The Aggressive Secularization of America
As an American I have watched with sadness, the eroding of our Christian values and standards of living. When I was in grade school, each day began with the reading of the Bible, broadcast over the intercom system (yes, we had the technology when I was little). At my graduation from high school, there were two public gatherings in the gym, the first being the baccalaureate service, where the minister chosen by the seniors gave an inspirational address, and religious hymns and patriotic songs were sung. The second public gathering was the actual graduation ceremony. The baccalaureate service is long gone from the American scene, found, as it were, to be an unconstitutional infringement on the separation of Church and State.
Gone, also, are the student Christian organizations, banned as they were, from the use of public school facilities, again on the basis of the separation of Church and State. Many of these same schools have given over classroom use to Muslim students, for their required prayer services, but surely not the case for Christians.
Our courts have aggressively moved to push the Christian faith further from the public forum. Attacks toward public displays of religious themes, such as the Ten Commandments, Nativity Creches, and even crosses over the graves of soldiers, have increasingly become the norm. There is even a movement to force police and fire department chaplains to remove the cross from their badges, something we’ve all vowed to resist.
This aggressive move towards secularism has increasingly become a part of American foreign policy, with the move to pressure other countries to follow our lead. Just as the Russian Revolution was supported, in the very beginning, by the anti-monarchist sentiments of the American government, so too, are we seeing an increase in the negative attitudes of the American government towards the rise in power and influence of the Russian Orthodox Church. At a time when our governmental leaders are pushing Christianity from the public forum, we criticize the Russian government because of it’s close ties with the Russian Orthodox Church. We even question the sincerity of Russian leaders Orthodox faith, perhaps because we know that many of our own leaders have put on the veneer of being Christian, for political survival.
Russians know the dangers of aggressive secularism, having suffered seventy years of state sponsored atheism, and many Russians look with shock at what they see as American capitulation to a secularism that has promoted a sort of state atheism of its own.
The Moscow Patriarchate announced a few years ago a “War on Aggressive Liberalism”, and called upon believers to fight the “anti-clerical forces” and “false values of aggressive liberalism.” The Patriarchate made it clear they would not sit back complacently, and watch a replay of the rise of anti-Church forces that hurled the Russian people into the dark days of the Communist aggression against the Church, and against believers.
The same forces that are aggressively seeking to discredit the clergy, divide Russian society, and turn Russians away from their temples, are at work in the United States. The time has come for all Christians to stand firm, and resist the forces of aggressive secularism. Whether we be Russian, Canadians, British, Greeks, or Americans, we need to stand united, and work to return Western civilization to its Christian roots.
As Americans, we need to make sure our governmental leaders know that we will not allow our nation to make war, either in reality, or in theory, against a land that is attempting to return Christ to the centrality of their national identity. Russia is not our enemy, and to treat her as such, is certain to further erode the American way of life. We can not continue, as a nation, to place profit, worldly influence, military power, and oil, over and above our Christian values, for to do so will lead to our certain doom.
Francis George, the Roman Catholic Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago, once stated, “I shall die in my bed, my successor shall die in prison, his successor will die as a martyr in the public square”. God will protect His Church from the Gates of Hell (Matthew 16:18: “the gates of hell shall not prevail against [my church]”), but the blood of the Martyrs waters the seed of the Church. For those who are perishing, the message of the gospel is foolishness, but for the Christian it is life.
With love in Christ,
Abbot Tryphon
Photos: Monday’s celebration of the Feast of the Exaltation of the Life Giving Cross
Great-martyr Nicetas the Goth (372).
New Hieromartyr John priest and Virgin-martyr Eudocia (1918).
New Hieromartyrs Andrew, Gregory, Gregory, John priests (1921).
Venerable Ignatius confessor (1932).
New Hieromartyr Demetrius priest (1935).
New Hieromartyrs John, Jacob, Peter priests and Nicholas deacon, Martyrs Mary and Ludmila (1937).
Uncovering of the relics of St. Acacius the Confessor, bishop of Melitene (257).
Martyrs Theodotus, Asclepiodotus, and Maximus of Adrianopolis (305-311).
Martyr Porphyrius the Mime of Caesaria (361).
Uncovering of the relics of the Holy Protomartyr and Archdeacon Stephen (415).
Venerable Philotheus the Presbyter of Asia Minor (10th c.).
St. Joseph, abbot, of Alaverdi in Georgia (570) (Georgia).
“Novoniketas” Icon of the Mother of God (372).
St. Symeon, archbishop of Thessalonica (1430).
Sts. Bessarion I and Bessarion II (1540), metropolitans of Larissa (Greek).
New Martyr John of Crete (1811) (Greek).
Venerable Gerasimus, abbot, of Sourvia (1740).
St. Joseph the New of Partos, metropolitan of Timisoara (1656) (Romania).
St. Mirin, abbot of Paisley.
