 For the 2024 Superbowl, Andra Day performed "Lift Every Voice and Sing," known as the Black national anthem, and Reba McEntire performed the traditional US National Anthem. It is not very often that we would say something good came of the Super Bowl, but this year is a little different thanks to the dustup over the response (or lack thereof) to the Black National Anthem: ‘White Tennessee Democrat Congressman Steve Cohen was incensed that Super Bowl fans did not stand in respect for what he called the “Negro National Anthem” during Sunday night’s big game.’ Those who disagree with Rep. Cohen have generally stuck to some form of the argument that because the United States is one nation, it should and does have only one national anthem. It is precisely here that a helpful opportunity presents itself, an opportunity to remind one and all that the United States are not one country, but many countries. This may be done via two ways. First, politically. Fifty States make up the federation called the United States. Each one is a sovereign, independent country. This truth has been expressed since the earliest days of their independence from the British Empire. One important example: The Treaty of Paris of 1783, which ended the war between Great Britain and the States, says explicitly that each State is a nation in her own right: ‘His Brittanic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and Independent States; that he treats with them as such . . . .’ It has generally been the authoritarian centralizers in the US who have tried to spin out a different version of reality – that the 50 States are one country – folks like Alexander Hamilton and Justice Joseph Story. Abraham Lincoln took their theory and put into practice by force of arms in an illegal, unjust war, but delusions will last only so long before falling apart. The Soviet Union affirms that: Fifteen very different countries forcefully united under the rule of Godless communists in Moscow broke apart in 1991. The European Union is constantly in danger of falling apart because it is similarly trying to amalgamate 27 independent countries into one giant supernation; Charlemagne’s earlier version of a European superstate fell apart for similar reasons. The United States are not immune from these political dynamics. Dissatisfaction with an all-powerful government in DC continues to manifest in the States. Texas’s de facto nullification of the Biden administration’s and the federal Supreme Court’s immigration directives is just the latest example. It appears that it will be only a matter of time before one or more States leave the present union. There is a second, and more fundamental, way that the United States are many countries rather than one: culturally. The easiest way to illustrate this is the Red State/Blue State dichotomy. In this regard, there are at least two countries existing within the current boundaries of the US – the conservative-leaning Red States and the liberal-leaning Blue States. But there is more to it than that. Because of the immigration patterns that have occurred in North America, there are several distinct cultural regions that have formed within the US. Speaking very generally about them, New England, because of her settlement by the people of southeast England, shares their penchant for cities and industry, and for egalitarianism and radicalism in politics and religion. Dixie, settled by folks from southwest England, is the opposite, favoring agricultural pursuits, rural lands, and hierarchy and tradition in politics and religion. On we could go: The Great Plains are more Scandinavian and German; the Rocky Mountain States are heavily Mormon; the Desert Southwest has a lot of Spanish influence; etc. All of this is well-attested to by authors such as David Fischer, Joel Garreau, and Colin Woodard. Religion, bloodlines/heredity, language, geography, and climate all combine to form unique cultures and countries that deserve as much autonomy as is possible within reasonable limits. Many in the US deny these very plain and simple truths, however, thinking that allegiance to a political creed is enough to empty people of their historical and cultural memories and roots and create new, blank-slate men and women who will inhabit a utopia called America. That didn’t work with the overly collectivist, individual-erasing communist ideology in the Soviet Union (the direction the EU seems to be going as well); it won’t work with the overly individualistic, community-erasing liberty ideology of the US either. Both are simply secular substitutes for the Christian Church – the only Body in the world capable of creating a new united race of men through the regeneration of the Holy Spirit. Because of this, we get second-rate ‘national’ rituals like the Super Bowl to help foster our unity rather than major feast days of the Church for the Lord Jesus Christ, His Most Pure Mother, other major saints, and so forth (to see what the South could be celebrating throughout the year, look here, here, and here). The healthier path for the States will be to recognize and nurture the various cultures amongst them, to allow them to coalesce into new confederations along rational regional/cultural lines, thereby putting to an end a lot of unnecessary clashes between States and cultures that hold opposing views on incendiary issues like abortion, drug legalization, transgenderism, immigration, marriage, guns, and the rest.
