Short answer: In one sense, no. In another sense, maybe. In yet another sense, definitely yes.
*
Mark Citadel, at his blog, posts an excellent essay Parallel Blueprint to Victory. In it he points to the successful colonization of parts of Western Europe by Muslims who reject their host societies, and he urges Christians to learn from their success. This post is not an evaluation of Mr. Citadel’s entire essay, but a meditation on part of it: Are unbelievers our enemies?
Some quotes from Mr. Citadel:
The solution for us [traditionalists] is not much different from the solution that Muslim immigrants to Europe have exemplified.
We call this the ‘parallel society’. This is not the creation of a hermit kingdom, it is the creation of [an] entirely separate and hostile social system that runs alongside the main culture.
…this approach is much more openly hostile than the one which [Rod] Dreher espoused, and I would argue it is this aggressive nature that determines long-term stagnation or long-term victory.
[snip]
Christians primarily need to start raising their children on two essential doctrines of this struggle.
1) You are Christian, you were born Christian, you will die Christian.
2) The world is not Christian. The world is your enemy.
[Emphasis in original.]
The key word for the present discussion is hostile. Since we are Christians, says Mr. Citadel, we should be hostile to those who are hostile to us. But to what extent are unbelievers our enemies?
In one sense, they are not. Scripture makes it clear that our ultimate battle is not with flesh and blood (mankind), but with Satan and his minions. See, e.g., Ephesians 6:12. All people are born dead in trespasses and sins and hostile to God (Ephesians 2:1), but God chooses some to be saved by giving them the gifts of repentance and faith in Christ. Those who remain hostile to God will remain hostile to God’s people, but our ultimate enemy is not the unbeliever.
In another sense, the unbeliever may be our enemy. In the not-so-distant past, all citizens of the Western nations recognized that theirs were Christian nations, and even the unbelievers (except, in some cases, for a tiny minority of revolutionaries) granted that Christianity had a right to rule. Unbelievers may have dropped out of the Christian society, but they did not work to destroy it.
No more. Atheism has girded itself for war. Unbelievers are now, speaking overall and with the existence of exceptions acknowledged, at war with Christendom. Since unbelievers in this sense have declared themselves to be our enemies, we are allowed to respond by acknowledging them to be our enemies. And they are not just our enemies in the spiritual sense. Whenever they forcibly legitimize social evils such as homosexuality, divorce, feminism, and mass immigration, they become our enemies in the practical sense.
Not all unbelievers support the liberal jihad against Christ. But enough of them do that we are justified in regarding the body of unbelievers as our enemies in this sense.
We Christians didn’t start the war but now that it has begun we are allowed to notice that we are under attack, and to respond.
And there is a third sense in which all unbelievers are our enemies. The Bible identifies the three basic enemies of the Christian as the world, the flesh, and the Devil. (See, e.g., Ephesians 2:1—3.) “The flesh” is our sinful nature. “The Devil” is not just Satan but all of his unholy minions. And “the world” is not planet earth, with its crust, mantle, core, rivers, mountains and seas. Here, “the world” means the non-Christian systems of the world: the philosophies, the movements and parties, and the governments that oppose Christ and his church. As one who rejects Christ, every unbeliever places himself within this vast meta-system that opposes Christ. And even when he is passive he still contributes to its advance.
*
So how should Christians respond to these facts? The obvious basic answer is that the Christian must defend himself against threats posed by unbelievers, even as he prays that they will come to Christ. And one of these threats is a temporal, a secular, a practical threat: that anti-Christian ways will permeate society and drag it down. Christians ought to notice these threats and defend themselves.
But there is a tradition of what might be called “culture-war pacifism” in many strains of Christianity. “Turn the other cheek” has often been misapplied to the culture wars that are always raging.
Evangelical Christians, for example, have generally opposed thinking of themselves as Christians by birth because they (rightly) see the Biblical teaching on a Christian identity as affirming that persons become Christian by repentance from sins and having faith in Jesus Christ. This being so, Evangelicals generally oppose anything that will tend to make people think that their Christianity is automatic, a part of their ethnic or national heritage. So they often oppose the culture wars.
[It is true that many Evangelicals are culture warriors. But the general thrust of historic Evangelicalism is to see kulturkampf as a distraction at best, and a sinful waste of resources at worst.]
But this is too narrow a view, my Evangelical brothers. Man is saved by faith alone, but he does not live by faith alone. Faith must undergird his life, but he must also take action. Although he can live in a hostile, non-Christian society, if God has so placed him, the Christian has no obligation to accept a social arrangement that is hostile to Christ. His duty to God is not just to have faith and to witness to other people. Since a society that obeys God’s laws is good, it is good for a man to support such a society, and to oppose anyone or anything that threatens this society.
A strong sense of having a Christian identity and the willingness to fight for what might loosely be called a “Christian society,” and not just faith in Christ for the forgiveness of our sins, is necessary for living well as Christians.
The Orthosphere 
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I remember Bonald saying something about a militant Christian tribalism. We need to realize the world is full of people that are our dire enemies and that they deserve no quarter since they would never give us that mercy.
Just because you think someone is not your enemy doesn’t mean they don’t hate you.
At the same time, I have always had a soft-spot for the seeking agnostic such as Huxley, Spengler and the like as well as for the cuttingly witty atheist like H.L Mencken.
But ultimately, regarding Jews, Muslims, and anti-theists? No mercy.
Also, Citadel is spot on when he said that we can learn from Muslims. Look at the Muslim response to the Charlie Hebdo Mohammed cartoon. A few months before that, there was a pro-sodomarriage cartoon showing the Three Persons of the Trinity sodomizing each other. What was the Christian response to this act of blasphemy by the Marxists, Jews and Continental Freemasons over at Hebdo? Silence.
The Muslims do get some things right.
Je suis Charles Martel. To hell with Charlie Hebdo. Just lolling at Muslim immigrants doing the jobs that the French just won’t do anymore.
Most of my family are non-believers. Or very loosey-goosey, lukewarm believers. It’s hard to think of e.g. grandma as an enemy.
Alan, I wonder why Evangelicals show this tendency (resistance to inherited Christian identity and societal identity) and confessionals don’t (or show less of it). You might be on to the answer. A Christian society is good.
By coincidence, I was reading a confessional (1689) Baptist website recently. There was an article attacking the de-facto/practical anti-nomianism so common in contemporary Evangelism. The point made was that even though the law doesn’t save, we should do our best to obey it since it is from God and, therefore, good. Same thing with a society with a Christianity idenity. It isn’t something we are guaranteed but it is good and should be pursued.
And I think confessionals are, obviously, more historic minded.
We appear to be entering an era in which much of the law is most certainly not from God. If the law says I have to applaud sodomy and soon I may be expected to celebrate paedophilia, I will have to be an outlaw.
I would probably titled the article “Christian, is the Barbarian Your Enemy?”, a question to which I could give an unequivocal answer of yes. When Christianity was allowed to propagate in China beginning in the seventh century, it was allowed to do so because the Emperor had been convinced that the “Religion of Light” was a civilized religion and would be useful in civilizing the population. Our common enemy is barbarism and barbarian religions, e.g. Islam, atheism, liberal Christianity in all of its guises.
Our permanent enemies are the world, the flesh, and the devil, and those who are not with Jesus in His One True Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church are, objectively, against Him and, thus our enemies.
Luke 19:27 tells everyone what will happen to those who do not accept Him.
This fact does not mean we have to kill our enemies but we have to at least recognise we have enemies and name the last prelate you heard say that.
What is it that our enemies want us to do?
Exactly what the alien said to The POTUS in “Independence Day”
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It was a pleasure to read this response to my essay on parallel societies. A few points:
First, I think we should never overlook how huge an issue abortion is here. Most would justify extreme opposition to the Third Reich based on its record of mass murder, and yet these same people do not extend the judgment placed on Hitler’s Germany to Modern Western countries, despite the fact that their moral crimes are greater by orders of magnitude. This is a puzzling position to take, and it belies a subconscious division in one’s mind between born and unborn in terms of value, and this is a division without justification. The Modern godless state is a state of mass murder. This must impact how the Christian views himself in relation to the state.
