Orthodox America's Battle
Many Americans do not want communistic culture like that of which looms over many European countries. But many, if not MOST, Americans, DO want communal culture, like that of what many other countries once had prior to communism.
First thing! Communism (Marxism, etc.) did not birth from thin air. Communism was a synthesis of agnostic and atheistic beliefs coupled with Christian beliefs. Christianity (even western Christianity) is heavily founded on being communal. I have researched and written on this research in a number of articles, and by the grace of God I intend to keep doing so. What Greece birthed, and what Russia inherited to run with, was no philosophy of sorts, no theological wonder of intelligencia or clericalism. What Greece birthed and Russia inherited was the simple truth and energy/grace of God’s people…his chosen people who live the truth of the Church out within their lives, loving their neighbor and leaving behind proof of this love within nature itself, forming everything from catacombs to empires.
America needs a model of community, and who better to accomplish this great need of community within America than the Orthodox Church, who has built the greatest empire on earth from a grass roots gathering of people that rescued babies from the streets and widows from the ghettos? Orthodox build communities because that is what the gospel is about. We love our neighbor and that love looks like something much more than what heretical Protestantism looks like. We are not about the hireling ways of making it LOOK like we are an empire, by packing in mega church temples only to give some sort of Christian entertainment for the remainder of the week. We worship God in spirit and truth to build, to have victory in life with our neighbor. Anyone or anything that wedges its ugly head in to destroy this love of neighbor, needs to be eradicated and exposed by the Church.
No politician will make things better. It’s not possible, especially considering Americas options. Presidents are elected based on how they can serve a plethora of religions within America. America has now grown into too large of a “melting pot” to continue to maintain control with as many religions that we have. We are schizophrenic to the max…hundreds if not thousands of core beliefs attempting to synthesize into one way of thinking and living.
America began with dedicated Protestants and Catholics, migrating from the cultic heresies within their religions, but many did not let those cultic activities go. They birthed MORE of a cultic community in their new land, and thus attracted a new kind of government that was forced to merge all religions. The course has been ran and it’s time to for America to pay the piper. It has all finally caught up.
One of the first things we pray within the Orthodox liturgy is not to “place our trust in princes, where there is no salvation.” St John Chrysostom wrote this because he knew the essence of the gospel was about loving thy neighbor. He preached in many areas of his writings that we should gather as a people to live out the gospel. It happened in many areas of the world, including many great areas of the Orthodox (Byzantine) empire. People labored for their neighbor, around the Church, and attracted other people to join this same community…even while being inclusive to these other people. In other words, the community was Orthodox but it allowed non Orthodox to live with them, just not as a leading force.
Orthodoxy has always first built their core community of pious people who often associated themselves with monastics and/or ascetic people, and then their national community that extends into the greater populace. Not the reverse! It’s impossible and in my opinion, apocalyptic. We cannot just flood ourselves into pagan lands because we have some special financial abilities. We must do as the great evangelists of all time have done it. We must build the core community first, where people are interdependent on each other and not dependent on the secular/pagan system of the antichrist world.
There is no quick-fix-point-the-finger-at-a-heresy way to fix what has been going on with the Church, especially within America. I mean, yes, it has a lot to do with ecumenism. But it’s much more complicated than just ecumenism. It has to do with how ecumenism has adopted and transformed entire nations, and how the Church is slowly merging with this new model of nationhood. I’m afraid to say that the spirit of antichrist is upon us in a very treacherous way…a very complex and chaotic way that we have never really seen before.
I don’t think it is going to be as easy as “oh, we will just have to die for our faith like the early Christians.” No, it’s going to be more difficult than that, as many fathers teach us. Many of us will have…
NO CATACOMB COMMUNITY TO LEAN ON…
Because much of the Orthodox Church in the west does not even believe/teach Christian community. They teach this sort of Protestant gospel of agnosticism, where it is simply not necessary to love your neighbor and actually embrace them with our gifts and resources. In fact, many clergy are telling us to
FLEE FROM OUR NEIGHBOR
Yes, it’s absolutely amazing. One popular US metropolitan is actually saying that many of us are guilty of murder for not submitting to the medical system of the world. But many of us know that such cowardliness of our neighbor has hardly even existed within the Church in all of history. We are to embrace our neighbor, and when they are sick, we are to care for them as the Church has in many other countries for many centuries. Where is your Orthodox hospital, you who speak of us who reject the medical profession? We see your multimillion-dollar temples, but no hospitals. Not even a clinic here and there. St John says in the Apocalypse that cowards are hell-bound.
We need a bishop to rise up and rescue us from these syncretists who are dragging the Church into the world. Let us pray to the saints and God that such a bishop would be inspired and strengthened to rise up and claim God’s fold. St Innocent of Alaska pray for us!