By Rebecca Dillingham
Never, never, never let anyone tell you that, in order to be Orthodox, you must be Eastern. The West was fully Orthodox for a thousand years, and her venerable liturgy is far older than any of her heresies.
— St. John Maximovitch
There’s a contingent of haters – dare I say, a conspiracy – who are gnashing their teeth over the fact that Orthodox Christianity is growing in the South. These ne’er-do-wells are absolutely enraged that not only are people coming to Christ, but also that this renaissance for people seeking authentic worship and the ancient faith is happening among those who dare to live in Dixie. Let me offer up Exhibit A.
A full week after I posted the happy news of my parish planting roots and “moving with faith in the Tarheel state,” someone (or some thing) decided to be a killjoy and a fallacious one at that. I mean, with an account called “I hate you” and a middle-finger profile pic, should I really expect anything more civilized?
Interestingly, on that same day and at that same time, “he” also commented on an entirely different thread but with the exact same four words: “Southerners can’t be Orthodox.”
At that point, I started to see in a variety of different conversations I had been involved in days earlier the same carbon-copy message and with the identical time stamp.
So, I decided to have a little fun with old “I hate you.”
Then I remembered that the month prior I had an encounter with another person/thing spouting the same exact phrase but with a different Twitter handle. Here’s the befuddling Exhibit B.
I figured others within this Southern-history thread may be interested, so I decided to continue responding to “his” outlandish claims with facts.
Sure, the “I hate you” and “NewVariantGerm” are probably just bots, or perhaps trolls, or even feds. Brand-new accounts with few followers and zero mutual friends are a tell-tale sign of Twitterbots. But who the heck really knows?
What I do know for sure is this isn’t about artificial-intelligence stalkers or NATO-bots that mock us as “Christcucks.” It’s about the narrative. After all, there’s a contingent of subversives even within Orthodoxy who allege that the increasing number of converts in the South are followers of a “foreign religion” and are maybe even “Russian assets.” Grab your torches and pitchforks, NPCs!
Sounds eerily similar to the unhinged cries of “foreign influence” and “misinformation” that we hear from the deep-state-funded technocrats who censor conservative speech and the criminal class who gush over a foreign dictator whose foreign flag they unfurl in the nation’s, er, I mean, the empire’s Capitol. This “bipartisan masochism” is meant to engender despair, just like Southerners being told they can’t be Orthodox.
I’ve written previously about and discussed the hostility toward the South from agitators within the Church, as well as the cozy relationship these betrayers of the Great Commission have with the state and other institutional powers:
• A dark horse in these dark times
• Stirring the pot
• Love your neighbor as yourself – except if he’s a Dixian
• We ain’t skeered … but they are
• Orthodox Christians vs. NPR
Truth is, Christianity is a foreign religion because none of us is in our true spiritual home. We’re all exiles passing through and, God willing, are bound for our eternal home in Heaven. Orthodoxy is also foreign in the sense that it’s in opposition to the world and its secular-humanist social disorder.
But it’s those facts that make Southerners (who are overwhelmingly nonconformists to the alien empire) already feel as if they’re foreigners in their own land, consequently making our temporal home one that is ripe for soaking in the Orthodox ethos. I flesh this out in “Come home, y’all,” explaining more the reason why I, along with three devout Southern converts, labored for more than a year to co-found the Ludwell Orthodox Fellowship.
In his podcast entitled “Christmas Episode: A Christian Response to Modernity,” Padraig Martin, who’s a Christian but non-Orthodox, notes my recent interview with James Perloff in which the author and I discuss how the Southern tradition was right on morals but wrong on theology. Check it out starting at the 56:15 mark to hear what Martin says about “Dissident Mama’s unique outlook on the impacts of Satan on an occupied Dixie.”
In our struggles against and within the cultural genocide, more and more people are seeking Christ and seeing the Orthodox Church as the reconnnection to our Southern, Christian, and Western Orthodox heritage. You can see God’s hand at work if you take the time to look, noticing that what so often seem to be burdens may really be blessings.
The renovationists don’t like one bit all this traditionalism, repentance, and focus on our being the Bride of Christ, which means we’re doing something right! Orthodoxy in America is not flying under the radar anymore. This very much tees off the Evil One, thus, progressive push back is to be expected.
Okay, I’ve already offered up evidence against the anti-Dixian/anti-Christian narrative, and why I think the South as a place needs Orthodoxy and as a civilizational reality could (and does) enculturate it well. But here’s the ultimate proof bucking the lie that Southerners can’t be Orthodox: we already are! One only has to visit a parish in the South to see that big and blessed things are definitely happening here.
The best proof for me personally, though, is that five years [now six as of today!] ago, my husband and I and our three sons were chrismated (and one of us baptized) into the Orthodox Church. On that Christmas Eve, December 24, 2017, we were five of 16 Southern-born folks who renounced the devil – literally spitting at him “as evidence of that rejection and disdain” – and then “put on Christ.”
Since then, that group has flourished through birth, adoption, and foster care, and into multiple parishes, all bearing witness of Jesus Christ and His Church. “Grant that the shield of my faith remain unassailable, and keep spotless and undefiled the garment of incorruption with which I have been clothed,” goes part of the prayer “On the Anniversary of One’s Baptism or Chrismation.”
Moreover, I submit this additional God-honoring evidence confirming that Orthodox Christianity is a spiritual heritage open to all nations and peoples, even us much-maligned Dixians: the following two hymns which I recorded back in October during a 3-day Liturgical Music symposium held at St. Tikhon’s Orthodox Church in Blountville, Tennessee.
Not only does the unified voice of the choir (which was comprised of Orthodox singers from Tennessee, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Missouri, Alabama, West Virginia, and Texas, and a few even beyond those Southern climes) represent the authentic beauty and organic diversity of Christianity, but the words of the hymns also offer us both timeless and timely wisdom.
“The Cherubic Hymn” implores, “Now lay aside all earthly cares that we may receive the King of all,” while “It is Truly Meet” praises “the Mother of our God … who without corruption gavest birth to God the Word.”
Therefore, whether you celebrate Christmas on December 25 or January 7, let us be of good cheer that He “who art born on earth … wast ineffably incarnate” and “shew us to be heirs of the eternal joy prepared for those that worthily honor Thy Nativity.”
The Orthodox Church is indeed for Southerners, my friends, because we too are Her heirs. So with that, I pray that you and yours have a Christmas filled with truth, beauty, and goodness, and may God bless Dixie and her people!
Rebecca Dillingham is a co-founder of the Ludwell Orthodox Fellowship.
