From our earliest of days, the people who settled the mountains of Appalachia have sought diligently to preserve their heritage, culture, and language. Our much derided accent, ancient customs and mountain knowledge is a source of pride to millions of Americans. Even today, there is a comfort and longing from folks all around to return […]
Stonewall Jackson
On December 4, 2021, one of the last true country music stars passed away. Stonewall Jackson was born in Tabor City, North Carolina, on November 6, 1932. Growing up with an abusive stepfather and little in the way of formal education, Jackson served as a submariner in the U.S. Navy before moving to Nashville to […]
Orthodox Saints for Dixie: December
A Selection of Saints of the British Isles & Western Europe & Africa By Walt Garlington ♱ St. Birinus, Apostle of Wessex, 3/16 December Birinus, a native of Lombardy, consecrated Bishop by Asterius Bishop of Genoa, and then sent by Pope Honorius to convert the West Saxons. One of his earliest converts was Cynegils, King […]
Orthodox Granny Women
By Olga Sibert Come on in. Sit down. Rest yourself. Settin’s cheaper’n standin’. Here in the Appalachians we have a person known as a Granny Woman. I was privileged to grow up with one and I pray, God willing, I will be one myself someday. On this past May 6th, as I was researching and reading […]
Come Home, Y’all
Each of us has ancestors, both physical and spiritual, who gave us [our] language, culture and, most importantly, [our] faith … To lose touch with that past, with those ancestors, means to become spiritually dry. — His Holiness Kirill, Patriarch of Moscow and All-Russia Some say that Orthodoxy suffers from a lack of converts here […]
Hillbilly Thomists or Hillbilly Hesychasts for the South?
By Walt Garlington “Through this (theoria) a man is deified, not through reflecting on words or visible things, but taught by silence.” — St. Gregory Palamas Mr. Joseph Pearce gives a very good illustration of how the West has gone astray after leaving its first love, the Orthodox Church, for Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. At […]
Ortho Dixie: Orthodox Christianity and Southern Identity
By Stephen Borthwick Anyone who has grown up in the melting pot of immigrant religiosity of the industrial northeast has a very specific vision of Southern religiosity – evangelical, provincial, low-church, and rabidly anti-Catholic, among other things. Even growing up in a household sympathetic to the South, I had plenty of condescending ignorance about the […]
Through the Mud
By Theodore Phillips Most modern Christian churches are stuck in the mud. Rain, old ruts, sinkholes and dead end paths lead many astray, bog down a few more and cause even more to abandon the path and surrender the struggle. There is a way to clean this mud road up and lay the foundations of a […]
The Real Old Time Religion
By A.J. Conyers People in the South who are intuitively attuned to its culture and history suspect that what passes for popular, evangelical religion in the region is not precisely what it has been in the past. Besides the fact that the South, like other parts of the country, is slowly giving in to the […]
Metropolitan Jonah Serves at Ludwell-linked Chapel
First Orthodox Liturgy Celebrated at Historic William & Mary Wren Chapel On Sunday, March 16, 2014, at the request of the College of William & Mary’s Orthodox Christian Fellowship, Metropolitan Jonah (Paffhausen; former Archbishop of Washington and Metropolitan of All America & Canada of the Orthodox Church in America) celebrated the Divine Liturgy in the […]
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