Southerners and Christians? How many Southerners, for expressing their love for their Christian ancestors, for defending statues and other monuments dedicated to honoring their memory, for criticizing some aspect of the Declaration of Independence or the federal constitution, for revealing uncomfortable truths about figures like Cotton Mather, Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, et al., for voicing opposition to the American Empire’s unnecessary and unjustifiable wars of conquest, and so on, have been either physically assaulted or labeled horrible names – racist, traitor, unpatriotic, and the like? This being the 250th anniversary of the independence of the States from Great Britain, the pressure from the votaries of Americanism to worship at the altar of their Golden Calf will be more intense than usual. We have noticed something encouraging to counter this gloominess, however. The young folks of the South we have been meeting lately are more open to identifying as Southerners, to learning about and enjoying the culture of their forefathers and mothers here in Dixie, to – in the words of St Nicetas’s biographer – ‘castigating the villainous Yankees, declaring their faith in Christ and condemning the false religion of the sordid American civil religion.’ May the Lord grant them, and the rest of us Dixie folk, the courage of St Nicetas to do precisely those things all the days of our lives. Nature furious – Rain freezing, Trees young and old Mercilessly Bent and broken. Night lightning Stabbing eyes. Arctic cold Piercing skin. Ground thickly Ice-covered; Little creatures Scratching for A bit of food. People’s houses Frigid, dark, Roofs crushed by Heavy branches. Lacking bread. Screens blank And silent. Roads closed, Cars immobile. Fallen man seeks Omnipotence, Believes magic, Technology, Demonology Will give it him. Victories There will seem to be, But deceits They will prove to be. For man without Christ Will only ever Wallow in His shameful Impotence. Nearly the shortest day of the year, Sun low in the sky, But a prelude to the dawning Of the Brightest Light upon the earth, The Son of God, The Second Adam, Born of a Virgin. The creation prepares itself for that Day, Oak trees clad in garments Of golden leaves, Shining in the waning December light. On this day A son of the first Adam And sharer of his name, Kevin Adam Talley, Appeared before God and man To be united with a daughter of Eve, Jamie Leann Fife. Beautiful is the bride, Young cousin, now grown woman. Fair is the father giving her away, Once dark-haired kinsman Now crowned with the gray hairs Of eldership and honor. All Glorious is the Holy Spirit, Hovering above bride and groom, Enveloping them in the blazing fire of Love That descends from Him Upon the two of them. Joyful is the proclamation ‘Husband and wife! ‘Mister and Mizriz Kevin Adam Talley!’ Spoken with authentic Southern tongue By the enthusiastic pastor. Truly wonderful is the gift of family! May God bless ours and grant it to grow, Larger yet closer, as the years unroll. When autumn comes, And cold air creeps slowly in, Then God the Holy Trinity Reveals a wondrous work of art – The exquisite acorns of the pin oaks, Their grey bodies imbued With a delicate blue blush, And caps crowned with a fleshy white, In smoothness and roundness Nearly flawless, like a tree-grown pearl. They fall in abundance, A feast for the eyes (And for the squirrels), But the blind machine cares not. The wheels of the one-ton automobile Crush them without remorse, Leaving upon the hard surface of the road A greasy stain of flattened fruit, Unmindful of its iconoclastic act. Thus is mankind warned: That machinekind will ruthlessly eradicate The fruitfulness of the world, Leaving it a barren, bloodless place Whose new master race will be cold steel Set in motion by combustion engine And electric current, Its only end to fill its metal maw With the beauty of the world And transform it into fuel To keep its gears a-turnin’. The history of Christian countries is a wonderful wellspring: It gushes forth inspiration for those who stop and refresh themselves with its cool, sweet waters. Southrons will find such to be the case with the last Greek ruler of Trebizond and his family. The background of their story begins in this manner: ‘It was 15 August 1461. Mehmed the Conqueror, after a brutal siege, occupied the capital of the Great Komnenoi, in Trebizond. The final strong bastion of Orthodoxy and Hellenism in the East ceased to illuminate. The empire was extinguished and our heritage was turned over to others. The Greeks of Pontus lived difficult and critical moments. Many times they felt the breath of death. And yet this death in this bastion of Hellenism, which is called Pontus, saw nothing but upright souls and indomitable resolve. ‘David, the Great Komnenos and last emperor, was a hostage in the hands of the Conqueror together with his three children and his nephew and successor Alexios V and displaced in Adrianople. The salvation of Trebizond was certainly impossible.’ The Christian Greeks falling to the Muslim Turks is much like the Christian South falling to the pagan Yankees. More on that in a moment. Let us continue tellin’ the story of this latter-day King David: ‘When David appeared before Mehmed he gave him two choices: to stay alive as long as he renounced his faith or for him and his entire family to be killed. From this terrible proposal David chose the second option, saying boldly to Mehmed: "No torture is going to bring me to the point of renouncing the faith of my fathers." So David went to eternity exchanging his royal crown for the halo of a martyr [this occurred on 1 Nov. 1463—W.G.].’ Their deaths have deep significance for Greek freedom and Greek faith: ‘Savvas Ioannides in his History and Statistics of Trebizond writes: ‘"The Greeks, to their honor, boast of two emperors: one who died bravely fighting for his country, Constantine Paleologos, and one who was martyred for his faith, David the Great Komnenos, the last Emperor of Trebizond. ‘So there are two elements to the national existence of all Hellenism, which are faith in the homeland and religion. Divine Providence has contributed to this with Constantine as a leader and hero of Hellenism and David as a leader and hero of Christianity." ‘ . . . The scholar Archimandrite Panaretos Topalidis, abbot of the historic Monastery of the Honorable Forerunner Vazelonos, in his erudite work titled Pontus Over the Centuries, comments as follows regarding the martyric end of the Emperor: ‘"... and then after some months he was cruelly faced with the dilemma, either to forswear or be slaughtered with his children. He preferred the second and saw the slaughter of his sons and his nephew Alexios, and together with them he was slaughtered on the hill called 'Pegioglou' by the Turks, which according to texts, on the other side of this hill Constantine Paleologos fell in battle and was killed. And so was fulfilled the martyrdom of Hellenism in the person of its two emperors: the one who was killed in battle for the defense of freedom, and the other slaughtered in testimony for the faith."’ This is how many Southerners describe their war against the Yankees: an attempt to protect Dixie’s freedom and the purity of her Christian Faith from the invaders. But like the Pontian martyrs, the deeds of the Southerners who sacrificed themselves for the well-being of their people have been obscured: ‘From these testimonies and opinions, we effortlessly conclude that we stand before a crowned martyr vindicated by God the just Judge, yet unjustly treated by all of Hellenism, since his sacrifice is neither highlighted nor his martyrdom honored. There are many reasons why the martyred King was not properly honored. But now we, the descendants and heirs of the Trebizond Empire, should highlight the common consciousness regarding his martyrdom for Christ, and pay him what he is due as sons of the beloved homeland, and verify the golden-mouthed saying which says: 'Just as the sun will not embarrassingly extinguish, the same goes for the memory of the martyrs."’ Thus are the Greeks reviving the memory of the Martyr David and his family. Moving words, these: ‘The ever-memorable former Metropolitan of Leontopolis, Sophronios Efstratiadis, in his scientific work titled The Hagiologion of the Orthodox Church, writes the following regarding our debt to the martyrs who were in obscurity without due honors being attributed to them: ‘"Wherefore we have a sacred duty to resurrect the dead of the earth and the living in heaven, and for the Church to ascribe to them her glory - the beauty, the forms and the names of the heroes of the faith - who through their blood and through their life established her foundations and are part of her undefiled crown, diamonds fallen from the precious crown, a sacred treasure of our faith. We have a sacred duty to seek and find the stars hidden by the clouds and place them among the heroes of the faith."’ And the closing lines, just as powerful: ‘We must honor the day of his martyrdom, proving to all those who delivered to obscurity this person and his martyric end, that the children of those who were uprooted, as the years go by, that not only are they not forgotten, but rather with sacred awe they address their sacred history, they study and learn the lessons, values and power and proceed to sail around the world in the Argo that did not stop her journey. The children of the Pontians do not forget, because they have within them the voices of their fathers, as trumpeted by the ever-memorable Leonidas Iasonides: "May our throats become dry, if we forget you, O Pontian earth."’ Southerners have this same duty, to rescue from obscurity the noble deeds of our ancestors who fought a mighty enemy with scant resources but strong faith in God, who sacrificed life and the fair bloom of youth and the quiet repose of their agrarian homes for their Southland, who watered it with rivers of their blood. This is our duty, the duty of every one of us: to reverence our ancestors with awe and hand down their stories to our children and to our children’s children as sacred history. Perhaps for such an act of filial piety the Lord our God will allow Dixie to make strides towards cultural and spiritual renewal, and to recover the political independence we knew for a few fleeting, difficult years. Sun setting, Driving home, A look to the horizon – Oak trees, many, Standing against The bronze sky Tinged rose-pink. Another look; Beyond the trees looms An high hill, Taller than they, No natural formation. Rather, a gathering Of garbage, Bagloads and truckloads Delivered daily, Compressed and buried Beneath layers of dirt Until the formation Rises high Into the heavens. Pagan man built Mysterious monuments And temples unforgettable. Christian man raised up Churches and cathedrals Filled with divine beauty, Meeting places Of Heaven and earth. And Modern, Post-Christian Man? Behold what he has Bestowed upon the world – Trash Mountain! The history of Yankeedom (those States generally north of the Ohio River and beginning with Minnesota heading east, but also including their descendants further west: California, Oregon, Washington, and Utah) began in New England with a group of Englishmen and women who believed that the Church of England was totally corrupt (and that they were not) and that they had to separate themselves from it in order to be saved: ‘The first wave of colonists came to Plymouth (which was later absorbed by Massachusetts) in 1620. These settlers were Separatists, but we often call them the “Pilgrims.” English Separatists believed that England’s legally established church was corrupt and irredeemable. They wanted to hold their own private church meetings instead of going to Church of England parishes, but it was not legal in England to start an independent congregation. Facing severe persecution, some English Separatists had already fled to the relatively freer climes of Holland. ‘Some of the Separatists in Holland worried about the corrupting effects of Dutch culture too. In 1620, just over a hundred people sailed to Plymouth on board the ship Mayflower. Upon arrival, the men of the colony signed the Mayflower Compact, committing themselves to the creation of a “civil body politic” that was devoted to “the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith, and honor of our king and country.”’ As Yankee culture matured and crystallized, there would be other outbursts against peoples they believed to be impure. Dixie was one of those peoples they scorned as such, and it helped precipitate the War and Reconstruction: ‘That same year [1860] William H. Herndon [of Illinois, a close friend of Lincoln’s] proclaimed that “Civilization and barbarism are absolute antagonisms. One or the other must perish on this Continent. . . . Let the natural struggle . . . go on. . . . I am thoroughly convinced that two such civilizations as the North and the South can-not co-exist on the same soil. . . . ” ‘ . . . scarcely had the war ended when the Nation announced that Northerners must “colonize and Yankeeize the South, . . . in short to turn the slothful, shiftless Southern world upside down”’ (Grady McWhiney, Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South, U of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, 1988, pgs. 260, 269) For righteous Yankees, the barbaric Southerners either had to be eradicated or transformed into Northerners. The eugenics movement (genetic purity) in the US was begun under Yankee auspices: Charles Davenport of Harvard was a leader; Indiana passed the first sterilization law; and New York City hosted the Second International Eugenics Congress in 1921. The violent murders committed by LGBT individuals (against Christian students in Tennessee and Minnesota, and against conservative activist Charlie Kirk in Utah) are the latest instantiation of the Yankee spirit that restlessly seeks to ‘cleanse’ society of those elements it sees as undesirable. Per Dr Clyde Wilson: ‘The violent rhetoric and assassinations being perpetrated today against conservatives are exact copies of the hate and murder committed against Southerners by abolitionists in the 1850s. They are from the same Yankee culture and personalities.’ From an historical perspective, it is interesting that this Yankee obsession with purity has antecedents in the schismatic and heretical groups that afflicted the early Church in Africa. Groups like the Novatians and Donatists believed that the Church in this world consisted of perfect saints, and all those who sinned were to be expelled from the congregation. Church Fathers of Africa like St Cyprian of Carthage (+3rd c.) and St Augustine of Hippo (+5th c.) rebuked them for these teachings. ‘The presence of those who have sinned does not destroy the sanctity of the Church; the tares do not prevent the wheat from growing. The Novatians taught that the presence of one who had lapsed infects all of society, as it were, and it is then no longer holy. “But with us,” writes St. Cyprian, “according to our faith and the given rule of divine preaching, agrees the principle of truth, that every one is himself held fast in his own sin; nor can one become guilty for another . . .”’ (Saint Hilarion Troitsky, On the Dogma of the Church, Fr. Nathan Williams, translator, Uncut Mountain Press, 2022, p. 470). ‘According to Donatist doctrine, there must be no sinners in the Church. . . . The society of the Donatists approved this requirement; among the Donatists there was no one with any kind of vice. When the Donatists separated, this was a separation of the wheat from the tares . . .’ (pgs. 553-4). This is the same self-righteous spirit that was present several centuries later in the separatist Pilgrim/Yankee Errand into the Wilderness. But St Augustine rejects it: ‘Augustine takes a completely different view of the earthly state of the Church. For example, . . . he says of the Church that in her there are many sinners . . . . And so it ought to be, because the Lord likened the Church to a net containing different fishes. When the net is brought to shore, then the fish will begin to be sorted: the good fish will be put into vessels, and the bad will be thrown back into the sea. The net is the Church; the present age is the sea; the shore is the end of the age. But while the net remains in the sea, the fish are together, both good and bad’ (p. 554). Contra the Donatists and the Yankees, the separation of the saints and sinners does not happen in this world: It happens at the end of the world, when Christ returns (p. 556). What St Augustine recommends is very similar to what one finds here at the South, where sinners and saints live together. St Hilarion paraphrases his teachings in this regard: ‘One ought not to sever fellowship with sinners, but one must naturally withdraw from fellowship in sins. Sinners in the Church can be of no harm. They should only be excluded in extreme cases, but peace should be preserved . . . . If this exclusion would break the peace, it were better to exclude them only from one’s heart’ (p. 555). This spirit of gentleness toward the wayward is evident all throughout Southern culture: in the rascals who themselves make up a portion of our literature, in A. B. Longstreet’s Georgia Scenes or G. W. Harris’s Sut Lovingood tales, and in the great patience of God as he leads the sinners of Flannery O’Connor’s stories to repentance (in Wise Blood for example). This is again consistent with the mercy seen in the African Church: ‘According to Origen, the Church is not a society of saints, but a hospital established by Christ for the human race that lies sick with sin’ (p. 390, bolding in the original text). The underappreciated modern Greek writer Alexandros Papadiamandis expresses this spirit well in his own writings: ‘Although the divine aspect of Orthodox worship always precedes its human aspect, this does not devalue its human character. Papadiamandis does not attempt to make the Church’s ceremonies and liturgical services either “mystical” or “respectable.” The priests in his stories do not cultivate the atmosphere and spirit of “angelism,”. . . . While Orthodox worship is directed toward God, the faithful offer the hymns of worship as one body, conscious of their brethren. They live and move with ease and freedom, as though they are in the house of their Father. They do not feel that they need to act in a certain way or that they should display an ethos different than the one they have in their life outside the church. ‘The faithful of the Church in Skiathos live in this spirit of freedom and love in Christ. They are not disturbed by Aunt Marios, a troublemaker who makes a fuss if another woman takes her seat in church. They accept both the eccentricity of old Daradimos, who has the bad habit of saying out loud whatever the priest, the reader, and the chanter are about to say, and the annoyance of Captain George Konomos, who casts scornful expressions at Daradimos for doing this. . . . ‘Whatever hour the faithful go to the service, they are well received, for all feel that each person is a member of the Body and of their community. They all live the communion offered by the ecclesiastical gathering in a human but substantial manner, not insincerely, as a matter of habit, or pietistically’ [the latter are all typical of Yankee worship—W.G.] (Anestis Keselopoulos, Lessons from a Greek Island, From the “Saint of Greek Letters,” Alexandros Papadiamandis, Herman Middleton, translator and editor, Protecting Veil, 2011, pgs. 133-4). Is this not an excellent encapsulation of Southern community life, with all of its colorful characters jumbled together – a description very much akin to characters in Wendell Berry’s Port William novels or James Kibler’s Clay Bank stories? These experiences of unity in diversity are not possible in Yankeedom, which has always had the tendency to expel those who contrast with the strictly imposed uniformity, lest impurity creep into the community: Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, et al. This gives fresh evidence for the claim that Yankees are really Gnostics. In their mania for purity and uniformity, they reveal their inability to cope with the multiform nature of reality and their desire to collapse all beings into a simple monad, namely the individual self. The talented Southern writer John William Corrington, who like some other recent Southern defenders (Richard Weaver, M. E. Bradford) died tragically young (may the Lord bless them and their work) – Mr. Corrington describes the Gnostic’s desire to strip the world of complexity: ‘What is unbearable about the world is not flesh as flesh, or matter as matter. It is the ineradicable duality of existence. It is that there are other things than oneself. The core of gnostic thought