—
And secondly, your statement about being saved and living by faith alone is a very nice way to put it. A well-rounded man recognizes that it is not only religion which matters in day to day life, and we must take note of the realities which God has revealed not through Scripture, but through nature. These are very important. We have a tribalism built into us, yet Christians try desperately to abandon this, and so become irrelevant as a result. If everyone is part of your group, then nobody is.
The key take-away is threefold
1) Christians must begin to see themselves as a tribe, and almost in a selective initiatic sense begin to delineate between truth and falsehood without descending into petty inter-denominational squabbling. I talked about this in my essay on Progressive Christianity, which needs to be isolated and destroyed. Christians must see their children as their legacy, and it is their solemn duty to ensure these children remain in the tribe.
2) Christians must see Progressivism as a competing religion which has dominion over the world as it is, and that no matter what its emissaries say, their record is one of complete and uncompromising hostility against Christians. They cannot be negotiated with or compromised with. Not only do they assault us with legislation, but they also kill children and relish in it.
3) Christians must recognize their claim to Occidental land. Like parasites, Modernists have fed off of the labors of dead Christians. The lands they occupy are ours. Despite being the largest religious group in the world, Christians have virtually NO lands that are ours today, and Occidental Christians in particular have none. We are in diaspora because we have been robbed. Our prime political directive beyond mere survival of the faith, is the seizure of these lands and the re-constitution of Christendom.
The simple fact that over 1,350,000,000 human beings have been sacrificed by abortion alone since 1980 should convince us that the gates of Hell have been thrown wide open and that demons, literally, stalk the earth. The ancient Kabbalists tell us that every time a man ejaculates for any reason other than impregnation, devils are born from the semen, thus we see in the modern world another opening for the real presence of embodied evil. Human sacrifice plus intercourse with succubi and incubi has produced a perfect storm of evil.
There’s nothing subconscious about it, supporters of abortion rights quite explicitly do not value the unborn as equivalent to the born (whether or not you agree with their reasoning). This is not hidden or unconscious in any way and I’m surprised anyone would think it is.
I could make an argument that even militant Christians don’t uphold this equivalence, but maybe another time.
Not being a Christian I hold to the universal Buddhist position that there can be no distinction between the value of born and unborn life. As soon as the sperm, egg and gandharva (intermediate being) come together at the moment of conception a living being is fully present. I also accept the position that abortion carries the same moral weight as matricide or patricide, since the murder of your child is equivalent to the murder of your parent.
Ignore obvious red herring.
My point was to refer to Christians who are supposedly pro-life. I should have made this clearer. Obviously Modernist trash do not value the lives of unborn children, that is clear as day.
I don’t think you can put abortion and the Nazi genocide in that moral equation to justify mass uprising. On one hand you have the government rounding up people and putting them in ghettos, extracting labor, and/or torturing them and/or killing them. On the other you have individual mothers and their “doctors” torturing and murdering captive unborn people under a government that ensures their “right to privacy” in this matter and takes money from all citizens to pay for and promote it.
So the big difference is the active role of the government in conducting the bloody affair. In China they force abortion, but not here, yet.
One uprising against Nazis would be clear to resolve. The other uprising against mothers, their doctors, the legislature, the judicial, and the executive–all this in a Democratic Republic where there are alternate means to change the law–is more difficult to resolve with violence.
The ubiquity of abortion and sexual pervesion is a sign that our rulers have lost the Mandate of Heaven. As Saint John describes our present situation:
Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.
And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities. Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled fill to her double. How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow. Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her.
And we see that we have to take Paul’s exhortation most seriously:
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
The barbaric evil in the world, e.g. Islam, secularism, is merely the effect of evil in the spiritual world. Before any physical warfare can possibly be successful, a serious spiritual battle must waged, and the tactical advice given by your Lord Jesus is probably the best way to begin, “this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.”
“One uprising against Nazis would be clear to resolve. The other uprising against mothers, their doctors, the legislature, the judicial, and the executive–all this in a Democratic Republic where there are alternate means to change the law–is more difficult to resolve with violence.”
It could not be resolves with ‘mere’ violence because Modernity is a far more deeply rooted ideology than National Socialism, which it in fact encompasses to a large degree. But not all violence is uprising. I am not asking for an uprising, which would be patently foolish on my part from a pragmatic standpoint. My argument is that it is not foolish from a moral standpoint.
The government funds abortion. The government harbors and protects abortionists. This is complicity. It does not matter that the state isn’t mandating these happenings. It is tacitly, and in most cases actively, endorsing them. There was a time when this practice was illegal. It was the government which altered this state of affairs, and which branch it was down to is just finger-pointing. Western governments are responsible for mass murder.
So, if you put aside the pragmatic concerns for a moment and speak only in terms of principle, it seems to me that if any Christian believes that concentration camp commandants were deserving of the death penalty, then abortion doctors are even more deserving of the death penalty, as are almost all ‘mothers’ who have murdered their children, effectively having hired a contract assassin to do it. And, if one supports any kind of punishment for the overseers of the administrative state who provided the mandate to those camp commandants, then they must support just as grave a punishment for the members of our own administrative state who are complicit in this slaughter. Not to do so is a gruesome hypocrisy.
If Dr. Mengele should have been shot, then George Tiller should have been shot.
“Shot” should be “executed.” An execution is carried out by the state, with the safeguards and protocols that accompany state action.
If people take the moral law into their own hands, then anarchy is let loose, even if their case is righteous.
“There’s nothing subconscious about it, supporters of abortion rights quite explicitly do not value the unborn as equivalent to the born”
Maybe among zealot, hard-hearted activists but I’m not sure this is true at the common level. The average supporter (most people) seems to be saying they value “choice” and often refuse to address whether or not the unborn is of the same value. They won’t say they’re “for” or “believe in” abortion. They say “I believe in choice.” They avoid it explicitly/externally so I think they avoid the question in their minds too. Also, like so many things in our PC-saturated culture, it’s become something they have to say to avoid the jarring dissonance of saying something controversial or un-PC.
Such a weird sin. How do you punish the murderer if the murderer is the mother?
“If Dr. Mengele should have been shot, then George Tiller should have been shot.”
When Tiller was shot I read a lot of articles e.g. at Chronicles that said it was immoral based on the teaching that justice is to be dealt out by the sovereign. But what if the Tiller shooter was motivated by simply trying to protect the life of the next baby Tiller was going to kill. He could have legitimately defended the life of a child who was, say, targeted in a school shooting. Why was the Tiller shooting different? Tiller was going to kill more children.
Precisely, Bruce.
Every man has the same obligation to God and His law. We may be in different stations in life, but this in no way lessens our duty.
Yes indeed, but reality tells “us” that some men take those obligations more seriously than others AND a tradition THAT SHOWS US a certain race of men taking those obligations more seriously than all other races.
Mr. Citadel,
The universal pro-life position is a claim for the “right” of your would-be murderer to exist. Such a claim is the claim of the radical liberal. Furthermore, abortion is first and foremost an act of self-annihilation. The female literally kills a part of herself. This is “highest value” of the West… The “right” to self-annihilate. The pathology of abortion AS IT STANDS NOW is a self-annihilating pact between modern “mother” and modern “child.” All across the high IQ “white” male mass is a degenerate concession from “son” to “mother.” A concession that subconsciously grants the “right of my mother to have killed me in utero.”
“We,” as wS, reject abortion because a) our mothers had NO RIGHT to kill “us” in utero, period, b) “we” claim no right to “our” enemy’s existence and c) “we” reject all acts of self-annihilation.
Well, just to put my position across, as I detailed in this essay
http://citadelfoundations.blogspot.com/2014/10/why-god-given-obligations-trump-man.html
I do not believe moral relationships are accurately described in terms of ‘rights’. The Traditional method of viewing these relationships is as a system of duties and obligations.
