By Benjamin Dixon
Understanding the ways and means by which the Orthodox and Southern traditions harmonize is crucial to the evangelization of the South. For myself, and many Southerners, the journey to Holy Orthodoxy feels less a conversion than the recovery of a lost inheritance. This goes well beyond the connections made to Southern agrarianism, the centrality of food and fellowship, or even a shared appreciation for beauty – though these certainly play a role – to a shared worldview which forms both a common foundation and critique of Modernity. What the basis of this worldview is, and how it should inform not only the evangelization of the South, but its transformation into an Orthodox Society should therefore be a topic of great interest among us.
The South has rightly been called the last non-materialist civilization in the West. Southerners recognize in the world some type of divinely established order, a hierarchy, which man is not to tamper with. For Southerners, the natural world and its ways are part of the mystery of God. Through its various cycles God issues providential blessings and reproofs; if one pays close attention the world even becomes theophanic, revealing the will and majesty of God. This translates to the art, music, and literature of the South, in which the natural world is still an enchanted place blessed by God. The world for Southerners is objective, knowable, divinely ordered and imputed with divine energy: truth, goodness, beauty, love, and by these he comes to know God through the struggle and toil of everyday life.
Richard Weaver sums up the Southern worldview at its most base, foundational level when he says, “the Southerner prefers to take in this whole through a kind of vision, in which the dominant features are a land and sky of high color, a lush climate, a spiritual community, a people inclined to be good humored even in the face of their eternal ‘problems’ and to adapt themselves to the broad rhythms of nature.” For Southerners, the world cannot be dissected into parts and analyzed without reference to the whole; conclusions drawn from sense data can not be made without reference to revelation. This is a very Orthodox notion in and of itself, in which the various “branches” of theology naturally grow out of the revealed truth of the Trinity and the incarnation of Christ. Likewise, mystical experience not in continuity with the truth held by the whole Church is discarded as deception.
The Southern worldview only seems natural when one considers that prior to Reconstruction, the South – especially the upper classes – belonged largely to sacramental confessions. Clearly, this planted a sacramental worldview into the culture of the South, a worldview which has far outlasted its allegiance to the English church. When exposed to the Orthodox Faith, Southerners immediately pick up on this shared vision of a world in which the many things of the material world cannot be radically dissected from one another and must have recourse to the One God – even if they may not express it in such terms.This underlying principle informs their experience of the world and the things within it.
“Southern Conservatives have condemned not science, reason, material progress, and individualism, but, rather, the cult of scientism, atheistic and pantheistic rationalism, and a material progress that has resulted in the alienation of the individual from self and society” – Eugene Genovese
Had the above quote began with “Orthodox Christians,” it just as easily could have been said by Dostoevsky, Kireyesvky, maybe even St. John of Kronstadt or St. Theophan the Recluse. Unlike their Northern cousins, Southerners retained some semblance of continuity with the worldview of Christendom, the medieval worldview which was purged from much of the West during the Reformation and Enlightenment. Whereas the Puritanical North zealously supported Cromwell in the English Civil War, Southerners were far more sympathetic to the crown. Southern theologians maintained a strong allegiance to tradition and launched sustained critiques against the excesses of the Reformation.
The French Revolution inaugurated a new age in the West. This new age was quickly embraced with Cromwellian zeal by the North – for whom religion and social engineering were largely synonymous. Nature lost its sanctity in the mind of the North; science became a tool for the conquest and subjugation of nature for man’s benefit. History has shown us that once God was removed from nature it was only a matter of time before He would be removed from any consideration of man. The Enlightenment gave way to the revolutions of Nihilism of the early twentieth century.
The South, self-conscious of its role as the guardian of Christian piety, was largely able to resist these trends in spite of the all out assault on its culture, history, and identity. Southerners, both cradle and converts have led a sustained rhetorical crusade against the atomization of the human person, the elevation of sense data over revealed truths, and moral relativism which have come to typify the modern western world. Lacking control or even a reasonable share over the levers of power and culture, devoid of a unifying religious life to match its sacramental worldview, the South has fought a long, losing battle against the forces of Modernism and its more deadly child, Nihilism.
As religiosity continues to decline, Southerners stand on an increasingly weak foundation from which to defend themselves. Or, as Eugene Genovese puts it, “the plaintive cry of Southern Conservatives for a reaffirmation of religious faith has faltered on their inability to generate, or even advocate, an appropriate theology or metaphysic.” (The Southern Tradition, pg 24-25) This is where the planting of the Orthodox Church in the South is decisive. While the critiques are strikingly similar, only Holy Orthodoxy can provide a complete critique of Modernity. Even more crucial, only Orthodoxy has a solution, the antidote to the dehumanization of mankind. The Church then, has come to satiate the Southern thirst for living water, the only remedy for the malaise of Modernity.
This shared sacramental worldview, conceptions of community and expressions of piety are allowing the Church to blossom in the fertile soil of the South. Culturally, the Orthodox Church plays the role of Moses, leading the South out of its captivity. Orthodoxy allows the South to find itself anew, to see its culture, literature, and way of life not just renewed, but transfigured in the True Light of Christ.
I for one firmly believe that this is nothing less than Providence; as the West stands on the precipice of the abyss, the transfigured South will stand as a beacon of what the West once was. I believe that our true rebellion is yet to come, and it will be a complete rejection of the dehumanization of man, of the desecration of nature which the revolutions of nihilism have foisted upon us. It could happen nowhere else. Whereas the richness of the Lives of the Saints is met with skepticism elsewhere, Southerners have always held a special place in their hearts for sincere, simple piety, for those pious souls whose sanctifying presence seems to make each forest, each creek, each hill and holler a slice of Paradise. Reading the life of Saint Herman of Alaska (as recorded in the Little Russian Philokalia) and its account of village life on a feast day in 18th century Russia was virtually indistinguishable from my Granny’s stories of her childhood. Of course we’d have to trade out the balalaika for a banjo or fiddle.
For the South, communion comes naturally. Now, in the fullness of communion with Christ, which can only take place in the Holy Orthodox Church, I believe we will see that long awaited revival our forebears so yearned for – but which they didn’t know would take the better part of a thousand years. But this requires the inculturation of the South, and part of that is bringing the ways, the means, the arguments and apologies of our forebears to their fullness in the light of Holy Orthodoxy.
The task falls to us to rethink, to re-experience Southern life in the Light of the Church. We cannot make an idol out of Southern history and culture, but must bring this great inheritance to the Church so that it may be perfected in the light of Christ. What can be perfected or improved will be so. That which cannot, the Lord will cast out just as He did for the peoples of Greece, of Rome, of Rus. But our primary task remains the same: to ensure that the Church our fathers planted here in the South is well watered, to ensure that its fruit spreads throughout the land. Today is the day that the Lord has made – Let us rejoice in it! Let us proclaim the Good News to our neighbors not only in word, but in deed. Truly, the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.
Benjamin Dixon is a conservative political operative and commentator from North Carolina. He currently serves as the Veterans Committee Chairman for the Young Republican National Federation. Ben has served in both the US Army’s 101st Airborne Division and the French Foreign Legion. You can follow him on Substack at Where the Wasteland Ends, where he covers a variety of topics including history, politics, military & grand strategy, philosophy, theology, and more.
