It was wonderful to catch up on this “Against Christian Civilization” lecture by Paul Kingsnorth. It is no credit to my skepticism, but I was surprised by his candor while addressing a First Things audience for their 2024 Erasmus Lecture.
Atavistic, anti-cosmopolitan pietism is to be expected from a man who converted from environmentalism. Worshipping the wilderness forms long grooves in the soul which take a while to sand down.
Nonetheless, I'm grateful he scolded the nationalists. They need it. They are likewise atavistic in their own way.
The prophet always needs to criticize civilization. That's what we keep them around for. A good prophet wants to make civilization better.
Mammon is a funny thing. He only perverts you when you worship him. But if you worship God, you can put Mammon on a string and make him do what he was designed for: solving problems and increasing human flourishing.
Princes worship Mammon because they think he gets them elected. Meanwhile, they believe they can actually create money out of thin air. So they worship the idol they created, and as a result they look more and more like the mute, dumb idol.
All GDP is, is increase. If we have more of it, we have more increase, and we can tithe more. So no, I wouldn't worship it, but it's a pretty darn good thing.
It would be a bad idea to abolish the leisure industry. Bible says that industrious men take dominion by lending to the indolent and making them slaves. Ostensibly this is to teach the slaves something. To discipline them. So, if a redneck wastes all his paycheck on 4x4s, or a millionaire wastes all his paycheck on jetting to Montrieux, there needs to be somebody there, engineering and building those 4x4s and those jets, so that industrious people can take that money away from those lazy people and do something good with it.
"Atavistic, anti-cosmopolitan pietism" may be a bit harsh, but good word. As for Mammon, I lean a little more toward the vision of Eugene McCarraher (at least when it comes to Mammon's relationship to medieval voluntarism and the invention of the secular nation state).
Thank you Jesse for holding the space here. As someone who has been recently received into the EO Communion, I am wrestling with what I perceive to be (perhaps wrongly) an intrinsic relationship between the ecclesial structure and the machinations of imperial ideology, even in a Church that supposedly resits a monarchical ordering. My question, which is perhaps a similar one to the one you are asking, is what does Orthodoxy, truly divested of its imperial clothing, look like? Is that even a possibility?
Good questions. I don’t think that Orthodox Christianity needs to be fully divested of its imperial clothing, but it must and can mature past it to “more clothing” in some sense. Fr. Sergei Bulgakov thought and wrote a bit about this and the true nature of hierarchy. Mother Maria of Paris demonstrated it in some ways. Even small things might be part of it in time—the insistence on parish councils in the U.S. for example. Monasticism has also been kind of a stronghold against empire. I also think of hints in the Social Ethos statement from the Ecumenical Patriarch about the need for more vocations to be recognized by the church beyond simply marriage and monasticism. No answers here but just a little pile of initial ideas.
Can you speak a little bit about why you think it needn’t shed its imperial clothing entirely? The desert fathers clearly saw an incompatibility, no? As for modern monasticism, reading a recent report on one parishioners visit to Athos, in the Orthodox Peace Fellowship Journal, makes for very sobering reading. It seems that the imperial spirit, whether that be in its Russian or Byzantine iteration, is alive and well on the holy mountain. I am with you entirely re. Mother Maria and many of the emigres, but I wonder if the beauty and potency of what they bring is because they’re pushing out against the ecclesial ‘walls’.
The desert fathers did not reject the church hierarchy. They served it in their own way. There is lot here. Far too much for a comment. Bulgakov is excellent on the topics of hierarchy and apostolic succession (which he calls, in one regard, a "mythology"). "Hierarchy" is a term coined by Saint Dionysius the Areopagite to express the concept that every creature is equally connected to God and expressive of the image of God. From another direction, all the language of the Old and New Testaments put the kingdom of God in kingly and empire language, which is an image that can be a conduit of universal priesthood and the beautify of all creation. Saint Anthony come back into the city a couple of times when called upon. You have monastics today such as Sister Vassa Larin in the United States and Father Seraphim Aldea with the Mull Monastery who display a kind of fullness of approach with all of this even as the live and teach today. In a widely satirical and funny example, Sister Vassa Larin recently shared a video of Donald Trump having his McDonald's apron tied onto him while the church Slavonic hymns for vesting a bishop were playing. She is not rejecting bishops but showing us both the power of the symbol and its many sad abuses in our everyday lives. Now I've mentioned probably six different things that all deserve lengthy and careful treatment but that are sitting in an absurd pile here in one comment.