Humans don’t have rights; they have obligations. Simone Weil said it best in her Draft for a Statement of Human Obligation: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgod/voices/weil.html
Mr. Citadel…
Exactly… Our mothers HAD NO “right” to kill “us” in utero.
Ergo, “we” reject abortion IN PARTICULAR fashion…
Likewise, traditionalists CANNOT BE universal pro-lifers unless they forgo a distinction between good and evil as the stance necessitates the “right” of your would-be murderer to exist. In other words, your universal pro-life position is ultimately self-annihilating.
Unequal humans cannot have equal obligations, can they?
We are in diaspora because we have been robbed. Our prime political directive beyond mere survival of the faith, is the seizure of these lands and the re-constitution of Christendom.
We are weakened and scattered because we play at being Christian. Christianity is a private passion and a public confrontation that proves itself with all of the fruits of the spirit with special care to love thy neighbor as yourself to the point of taking up arms to protect him and provide the culture that allows him to choose his destiny with or without God.
There is nothing beyond the horizon of the Gospel. Any attempt to achieve that “beyond” reverts to the before. Before Christ there was Moloch – or Dionysus – or Allah. After Christ there can only be Moloch or Dionysus or Allah.
But… the horizon of the Gospel is infinite…
The separation of the societies is already happening. It will accelerate.
Not only is there no difference between the born and the unborn; there is no difference between the living and the dead, who used to be called ancestors. Insofar as we are conscious – and moral – the dead are with us. The enlightened folk of Çatal Hüyük, a ten-thousand-year-old city in Anatolia, buried their ancestors in the floors of their apartments and slept in company with them “24/7.”
I second Arrogant Prig.
It seems to me that Traditional societies-cultures rooted in the sense of the sacred and conformity to the Real, are under assault across the globe by an anti-traditional nominalist Modernity. In view of that threat, why does it seem that there is more hostility between traditionalists of different Traditions rather than less?
We forget that we are outgunned and outnumbered and that sometimes you need to make tactical and even strategic alliances with people you may not trust and don’t really understand. My interest is in seeing civilization reestablished in Europe and Asia, and perhaps even established in the Americas. Any civilization must be based on an orthodox religion, and I believe there are two still active in the world: catholic Christianity (Roman Catholic and Orthodox Catholic) in Europe and Mahāyāna Buddhism in Asia. While I deny that Christianity and Buddhism are two manifestations of some Transcendent Unity of Religions (sorry Frithjof), I do believe that civilization in either its Western or Eastern flavors, provides a space in which men may become wise, pious and virtuous. I have no interest in converting Europe to Buddhism, and I do wish my Christian friends would spend less time worrying about converting the Chinese and a lot more time simply converting the damn Germans.
I am glad that there are those of Traditionalist persuasion in other religions who understand the tidal wave of what is essentially satanism that threatens the ENTIRE Traditional order, not just the Christian one which it has largely succeeded in overthrowing. I have had communication with a couple of Muslims who see the world this way, but it’s good to see a Buddhist reach this realization as well.
I have voiced support in the past for Burmese monk Ashin Wirathu, not because he is explicitly anti-Islamic (I left my counter-Jihad days behind me long ago), but because by virtue of this he is entirely hostile to globalist Modernism which wants to turn Burma into another client state, as is evident by his recent branigan with a UN official.
The differing religions of the world have always had friction between them, such is of course natural since all religions have political implications and where politics differs, conflict arises. (there are notable exceptions of course, of minorities practicing without harming the power structure, such as Christians filling high society roles in Alawite dominated Syria without much issue… at least not until the Sunnis tried to topple Assad. It turns out Alawite Muslims and Christians are strangely compatible). However, there is a greater threat which should be recognized by all, and it is a threat more insidious than anything like ISIS, because it often doesn’t need to use force to get its way. It is far more cunning, more like the deceiver himself than like Behemoth.
Across nations, there should be a consensus among religiously diverse societies and communities. The #1 threat to all Traditional religious practices, is Modernity. It doesn’t stop in Europe.
Protestant Christianity has always been weak on culture. This is hardly surprising, since they were protesting against a Catholic Christianity that had become, in their opinion, nothing but culture (i.e. “superstition” and “ritual”). Please take this in a spirit of comity, as an historical fact that is relevant to our present predicament. When Catholicism decays, as it has in much of southern Europe, you get a society of barbarians living amid the visible ruins of a Christian culture–the bells, the churches, the holidays, many of the folk rituals, are all still there. When Protestantism decays, as it has in much of of the United States, you get a society of barbarians living on the brummagem midway of a traveling carnival.
Protestants and Catholics are both unprepared for the future, in which Christianity will likely be a ghetto culture, but unprepared in different ways. Protestant culture is too “thin” to furnish the forms that will set the Ghetto of God apart from the City of the World; Catholic culture is “thick,” but its forms developed at a time when Catholicism was dominant.
Here in the United States, even Catholics must prepare for a post-Christian world that is specifically post-Protestant. We will not be enjoying a long post-Catholic twilight. Abandoned churches will not become museums; they will become massage parlors.
Protestant culture is not only thin, but most of its forms have diffused into secular culture, and so cannot serve as stigmata for members of a ghetto culture. Keeping Christmas and Easter hardly sets one apart. And when American women begin embroidering crosses on the bottoms of their blue jeans, it is not clear just what wearing a cross means.
Stigmata are essential to a ghetto culture. (We Catholics should offer the imposition of ashes only before 8:00 a.m. on Ash Wednesday.) They weed out members who are not committed to the stigmatized identity, but more importantly, they socialize the children into the idea that they are different.
Agree in general with what you said. Confessional Protestantism is more historic-minded and, thus, better in this respect. The closer-to-Catholic churches (which happen to be confessional) i.e. Lutherans and Anglicans, not surprisingly, are, as you say, thicker in culture.
Confessional Calvinist churches are also “closer-to-Catholic” and “thicker in culture.”
Confessional Protestantism certainly has a better sense of liturgical form. But I’m thinking here about practices on the boundary between the sacred and the profane, because it seems to me that these are the shell in which a ghetto culture can survive. There is one aspect of Protestant culture that I didn’t sufficiently credit, and that is the stigmata of “clean living.” I grew up in this culture, which set itself apart with prohibitions against drink, smoking, dancing and cards. These were things that good Christians didn’t do, and these taboos strongly reinforced Christian identity. Protestants were wrong (I think) to describe these activities as inherently sinful, but they were right in adopting stigmata to mark a boundary between themselves and the worldly. Most of these taboos are now obsolete, for one reason or another, but we might do something with an updated version of the objection to cards. What are the “cards” of today. The media, of course.
I confess (no pun intended) that I am not as familiar with confessional Calvinist churches as I am Lutheranism and Anglicanism. And I’m not real sure how different Presbyterianism is from Dutch/continental Calvinist. I know that R.C. Sproul’s chapel, although it’s a newer building, is a beautiful, traditional-looking church building. That’s a good sign. Sproul also seems to like Christmas a lot – another good sign.
JM Smith, your “practices on the boundary” sounds like what I’d call Catholic folk culture. I’m struggling to think of a Protestant equivalent. Burning effigies of Guy Fawkes?
Some protestants saw those things as inherently sinful, some as their equivalent of near-occasion-of-sin.
That’s the thing. There wasn’t much in the way of what I called “practices on the boundary” because one aim of the reformers was to remove these practices. Puritans aimed to purify the Church of what they regarded as Catholic corruptions, and these were as often liturgical and cultural as doctrinal. Many of them threw out Christmas along with all the other holidays, excepting Easter. The historian Christopher Dawson says that this is one reason American culture was so rapidly secularized, even while most Americans remained privately pious.
