Tradition or Revolution?

A holy Christian king of the country of Georgia celebrated on 26 January offers a challenge for the South, forces us to make a choice about what kind of people we really want to be. Before we reach that crux, let us see what kind of a life Saint-King David IV the Restorer (+1125 A.D.) lived.

Most notably, he placed the highest priority on the spiritual health of his people:

At the end of the 11th century the Georgian Church underwent a trial of physically and spiritually catastrophic proportions.  

The Seljuk sultan, Jalal al-Dawlah Malik Shah (1073-1092), captured the village of Samshvilde, imprisoned its leader, Ioane Orbeliani, son of Liparit, ravaged Kvemo (Lower) Kartli, and finally captured all of Georgia, despite the isolated victories of King Giorgi II (1072-1089). The fearful Georgians fled their homes to hide in the mountains and forests.

Tempted and deeply distressed by the difficult times, the nation that had once vowed its unconditional love for Christ began to fall into sin and corruption. People of all ages and temperaments sinned against God and turned to the path of perdition. God manifested His wrath toward the Georgian people by sending a terrible earthquake that devastated their Paschal celebrations.

In the year 1089, during this period of devastation and despair, King Giorgi II abdicated, designating his sixteen-year-old only son, David (later known as “the Restorer”), heir to the throne. It is written that the Heavenly Father said: I have found David My servant, with My holy oil have I annointed him (Ps. 88:19).

The newly crowned King David took upon himself enormous responsibility for the welfare of the Church. He supported the efforts of the Council of Ruisi-Urbnisi to restore and reinforce the authority of the Georgian Church and suppress the conceited feudal lords and unworthy clergymen. During King David’s reign, the government’s most significant activities were carried out for the benefit of the Church. At the same time, the Council of Ruisi-Urbnisi reasserted the vital role of the Orthodox Faith in rescuing the Georgian people from the godless mire into which they had sunk.

Despite this abundance of activity on behalf of the Church, King David did not forget about the physical well-being of the Georgian ethnos, nor did he leave the physical protection of them to others. He put himself in danger to drive out the invaders of Georgia:

​The king summoned his noblemen and began to reunify the nation. The king’s efforts to reunify Georgia began in the eastern region of Kakheti-Hereti, but the Turks and traitorous feudal lords were unwilling to surrender the power they had gained in the area. Nevertheless, King David’s army was in God’s hands, and the Georgians fought valiantly against the massive Turkish army. King David himself fought like any other soldier: three of his horses were killed, but he mounted a fourth to finish the fight with a fantastic victory. The Turkish presence was eliminated from his country.

When overwhelming odds faced him and his army, he did not quail in fear or puff himself up with prideful self-confidence, but placed his hope in God and encouraged his soldiers to do the same. The result was victory over the enemy and unity and rest for his country:

The defeated Turks returned in shame to their sultan in Baghdad, draped in black as a sign of grief and defeat. Nevertheless, the unyielding sultan Mahmud II (1118-1131) rallied a coalition of Muslim countries to attack Georgia. The sultan summoned the Arab leader Durbays bin Sadaka, commanded his own son Malik (1152-1153) to serve him, gathered an army of six hundred thousand men, and marched once more towards Georgia.

It was August of 1121. Before heading off to battle, King David inspired his army with these words: “Soldiers of Christ! If we fight bravely for our Faith, we will defeat not only the devil’s servants, but the devil himself. We will gain the greatest weapon of spiritual warfare when we make a covenant with the Almighty God and vow that we would rather die for His love than escape from the enemy. And if any one of us should wish to retreat, let us take branches and block the entrance to the gorge to prevent this. When the enemy approaches, let us attack fiercely!”

None of the soldiers thought of retreating. The king’s stunning battle tactics and the miracles of God terrified the enemy. As it is written, “The hand of God empowered him, and the Great-martyr George visibly led him in battle. The king annihilated the godless enemy with his powerful right hand.”

