This made for some interesting reading the other day. Our circle of homeschooling friends here in town include a lovely Orthodox family, the husband of which is also an Orthodox priest who is establishing a church here in town. Towards the end of the evening, a few adults lounged around the family room kibitzing about politics and whatnot. He commended the article to me, and so I commend it to you. It’s an interesting counterbalance to articles like this one, which is no doubt prompting widespread cases of the howling fantods in an entirely different population.
I think some of the observations in the first article are spot-on. As for the second…I’ve read a few of Jeff Sharlet’s other articles on fundamentalists. Frankly, I think of few of his subjects would benefit from a serious, heavy throwdown with St. Augustine, especially Civitate Dei. My money would be on the Bishop of Hippo.
As for myself, I’d rather see a revolution along the lines of this one, described by Chesterton at the conclusion of What’s Wrong With The World:
I begin with a little girl’s hair. That I know is a good thing at any rate. Whatever else is evil, the pride of a good mother in the beauty of her daughter is good. It is one of those adamantine tendernesses which are the touchstones of every age and race. If other things are against it, other things must go down. If landlords and laws and sciences are against it, landlords and laws and sciences must go down. With the red hair of one she-urchin in the gutter I will set fire to all modern civilization. Because a girl should have long hair, she should have clean hair; because she should have clean hair, she should not have an unclean home: because she should not have an unclean home, she should have a free and leisured mother; because she should have a free mother, she should not have an usurious landlord; because there should not be an usurious landlord, there should be a redistribution of property; because there should be a redistribution of property, there shall be a revolution. That little urchin with the gold-red hair, whom I have just watched toddling past my house, she shall not be lopped and lamed and altered; her hair shall not be cut short like a convict’s; no, all the kingdoms of the earth shall be hacked about and mutilated to suit her. She is the human and sacred image; all around her the social fabric shall sway and split and fall; the pillars of society shall be shaken, and the roofs of ages come rushing down, and not one hair of her head shall be harmed.
Now that’s a platform I could get behind.