I should add one other item to my short list of Protestant cultural practices, though, and that is the sabbatarian blue laws that remained in force through my childhood. I know Protestants who are still strict about this, and it does serve as a stigmata (particularly for their children), but they are members of a dwindling breed. I live in the heart of the Bible Belt and the stores are packed on Sundays. One can pick out the Christians who have been to church (but not yet home to change), since they are the only ones who don’t appear to be on their way to a picnic.
Confessional Calvinist churches are also “closer-to-Catholic” and “thicker in culture.”
Not sure about that. Can you provide examples?
I think of books. Calvinists have certain books that they might carry around or discuss amongst each other.
Or maybe the beards?
That’s about all I can think of.
“Can you provide examples?” Sure, in a general way.
Remember first that I’m comparing confessional Calvinistic churches with generic Evangelical or mainline Protestant churches. It’s a matter of which group is closer to Catholicism. None of them are like Catholicism, but some are closer.
Remember also that I’m referring to historic confessional Calvinism, not pop-Calvinism of the “young, restless and reformed” variety, like Mark Driscoll before his downfall.
That said, the Calvinistic churches have liturgy, sacramentalism, exclusively-male clergy, extra ecclesiam nulla salus, church discipline, a strong sense of continuity with medieval and patristic Christianity, a tradition of engagement with the world rather than pietistic retreat, and so on.
And the beards help. Intimations of patriarchy and all that, y’know.
In this sense they’re “closer to Catholicism” and “thicker in culture.”
“the Calvinistic churches have liturgy, sacramentalism,”
I thought the Calvinists saw baptism and the Lord’s supper as mere signs and memorials. You practice infant baptism – does baptism effect salvation? I think I read somewhere that Calvin had a surprisingly high view of the Eucharist.
I’m not a Calvinist myself, but I do know something about their history. They certainly aimed to strip away “accretions” (such as, for instance, “Godparents”), but they also aimed to preserve fundamental institutions. With respect to Baptism, they were not anabaptists, and so did not believe the baptism by water must follow baptism by spirit. It remains for them a rite that marked admission into the Church, and so was administered to the children of Church members. In one sense, Calvinists took the Lord’s Supper more seriously, restricting it to persons who gave compelling testimony of baptism by spirit. It was the New Light sects like the Quakers who diminished or discarded the Lord’s Supper. Christian sects diminish or discard the Lord’s Supper when they no longer believe in a literal Second Coming, and so no longer require a ritual to “remember” Jesus until he comes again. At least, this is how I see it.
“Many of them threw out Christmas along with all the other holidays, excepting Easter. The historian Christopher Dawson says that this is one reason American culture was so rapidly secularized, even while most Americans remained privately pious.”
It seems to me that the US is one of the _least_ secularised of Western societies. Compared with Australia and the UK, where Christmas is still a big retail season (though nothing else) the US looks like a markedly Christian country.
I don’t know what the situation is in (Catholic) southern Europe or the Protestant north, but I would be surprised if religious observance were greater than in the US.
Americans are certainly more likely to go to church on Sunday morning, and to say grace before meals, and perhaps to flaunt bumper stickers with religious mottos, but Christianity is not woven into the fabric of our culture. It’s more like a patch that has been sewn onto it. Consider the “student-led prayers” that precede so many of our football games, graduation ceremonies, and other events. They are not evidence of a strong, natural, organic Christian culture, and occur only because, and so long as, there are a large number of Christians in the grandstands. When the number of Christians shrinks to an inconsiderable number, the “patch” will be removed and no one will notice that its gone.
I’m not doubting the sincerity of American Christians, or meaning to condemn Protestantism. But Protestantism was by design a movement that opposed the external forms of religion and focused on private conscience and personal piety. This is why, when Protestantism disappears, it disappears without a trace. Consider the example of place names, which long survive the culture that made them. A man wandering through Europe a thousand years from now will know that it used to be a Christian land, simply by looking at the original meaning of so many of the place names. The same man wandering through what used to be the United States will not draw the same conclusion.
Yes, it makes sense to prepare for underground churches, like in North-Korea and Saudi-Arabia. Catholics could develop a tribal identity by learning Latin, Orthodox could develop a tribal identity by learning Old Church Slavonic.
The only Catholic/Protestant synthesis capable of opposing and then separating from Modernity is white Supremacy.
Mods, why haven’t you banned this clown yet?
He’s not bad enough to ban, at least in my book.
If it sounds like I’m praising him with faint damns, it was not intended.
He has also respected our comments policy. Personal insults levied against other commenters, NB, violate it.
Plus, he is just right, clown or otherwise.
We all have trodden different paths to reaction, so I’m glad the Orthosphere has shown the good sense to be tolerant of our various modes of expressing our beliefs and commitments. Having been largely raised by thoroughly unreconstructed Southerners born at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, including a grandmother who was a member of the Christian Identity movement, I have yet to read anything by Thordaddy that even causes me to bat an eye. I may not always agree with him, but, to be honest, I would love to have him as a neighbor. I doubt he would be easily outgunned, and, come the revolution, that just might prove to be of decisive importance.
TD, I think I see what you mean here. “Catholic/Protestant” is, strictly speaking, synonymous with Western man in his religious being and white supremacism is the one and only road out of contemporary modernity, since contemporary modernity *just is* anti-white supremacy. An active embrace of white supremacy is the only thing that fully dissolves modernity’s claim on a man’s soul.
To whatever extent others here exhibit discomfort with embracing white supremacy–the great truth of white superiority and nonwhite inferiority–to just that extent are they yet deceived by the modern mirage, and will never arrive at the oasis they think they see about an hour’s crawl ahead. The coming social collapse that will inevitably beset the USA will, at the same time, dissipate the illusion that a “soft landing” via religious revival and/or a more genteel bigotry (than explicit white supremacy) is possible. Then, it will be revealed that all along there was no substitute for preparation for violent conflict. Then, like it or not, only our racial and ethnic kinsmen will be our friends and allies, while all those not our racial or ethnic kinsmen will only be our enemies.
Speaking directly to the theme of the original post–in the perilous times to come, it won’t so much be that the category “non-Christian” is the substance of enmity, but rather the category “nonwhite”. And that means that, even now, such a state of affairs is latent. If you don’t believe me, just wait–you’ll get the point, if you live long enough. And if *you* don’t live long enough to see that day, your descendants certainly will. When that day comes, will we be prepared for the violence and strife with which we will have to deal? I submit that white supremacy–with its customary emphasis on the necessity for ruthlessness–gives us our only shot.
Mr. McKenzie,
It seems these days that a non-violent “white” Christian is a soon-to-be dead Christian. And of course, that bothers the enemies of Christianity none whatsoever. And for those white Christian patriarchs, if the “protect” in “provide and protect” is not a call to the NECESSITY OF violence then what is it? Just a more elaborate “providing,” Mammon-style?
“It seems these days that a non-violent “white” Christian is a soon-to-be dead Christian.”
Heh heh–exactly.
“White Superiority / Supremacy” is a red herring. We whites, whether superior or inferior, are a people, and as a people we may not validly be denounced for caring for, protecting, and supporting, our own people. This caring, protecting and supporting does not make us “supremacists.” It makes us “normal people,” at least by historic standards.
But those who exaggerate racial hostility, while they are exaggerating a valid phenomenon, are just making the situation worse.
Mr. Roebuck…
With all due respect, modern Christian can in no way be accused of exaggerating racial hostilities… In fact, he can only be accused of severely underplaying them due a subconscious deracination.
I meant, many people exaggerate the significance of it. They say that therefore we must hate the other race.
Anyway, does the Bible refute a superior race of men? Not as extant, but just humanly POSSIBLE? I think not. In fact, Christianity IS the Supremacist Doctrine… The assertion of objective Supremacy both natural and supernatural. Christians ARE Supremacists. Period. But the Christian CANNOT BE deracinated AND still be ANY KIND of particular Christian. So each and every Christian MUST BE some kind of Christian because the deracinated “Christian” is a self-anmihilator, ie., not a Christian at all.
Mr. Roebuck…
Worshipping Perfection AS a white man (Western Christianity) in no way invokes notions of “hate” UNLESS one is inexplicably subservient to the radically liberated frame.