in every form is finally almost pathetically, terrifyingly simple. It is the overpowering childish wish that all things should be oneself, that one should be the cosmos and all beyond it. . . . The very act of differentiation and its realization is a cleaving away from the individual consciousness all else to be placed in the dualistic or multifarious perspective of the process of reality. . . . Thus the gnostic, for all his noted horror of dualistic reality, is not in fact so much against flesh or matter as such, but passionately desirous that all polarities should collapse, all dichotomy vanish into one—and that the one should be himself’ (The Southern Philosopher: Collected Essays of John William Corrington, Allen Mendenhall, editor, University of North Georgia UP, Dahlonega, Georgia, 2017, pgs. 171-2). There have been many calls to restore Christianity to public prominence in the States following the murder of Charlie Kirk. Large numbers of people believe that the early Yankee model of a Christian society, the Puritan-Pilgrim model, is a legitimate one to imitate. They are mistaken. That paradigm is a replica of the heresies of years past. It is not incorrect to say that the Yankee spirit, obsessed as it is with purity, with homogeneity and the absence of complexity, which were such integral parts of the early heresies, is at least partly responsible for the death of Mr. Kirk, whose murderer disagreed with him to such an extent that he felt compelled to remove his presence from the cosmos lest it go on tainting it with ‘hate’ (if the reporting on him being Mr. Kirk’s murderer is true; there are reasons to believe it is not). What is needed instead to re-establish healthy communities with a genuine diversity are the older Christian traditions found in Dixie, Africa, and Greece, as explored above. Make no mistake: Sometimes separation is necessary. There came a time when even the Apostles had to shake the dust from off their feet of those places that rejected the Gospel, when the Church councils had to pronounce anathemas against the heretics who would not accept correction and discipline for their false teachings. We have probably reached such a point in the United States, as discussed previously. For a mild, non-censorious Christian community where saints and sinners can peacefully coexist isn’t possible in the Gnostic-Donatist-Yankee kind of world. The latter will always be hunting for and waylaying The Other, unable and unwilling to countenance his existence. We don’t mean those words of the title in an elegiac, metaphorical sense, though there is an element of that in what we will be discussing. It is in reference rather to a hard, empirical truth, that deaths are rising in farm communities, and specifically a certain kind of death: from cancer. News stories about exploding cancer rates in agricultural areas are beginning to pile up. Here is an excerpt from the latest, reporting on Missouri farming counties: ‘Nestled in Missouri’s Bootheel is the small town of Kennett, the Dunklin County seat. With just over 10,000 residents, it’s a close-knit community where good-natured teasing is a common show of affection. ‘Once a sprawling swampland, it has since been transformed into an expanse of flat, fertile fields where agriculture stands as the backbone of the region’s economy. ‘Kennett’s houses don’t get much taller than one story, and as visitors stroll down the main street, they’re welcomed by a mix of restaurants, boutiques and a cozy hair salon. ‘These buildings are dwarfed in size by a silent, boarded-up hospital, its vacancy a remembrance of what the community has lost. ‘It’s the kind of community where if something tragic happens, everyone finds out. ‘Bobbi Bibbs found this out the hard way. She discovered she had cancer in her colon in December 2023, which then metastasized to her liver, making it a stage four diagnosis. ‘Bibbs isn’t alone. Dunklin County is among the 10 counties with the highest rates of that type of cancer in the state.’ The reason for this is now coming to light, mainly, the heavy use of toxic agricultural chemicals. The news story continues: ‘In Dunklin County, there are hundreds of thousands of acres of crops — and most of that land is blanketed by pesticides. ‘Estimates suggest that thousands of kilograms of pesticides are sprayed over Missouri cropland each year. In some places, wastewater sludge containing “forever chemicals” — per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — is applied on farmland as fertilizer. ‘Multiple scientific studies have explored a connection between pesticide use and cancer, pointing to a silent public health crisis hitting rural communities particularly hard. ‘The University of Missouri, in partnership with Investigate Midwest, conducted a county-by-county analysis of cancer rates and pesticide use, using the most recently available data for pesticides that are repeatedly cited in research as likely to be associated with cancer risk. ‘The six counties with the highest use of these pesticides per square mile are all located in the Bootheel, including Dunklin. Four of those counties are in the top 15 for overall cancer rates in Missouri. All counties with the highest rates of cancer are rural.’ If we cast a wider net and look at all the States, the data appear to confirm that those with the heaviest use of agri-chemical pesticides and herbicides have the highest cancer rates. Many of them are Southern States. This is an existential threat to the Southern identity. Agriculture is one of the most defining marks of Dixie’s culture. Pecans, rice, corn, black-eyed peas, okra, mayhaws, peaches – the list could go on much further. Without the fruits of the land, the South would be a much different place. And if our farmers are too sick to bring forth those fruits, then a central part of Southern culture will die with them. This is not all by accident. The giant agribusiness cartels want centralized control of the food supply; monopolies in their hands secure them the largest possible profits. Independent farmers, on the other hand, using heirloom seeds, non-toxic pest control, and fertilizer from livestock manure and other natural sources, are their death knell. The goal of the cartels is to make the farmers dependent on them for all their inputs. Patented, genetically modified crop seeds were a big step to securing monopoly control of agriculture. Along with the patented plants came all the chemicals like glyphosate/Roundup that were to be used together with them, which had to be bought from the same cartels. This industrial model of agriculture is largely what is practiced here at the South today, and it is this which has destroyed the traditional family farm, and ruined the health of farming communities and of the wider environment of which they are a part. But this model is alien to our people. Dixie’s approach to farming is quite the opposite of it: It is based on the idea of the independence of the farming family and on increasing the health of people and land and animals. John Taylor of Caroline County, Virginia, wrote some wonderful lines articulating the Southern vision of agriculture in his book Arator (first published in 1814). Reading only a few passages from his book offers strong inspiration to reject the present model and reacquire the Southern agricultural ethos. On improving the land, he writes:
The Dixian way of agriculture not only improves man and his environment physically, but it also improves him spiritually:
These and other passages show the old Southern model of agriculture to be superior to the modern industrial model, bestowing health and plenty and virtue in abundance. But the latter still holds out a grave temptation to contemporary Dixians, the desire for work without effort. This has been mankind’s temptation since the Fall, to find some way of undoing the effects of his sin in Eden in defiance of what God requires of him. The Lord proclaimed it, that we should labor in the sweat of our brow all the days of our life (Genesis 3:17-19), but mankind, at the instigation of the devil and his demons, tries to annul the curse via the magic of technology. Paul Kingsnorth captures this brilliantly in a passage from his novel Alexandria:
But again, this is base, black-hearted defiance. The Lord Jesus was particularly clear on this. It is not worldly ease and self-indulgence that will undo the curse of the Fall, but self-denial: ‘If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it’ (St Mark’s Gospel 8:34-5). Church history confirms the truth of this. Those who denied themselves for Christ’s sake regained what the Church Fathers call the ‘aroma of Paradise’ – holy men and women to whose bidding the creation listened, like it once did for Adam before the dreadful Fall: dead plants become alive again and fruitful, the elements obey their directions, and animals become tame and friendly around them. If we follow the wide path of magi-technical industrialism, which includes modern agriculture, with its smooth, greased path of ease and comfort, the door to Paradise will be closed. But if we put forth effort, walking the narrow path, as the Lord commanded, it will be open to us (St Matthew’s Gospel 7:13-14). The latter is normative here at the South, the ‘hard pastoral’ vision described by Mel Bradford and other Southern Agrarian writers. The narrow path seems to be in the Southern future, one way or the other. If we stay on the easy industrial path, all of our factory farms are going to fail for lack of healthy farmers to operate them, by necessity making us a people of small, independent farming homesteads again. It would be prudent, therefore, for us to begin the transition voluntarily. Chris Smaje, in his book A Small Farm Future, though marred in some places with shibboleths like carbon dioxide causes catastrophic climate change (research actually shows that CO2 concentrations rise in response to rising temperatures, not the other way around) – his book shows that it is possible for a family to live a good life by intensively farming only a few acres of land. Christian, agrarian voices guided Dixie well in the past. We must heed them once again if there is to be much hope for a pleasant future. |
AuthorWalt Garlington is a chemical engineer turned writer (and, when able, a planter). He makes his home in Louisiana and is editor of the 'Confiteri: A Southern Perspective' web site. Archives
April 2026
|