There is plenty to argue about here (not least the jaw-dropping assertion that Christ was not in favour of renunciation!) but argument is rather futile beyond a certain point, I think. I have responded to some of my critics here, and much of what I wrote also applies to your arguments:
The only thing I would add is a response to the notion that these ideas are 'protestant.' I would say the opposite (and it's notable to me that most of my critics seem to be protestants.) The protestant shattering of the Church brought Christianity down into this-world with a bump. Protestantism invented modernity, and led repeatedly to attempts to build the kingdom of God on Earth - which is what puritanism represents.
You are right to say that I have a lot of sympathy with the likes of Winstanley (I wrote about that here last year: https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/and-did-those-feet). They were trying to live a Christ-like life in the midst of power-worshippers who only spoke of Christ for worldly reasons.
But I am an Orthodox Christian, and everything I wrote is entirely in line with Orthodox theology (which I studied for two years). Read almost any of the eastern church fathers and it will become apparent: just one page of St Isaac the Syrian should do it. The Orthodox know better than anyone what icons are, after all. We are stumbling towards theosis, not towards the city of God on Earth. You may choose to believe that God's plan involves progress from a garden to a city, but that's little more than modernist ideology in disguise, in my small opinion.
But as I say, I appreciate the engagement. All the best to you.
You are doing wonderful work for the Kingdom and I am among the many who are grateful for it.
Of course Our Lord counsels renunciation – who could doubt it? – but renunciation comes in many forms. Isaac the Syrian does not mean for everyone to become Isaac the Syrian. That is behind the reach of most of us, me included. I must be content with being Thomas Plant. I still have much more to renounce than I presently do, no doubt about it, but carrying on earning my keep and tending to my family and flock is itself a renunciation of other things I might do.
You may be surprised to find that the English spiritual tradition represented before the Reformation by Anselm, Walter Hilton and Julian, and after it by Hooker, Andrewes, Herbert, Taylor and Traherne among others is very much, and explicitly, directed towards theosis. With the exception of a few years of Calvinism under Cromwell, the Reformation in England and its Prayer Book system were very much a continuation and restoration of that emphasis, by means of considerable reference to Eastern sources. The fathers take second place only to Scripture in Anglican tradition.
That the Church of England has reached the deleterious state you rightly observe today is a failing to be what is truly is, not the result of a straightforward trajectory from Protestantism to modernity. We are in a period of what I hope is only a temporary decline, which certain Orthodox churches have also faced in the past and, by the grace of God, recovered.
As for the invention of modernity, I think that is better traced back to the late Franciscans and particularly to Ockham’s nominalism. This and the voluntaristic affective spirituality of the Franciscans give the background to Luther and Calvin. There is God as well as bad to be found in both, though I (perhaps like you) would sooner go back to the theology of the 6th century than the 16th.
The genius of the fathers, it seems to me, especially St Augustine, St Athanasius, the Cappadocians, my beloved Dionysius and St Maximus, is that they refuse to polarise this world and the next, discerning the transcendent God (who is both King and Kingdom) immanently at work in this world. God sings through His cosmos. This is emphatically neither the same thing as immanentising God to such an extent that He becomes the cosmos and the Kingdom is something we in Pelagian fashion build here on earth, as liberation theologians would have it; nor, though, is it positing such a divide as to lead to a Gnostic hatred of the world, against which the Fathers fought hard. The Puritans, in my view, are guilty of such Gnosticism. Hence, they can allow no doctrine of cooperation with divine grace such as the Orthodox and Anglican divines insist on, rendering spiritual progress and theosis impossible: theirs is a zero-sum game of salvation or damnation, and since there’s nothing you can do about the result, you might as well just make money. My criticism of your position is that, ironically, by turning your back on civilisation, you leave it to such unscrupulous use. I maintain still that Orthodox theology as much as Anglican, both of which I have enjoyed the benefit of studying for some time now, demands the hallowing and sanctification of the social order, not to its abandonment to the Devil. I cannot think of anything in Staniloe, Schmemann, Lossky, Behr et al which would contradict that point, let alone in the Fathers. Exhortations to monks are another matter, but context is everything.
If you will forgive me a word of counsel, I would only advise a little caution before dismissing things you have perhaps not studied in their fullness: the Church of England isn’t all Vicar of Dibley, thank God. Martin Thornton’s English Spirituality is an excellent primer on our native tradition, should you have time to read just a single volume summarising its depths before you speak out to tens of thousands of followers on it again. Even an Orthodox Christian may find it worthy of attention. You will discover there the spiritual grounds on which Walsingham (of which I am a Priest Associate) was revived - and I am grateful for your recent attention to our little Nazareth.