Mr. Roebuck…
A white Supremacist is a white man who believes in and therefore strives towards objective Supremacy…
You cannot debate this UNLESS you go into the mindset of the radical liberal.
Thus, Alan Roebuck, as a white Christian is a white Supremacist and then to publicly deny this is to profess that you are in fact a radical liberal. But, you are not a radical liberal. You are a Supremacist in general and white Supremacist in particular.
How can there be a real Catholic/Protestant schism when both sides are solidly anti-white Supremacy… Against white men striving towards Perfection both individually and ESPECIALLY collectively?
This ^^^ is the real debacle of modern “Christianity.”
Alan, if the white race is neither superior nor inferior to all other races then they are equal. I would hope that at a website committed to “traditionalism” we can safely dispense with any pretense of egalitarianism. And, though you are apparently loath to admit it, I don’t believe for even one second that you suppose the white race to be inferior to any other. Ergo…
But it’s your very unwillingness to be frank about these things that bespeaks a timorousness that signifies a de facto fealty to contemporary political orthodoxies, however residual. As I said in my comment above, whether you like it or not, the future is going to dissolve your residual servitude to contemporary shibboleths. All of us will be in better stead simply to let go of such hesitations right now, rather than wait for inevitable disillusion.
In the trial to come, Alan, nonwhite barbarians aren’t going to show your grandsons or granddaughters any mercy at all–and you may rue the day you fretted about Joel Osteen and Kenneth Copeland being the major concerns with which we ought to preoccupy ourselves.
Who is the enemy? It seems pretty clear from all of the above that the primary enemy is the secular Western society in which the orthodox who come here are dwelling. There also seems to be a feeling that the current “order of battle” is a given; that the future of Western Christianity, whatever it is to be, will grow out of the current orthodox cohort. In an important sense I agree with this; but the situation is extremely dynamic.
Excuse me if my grasp of history is inadequate or just wrong, but the “Benedict Option” and its variants seems to me to be, in fact, a reverse Benedict option. The monasteries were self-consciously evangelising institutions. They re-evangelised Europe by constantly going out, extending their reach and the network of evangelisation. As it is being discussed, the Benedict Option harks back to the retreat of Christianity to the remote boundaries of a chaotic set of cultures.
The process of retreat and re-evangelisation took centuries. I don’t see the current struggle being resolved on anything like that time scale. Modern cultures are far too dynamic.
Those with an historical magnifying glass may justly detect the roots of the current cultural collapse running back two or three centuries. However, this is not evident in the day-to-day life of the culture.
In the Eastern Church, the crisis was precipitated by the October revolution, the success of which surprised everyone.
The Christian West successfully resisted both Fascism and Communism. Even within Nazi Germany, the Confessing Church refused to embrace German Christianity, and the Catholic Church saw the essential evil of Nazism before the war. Pius XI’s _Mit Brennender Sorge_ (thought to have been penned by Pacelli as Secretary of State) makes wonderful reading.
The joint shocks of the First and Second World Wars are difficult to imagine, but it was the boomers who initiated the dramatic changes which we have inherited. And it seems to me that the single most powerful driver of that change has been the contraceptive pill. Without the pill, the carte-blanche abortion licence was inconceivable. It was only a generation that came to sexual maturity with the expectation of sex without consequences that could have embraced such a dramatic change. From the general availability of the pill to Roe vs Wade was little more than a decade.
Much is made of the infuence of the Frankfurt School, but I think that the state of mind and bodily infertility generated by the sexual revolution provided the soil for it, as whole populations set about destroying their descendants’ future for the sake of present orgiastic excess.
However suddenly it took hold, the cultural pastiche that resulted is inherently unstable. The most obvious but little appreciated marker of this instability is that boomer culture is sterile: it cannot reproduce itself. Such societies can only keep the wheels turning by programs of immigration, and it is here that the self-hatred of the West has reached its apogee.
The mindset of secularism was laid down in halcyon days of the 60s, when the engines of the West were still running on the economic and social capital that had been laid down by earlier generations. It is a mindset of privilege. However, it is not only demographically unsustainable; it is psychologically, intellectually and economically unsustainable. The absurdities are increasing in frequency and intensity. We have our own Red Guards, waving their shiny little black smartphones, and quoting the thoughts of Chairman Tweet, while metaphorically shattering all the glass in the schoolrooms for which their grandparents sacrificed so much. The contradictions are rapidly increasing. Where in 1996 the _First Things_ issue on _The End of Democracy?_ caused a bitter spilt in US conservatives, now a minority bench of the very Supreme Court make the same trenchant attacks on the majority bench that were so controversial in 1996. Europe is collapsing under the weight of illegal Muslim immigration.
These are symptoms of a culture approaching a terminal crisis. It will happen with startling speed, and when it does, assumptions about who continues to believe in what will be shredded. The gatekeepers and court jesters of secular certainties are being forced into more and more shrill irrationalities. They might insist that they are still true believers, but the smooth assurance of the confidence man is missing, and obviously so.
Such a time calls, not for retreat, but a sharpening of the traditional and orthodox analysis. We see that in forums like this, where lines of argument that have been completely excluded from “acceptable” discourse are being rehearsed. I agree with some, and disagree, sometimes strongly, with others. But the aftermath of the collapse of current certainties is likely to see radical alternatives competing for the field, and the reaction to the poisoning of Western culture may not itself be a very attractive thing.
I have drifted far from my original intention, but it is late and I must stop now. Thanks for reading this far.
Somewhere in the discourse of reaction – possibly here – a commenter recently said that the Fall of the West happened the way Hemingway said his bankruptcy happened: first slowly, then fast.
The 60’s do seem to have been an inflection point. But think of the curve of any positive feedback function, such as that of the population of deer unchecked by predators, or of compounding interest. That’s the curve describing the rate of devolution of social order; or perhaps of the incidence of social pathologies. Somewhere in the 60’s, the slope of that curve increased above the (already steep) 45 degree angle it had approached at WWI.
Are we at the vertical yet? When it is a Big Problem for girls to cut their forearms but a Brave and Wonderful Thing for them to cut off their breasts, it’s hard to see how we could get more depraved. There is in general these days an unprecedentedly large set of unprecedentedly acute contradictions of that sort operating in public discourse. [Is social depravation the unresolved conflict of contradictory moral precepts?] I suppose we will have attained the vertical when it begins to seem right-minded and even obvious, mere common sense, that we ought to round up and destroy the intolerable “intolerant haters.”
One way or another, we will reach 90 degrees along some dimension of social pathology. It is then that the crash will begin, and as you say these things happen very quickly – think of the Fall of the Warsaw Pact, or of the collapse of the bubble in real estate and stocks in 2008.
The 1960s were a time of epochal change, and conservatives find it hard not to see that delirious decade as the mother of all disasters. But conservatives should be careful when thinking about the 1960s, because thinking about the 1960s sometimes makes them stupid.
If you’re in the woods at night, standing on one side of a campfire, its very hard to see what’s on the other side of the fire. The 1960s is sort of like that campfire: it blinds us to what lies on the other side. To shift my metaphor, the house began to collapse in the 1960s, but the termites had been at work for a long, long time.
I also think there are some aspects of the 1960s that a Burkean conservative should admire. There was a genuine revival of interest in American folk culture, and a genuine questioning of “progress” and the cheap finery of American pop culture. Russell Kirk was closer to at least some of the hippies than he was to the Republican Party establishment. There were a great many spiritual charlatans at work, but they were exploiting a genuine spiritual awakening. Modern evangelicalism grew out of this period, which some have called the “fourth great awakening.” Conservatives tend to dislike the Gaia-worship that came out of the environmental movement, but they should applaud the growth of piety toward the patria.
The 1960s in most respects paralleled the romantic movement of the 1830s and 40s. Both were reactions against a preceding age of sterile rationalism, and both gave birth to radical and conservative streams of thought. In the case of the 1960s, the radical stream was much larger, but a conservative stream exists. The Orthosphere is part of it.