The battle at Didgori enfeebled the enemy for many years. The following year, in 1122, King David recaptured the capital city of Tbilisi, which had borne the yoke of slavery for four hundred years. The king returned the city to its mother country. In 1123 King David declared the village of Dmanisi a Georgian possession, and thus, at last, unification of the country was complete.

One victory followed another, as the Lord defended the king who glorified his Creator.

The challenge for us in the South today is: How do we respond to a life like this, to such outstanding heroism and faith? Modernity teaches us to scorn kings and traditional Christianity as irrelevant artefacts of the past, to reject them as retrogressive forces in society. It is precisely here that Dixie finds herself in trouble, as she has tried to live with one foot in the world of tradition and one in the world of modern Progress – in the former we are constrained by the activities of a virtuous hereditary aristocracy, while in the latter it is proclaimed that all government originates from an all-powerful mass of ‘the people’, that everything must be done according to their will. No less than John Randolph of Roanoke warned us throughout his life of the dangers of this schizophrenia, particularly at the Virginia constitutional convention held in 1832 as Mr. Randolph neared the end of his life.

Compromise between the two is impossible. We cannot go only a quarter of the way or half way with the progressive Revolution. We must either master it, or it will destroy us. And one of the surest signs that a people has vanquished the Revolution is its embrace of hereditary Christian monarchy, which is one of the most visible symbols of tradition.

This will likely be difficult for many Southerners to accept right away, as we have been fed a diet of ideological poison for decades now about governments of, by, and for that mysterious, god-like People (e.g., Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address). But as they explore their own past and the history of other Christian countries, we think they will come to the same conclusion.

Traditional Southern life, prior to the War and its upsetting of our established pattern of living, operated largely as a network of small kingdoms (plantations) ruled by a king and queen (the gentleman and his lady). Mississippian Henry Hughes illustrates this for us in his book Treatise on Sociology (1854). In describing the tithing system of Old, pre-Norman Conquest England, he is using it as an aid in explaining the plural executive (the many plantation owners) of the antebellum South (pgs. 266-8, 1968 reprint, Negro UP, New York):

What therefore, is a perfect executive department? . . .

In an executive department therefore, the greatest power is (1), the greatest Number, with (2), the greatest Interest, and (3), the greatest Wealth. These numbers must be either magistrates or people; official or inofficial.

An approved executive method is that of King Alfred. This is a civil division of the State into counties; of counties into hundreds; and of hundreds into tithings. Tithings are so called because composed of ten freeholders with their families. They were instituted to prevent by recognizance or punishment, rapines and disorders in the realm. In each tithing, ten families were associated politically. They dwelt locally together, and were sureties or pledges to the sovereign for the good-behavior of each other. They were bound to have offenders forthcoming. Of the inhabitants, one of the principal men, by supposition the discreetest in the tithing or association, presided over the rest.

As ten families made a tithing; so ten tithings, a hundred. This was governed by a high constable: and a hundred court for the trial of causes, was formerly held.

Divisions of this nature seem to have obtained in England, Denmark, France, and ancient Germany. They were set on foot, to oblige each district to answer for robberies in its own district. In England, the liability of the hundred, in certain cases, to make good to the injured party, wrongful loss or injury, is traceable to the law of frankpledge. Such, the system for civil administration of laws, completed by King Alfred. By this method, the persons of the executive department are both the official and the inofficial. These are the people; those, the magistrates. Tithing men and high constables are magistrates. Hundredors and tithing families are people; they are inofficial. Their economic interest for the execution of laws, was the fear of loss. They were responsible in damages for wrongs within their jurisdictions. In case of laches on the part of the association, this loss for damages was divided, and his rate levied on each. The implement for the prevention of wrong, was the fear of this special loss.

Many notable attainments came along with this system for Dixie, but there was one great flaw:  lack of unity.  Without a king-father at the summit of the hierarchy to keep order, the brothers of the family will fight with one another (to borrow a phrase from Dr Matthew Raphael Johnson) – and ours did.  How tragically we saw this unfold during the War with the Yankees, as political and military leaders here at the South wasted their energy fighting against one another rather than concentrating upon the inbreakers. 

