By Olga Sibert
I was delighted to have come across this video from the Abbeville Institute’s 2019 summer school in which John Devanny quotes Professor Richard Weaver’s views on the cultural and religious orthodoxy of the South.
A theme common to my writing is the natural fit between Orthodoxy of the people of American South. Professor Richard Weaver was a scholar and writer who saw the flavoring of orthodoxy in the South as well. Of Weaver himself, Tom Woods writes, “Along with Russell Kirk and Robert Nisbet, Richard Weaver was one of the most influential intellectuals of the postwar conservative renascence in America. A professor of English at the University of Chicago, Weaver was also a scholar of Southern history, and his defense of Southern civilization was at once so elegant and insightful that historians continue to study and discuss his work some forty years after his untimely death.”
In Weaver’s observations of the South, he repeatedly used the term “orthodox” to reflect both the South’s rich sense of ancient tradition as well as its unwillingness to change that tradition. Southern culture can, by those terms, rightly be called “orthodox.”
As Weaver noted, “… although the South is heavily Protestant, its attitude towards religion is essentially the attitude of orthodoxy. The South’s readiness to at times question the great ‘god’ of science is one of its most persistent medieval heritages. Southerners knew that science had limits. It was a poor monistic system. While science was a fascinating technology, it had little to say about the essence of man or proper moral judgments.”
In his book “Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives,” Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica seems to speak to this Southern understanding of science and progress when he says, “We think we know a lot, but what we know is very little. Even all those who have striven all their life to bring progress to mankind – learned scientists and highly educated people – all realize in the end that all their knowledge is but a grain of sand on the seashore. All our achievements are insufficient.”
St. Nikolai Velimirovich would find a welcome seat at many Southern tables. There you might hear him reflect on the subject of technology, science, and progress by explaining that “God was the reason of true faith and good behavior and of the knowledge of technology among people. While people continually felt God above them, before them, and around them, in the same way air and light is felt, they attributed and dedicated all their technological works and handiwork to Him, their Lord and Creator.”
“When the feeling of God’s presence became dulled and spiritual vision darkened,” he continued, “that is when pride entered into tradesmen and technologists, and they started to give glory exclusively to themselves for their buildings, handiwork, and intellectual works, and began to misuse their work that is when the shadow of cursedness began to fall on technology.”
To offer my own, Orthodox-inspired reflection upon Weaver’s observations, I would say that essentially Orthodoxy and Southern Culture both resist the spirit of the age. They resist unnecessary technology, rootless progress, and an unholy union with the wider populace. The Orthodox church fights religious ecumenism in favor of maintaining their spiritual heritage as the original Church of God even to the point of breaking communion with those churches they see as veering too close to union with heretics.
Orthodoxy does not embrace modern ideas, current philosophies, or the notion that science has all (or even some) of the answers to life. Orthodoxy may exist in the cities, but it thrives in the quiet places where God’s seasons turn on the leaves. It blossoms in the woods of Saint Seraphim, the monasteries of St. Anthony, and the orphanages of St. Elizabeth.
Likewise, the South was founded by those independent men and women who often first immigrated to America through Northern channels, such as Boston or Pennsylvania but quickly made their way to states like Tennessee, Georgia, or the Carolinas, where they could slow down, work with God’s seasons and the land. The Confederacy of the South fought hard to preserve their individual rights, localized jurisdictions, and culture when it broke its “communion” with the progressive North.
To this day, urbanites from the city come from all over to swamp Southern antique malls, thrift shops, and flea markets. They run their hands along the well-loved seams of hand-stitched quilts. They marvel at the care a Southern man took to maintain and keep an older, outdated machine in working order until his death. They feast on the slow-simmered bar-b-que, made-from-scratch sauces, and lovingly curated pies.
When Sherman came charging. When industrialists came speculating. When the media came knocking, our Southern attitude was essentially the attitude of Orthodoxy.
Originally published July 11, 2021, at Eastern Chestnut.
Olga Sibert is a 14th generation Southerner born in Appalachia. She is the mother of 7 children. Her line was reunited to Orthodoxy in 2019 when her family was baptized and chrismated. Every Sunday, Olga turns down the Alan Jackson before whipping her minivan up the gravel driveway to her ROCOR parish. You can follow her at her blog Eastern Chestnut: Restoring Strength to the South Through Orthodoxy and on Instagram.