If Thordaddy isn’t a troll, he’s a crank. He has in his mind precisely one idea, and that idea is (in his mind) relevant to anything and everything. At this point, I could write Thordaddy’s comments, and so could all of you.
If we take Thordaddy to be advocating some sort of self-overcoming, some sort of annihilation of the flesh, his idea resembles Christianity. But by my reading, the self-overcoming he advocates is Nietzschean, not Christian. It is achieved through domination (i.e. “supremacy”), not submission, and through pride, not humility. Our aim as Christians is to become godly, not god-like, to be saints, not supermen.
As I’ve written to Thordaddy on more than one occasion (to no apparent effect), the word “supremacy” is properly a term of political theory, where it serves to indicate an opinion as to who should rule. As Christians, we are ultimately Christ supremacists–which is why we address him as Lord–although this cosmic fact is qualified by the lesson of the two faces of the coin. As Christians, we are Christ supremacists. We should all strive to be worthy subjects of Our Lord, but to call this striving a bid for supremacy is sheer satanic pride and blasphemy.
There is, of course, the other side of the coin, so we may entertain questions of proper temporal supremacy. Who should rule on earth? As Christians, we are advised to be relatively indifferent, meekly accepting any ruler who does not prevent us from properly acknowledging the ultimate sovereignty of Christ. It may well be the case that white Christians are best able to properly acknowledge the ultimate sovereignty of Christ under white rulers, and if this is the case we should be “white supremacists,” but we would in this case be white supremacists because we are, ultimately, Christ supremacists.
If Thordaddy wishes to talk about “superiority,” which is not at all the same as “supremacy,” he should give some content to that word. Superior at what, or in what way? Of all the ways in which a man can be superior, which are (is) superior? A man who strives for a superior body, such as that displayed on Thordaddy’s avatar, will have to settle for an inferior mind–time in the gym being time spent away from the library. Let’s hear an actual theory of superiority from Thordaddy, instead of the monotonous drum-beat of superior, superior, superior.
The white race has many fine qualities, and I have never felt an ounce of shame over being a member of it. But my affection for my people has very little to do with whatever claims they may make to superiority. Again, all of Thordaddy’s talk strikes me as Nietzschean, not Christian, as grounded in admiration rather than love.
This has gone on longer than I’d intended, but these ideas have been stewing in the back of my mind for a while now. I don’t think Thordaddy should be banned, but I’d like him to try to up his game and aim for some superior comments. Explain why your ideas are not Nietzschean; explain how they relate to the supremacy of Christ; explain why the supremacy of Christ would be best served by “white supremacy”; explain what superiority means.
(I’ll be off line for the next few days, so silence should not be taken as a sign of cowardice or contempt)
JMSmith…
What part of this ABSOLUTE conception do you dispute?
A white Supremacist is a white man who believes in and therefore strives towards objective Supremacy… Perfection.
White Supremacists = white Christians IN THE ABSOLUTE SENSE.
White Supremacy is a voluntary collective of white men who believe in and therefore strive towards objective Supremacy… Perfection.
White Supremacy = white Christianity in the absolute sense.
And now that you put yourself to the task of deconstructing this ABSOLUTE CONCEPTION of white Supremacist and white Supremacy, please do tell us your mechanisms of deconstruction and relativizing?
Do you not “see” how you are ACTUALLY conceding the intellectual war… You are telling “us” that modernists are just smarter… Mmm… More worldly than Christians. But then exclaiming, “well of course, we are less worldly than the modernist,” is not then some reprieve from the fact that your are actually telling other racialized Christians that you are not a real Christian at all.
Attempting to disassociate from ANY ASPECT of the Creation is pathological. Attempting to disassociate from particular origins within the Creation is self-annihilating. I didn’t make these “rules” up. The Perfect God “put” these rules forward. Your God and my God…. The same God.
Mr.Smith:
“He has in his mind precisely one idea, and that idea is (in his mind) relevant to anything and everything.”
Given the fact that contemporary modernity *just is* anti-white supremacy, thordaddy is right to suppose that white supremacy is always relevant to the sorts of discussions held around here.
“But by my reading, the self-overcoming he advocates is Nietzschean, not Christian.”
No one–including Nietzsche–is wrong about everything.
“Our aim as Christians is to become godly, not god-like, to be saints, not supermen.”
Distinctions without difference.
“the word “supremacy” is properly a term of political theory, where it serves to indicate an opinion as to who should rule.”
Though thordaddy gives the term “white supremacy” an expansive significance–a significance that I personally find interesting–there can be no doubt that it incorporates the political theoretical meaning that whites should rule.
“As Christians, we are Christ supremacists.”
Thordaddy has made this very point over and over.
“As Christians, we are advised to be relatively indifferent, meekly accepting any ruler who does not prevent us from properly acknowledging the ultimate sovereignty of Christ.”
Surely there is a difference between what was needful in a time when Christians were the most threadbare of minorities, and what is needful in a time when the glorious splendor of a millennium-long international “Christendom” lies just behind us–and might yet be recuperated.
In any case, submitting “meekly” to a liberal regime which is itself an incarnation of relative meekness just seems doubly craven.
” It may well be the case that white Christians are best able to properly acknowledge the ultimate sovereignty of Christ under white rulers, and if this is the case we should be “white supremacists”
Bingo! Thordaddy’s point entirely.
“If Thordaddy wishes to talk about “superiority,” which is not at all the same as “supremacy,” he should give some content to that word. Superior at what, or in what way?”
And so, Mr. Smith, you imply that the white race might not be superior overall to other races. Yet we both know you don’t actually believe that. Why all this rigmarole?
“Again, all of Thordaddy’s talk strikes me as Nietzschean, not Christian, as grounded in admiration rather than love.”
Obviously, admiration and love aren’t entirely disjunct.
Now–while I of course know where you’re coming from–are Nietzscheanism and Christianity absolutely incompatible? If so, why did Nietzsche himself say that the ideal man would be a “Caesar with the soul of Christ”?
JMSmith…
For the wS, the Black Question has been answered. Separation. Only modern “white” “Christian” seemingly longs for that degenerate relationship.
So when one thinks of white Supremacy in relation to “blacks,” he need not think in terms of superior or inferior, but simply separation.
PS. I rarely use the word superior. Striving towards Supremacy is open to all sentient human beings. It cannot be otherwise. This reality is no way argues against wS.
“Unbeliever” is both too polite a way to label the enemies of Christianity and perhaps a false distinction? There was a time when modernism was accused of being in the pursuit of “perfecting man,” with the futility of such an undertaking rooted in “it” possessing no absolute conception of Perfection, ie., there is no OBJECTIVE Supremacy. The modernist believes himself to be a more “perfected individual” all the while vehemently rejecting Perfection. Now, all are in apparent agreement, “believer” and unbeliever alike… “We” cannot “perfect man” because there is no model of Perfection to emulate.
This ^^^ is what the Orthosphere, collectively, is claiming AS THOUGH “it” were an unbeliever.
Can someone explain how Christ as His teaching is a race doctrine?
As I understand it, the Incarnate Christ saves all of humanity – all of creation actually.
Christianity is not a “race” doctrine. But a deracinated “Christian” is no such thing. Christianity is a Supremacist Doctrine… Christianity LITERALLY ASSERTS the existence of objective Supremacy… Perfection… The Perfect Man. And self-evidently, some men believe this more than others and some race has done exactly the same thing. Ergo, some race believes in objective Supremacy as Perfection and The Perfect Man more than all other races. This is indisputable and why white Christians are “smeared” as white Supremacists and murderously hated around the globe ESPECIALLY by our “white brothers.”.
“Christianity is a supramecist doctrine”
Ok…….I’ve never heard it put that way. If by supremacy we mean union with God?
Cassiodiorus, Thordaddy lives in his own rhetorical world. It bears some resemblance to our world, but proceed with great caution when entering it.