That is one advantage of having a Christian king.  Related to it is another:  The king is katehon, he who withholds the ferocious forces of evil that desire to destroy everything good in the world (see II Thessalonians 2:7).  A mighty prophet, pastor, and wonderworker of the 20th century, St John Maximovitch (+1966), said in one of his sermons,  ​​

First of all, the forces preparing for his [Antichrist’s—W.G.] coming fight against lawful monarchical rule. The holy Apostle Paul says that the Antichrist cannot appear until "the one who restraineth" is put aside. John Chrysostom explains that the "one who restraineth" refers to a lawful, pious regime. Such a power struggles with evil. "The mystery" working in the world does not want this, does not want the struggle against evil by the power of a pious ruler — quite the opposite. It wants the rule of lawlessness, and when it achieves this, nothing more will stop the appearance of the Antichrist. ​

On the opposite side of the coin, contrary to the modern stereotype, kings are often the forces for progress in the true, Christian sense of the word.  Returning to St David IV, we find examples of this: ​

In 1106 King David had begun construction of Gelati Monastery in western Georgia, and throughout his life this sacred complex was the focus of his efforts on behalf of the revival of the Georgian Church. Gelati Monastery was the most glorious of all the existing temples to God. To beautify the building, King David offered many of the great treasures he had acquired as spoils of war. Then he gathered all the wise, upright, generous, and pious people from among his kinsmen and from abroad and established the Gelati Theological Academy. King David helped many people in Georgian churches both inside and outside his kingdom. The benevolent king constructed a primitive ambulance for the sick and provided everything necessary for their recovery. He visited the infirm, encouraging them and caring for them like a father. The king always took with him a small pouch in which he carried alms for the poor. ​

As political structures developed in Christian countries over the course of the centuries, what arose was not an either-or situation, either an absolute monarch or a purely elected government.  It was a combination of both elements – hereditary and elected officials.  Thus, the return of a king to Dixie would not be radical departure from the norm, but a return to it. 
 
There have been a couple of moments since the deviation of 1776 at which the South approached monarchical restoration, once at the beginning of the War of Northern Aggression and once near its end.  During secession and the formation of the Confederate government, there were suggestions of establishing a monarchy of some sort (Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene Genovese, The Mind of the Master Class, Cambridge UP, New York, 2005, pgs. 704-5); as the war picture became ever more bleak in 1865, the Confederate government on 6 Feb. gave General Lee exceptional powers over the army to try to turn the tides in favor of the South (F. B. Simkins, A History of the South, 3rd edn., Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1965, p. 245). 
 
Today, in Dixie and elsewhere, there remains a great respect for and resonance with Christian monarchy, as evidenced by the attention surrounding Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral, the captivation of readers with a character like Aragorn from Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, and the continued presence of St-King Alfred the Great in the Southern imagination (as we see with Mr Hughes, above) even though 1,000 years have passed since his repose in the Lord. 
 
By re-establishing monarchy in the South, we do not have to jettison all the political wisdom and institutions that have grown up here over the last nearly 250 years; not very much of it, probably.  But if we are to be victorious over the satanic forces that have grown frighteningly powerful in recent years, we must use every weapon in the arsenal of tradition that is available to us.  And a Christian king is an exceptionally strong weapon. 
 
The allies of evil have said a number of times that ‘America’ has a special meaning for them.  The Theosophist H. P. Blavatsky is typical:  ‘It is in America that the transformation will take place, and has already silently commenced’ (The Secret Doctrine, 1888, quoted in Mitch Horowitz, Occult America, Bantam Books, New York, 2009, p. 246).   
 
In order to escape the nets of these evil people, to stop and reverse their special American ‘transformation’/Revolution here in Dixie, let us crown a Southern king – a true katehon for the Southern ethnos. 

Notes: All quotations related to St David IV are from this web page: ​
https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/2023/01/26/100326-blessed-david-iv-king-of-georgia