Many thanks for your very thoughtful reply, father. Much to think about here.
I think a lot of this is covered in the response I wrote, which I linked to above. Of course we are not all to become monks. My personal question now is what renunciation of the world looks like to those of us who live in it. The world is a different arena of struggle to the monastery, and the one that most of us live in.
Much of what animated my talk was the sense that so many of us play down Christ's radical and very difficult teachings in that regard - including many in the Church hierarchies. I want instead to stare them down, and not make excuses.
It's worth getting back to the focus of the talk, which was not about why we should all be monks, but why we should not confuse Christ and culture. I gave that talk because I can see a rising movement of people - some Christian, some not - who are using the Way of Christ as a political tool. It sticks in my throat to hear the defence of Mammon dressed up as the defence of something called 'Christianity.'
I take your point about modernity: I wouldn't claim that the reformation invented it (could we trace it back to the Schism? these questions are often circular) but I don't think we could deny that the Christianities which emerged from it were very much attuned to the new rising bourgeois mercantile world. In that sense, 'protestantism' has been a much more worldly version of the faith. Even the puritans were trying - quite explicitly - to build a shining city on a hill, or God's kingdom on Earth. Medieval Christianities of both east and west, as you say, have a very different emphasis.
I appreciate your words on English spirituality and will certainly look into the Thornton book. I am in fact deeply interested in the question of how the English can get back to their Christian roots, and what those roots were. I have much more reading to do on that question. I did write a small essay touching on it last year:
I have never dismissed the English tradition - only the state of the current CofE. I do so as a disappointed family member. The CofE at present offers me no prospect of spiritual transformation and very little Christian strength or tradition: if it had done, I wold not have needed to go east. That's not to say those things don't exist in the English/British tradition, though, and I have never suggested that. Quite the opposite: that tradition is rich, and most English people have forgotten it. Their church is currently very bad at reminding them. It's too busy holding raves in the naves instead.
We may never agree about whether civilisation is an icon or an idol, but perhaps we can agree on the need for the English to rebuild that tradition by going back to its roots. Whether the CofE can help that to happen might influence their future, or if they even have one.
Incidentally, given that interest, and our shared mentions of Walsingham, I wonder if you have seen Marcus Plested's new Substack on that very matter:
You have been very generous and patient in responding to what, in hindsight, was exaggerated criticism from me, for which I am sorry. Thank you.
Your talk has achieved a great deal of good just in getting people to talk about this. Sometimes an excess of zeal - an Elijah or St John Baptist - is just what the Church needs to wake us all up. On reading your post from today, I see where your targets lie more clearly, and appreciate your rather daring use of First Things to make your point. All credit to them, too, for deviating from their majority narrative. The abuse of Christianity to prop up a political agenda is a very legitimate object of ire.
I am sorry to say that I agree with you about the state of my own church, the raves, knaves and crazy golf helterskelters. We have bored the nation into apostasy. There is hope in some quarters, though, not least under the Bishop of Oswestry, and in the Anglican movement in the US. You have sympathisers among them (and a small following here in Japan). I think that changes are afoot in the Anglican world, which is thankfully bigger than the C of E. Many of us are great admirers of Orthodoxy. Some are on Substack.
I’m very much looking looking forward to “And did those feet?” (I’m interested to discover your answer. Most say “no.” I’m a hopeful “maybe.”) Thanks too for pointing out Dr Plested’s Substack. We met many times when I was studying Dionysius and he was involved in the splendid work of IOCS.
Godspeed to you, and of your charity, pray for us!
Here is a quick and easy way to determine whether The West is an idol:
Does Christendom need The West? If you believe do, The West is your idol. You think the west has power over your life and the future, and it is your primary source of hope.
The West needs Christendom more than Christendom needs the West, for sure. The Kingdom needs nothing, though it demands everything. In that sense, it is only complete once God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven, and so will not be perfected until all is all in Christ: the West included.
I would say this is a severe misread of Kingsnorth; per comments he has made about similar rebuttals. Also, with all due respect, I would say a somewhat petty and patronizing take (equating his view with ignorance/simpleness - a symptom of his "new" Christian faith), especially the lazy dismissals and implications which cast Kingsnorth's call as one for "lazy layabouts"..."incapable of self-defense."