No, Mr. Roebuck… I am just able to step “outside” of the radically autonomous milieu better than most…
NOT A SINGLE Orthospherean has been sufficiently motivated enough to offer up one simple rebuttal to my continuous CLAIM that white Christians equal white Supremacists…
Orthospherean: White Christians ARE NOT white Supremacists.
Even now, when Mr. Alan Roebuck, top-notch white Christian, reads what is right before him… He WILL NOT object. He CANNOT OBJECT. He will not type in the above rejection and press “post comment.” And the REASON that Mr. Alan Roebuck will not simple assert that white Christians are not white Supremacists IS BECAUSE such an assertion IS EQUAL TO proclaiming one is NOT A Christian.
THIS ^^^ is the psychologically-twisted “intellectual” game that white Christian are losing and being crushed out of existence for that loss.
White Christians are not White Supremacists, Thordaddy. The two categories may overlap; but they are not, as you say, equal. For them to be equal, membership in one category would necessarily follow from membership in the other. Outside of your head, the phrase “white supremacy” is the theory that whites should rule. The word “supremacy” does not appear in any of the Bible concordances I have consulted, although “supreme” does. When it does not refer to God, it refers to sovereign political authority (e.g. 1 Peter 2:13-17). It is obvious that there are many, many white Christians who are not white supremacists, and many, many white supremacists who are not Christians.
Christians are very clearly instructed to submit to the existing sovereign political authority, whatever it may be, unless that authority prevents them rendering unto God, that which is God’s. This is the meaning of the lesson of the coin. They are not told to scrape and scramble for supremacy, but to keep their eyes fixed on a kingdom that is not of this world. This does not mean that Christians may not seek political power, or hold political opinions. We are not enjoined to quietism. But it does mean that Christianity is compatible with a wide range of political arrangements and opinions.
I’m willing to pretend that the word “supremacy” means perfection, for the sake of this argument. And I will grant you that Christ has told us that we “must be perfect” (Matthew 5:28). But this command appears at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, which begins with the Beatitudes, so Christian perfection would seem to have something to do with being “poor in spirit,” “meek,” “merciful,” etc. What is the connection? Well, the sermon goes on to describe what moral perfection would be, making it clear that no man can hope to succeed in attaining perfection by his own striving. Thus the path to perfection begins in humility–what you might call “self annihilation.”
If people have failed to “rebut” your “continuous claim that white Christian equals white supremacy,” it may be because it has been nothing but a “continuous claim.” You have offered no arguments in support of this claim, cited no authorities, produced no evidence. You’ve given us nothing to rebut.
Let me explain this another way…
White Christians are dying, physically… Meaning, the long term trend “sees” white Christians heading towards 0.
But this not an actual problem for either the passing on of Christianity or a problem for most “white” people. Orthosphereans ARE A RADICALLY LIBERATED mixture of these basic ideas. SO AS LONG AS Christianity can be “passed forward,” it DOES NOT MATTER if white people completely die out.
This ^^^ is PATHOLOGICAL.
jMSmith retorts…
“White Christians are not White Supremacists, Thordaddy. The two categories may overlap; but they are not, as you say, equal.”
Where they overlap, they must be equal and where they don’t overlap, they must not actually be EXACTLY what they claim.
“For them to be equal, membership in one category would necessarily follow from membership in the other. Outside of your head, the phrase “white supremacy” is the theory that whites should rule. The word “supremacy” does not appear in any of the Bible concordances I have consulted, although “supreme” does. When it does not refer to God, it refers to sovereign political authority (e.g. 1 Peter 2:13-17). It is obvious that there are many, many white Christians who are not white supremacists, and many, many white supremacists who are not Christians.”
Again, all this hinges on *you* BEING IN THE MIND of the radical liberal which is equal to claiming that you are not a Christian.
“Christians are very clearly instructed to submit to the existing sovereign political authority, whatever it may be…”
Christians ARE NOT instructed to submit to self-annihilation through FORCEFULLY IMPOSED mechanisms of “tolerance” and “nondiscrimination.” This is the diabolical blasphemy of the enemy within.
“…unless that authority prevents them rendering unto God, that which is God’s.”
Our “authorities” absolutely do not acknowledge our God. Moot point.
“They are not told to scrape and scramble for supremacy, but to keep their eyes fixed on a kingdom that is not of this world. This does not mean that Christians may not seek political power, or hold political opinions. We are not enjoined to quietism. But it does mean that Christianity is compatible with a wide range of political arrangements and opinions.”
Exactly, white Christianity is only compatible with Perfection as the ultimate “operating paradigm.” Our “authorities” operate within the “equality” dogma.
“I’m willing to pretend that the word “supremacy” means perfection, for the sake of this argument. And I will grant you that Christ has told us that we “must be perfect” (Matthew 5:28). But this command appears at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, which begins with the Beatitudes, so Christian perfection would seem to have something to do with being ‘poor in spirit,’ ‘meek,’ ‘merciful,’ etc. What is the connection? Well, the sermon goes on to describe what moral perfection would be, making it clear that no man can hope to succeed in attaining perfection by his own striving. Thus the path to perfection begins in humility–what you might call ‘self annihilation.'”
Bingo… The alt-rite critique comes into play… “White Christianity” is self-annihilating, ie., DEGENERATE. “White Christianity” is anti-white Supremacy and thus self-annihilating. This ^^^ is the fundamental psychological battle in a nutshell.
“If people have failed to ‘rebut’ your ‘continuous claim that white Christian equals white supremacy,’ it may be because it has been nothing but a ‘continuous claim.’ You have offered no arguments in support of this claim, cited no authorities, produced no evidence. You’ve given us nothing to rebut.”
No… They have not rebutted the claim because they understand deep down inside what they will actually be saying to the modern world. They will be DENYING their Christian faith (what the leftist “intellectual” seeks so as to keep his hands “clean”). They will be denying their belief in Perfection as something REAL and thus intelligible and able to be related to. This state of being is the state of radical autonomy and it is caused by a pathological deracination. A pathological deracination found throughout “white Christianity,” Protestant, Orthodox and Catholic alike. An endemic deracination simply not found in nonwhite Christians.
Td,
I’m sorry, I just don’t follow you. The Gospel and the church fathers are what I rely upon to deepen my understanding of the Christian faith. Your position seems, well, unrelated.
And I learned “race-realism” on the pee wee football field.
You have entered The Thordaddy Zone, a dimension not of reason and revelation but of racial non sequiturs.
It also seems to me that the Orthosphere has its own version of Godwin’s Law: as a comment sections grows, the probability of Thordaddy appearing and explaining how Christianity is all about [white] supremacy (and vice versa) approaches 1.
I’m also starting to suspect that Wade McKenzie is a Thordaddy sock puppet.
As a (gasp) non-white Christian, one would expect me to be enraged or insulted by Thordaddy’s antics. But nope, I’m coming to appreciate him as a source of avant-garde entertainment. Besides, if I want to read a serious, thoughtful religious blog, there are many for me to choose from on the blogroll.
Cassiodorus, don’t fall into the trap, dude. He’s a nut with too much time on his hands.
Jim…
What’s the trap? Is “it” really real?
Isn’t the real trap that you believe white Supremacist equals white degenerate, but then cannot come to admit to yourself that your claim comes from the mind of a radical liberal?
Is it really not self-evident that the best of white men be referred to as white Supremacists? And if the best of white men are also naturally white Christians, is it not self-evident that the best white Christians are white Supremacists?
Cassiodorus,
That you limit yourself to the learning of a thing is nothing to tell us about and equally irrelevant to the nerdy “race-realists” telling “us” old jocks about their statistically and scientifically validated “race-realism” learned at the ripe age of 23 or so. I LEARNED Christianity through life experience AND immersion in radical modernity and then use Scripture for confirmation of that realty.
AND THE REALITY is that Christianity IS THE CLAIM that objective Supremacy is REALLY, REALLY REAL. So real is Perfection that “it” is the Christian’s “operating paradigm.”
