Dissident Right and Orthodoxy

[Iacobus]

I think the struggle would be that Christianity is supposed to be inclusive and welcoming regardless of colour or creed. And while in theory I agree, in practice I can't stop myself from preferring to be among (mainly) my own people regardless of their religious beliefs. While I'd prefer 5 Nigerian Christians living on my street compared to 5 Pakistani Muslims, I'd probably rather 5 non-religious Europeans.

Even if those 5 non-religious Europeans want to convince your son to be transgender and godless?

I hear what you're saying and it speaks to how the nations are seemingly meant to be - immigrants should be the exception not the rule, the same for mixed marriages and such things. Not this Babelesque situation. But loyalty to ethnicity over Godliness & fellow Christians is not going to lead down a good path. Refer to Christ's conduct with the Samaritans... the Jews would have no dealings with them on the basis of ingroup preference but Christly humility and love for one's neighbor (which unambiguously extend beyond our own ethnicity) trumps all.

 

[Jeremiah Branch]

I don't think there is a contradiction between Christianity and the idea of separate nations as well as a healthy nationalism.

First of all, Christianity has existed quite comfortably on a national basis for most of Christian history.

Second, a careful reading of Scripture shows that preference for one's own (without hatred of others) is not only not against Christian teaching but even required by it:

"But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever." 1 Tim 5:8. The nation is the family writ large, and I think this verse can be extended to or analogized to the nation.

"And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come." Matt. 24:14 If preaching will be done to "the nations" all the way until the end, that implies that the nations -- which means a discrete people, not a plot of land with whoever happens to be on it -- will exist. If they will exist, they are good. So, it is clear that God loves the nations. The adulteration and dilution that is taking place is most similar to the Tower of Babel, which displeased God and let to the dispersal of the peoples into their distinct nations.

Again, other than in the decadent, Godless and listless West, this is all utterly uncontroversial. Go to Korea: They are happy to be Korean; doesn't mean they hate everyone else. Same for Sri Lanka, Nigeria, Lithuania, etc etc etc.

And the immigration that has defined the modern era has been completely agenda-driven and not natural: Without the welfare state and an ideology of self-hatred, it never would have happened.

 

[Jeremiah Branch]

Also, there are plenty of quotes from Holy Fathers and Elders indicating that love of nation (not just country, but nation, i.e. the people) is virtuous.

Here is one I came across the other day from the modern Greek elder Epiphanios (+1989):

"I am in pain and agonize over the path of the Greek people, who are constantly being de-hellenized, de-christianized, de-colorized, cut off from their roots, and are losing their identity." (From Precious Vessels of the Holy Spirit: The Lives & Counsels of Contemporary Elders of Greece, p. 72)​

And you will see Elders (later Saints) who counsel young men to fight in wars to defend their homeland against invasion etc.

 

[Kingdom]

I think something I'm struggling with is squaring Christian belief with ethnonationalist (or at least ethnonationalist adjacent) politics.

Quote unquote:
"The Orthodox Faith must become incarnated (indigenized) in local cultures to produce authentic fruits of human cooperation with God.

Father Emmanuel Clapsis explained it this way in his book Orthodoxy in Conversation:

The different cultures human communities have produced all have the potential to receive the gospel and be transformed by it because God is already active in them through the omnipresence of His Spirit… The gospel, as it encounters different cultures, affirms some elements of them, rejects whatever is incompatible with essential tenets of the coming reign of God, and challenges them to be transformed through development so that they may come closer to God’s intentions for the world. Theology in its role as mediator between faith and culture has the task of assisting the Church in assessing critically the whole process of conversation between gospel and culture, and of developing principles and criteria of authentic inculturation that maintain faithfulness to the Christian tradition.

All missionaries, to every place that we now think of as “Orthodox”, found a culture there when they arrived. The missionaries sought ways to present the Gospel in terms that the indigenous people could best understand, without changing the essentials of the Faith. The Churches they founded, over time, sorted the “wheat” from the “chaff” (culturally speaking) while transforming those cultures to become “closer to God’s intentions for the world.” The results are the great “Orthodox cultures” we think of today, without usually stopping to remember that there was never a fully-formed, Orthodox culture that just dropped in from Heaven. Every one of them arose from the same historical “conversation” between the Gospel and pre-existing cultures.

This is the pattern of Orthodox missionary activity throughout most of history and in most places. The Russians did thusly with the Inuit in Alaska. Missionaries such as Saints Herman and Innocent translated the scriptures and holy books into the Inuit languages and blessed the best aspects of the native cultures. The Alaskans saw that they could be Orthodox Christians, and still be who they were as a people. After the transfer to American rule, almost all the Russian clergy went home. But as this article from the OCA phrased it, “The Orthodox Church in Alaska was able to survive because, from its very beginning, it was envisioned, in the best tradition of Orthodox missionary spirituality, as an indigenous church, not as a “diaspora.”

In some areas of Alaska, they still say, “To be native is to be Orthodox.” "
https://orthodoxreflections.com/doe...love-american-culture-enough-to-transform-it/