There are some murmurs, and some rising focus of attention, among people employed by the British state, about the Orthodox Church in England. I have heard a programme aired twice, and I believe it has been shown again on BBC, about young men in England and the USA joining the Orthodox Christian Church. The phrase ‘right wing’ has been applied to these young men, and by implication, the Orthodox Christian Church is cast as being ‘right wing’.
I have some ideas about this, and some ideas about the British state and the state broadcaster. My ideas are quite straightforward; they are also true, as far as I can see, so I hope they can be of use to others.
At the church service today, during which this modest attack on our Church made by the BBC and the state was mentioned, I think that I was surrounded by Christians from Ukraine, Russia, Japan, China, the USA, South Africa, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, and other places; and also from all parts of the United Kingdom. As I have remarked before, over the years, this is how a true internationalism in the United Kingdom is acceptable and possible; this is how an international community can work. The Church, as established by Christ and his disciples, is an international thing; it has no interest in colour, race, or country of origin.
The Christian Church is a true global community. As such, it is a rival to the other types of international community, namely, the globalist, internationalist, authoritarian approach taken by contemporary British political actors. British governments of all kinds, and for at least three decades, have thrown the borders of our country open, so as to allow vast numbers of mere foreigners to rush in, and roam around our country without any opposition. They did so, on the premiss that people from all across the world can simply rub along together inside the United Kingdom. The natural outcome of that governmental approach is naturally the destruction of our country.
As we see, the community of Christians share a belief and practice. But the community of the modern British state does not share a belief and practice, but is rather ‘liberal’; it is international only because GDP figures look better when the borders are open. Therefore, the State and the Church share an interest in humanity in general. But while the Church brings international Christians together, the State has no criterion of entry other than financial enrichment and political ambition. And there is very good reason for the State and the liberal establishment, to feel ill at ease with the Church, because the Church is international because of God’s commands, while the State is international for reasons nobody can clearly express, except that there is some increase of wealth in some hands. When they therefore say, in public, that the Christian Church is ‘right wing’, implying some kind of racism or whatever they call it, they are not so much telling the truth dispassionately, as they are simply attacking a rival, and trying to undermine the Church.
It is a fundamental aspect of all Western states and nations, especially the British one, that there is a distinction between Church and State. The State is the government. The Church is the people of God. They are not the same thing, yet they have to co-exist. The Prussians invented the ‘nation state’, which does join them together; but the people Great Britain fought two world wars in order to crush Prussian Germany, and stop the spread of it.
The State has this job: first, to protect the property of the nation, to protect the money and property of the people; second, it must protect the borders of the land, and by extension, the Church. That is the State’s reason, that’s why it exists.
The Church on the other hand, has this purpose: to bring the people together in the worship of God. The Church does not have a monopoly on worship of God, since there are also hermits, monks, monasteries, and private individuals who worship God in their own way, and stand outside the Church hierarchy, such as that is. The Church is a public organisation for the benefit and welfare of the people.
Christ himself laid down these principles: he took no part in politics, he did not rebel against the State; he asked his followers to recognise that the State is essential. The Church must survive alongside the State, but separate from it.
However, in recent times, the State has taken to failing in its job; it has begun both to over extend its are of responsibility, and, to fail at its proper occuapation or purpose. Let’s not talk about the vast increases in population because of weakness at the borders, some of it very harmful indeed. The British state is failing in other areas, too; spending on the military is totally inadequate; protection of British ownership of our country has totally disappeared. This is partly because the State, since around 1910, has encroached onto the area which rightfully belongs to the Church. It is involved in charity, in supporting families with money; it is involved in making jobs, in extending charity to international people – all of which it ought not to be doing. So, it has become the rival of the Church. Whether it is also the rival of God is another matter.
The State, or the government, whose job from all historical time, was to close the borders of the nation very tightly, and whose second job was to protect private property and wealth by means of the law, has so far strayed from the straight path in our time, that in a recently released document from the State’s counter-terror programme ‘Prevent’, it is said that anyone who believes in that a nation has borders, and must protect the people, is ‘right wing’, and should be considered a threat to the country.
The government is now very untraditional, and is not doing its proper job, but rather a hybrid sort of State-as-Church thing, similar to the old atheist socialist purpose, like those European governments which went off the beaten path so badly in the twentieth century, under the Communists and the various types of national socialism.
On the other hand, the Orthodox Church remains obviously traditional, and clear sighted about its historic role. To an Orthodox Christian, it must be clear, that the Church of Christ alone ought to be looking after the people, while the State ought to stay in its lane, and look after the borders and the laws on private property. Because this is clear to a Christian, it is therefore easier for a Christian to hold the traditional view: that the nation must be protected, and God must be worshipped in humility and with a transcendental selflessness. A Christian should find the current extreme-liberal way of government unnatural, because it is atheist, intrusive, and socialist, international in an unnatural way. If the British Parliamentary system has created a monstrous hybrid of church and state, then one would expect a situation where property is stolen without opposition, tax is overbearing and spending profligate, borders are porous; and the threat of external enemies, and defeat in war, become likely.
A Christian Church needs a particular land in which it can serve the people. It requires social harmony, definite borders, and above all, because Christians aim at sainthood and total denial of the world, the Church needs a government which will protect the people from external enemies. Christians need friends, and need to be shielded from enemies. Whereas Jesus said ‘love your enemies’, this is meant in the sense of prayerful stillness, and inner composure, and so that the Spirit could possess a man without any resistance; and when Jesus said ‘if any man shall sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also’, this was not meant in any other way than to provoke potential saints to entirely deny the world. That the nation’s government should give away the coat and the cloak of the country is a vile, disgusting mixture of the world and the other world; and yet that is what successive British governments have been doing.
So, it is no wonder that they now claim that the Church and Christians are a threat, or that they are ‘right wing’. That is a logical thing for the overwhelming and ambitious and perverted State to do in this time; because they see no higher calling, they also see no reason to protect what is natural and of the earth. But that is the logic of a corrupt and failing State. Socialist governments do find Christians to be a nuisance, and they do claim that they are criminals; they do tend toward persecuting them from time to time.
I advise any natural man, or woman, who loves their country, and who has been unable despite decades of propaganda, to deny the evidence of their heart and their senses, and who despite all this, knows that God created the world for him or her, to go to Church, preferably an Orthodox Church. For, there are two things which are always in need of being put right, and of the light: your soul, and your country.
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“In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink.
He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.
(But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.)
Many of the people therefore, when they heard this saying, said, Of a truth this is the Prophet.
Others said, This is the Christ. But some said, Shall Christ come out of Galilee?
Hath not scripture said, That Christ cometh of the seed of David, and out of the town of Bethlehem, where David was?
So there was a division among the people because of him.
And some of them would have taken him; but no man laid hands on him.
Then came the officers to the chief priests and Pharisees; and they said unto them, Why have yet not brought him?
The officers answered, Never man spake like this man.
Then answered them the Pharisees, Are ye also deceived?
Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed on him?
But this people who knoweth not the law are cursed.
Nicodemus saith unto them (he that came to Jesus by night, being one of them,)
Doth our law judge any man, before it hear him, and know what he doeth?
They answered and said unto him, Art thou also of Galilee? Search, and look: for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet.”
(John 7 : 37-52)