The church hierarchy does predate its alliance with imperial power. It's true that it probably didn't exist in the generation of the Apostles, but it's otherwise pretty universal, including in churches (like the Oriental Orthodox) that had a comparatively brief association with the Roman Empire and its successors. The ecclesial structure doesn't neccesarily lead to imperial machinations, even if it does in some sense mirror the imperial hierarchy. You actually need access to the kind of power that comes from a direct association with empire. Otherwise, a bishop is just a pious loudmouth in a fancy robe.
I think Bulgakov and Hart would agree that historical embodiment must involve this. However, they both would also leave the church continually looking beyond fallen time while also open to the stormy movements of human societies within fallen time. This would mean that no temporal church structure would be "finished" or "complete" within history. To over-simplify absurdly, of course...
I suppose then, it comes down to the whole tension that arises when a community, expecting an imminent parousia, finds itself having to coagulate into a form that can withstand being in history. So, do I take it, in your opinion, that hierarchy is an inevitability of contingent existence and therefore the Church, in history, has to contend with this fact.? I suppose, at its best, the hierarchy of the Church can reflect the kenotic relationship of the Trinity; leaders pouring themselves out on behalf of their people. At its worst it clings to power, drawing it into ever increasing top down structures. Sorry about the rambling
I appreciate your interaction on a fraught and vital topic! Thank you. If any grumpiness creeps into my writing voice, it is because you make me wish that we could sit down together and talk at length on these questions.
Just following this up Jesse. I’d love to chat with you as and when. Perhaps easier to arrange off Substack. My email is christiancogley@gmail.com if you have the time and inclination to connect.
Although I agree with Kingsnorth's critique of the self-appointed defenders of "Christian civilization" (Christian nationalists who make common cause with atheists will be damned along with them, imo), I can't help but notice that his vision of the Christian future looks a lot like a return to paleo-Protestantism or even Puritanism, with its contempt for all things "worldly" and its skepticism towards anything that might lead us away from the moral rigor that is apparently all that God really cares about. I mean, he might be right that that's really the essence of a truly apocalyptic Christianity, but that puts us in a quandrary, since (as DBH puts it his translation of the New Testament) there's no trace of "common sense" in the New Testament, and certainly no room for even the most basic institution-building or continuity. If anything, the Gospels (taken literally) evince a wanton disregard for human flourishing, which (if detached from a belief that the end really is imminent) can too easily become the kind of "burn it all down" nihilism represented in, say, Catechism of a Revolutionary. The Early Church had the advantage of having actually encountered the Risen Christ; I'm not sure anyone who hasn't can plausibly aspire to that kind of "extremism" (again, quoting DBH). If we accept, however, that in all likelihood we are not the final generation on earth in a literal sense, we can't just embrace the approaching Dark Age with the faith that everything will somehow turn out all right.
Helpful thoughts. However, I'd argue that we all encounter the risen Christ directly in every Eucharist and that the New Testament extremism pushes us into a radical present with God that is not "worried about tomorrow" simply in terms of realizing that the priority is always receiving God's presence with us in the present moment regardless of the stormy seas or the human flourishing that might surround us on any given day of our life. This does not have to be opposed to plenty of hard work and wisdom. However, it does recognize that no historical accomplishment (or disaster) within empirical time is ever the final end of creation.