2 Comments
 Tell us again of the birth of God, When the sun was dying And humanity old and frail. Tell of the strong Deliverer, Who broke the chains around our necks, And the compassionate Healer, Who removed the iron lances from our hearts, Placed there by the murderous tyrant. Tell us of the young Maiden, The Mother of God, who knew no man, Whose womb became more spacious than the skies. Tell us of the new stars in the heavens, The new gods and goddesses – the martyrs and the saints – Replacing the old constellations of the pagans, Andrameda, Perseus, Hercules, With those reborn and recreated in Christ, St. Katherine, St. Paisius, the Great Basil. Tell us again of the deep, dark night When the Omnipotent was born as a helpless child, And hosts of the bodiless powers appeared, Singing praises while beholding a mystery. Tell us of the brilliant Light That erupted within hell, Crushing its bars and blinding its guards, And leading the captives home to heaven. Tell us again, and once more, and yet again Of the Love that united Godhead with manhood forever, That slew death like a viper struck with a sword, That will seat us next to Christ at table In Paradise, without fear of ever being cast away; Instead, deepening our union with Him As years and ages and aeons unfold In that world not made by human hands, Where together God, men, and angels will always abide.  A woman is a mysterious thing, Whose simple, single ‘How’s it goin’?’ Is enough to befuddle a man, To frustrate his focus, To weaken his strength. The women who want to exercise Maximum power in the world By putting on a pair of pants And sitting on a corporate board Or in a senator’s chair Have got it all quite wrong – All they need do Is grab the men-folk rulers By their collars And tell them softly, ‘I love you so!’  There you stand Payne Murphy,
Beneath the thick bough of an ancient oak, With Allyson, the answer To your heart’s yearning, Glowing beautifully in the late evening sun, As a bride shall do. But in that holy moment, The two of you before the minister, Your own Uncle Boyd, Transformed in a mystery From an individual man and woman Into husband and wife – One flesh – in Jesus Christ, There beside you also stand The souls of Percy Murphy, Raiford, James, many forebears Of our family, looking with hope and joy Upon their offspring, Now growing to maturity. The future rests upon your shoulders, And upon all the youthful generation – The future of our family, the future of the Church, The future of the Southern people. October is the time of nature’s waning; Leaves grow sere and shadows lengthen. But in the Grace of a wedding, This law is overturned, As renewal enters the world: A new branch of the family tree emerges, Formed of P. M. and Allyson Fife, And our eyes look with longing For the fruit that it will bear.  AG Jeff Landry made his final appeal to Louisiana’s voters on Oct. 12th in the campaign for governor (which he subsequently won on Oct. 14th). In short, it could be summed up as ‘Louisiana ought to be great.’ In his own words:
We fully supported Mr. Landry for governor, believing that he has the right mix of experience and temperament, the right view of State sovereignty vis-à-vis the federal government, etc., to bring some beneficial changes to Louisiana. However, his words in this last appeal of his leave us concerned, for we have seen nearly this same kind of campaign unfold amongst our cousins in France under Charles de Gaulle. Now, General de Gaulle was an extraordinarily gifted leader. He nearly single-handedly kept the nation of France alive at times during WWII. After the end of the war, France lay prostrate, exhausted and dispirited. And again de Gaulle raised her up. He entered politics with the aim of making France a renowned country once again, politically stable, economically prosperous, and a prominent player in world politics. And he achieved a measure of success in those things – influential in Africa, rejecting complete subordination to NATO, protecting French interests in a European commonwealth – as well as giving France a new constitution that stabilized her political life and a reinvigorated economy. But once de Gaulle retired from politics, most of his achievements unraveled quite rapidly. Socialism/Leftism became the dominant ideology in the succeeding decades, remaining so today, with all its caustic attendants – open borders, hatred of the native culture, an oppressively large government, etc. When political leaders fail to raise the eyes of their peoples above the horizon of the earth, they doom them to precisely the kind of materialistic nihilism that France has fallen into. Politics is not an end in itself. Politics, like everything else, is a waysign, pointing us to the ultimate reality, to God. When we turn our eyes from Him, exchanging the infinite, uncreated God for some limited, created thing as the ultimate good, we bring trouble upon ourselves. Gen. de Gaulle had a wonderful opportunity, given his many talents, to rouse his people to true greatness, that is, to Christian holiness. But he failed to do so, and France has suffered much because of his failure. AG Landry, if he is not careful, is poised to repeat the mistake of de Gaulle. His final appeal is bereft of any mention of God, Christ, Church, etc.; it is concerned only with a worldly kind of greatness. But worldly greatness satisfies people for only a short