Is it possible just to ban TD’s IP? Seriously, in the few weeks I’ve been reading he’s single-handedly (well ok, with Wade’s help) derailed three threads that could have led to some good discussion.
Honestly, I don’t even really care that he’s a white supremacist; it’s a position that is compatible with Christianity as long as you don’t deny that non-whites are fully human, have immortal souls, and ought to be saved. BUT not every single thing we talk about here is related to white supremacy.
It’s also possible to ignore his off-base comments.
Sure it is, but because I don’t waste my time making such comments either here or IRL then the advice is worthless.
Certainly, Mr. Roebuck, as a Protestant, you can “see” the potential flaw in purposely limiting one’s self to learning about a “thing” especially if it’s the strict statistical type of learning that leads one to race-realism far deeper into formative years.
I learned about the Supremacist Doctrine of Christianity as exemplified by the white race through a deep immersion in radical liberation. In this manner, the Fathers of the Church, and more importantly, Scripture, work as certain confirmation.
The zeitgeist neither wants you to be a great white Christian nor a genuine white Supremacist. So then to not comprehend that these two entities are synomymous in the minds of the radical liberationist is just an inexplicable shortcoming on your part.
All his comments are off-base, to say the very least.
New people constantly fall into the trap of talking with him and then they leave forever. His ramblings turn off a lot of people visiting the site who otherwise would stay and contribute to the argument.
Honestly, I liked the Orthosphere at first, but it seems to be filled with kooks, so I’m probably not going to bother with it anymore.
Jim…
You ought to read Kristor’s new post and ask yourself whether its claim is equal to my assertion that white Christians believe Perfection to be their “operating paradigm?”
And when you come to the realization that I’ve been saying the exact same thing then YOU will be the one bearing false witness and engaged in a sinful demonization of a white Christian who is just meaner than you, but certainly no less faithful.
Jim, it would be ill-advised to leave such a great site because of one poster with whom you have disagreements. I have before lodged objections with Thordaddy’s bizarre terminology, but the Orthosphere isn’t really about him.
To MC: It’s not just TD, but you’re right: I shouldn’t let it bug me. It’s just that lately some really good articles have been followed by a bunch of comments that don’t seem to have anything to do with their content, and that’s a bit insulting to their authors.
We’re working on a solution to the problem. Stay tuned…
This is pure histrionics… The stuff of the SJWs deeply embed within Christianity.
Thor I looked into your past. It appears in 2009 you were very sane and could follow a discussion. You made great arguments pertaining to the topics at hand. I found one where you explained that reducing immigration to Australia would reduce global warming, yet none of the global warming alarmists would admit the logic. I also found some where you went up against abortionists with the same self-annihilation logic you currently use, but back then it was much clearer and sane.
I don’t know if you had a head injury, or drugs are to blame, but you’ve lost it man. You’ve lost something. Perhaps it is time to retire from the internet?
Hell is eternal, Hell is eternal, Hell is eternal…
Everytime you appear in order to troll a good site, I will hammer you down.
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True, but in what way is mass immigration hostile to Christ?
Mass immigration may not be directly hostile to Christ, but it is a natural and destructive result of the current anti-Christian worldview which dominates the world. It produces balkanization which leads naturally to tyranny or war.
Disagree on this. It may produce and lead to those things, but preventing it is the very purpose of civilised society and all that it professes. One cannot assert that mass immigration will lead to war without also asserting that the fundamental powers of the society war is waged to defend are impotent. In Christian terms, it seems to also presume that God is not sovereign and the Gospel is not His power for salvation.
If preventing “it” (tyranny and war, I presume) is what civilized society and all it professes is about, then if mass immigration will likely lead to tyranny and war, it is our duty to prevent “it” (mass immigration); that mass immigration *may* lead to those things (and a very solid argument can be made that it has in our case), that’s good enough for me.
I have advocated a strict moratorium on immigration to this country for a long time now, not because I think there’s a snowball’s chance in Hades it will happen in my lifetime, but because it’s the right thing to do given where we are at this very moment, and is in keeping with God’s separation of the races as Citadel points out.
Who are the immigrants? In 9 out of 10 cases, they are anti-Christians. But I digress, mass immigration is hostile to Christ because it is a betrayal of the sacred order, the World of Tradition ordained by God, which is necessarily ethnocentric. People want to live among their own kind. To say this is immoral and that foreigners should be foisted upon people, even to the brink of their own genocide, is to say God was wrong in dividing us into races.
Posting problems, so I’m trying down here.
This is in response to Bruce B. | October 9, 2015 at 12:13 PM.
No. We see them as the two and only sacraments, both of which were instituted by Jesus.
No. Salvation is through the unmerited grace of God; there is nothing we can do to earn it, nor anything we can do to lose it.
Calvin on the sacraments:
From the Orthodox Presbyterian Church website, in an article called “Reformation — Then and Now“
Wm. Lewis,
By coincidence, I checked the site and saw you commented. I had been wanting to apologize to you for a while for something arrogant I said in a comment but hadn’t seen you around here – I apologize.
Thank you for the information on the Calvinist perspective. I assume the memorialist view is Baptist – they call them “ordinances” not sacraments.
I admit I am still confused. My definition of a sacrament is “a visible sign that bestows effects invisible grace” or something like that (where salvation is through grace). So in this sense, sacraments effect salvation though they don’t act without faith. This doesn’t seem to be Calvin’s position. The non-elect can and probably do participate in them so I don’t see how they’re God’s pledges to them.
Hi, Bruce B.,
Thank you for your gracious apology; I accept it, of course. I do recall some kerfuffle earlier this year, and wanted to follow up on it, but I set it aside, and now don’t recall what post it was in. No matter; I was probably unnecessarily provocative myself.
The non-elect can, and do, participate in the sacraments, but when they partake of the Lord’s Supper unworthily, they are guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord (1 Corinthians 11:27). This is why in the church I attend, the pastors always warn those attending services not to participate unless they meet certain criteria, which they also state.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q&A 91–97, deals with the sacraments and their meaning. While not identical to Calvin’s statement above, I believe that they are compatible. I hope the lengthy quotation below answers your questions.
Q. 91. How do the sacraments become effectual means of salvation?
A. The sacraments become effectual means of salvation, not from any virtue in them, or in him that doth administer them; but only by the blessing of Christ, and the working of his Spirit in them that by faith receive them.
Q. 92. What is a sacrament?
A. A sacrament is an holy ordinance instituted by Christ; wherein, by sensible signs, Christ, and the benefits of the new covenant, are represented, sealed, and applied to believers.
Q. 93. Which are the sacraments of the New Testament?
A. The sacraments of the New Testament are baptism and the Lord’s supper.
Q. 94. What is baptism?
A. Baptism is a sacrament, wherein the washing with water in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, doth signify and seal our ingrafting into Christ, and partaking of the benefits of the covenant of grace, and our engagement to be the Lord’s.
Q. 95. To whom is baptism to be administered?
A. Baptism is not to be administered to any that are out of the visible church, till they profess their faith in Christ, and obedience to him; but the infants of such as are members of the visible church are to be baptized.
Q. 96. What is the Lord’s supper?
A. The Lord’s supper is a sacrament, wherein, by giving and receiving bread and wine according to Christ’s appointment, his death is showed forth; and the worthy receivers are, not after a corporal and carnal manner, but by faith, made partakers of his body and blood, with all his benefits, to their spiritual nourishment and growth in grace.
Q. 97. What is required to the worthy receiving of the Lord’s supper?
A. It is required of them that would worthily partake of the Lord’s supper, that they examine themselves of their knowledge to discern the Lord’s body, of their faith to feed upon him, of their repentance, love, and new obedience; lest, coming unworthily, they eat and drink judgment to themselves.
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Is there going to be a battle for the SBC? Or will they roll over play dead?
https://freeamericannational.blogspot.com/2018/06/is-there-going-to-be-battle-for.html?m=1