Noting another portion of the Kingsnorth lecture here that I've transcribed for my own future reference (with two passages from Hart below that I'm considering as well):
Kingsnorth: “We are, I'm sure, now living through the end of something. Here we are. There's nothing to be done about it. It's a historical cycle. We're living in what the Sufi philosopher and writer René Guénon called ‘the darkness between worlds.’ Something has ended, and something is coming: we don't yet know what. And hard as it is—it's taken me a long time to come to the conclusion that we should accept it. Even—if we have the strength—we should embrace it. We should use it as an opportunity to sharpen the blade of our souls on the stone of the churning world. Christians, of all people, should know the drill by now. We can't can't see where this is leading, but any suffering that's undergone as the world falls down around us might even lead to better things. ...Who would have predicted in 33 AD, sitting at the foot of the cross and watching their teacher die in agony, the incomprehensible global force that his agony would spark? Cultures, I sometimes think now, are built by accident. If at the heart of all cultures is a sacred jewel, a revealed truth, if all cultures have a spiritual essence, well, then it comes from spiritual work. The monks built the West just as surely as the soldiers did, and they built the more enduring part.”
Hart: "It should never be forgotten that Christianity entered human history not as a new creed or sapiential path or system of religious observances, but as apocalypse: the sudden unveiling of a mystery hidden in God before the foundation of the world in a historical event without any possible precedent or any conceivable sequel; an overturning of all the orders and hierarchies of the age, here on earth and in the archon-thronged heavens above; the overthrow of all the angelic and daemonic powers and principalities by a slave legally crucified at the behest of all the religious and political authorities of his time, but raised up by God as the one sole Lord over all the cosmos; the abolition of the partition of Law between peoples; the proclamation of an imminent arrival of the Kingdom and of a new age of creation; an urgent call to all persons to come out from the shelters of social, cultic, and political association into a condition of perilous and unprotected exposure, dwelling nowhere but in the singularity of this event – for the days are short."
Hart: “I find Guénon’s tedious pontifications on social hierarchy—sacred and profane—just a tad fascistic for my taste, and his understanding of tradition strikes me as so ahistorical and haughtily impersonal as to be little more than the private invention of a bilious personality attempting to disguise his misanthropy as a moral philosophy. That one can find various truths and truisms about the evils of our day scattered through his writings hardly compensates for the ethical viciousness of his religious views.”
Atavistic, anti-cosmopolitan pietism is to be expected from a man who converted from environmentalism. Worshipping the wilderness forms long grooves in the soul which take a while to sand down.
Nonetheless, I'm grateful he scolded the nationalists. They need it. They are likewise atavistic in their own way.
The prophet always needs to criticize civilization. That's what we keep them around for. A good prophet wants to make civilization better.
Mammon is a funny thing. He only perverts you when you worship him. But if you worship God, you can put Mammon on a string and make him do what he was designed for: solving problems and increasing human flourishing.
Princes worship Mammon because they think he gets them elected. Meanwhile, they believe they can actually create money out of thin air. So they worship the idol they created, and as a result they look more and more like the mute, dumb idol.
All GDP is, is increase. If we have more of it, we have more increase, and we can tithe more. So no, I wouldn't worship it, but it's a pretty darn good thing.
It would be a bad idea to abolish the leisure industry. Bible says that industrious men take dominion by lending to the indolent and making them slaves. Ostensibly this is to teach the slaves something. To discipline them. So, if a redneck wastes all his paycheck on 4x4s, or a millionaire wastes all his paycheck on jetting to Montrieux, there needs to be somebody there, engineering and building those 4x4s and those jets, so that industrious people can take that money away from those lazy people and do something good with it.
"Atavistic, anti-cosmopolitan pietism" may be a bit harsh, but good word. As for Mammon, I lean a little more toward the vision of Eugene McCarraher (at least when it comes to Mammon's relationship to medieval voluntarism and the invention of the secular nation state).
Thank you Jesse for holding the space here. As someone who has been recently received into the EO Communion, I am wrestling with what I perceive to be (perhaps wrongly) an intrinsic relationship between the ecclesial structure and the machinations of imperial ideology, even in a Church that supposedly resits a monarchical ordering. My question, which is perhaps a similar one to the one you are asking, is what does Orthodoxy, truly divested of its imperial clothing, look like? Is that even a possibility?