time; then the spiritual hunger for something deeper awakens, and if it does not find Christ, people will try to satisfy it in all kinds of ways, many of them harmful – cults, drugs, crime, alcohol, suicide, overeating, endless social media use, etc. Louisiana is already experiencing many of these. Less crime, more economic opportunity, and better education will help to a degree, but not for long. Louisianans desperately need to be reacquainted with the exhilarating quest for holiness, and, once again, it is a French kinsman who provides a helpful illustration for us, St. Martin of Tours (+397 A.D.), the Patron Saint of France. Even a brief look at his life will show us the kinds of meaningful encounters that await those who seek after God sincerely and using the right means (prayer, fasting, the Divine Liturgy, etc.):
Worldly greatness is ephemeral. It quickly dissolves into nothingness. But holiness makes things immortal. Ten, twenty, fifty years from now, no one will care about our NFL stars and their statistics; no one will care about our GDP output. But generation after generation will continue to be in awe of the architecture of an abbey like Mont St. Michel off the coast of Normandy; they will continue to be drawn to the otherworldly beauty of illuminated manuscripts like the Lindisfarne Gospels; they will continue to seek consolation from the relics of the saints, which remain incorrupt and miracle-working because of the Grace of God that dwells within them. St. John Maximovitch (+1966), a saint who touched most of the world in some way, a saint everyone should know at least a little bit about, shows us how holiness overturns the normal working of the laws of death and decay. His holy relics were uncovered in 1993 in San Francisco, 27 years after his blessed repose:
We are grateful to God for the Landry victory on the 14th. It is critical, however, for Mr. Landry, State legislators, school board members, and for all the rest of us here in Dixie – both those in government and those outside of it – to remember that unless a political vision and agenda are linked to a higher spiritual reality, it will all be for naught. Worldly glory and achievements fade and wither like the grass in August, but deeds done for love of God and neighbor, deeds infused with the holy Grace of God, last forever.
Or, to say it more plainly, a holy Dixie is an immortal Dixie.  Mr. Mark Atkins’s essay of 26 Sept. 2023, ‘What Is the South? What Is Dixie?,’ contains many fine passages, which is not unusual for things written by him. There is one that is cause for concern, however:
The land is undoubtedly an important factor in defining Southernness, but this passage makes something more of it than it ought to. The land in this telling has been transformed into some kind of dark, brooding deity that we must struggle with to receive a blessing, and along with the blessing, wounds. Mr. Atkins has retold the story of Jacob wrestling with God, replacing Jacob with Dixie and God with Land:
Further, it is ultimately not something external that we struggle with (the land), but something internal, sin. That is to say, the sins of men and women are the cause of the rebellion of the creation against mankind. When sinfulness is quelled in man, then harmony between them is restored. There are numerous instances of this throughout Church history in the lives of her saints. We will look at only a couple, for the sake of brevity, from the life of St. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne (+687) by another English saint, St. Bede of Wearmouth-Jarrow Monastery (+735). In his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, St. Bede writes,
Now, supposing a land full of Christian holiness in which there is little struggle with the land, would that people be bereft of a rich culture because of that absence? Certainly not! But what would be the source of culture in such a place? Just what it has been in every other place – the religion of the people, the Christian Faith. The country of Georgia, which we have mentioned before in some past essays, is a wonderful testimony to the culture-building nature of Christianity. Georgia was baptized into the Orthodox Church under the holy King Mirian in the 4th century, about the year 324 A. D.; she has not departed from the Church despite numerous brutal assaults upon her by the enemies of Christ. During St. Mirian’s reign, we see a Christian culture in its early formation:
As Southerners, we adore the land of Dixie, which provides us our sustenance, in which rest the bodies of our departed forefathers, from which grow our beautiful live oaks, white oaks, azaleas, and so many others, upon which gallop our half-mythical horses. The theme of land appears over and over again in our poems, in speeches, etc. But let us not claim more for it than we ought. True and lasting culture is born from worship of the Holy Trinity, the same Holy Trinity that King Mirian enjoined his son to adore – not Mr. Atkins’s trinity of family, People, and Land, but rather the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. It is He Who sustains and protects and enriches a Christian people’s culture, if they are willing to co-operate with Him, as the histories of Georgia and other Christian countries attest. The land will always be a large part of that culture, but we must be wary of taking a part and making it into the whole.
