There seems
to be quite a fair amount of cultural tone-deafness and historical ignorance
amidst the episcopacy of the various Orthodox jurisdictions in the United
States. Abp. Elpidophoros of the Greek
Archdiocese of America epitomizes this in his 2023
Thanksgiving Encyclical. A mistake
is made right in the opening line:
‘Our National Day of Thanksgiving arrives in a time when
the world is in turmoil, and “wars and rumors of wars” (Matthew 24:6) cast a
pall over the global community.’
Anyone who
has read more than the simplified comic book version of U.S. history (to use
Dr. Clyde Wilson’s words) will understand that the United States are not ‘one
nation indivisible.’ Those words, and
the whole Pledge of Allegiance, were written by
a socialist, Francis Bellamy, in the 1890s:
What’s so conservative about the
Pledge?
Very little, as it turns out. From its
inception, in 1892, the Pledge has been a slavish ritual of devotion to
the state, wholly inappropriate for a free people. It was written by
Francis Bellamy, a Christian Socialist pushed out of his post as
a Baptist minister for delivering pulpit‐pounding sermons
on such topics as “Jesus
the Socialist.”
Bellamy was devoted to the ideas of his more‐famous cousin
Edward Bellamy, author of the 1888 utopian novel Looking Backward. Looking Backward describes
the future United States as a regimented worker’s paradise where everyone
has equal incomes, and men are drafted into the country’s “industrial army” at
the age of 21, serving in the jobs assigned them by the state. Bellamy’s novel
was extremely popular, selling more copies than other any 19th century
American novel except Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Bellamy’s book
inspired a movement of “Nationalist Clubs,” whose members campaigned for
a government takeover of the economy. A few years before he wrote the
Pledge of Allegiance, Francis Bellamy became a founding member of Boston’s
first Nationalist Club.
After leaving the pulpit, Francis
Bellamy decided to advance his authoritarian ideas through the public schools.
Bellamy wrote the Pledge of Allegiance for Youth’s Companion, a popular
children’s magazine. With the aid of the National Education Association,
Bellamy and the editors of Youth’s Companion got the Pledge
adopted as part of the National Public School Celebration on Columbus Day 1892.
Bellamy’s recommended ritual for
honoring the flag had students all but goosestepping their way through the
Pledge: “At a signal from the Principal the pupils, in ordered ranks,
hands to the side, face the Flag. Another signal is given; every pupil gives
the Flag the military salute–right hand lifted, palm downward, to a line
with the forehead and close to it… At the words, ‘to my Flag,’ the right hand
is extended gracefully, palm upward, towards the Flag, and remains in this
gesture till the end of the affirmation; whereupon all hands immediately drop
to the side.” After the rise of Nazism, this form of salute was thought to be
in poor taste, to say the least, and replaced with today’s hand‐on‐heart
gesture.
Furthermore,
the traditional view of the nature of the union of the States was that of a
voluntary union. Each State was
equivalent to a nation of Europe or any other continent, able to come and go as
she wished from the United States. The
historian Dr J. A. C. Chandler wrote a
long piece on the U.S. constitution of 1787, explaining that view (we part
ways with him on the purported ‘sovereignty of the people,’ however):
As an introduction to the
subject, let us examine the Southern view of the nature of the constitution. To
Southerners, the Union was a compact, entered into by separate and distinct
political bodies. Such was the Union of the states under the Articles of
Confederation, and such the South believed was the Union under the present
constitution. According to this compact theory, the government of the United
States was created by the states and all the powers of the Federal government
are held in trust for the states themselves. Sovereignty, therefore, does not
belong to the government of the United States or to any state government, but
to the people who made the government of the United States and the states, that
is, to the people of the several states taken individually and not to the
people of the United States as one mass. These are the views expressed by
Alexander H. Stephens, and, in general, were the views held at the time of the
adoption of the constitution of the United States. Such were the views of Mr.
Madison and Mr. Jefferson, and even of Mr. Hamilton himself, with reference to
the question of sovereignty, though Mr. Hamilton differed from Mr. Madison and
Mr. Jefferson as to the limitations placed upon the Federal government.
This view is
verified in actual history by the fact that North Carolina existed outside the
U.S. for a time, as did Texas and Vermont,
before they decided to join the union.
And the
Treaty of Paris of 1783 that formally ended the colonies’ war for
independence with Great Britain names, in its first article, each former colony
as a sovereign, independent country:
His
Brittanic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New Hampshire,
Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New
York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South
Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and independent states, that he
treats with them as such, and for himself, his heirs, and successors,
relinquishes all claims to the government, propriety, and territorial rights of
the same and every part thereof.
Now, who was
it that brought a violent end to this understanding of the union? None other than Pres. Abraham Lincoln, the
very same one of whom Abp. Elpidophoros quotes sympathetically in his
encyclical:
. . .
The rest is
at https://orthodoxreflections.com/the-orthodox-bishops-in-the-united-states-act-culturally-illiterate/.
--
Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us
sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!
Anathema to the Union!