Good questions. I don’t think that Orthodox Christianity needs to be fully divested of its imperial clothing, but it must and can mature past it to “more clothing” in some sense. Fr. Sergei Bulgakov thought and wrote a bit about this and the true nature of hierarchy. Mother Maria of Paris demonstrated it in some ways. Even small things might be part of it in time—the insistence on parish councils in the U.S. for example. Monasticism has also been kind of a stronghold against empire. I also think of hints in the Social Ethos statement from the Ecumenical Patriarch about the need for more vocations to be recognized by the church beyond simply marriage and monasticism. No answers here but just a little pile of initial ideas.
Can you speak a little bit about why you think it needn’t shed its imperial clothing entirely? The desert fathers clearly saw an incompatibility, no? As for modern monasticism, reading a recent report on one parishioners visit to Athos, in the Orthodox Peace Fellowship Journal, makes for very sobering reading. It seems that the imperial spirit, whether that be in its Russian or Byzantine iteration, is alive and well on the holy mountain. I am with you entirely re. Mother Maria and many of the emigres, but I wonder if the beauty and potency of what they bring is because they’re pushing out against the ecclesial ‘walls’.
The desert fathers did not reject the church hierarchy. They served it in their own way. There is lot here. Far too much for a comment. Bulgakov is excellent on the topics of hierarchy and apostolic succession (which he calls, in one regard, a "mythology"). "Hierarchy" is a term coined by Saint Dionysius the Areopagite to express the concept that every creature is equally connected to God and expressive of the image of God. From another direction, all the language of the Old and New Testaments put the kingdom of God in kingly and empire language, which is an image that can be a conduit of universal priesthood and the beautify of all creation. Saint Anthony come back into the city a couple of times when called upon. You have monastics today such as Sister Vassa Larin in the United States and Father Seraphim Aldea with the Mull Monastery who display a kind of fullness of approach with all of this even as the live and teach today. In a widely satirical and funny example, Sister Vassa Larin recently shared a video of Donald Trump having his McDonald's apron tied onto him while the church Slavonic hymns for vesting a bishop were playing. She is not rejecting bishops but showing us both the power of the symbol and its many sad abuses in our everyday lives. Now I've mentioned probably six different things that all deserve lengthy and careful treatment but that are sitting in an absurd pile here in one comment.
The church hierarchy does predate its alliance with imperial power. It's true that it probably didn't exist in the generation of the Apostles, but it's otherwise pretty universal, including in churches (like the Oriental Orthodox) that had a comparatively brief association with the Roman Empire and its successors. The ecclesial structure doesn't neccesarily lead to imperial machinations, even if it does in some sense mirror the imperial hierarchy. You actually need access to the kind of power that comes from a direct association with empire. Otherwise, a bishop is just a pious loudmouth in a fancy robe.
I think Bulgakov and Hart would agree that historical embodiment must involve this. However, they both would also leave the church continually looking beyond fallen time while also open to the stormy movements of human societies within fallen time. This would mean that no temporal church structure would be "finished" or "complete" within history. To over-simplify absurdly, of course...
I suppose then, it comes down to the whole tension that arises when a community, expecting an imminent parousia, finds itself having to coagulate into a form that can withstand being in history. So, do I take it, in your opinion, that hierarchy is an inevitability of contingent existence and therefore the Church, in history, has to contend with this fact.? I suppose, at its best, the hierarchy of the Church can reflect the kenotic relationship of the Trinity; leaders pouring themselves out on behalf of their people. At its worst it clings to power, drawing it into ever increasing top down structures. Sorry about the rambling
I appreciate your absurd pile and your time. Thank you. I am here to learn.
I appreciate your interaction on a fraught and vital topic! Thank you. If any grumpiness creeps into my writing voice, it is because you make me wish that we could sit down together and talk at length on these questions.
Perhaps we can zoom one of these days? If you have the time and inclination I am up for it. Maybe there’s others who would want to get involved too?
Glad to chat that way as well as time allows. Very early mornings Eastern time (U.S.) are often flexible for me.
Just following this up Jesse. I’d love to chat with you as and when. Perhaps easier to arrange off Substack. My email is christiancogley@gmail.com if you have the time and inclination to connect.