 The White House on the Potomac, The portal to power, wealth, and fame – To wield its dark demonic forces Innocence is lost and the blood of man is shed; Malicious lies are told, Allegiance is bought and sold, Deceptive arts unfold. Your hope does not lie there, Southern man, In demagogues making a noisy scene, But in the glittering white house – The church of Candida Casa – Of Blessèd Ninian in Whithorn, Nestled on Galloway’s bay, Built by the hands of the saint, Who lived and prayed in a little cave. The Southern heart, aching for a noble, loving father, Will not find him amongst the greedy gangsters And the sham showmen of DC, But rather in that royal-born Briton, St. Ninian, who put aside crown and kingdom To bring the Good Tidings of Jesus Christ To a branch of Dixie’s kin, the warring Scots; Who nourished them with preaching, Sacraments, and his prayers, And who will tenderly guide us, And work wonders for us, If we will entreat our Elder, As a child would his father.  Exile from one’s homeland can cause overwhelming grief to flood over him, a condition illustrated poignantly in the familiar Psalm 137, which begins with the words, ‘By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.’ However, internal exile gives rise perhaps to even sharper pains, as these exiles must stand by and watch as piece after piece of their tradition is destroyed before their eyes. Internal exile is the situation of traditional Southerners today. And though there are differences between internal and external exile, they are sufficiently similar that Dixie can draw wisdom from the experiences of those who have suffered external exile. Two especially superb examples of Christians suffering patiently and joyfully despite their exile come to us from the early 5th century: St. John Chrysostom and St. Olympias. St. John is one of the finest pastors the Church has ever known. His surname, Chrysostom, means ‘golden tongue’, a name given to him for the excellence of his many sermons. He was exiled from Constantinople by the God-hating rulers of his day who falsely accused him of various infractions. St. Olympias was born into a well-to-do family, but devoted her life to God after her betrothed died. She became a deaconess in the great cathedral of Hagia Sophia under St. John and was sent into exile because of her loyalty to her godly pastor. Many letters of these two to one another have survived to our day, and they offer a wealth of helpful advice on how Southerners can deal with our current woes. In one letter St. John helps us put suffering in its proper perspective. It is in fact something that makes up the very nature of the Church:
Suffering joyfully, without complaint, because of our trust in God is, furthermore, a great virtue. He writes to St. Olympias many moving words about this:
The South can find the will to endure by meditating on the lives of the martyrs and confessors who have gone before us:
And while we are being buffeted by the waves of heavy trials, in order to avoid being crushed against the shoals of despair, it is imperative to remember that God’s love governs the universe:
That same love directs the fate of Dixie, too. And, in a passage reminiscent of General Lee’s on hope in God’s providence, St. John tells us to trust God with the final result of our struggle for an independent, Christian Southland: ‘Therefore, my friend, wait for the final outcome. For all things will certainly turn out, whether in this life or the life to come. In every circumstance, yield to the incomprehensibility of God’s providence.’ Yet, however things turn out for the South, we must praise God, for His ways are beyond searching out:
May our Loving Lord, Jesus Christ, allow the South to achieve all her godly goals, through the prayers of the righteous sufferers, St. John and St. Olympias! Note: All quotes from St. John are from this essay by Mr. Christopher Hall.
