The Beam in the American Eye

“And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.” - Jesus Christ, Matthew 7:3-5 (KJV)

By Bp. Joseph Boyd (Ancient Church of the West)

248 years ago, the United States declared itself independent with these words - 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The Declaration went on to illustrate the ways in which the British King and Commonwealth had invalidated their claims to authority, through unfair and unjust actions, contradictory laws and regulations, and by disinterest, foreignness and a lack of local involvement. 

The understanding of authority was not one of a top-down, inherited, “divine” right, but one of function, service and of mutual consent. It replaced the “papal” claim of kings to a “synodal” form of government - one that focuses more upon cooperation and a synthesis of ideas, on compromise between personalities, rather than upon an absolute claim to authority by the assertions of a historical narrative. In many ways, the American way of seeing independence was a rejection of Ultramontanist Catholic history, and an attempt to return to Early Christian Conciliarity, although, ultimately, the dynamic tension between these views that represents Christian Orthodoxy were rejected and a cheap form of populism, seen in the later success of radical Anabaptist and “Evangelical” Protestantism, which rejects all claims to authority based upon continuity and a wider perspective, was lost in the American Ethos. 

The Famous Call to Prayer and Fasting, Corporately Led in the Continental Congress, for Direction and Protection at the Founding of the United States of America

While there were many profound and orthodox theological truths contained within the Declaration of Independence (such as the necessity of relationship and representation within hierarchy and the importance of local, pastoral governance, which is enforced for the good of the ruled and not to the advantage of the ruler) there was also a strand of thinking that could and would easily lead towards rebellion, dissolution of culture, and a kind of antinomianism that typifies the American attitude about history to this day. “If we don’t like the laws of an authority, than we just pronounce ourselves separate from it, and insulate ourselves with ignorance and rejection, rather than grappling with the hard questions of our inheritance.” This rebellious perspective did not seek to keep the laws, language and cultural conventions of that which came before, but, instead, saw an opportunity to create a “Tabula Rasa”, a “clean slate”, upon which a new history could be written - one less religious and far more secular. In the words of our cultural idiom - “Ignorance is Bliss.” This instinct to create purity through division, and then seal our self off from any further contact by rejection and intentional ignorance is one of the defining characteristics of American Christianity. 

America’s “feet of iron and clay” can be seen in the more secular influences of people like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, whose approach to the Bible was just as revisionist as their French Enlightenment-inspired approach to State-building. Others, Like Washington and Adams, were concerned with continuity in the midst of change, and maintaining those Christian virtues which made the Declaration of Independence’s understanding of the “Creator” more clear. These men sought consistency with first principles, rather than radical revolution. They stood their ground and were content with local leadership because they saw the source of authority as truth and a universally accessible polity, based upon the consent of the governed, rather than upon a will to power of the claims of a king to the “Divine Right to Rule.” This right, a mandate received from above, was central to the biblical understanding of anointing and representational power, but its unfortunate abuses and the many decades of religious wars that occurred because of a misunderstanding or misapplication of this ideal, led to its wholesale rejection in the minds of Protestant politicians and a loss of a sacramental link between Church and State.

The "Holey Bible" of Thomas Jefferson, Who Cut Out Portions He Believed Didn't Belong in the Sacred Text

The problem is, as time has gone on and men have become more forgetful, we have replaced that foundation of continuity, of Creedal Christian Faith, and have begun to manifest the visions of the Deists who were tolerated at the foundation of our Nation. Rather than venerate the Christian heroes who bled and died to pass on a biblical patrimony of faith, now we worship at the feet of radical, self-mutilating individuals who demand all from everyone for the satiation of their grandiose claim to a privileged and protected identity. In a land that was envisioned as the sanctuary of religious liberty and freedom of conscience to follow God in an uncoerced and truly loving way, which reflects the reality of our personal relationships with God, we now coerce the individual for the purpose of serving an atheist ideology that outlaws the mention of the very One upon Whom all rights are based. In all of this, we see how God never forces us to love Him and allows us to condemn ourselves to a Hell of our own making. 

Our blindspot has been a lack of understanding and appreciation for the way our Christian history, the Apostolic, Orthodox, fully Catholic inheritance of the Western Civilization has effected our desire for and understanding of freedom. Freedom is pictured as an innate human right, but freedom only exists if man is made in the Image of God and we are more than biological or intellectual units, equipped with an eternal, immaterial soul. If the spiritual component of each man, woman, child ever born is not equal and sharing the same potential for salvation and reflection of God’s glory, then, truly, there is no basis for equality. Equality can only exist as a theological capacity, as a revealed truth, not as a humanistically self-evident state. Some people are stupid, some are weak, some are addicted and dysfunctional. If our equality is based on sameness, then we are, obviously, not equal. But, if our equality is given by God, Who rules over mankind, and Who has revealed the Law as His Divine Will for mankind, then, we must submit to God and recognize, even begrudgingly, the worth of those who do not bring value or who take away from our biological or intellectual advantages and survival. 

This is why it is wrong for us to force freedom upon non-Christian cultures, and why it is unreasonable to expect those without a Judeo-Christian Faith to believe in a governmental system established to ensure not only equality, but the free exercise of the human will in the worship of God and the propagation of a virtuous family. As George Washington famously said, “Human rights can only be assured among a virtuous people. The general government . . . can never be in danger of degenerating into a monarchy, an oligarchy, an aristocracy, or any despotic or oppressive form so long as there is any virtue in the body of the people." Those without the basis of Christian religious faith would find such structures unnecessary, unpalatable, and in opposition to their own free wills. They would, rather, find the original form of American governance offensive and biased, and insist upon its replacement by some other values and exercise freedom, not as a process of virtue and self-restraint, but as a license to sexual wontonness and an invitation to cultural suicide. It would become, rather than an invitation to apostheosis and glory, a short-lived experiment in hedonism and Epicureanism. 

Our Orthodox hope should be that American principles are restored, and that in this restoration, we rediscover all that was lost in our formation that ties us back to the Christian civilizational history of the ages! “In God We Trust” will allow us to become, once again, “E Pluribus Unum” (Out of Many, One)! 

PRAYER

ALMIGHTY GOD, in Whose Name the founders of this country won nationhood for themselves and for us, and lit the torch of religious freedom for countries around the world: Grant that we and all Thy people may have grace to restore this nation through obedience to Thy righteous laws, holiness of life and Communion in Thy One Holy Catholic and Orthodox Church; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who livest and reignest with Thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

America's Founding Fathers at Prayer, Oaks, PA, Demonstrating the Lost Piety of Our National Ethos