Sent you an email. Thank you.
Although I agree with Kingsnorth's critique of the self-appointed defenders of "Christian civilization" (Christian nationalists who make common cause with atheists will be damned along with them, imo), I can't help but notice that his vision of the Christian future looks a lot like a return to paleo-Protestantism or even Puritanism, with its contempt for all things "worldly" and its skepticism towards anything that might lead us away from the moral rigor that is apparently all that God really cares about. I mean, he might be right that that's really the essence of a truly apocalyptic Christianity, but that puts us in a quandrary, since (as DBH puts it his translation of the New Testament) there's no trace of "common sense" in the New Testament, and certainly no room for even the most basic institution-building or continuity. If anything, the Gospels (taken literally) evince a wanton disregard for human flourishing, which (if detached from a belief that the end really is imminent) can too easily become the kind of "burn it all down" nihilism represented in, say, Catechism of a Revolutionary. The Early Church had the advantage of having actually encountered the Risen Christ; I'm not sure anyone who hasn't can plausibly aspire to that kind of "extremism" (again, quoting DBH). If we accept, however, that in all likelihood we are not the final generation on earth in a literal sense, we can't just embrace the approaching Dark Age with the faith that everything will somehow turn out all right.
Helpful thoughts. However, I'd argue that we all encounter the risen Christ directly in every Eucharist and that the New Testament extremism pushes us into a radical present with God that is not "worried about tomorrow" simply in terms of realizing that the priority is always receiving God's presence with us in the present moment regardless of the stormy seas or the human flourishing that might surround us on any given day of our life. This does not have to be opposed to plenty of hard work and wisdom. However, it does recognize that no historical accomplishment (or disaster) within empirical time is ever the final end of creation.
Noting another portion of the Kingsnorth lecture here that I've transcribed for my own future reference (with two passages from Hart below that I'm considering as well):
Kingsnorth: “We are, I'm sure, now living through the end of something. Here we are. There's nothing to be done about it. It's a historical cycle. We're living in what the Sufi philosopher and writer René Guénon called ‘the darkness between worlds.’ Something has ended, and something is coming: we don't yet know what. And hard as it is—it's taken me a long time to come to the conclusion that we should accept it. Even—if we have the strength—we should embrace it. We should use it as an opportunity to sharpen the blade of our souls on the stone of the churning world. Christians, of all people, should know the drill by now. We can't can't see where this is leading, but any suffering that's undergone as the world falls down around us might even lead to better things. ...Who would have predicted in 33 AD, sitting at the foot of the cross and watching their teacher die in agony, the incomprehensible global force that his agony would spark? Cultures, I sometimes think now, are built by accident. If at the heart of all cultures is a sacred jewel, a revealed truth, if all cultures have a spiritual essence, well, then it comes from spiritual work. The monks built the West just as surely as the soldiers did, and they built the more enduring part.”
Hart: "It should never be forgotten that Christianity entered human history not as a new creed or sapiential path or system of religious observances, but as apocalypse: the sudden unveiling of a mystery hidden in God before the foundation of the world in a historical event without any possible precedent or any conceivable sequel; an overturning of all the orders and hierarchies of the age, here on earth and in the archon-thronged heavens above; the overthrow of all the angelic and daemonic powers and principalities by a slave legally crucified at the behest of all the religious and political authorities of his time, but raised up by God as the one sole Lord over all the cosmos; the abolition of the partition of Law between peoples; the proclamation of an imminent arrival of the Kingdom and of a new age of creation; an urgent call to all persons to come out from the shelters of social, cultic, and political association into a condition of perilous and unprotected exposure, dwelling nowhere but in the singularity of this event – for the days are short."
Hart: “I find Guénon’s tedious pontifications on social hierarchy—sacred and profane—just a tad fascistic for my taste, and his understanding of tradition strikes me as so ahistorical and haughtily impersonal as to be little more than the private invention of a bilious personality attempting to disguise his misanthropy as a moral philosophy. That one can find various truths and truisms about the evils of our day scattered through his writings hardly compensates for the ethical viciousness of his religious views.”