 When her stomach is unsettled,
Momma must stay at home. When Summer issues his stern command, Then we will swelter in hot weather. When one grandson arrives, He must walk the boundaries Of the property of the camp, Greeting the young trees And mourning the ones that have fallen. When feet approach the pond, Then a fishing pole will be in the hand. When the call to bless the food and family comes, Then the time for talk will cease. When the ladies turn a camera toward you, You had better stand and smile. When little Lennon stands before you with her bike, Then someone will push her round, Whether Daddy Kyle or Granny Sug or young Cousin Cooper. When our patriarch Raiford decreed Long ago the gathering of the Walton kin to meet Once a year, then most joyfully We obey, in flood or frost or scorching heat.   The United States are often presented as ‘one nation’, but that is far from the reality. One of the most exemplary of the Vanderbilt Agrarians, Donald Davidson, even spoke of a cultural ‘cold Civil War’ that began between the North and the South after WWI drew to a close (Southern Writers in the Modern World, U of Georgia Press, Athens, Ga., 1958, p. 34). The latest instance of this propaganda war against the South is Fox News journalist Greg Jarrett’s new book Trial of the Century, which rehashes the events of the John Scopes trial in Dayton, Tennessee, in 1925. His central claim is that Tennessee’s law against the teaching of evolution was an evil restriction upon the sacred right of freedom of speech. The rather unmistakable message that emanates from this is that laws upholding Christianity are bad; the untrammeled ‘free exchange of ideas’ is much better. Southerners should recognize his book for the attack on their Christian culture that it is. Prof. Davidson and the other Agrarians recognized the Scopes trial itself as such. Prof. Davidson describes windbags like Mr. Jarrett as ‘vain-minded modernists, all resolved to define God as science and to give the theory of evolution the status of quasi-religious dogma’ (Southern Writers, p. 40). He adds, ‘ . . . the Dayton episode dramatized, more ominously than any other event easily could, how difficult it was to be a Southerner in the twentieth century . . . . It was horrifying to see the cause of liberal education argued in a Tennessee court by a famous agnostic lawyer from Illinois named Clarence Darrow. It was still more horrifying—and frightening—to realize that the South was being exposed to large scale public detraction and did not know or much care how to answer’ (Ibid.). Hopefully Southerners will know and care how to answer this reprise of the Scopes trial that Mr. Jarrett is trying gin up. We can start by learning how the Southern Agrarians reacted to the Scopes trial. John Crowe Ransom became a defender of traditional religion: ‘John Ransom astonished his campus friends at Vanderbilt by openly challenging the modernist position and defending Fundamentalism in religion. I recall a tense scene on the third floor of Calhoun Hall at Vanderbilt during which Ransom, more excited than I had ever seen him, opposed Dr. Edwin Mims in vigorous argument over the issues raised at Dayton. Out of the bold and somewhat grim conviction of such moments, I should guess, grew the exacting study and thought that went into the composition of Ransom’s great book about science and religion, God Without Thunder: An Unorthodox Defense of Orthodoxy’ (Ibid., p. 41). Prof. Davidson wrote searing lines of poetry warning about the idolatrous worship of science. These are from ‘Fire on Belmont Street’:
Prof. Richard Weaver, a later Southern Agrarian, explained the wisdom, in his essay ‘The Older Religiousness of the South’, of relying on unchanging divine revelation rather than mutable scientific theories. This was not written specifically in response to Dayton as were the afore-mentioned, but it seems likely to have played a role in its creation:
‘Reverence for the “word of God” is a highly important aspect of Southern religious orthodoxy. Modern discussions of fundamentalism usually overlook the fact that belief in a revealed knowledge is the essence of religion in its older sense. The necessity of having some form of knowledge that will stand above the welter of earthly change and bear witness that God is superior to accident led Thomas Aquinas to establish his famous dichotomy, which teaches, briefly, that whereas some things may be learned through investigation and the exercise of reasoning powers, others must be given or “revealed” by God. Man cannot live under a settled dispensation if the postulates of his existence must be continually revised in accordance with knowledge furnished by a nature filled with contingencies. . . . It is therefore imperative in the eyes of the older religionists that man have for guidance in this life a body of knowledge to which the facts of natural discovery are either subordinate or irrelevant. This body is the “rock of ages,” firm in the vast sea of human passion and error. . . If moral philosophy must wait upon natural philosophy, all moral judgments become temporary, relative, and lacking in those sanctions which alone make them effective, as the more perspicacious Southern theologians pointed out’ (The Confederate South, 1865-1910; A Study in the Survival of a Mind and a Culture, LSU Dissertation, 1943, pgs. 89-90. Published by ProQuest LLC, Ann Arbor, Mich., 2015. Now available as The Southern Tradition at Bay.). This Southern intuition about the instability of science has been proven right once again, in a new analysis of Darwinian evolution no less. When Prof. Weaver did address the Scopes trial directly, he found that, contrary to Mr. Jarrett, the result of the trial was not a ‘sweeping victory’ for science, free speech, civilization, etc. Rather, ‘ . . . science received, in the popular estimation, a check in the trial but a moral victory, and this only led to more misunderstanding of the province of science in human affairs. The law of the State of Tennessee won a victory which was regarded as pyrrhic because it was generally felt to have made the law and the lawmakers look foolish. This also was a disservice to the common weal’ (The Ethics of Rhetoric, Hermagoras Press, Davis, Cal., 1985, pgs. 53-4). From the strictly Christian point of view, many holy elders have also appeared since Darwin’s time to warn us about the falseness and the destructive effects of his theory of evolution. We will quote only one, St. Theophan the Recluse (+1894), but these warnings could easily be multiplied: ‘People have suddenly had a thought and have started to write about preserving faith. But they don’t want to block the source of unbelief. This source is the spread of the teaching that the world formed by itself, according to which there is no need for God and the soul does not exist--it’s all atoms and chemistry, nothing more. This is being preached at [university] rostrums and in literature. He who breathes these fumes is inescapably stupefied, and loses his sense and faith. . . . Until these books are destroyed; until professors and literary men are forced not only not to hold to this theory, but even to demolish it—until then—faithlessness will grow and grow, and with it, self-will and the destruction of the present government. That’s the way the French Revolution went’ (Fr. Seraphim Rose, Genesis, Creation, and Early Man: The Orthodox Christian Vision, 2nd edn., Hieromonk Damascene, edr., St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, Platina, Cal., 2011, p. 792). From all of these sources and others, Dixie may draw ideas for how to challenge this renewed attack on the Biblical account of creation that she has consistently defended. In the near term, though, we ought to declare quite forthrightly to Mr. Jarrett that we simply don’t need his book around here at the South. We would be just as pleased if he threw it into the pit of hell where its celebrated atheistic evolution originated. Freedom needs limits to be enjoyed properly: Southerners, by and large, want only the freedoms compatible with life in Christ; Mr. Jarrett wishes for us to accept a more liberal freedom that would make living that kind of life impossible. And while we’re on this subject, isn’t it about time for the South to form her own news network? With the ease of recording videos and with the growing number of sharp Southern commentators, could we not produce at least a weekly show presenting news stories from the traditional Southern perspective? Fox News obviously has a high degree of disdain for Dixie and her Christian culture – from the South-slandering Victor Davis Hanson to Brett Baier’s book with its slobbering approval of General Grant to the ‘conservative transgender’ commentator Bruce Jenner. The positive ramifications of a Dixie-centric news/commentary channel for the South would likely be many. |