It is precisely because we don't choose Christ, or fall away from abiding in Him as the actual primary thing, that civilization becomes an end in and of itself; and crumbles eventually in repeated cycles. Civilization will spring forth naturally from a Christ-centered ethos, the New Jerusalem is real, but we are arrogant to think we can usher it in ourselves with a veneer of cultural Christianity. Yes, Kingsnorth is not underlining this latter reality in his initial talk but he has clarified and it does nothing to diminish the purpose of his initial challenge...to remember the radical call (for all of us who profess Him) his life and teaching requires of us all; not just select people mentioned in the scriptures with ZERO application/implication for us ongoing.
Labeling Kingsnorth's view as essentially being "too-Protestant" while yourself being one, and along with the petty dismissals and inferences betrays the fact that you maybe don't really understand what he is calling us to remember about the Christ of scripture and is ultimately hard to take seriously as a response.
I take your comment about being patronising very seriously, and feared that it might be the case: I was trying to think of the kindest way of saying that after a considerably longer time studying theology, both eastern and eastern, I think Kingsnorth is rather more assured in his thesis than his experience and learning allow. I wish that I could find a less patronising way of saying that.
Nor by any means do I think that Kingsnorth is counselling us all to become layabouts, and I certainly don’t think of monks as such. But his point about Jesus never telling us to get jobs simply doesn’t add up to the conclusion he reaches. He never told us to go the lavatory, either. Forgive me if my humour here gets in the way of the point I’m trying to make, which I think still stands.
I think there’s an element of sleight of hand in equating cultural Christianity with a Christian culture. The former is certainly a veneer; the latter need not be, and historically has at times and in places been far more than skin-deep. This includes Protestant countries.
I am part of an historically Protestant church, yes, but our protest was against Rome and not the East, still less the Fathers. My wording of “Radical Protestant” was deliberate. In England, it was the Radical Reformers who fought against king and civilisation: the Anglican divines strove to preserve the sacred order of monarch and episcopate, and the spiritual riches of a common liturgy for all the people of the land. This is a far cry from the laissez-faire individualism and libertarianism which Kingsnorth rightly decries. I just don’t think that it’s a period of history or a narrative he is especially interested in: he’s made his decision that “Protestantism” is one thing and that it’s not worth studying now that he had found the Orthodox truth. I don’t blame a convert for zeal, and I admire it, but I think it’s reasonable to point it out.
I quite agree that we cannot usher in the new Jerusalem. We can and must, however, cooperate with God’s grace for the best interest of His children. This synergy is a matter of traditional theology maintained by the Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans, but which the Calvinists’ opposition of grace and works dismisses. Hence I continue to maintain that a rejection of attempts to hallow the secular order is more redolent of that school than of the Orthodoxy which Kingsnorth professes. But of course, you are right that the hallowing of ourselves by prayer and ascesis must come first.
As someone who works in schools with children with disabilities, I can say that I am thankful for the presence of civilization that makes this possible, albeit very imperfectly. I am not a theologian, but an average layperson. But I see so much value in the ordinariness of life within this civilization, where there is beauty and suffering.
I still feel in your reply here you are expressing an unfortunate type of credentialism where only the "experts" or the "adults in the room" should be allowed to speak on a given topic. I do agree that converts should probably spend years being quiet, as recommended by many a monk/priest, but sometimes the zeal of a convert can pull us all back from the edge, especially when done quite solemnly as Kingsnorth. He was invited and was clearly uncomfortable to a degree, understanding the history of the lecture itself, but spoke forth truth in a non-inflammatory tone/manner. The actual content and challenge of his talk sure has raised some hell though! ;)
I find it interesting that Kingsnorth's talk has become a bit of a Rorschach test, with many (maybe even myself) not really engaging with what he actually said overall but simply respond with reactive assumptions and weak dismissals (yours was not weak per se, but misguided I feel). I for one am clearly surprised why anyone who took his original talk seriously would have come away with him as advocating for a "full retreat" or "head for the hills", but rather a sober reevaluation of our actual values and impulses to "save" culture...western or otherwise.
Also, I know many Protestants who make similar claims to their particular expression being the "middle way" between the Catholics and the rest. I still fail to understand why you as an Anglican are in a position to label Kingsnorth (or anyone) as not sufficiently Orthodox (by implication), just because you disagree with (I would say misunderstand) him on the thesis of his lecture.
Anyway, It is good to see you interacting with Mr. Kingsnorth directly now. Much more fruitful than missives via Substack with click-bait titles. Franky, this seems a bit beneath someone of ordained clergy and looked/felt very similar to caustic responses I've read from neo-conservative think-tanks in America. Would a revision or retraction be in order? Forgive me if I am being too bold.
Here is another example of healthy dialogue in regards to the topic at hand.
I think your criticism is fair and the good that Kingsnorth's talk has done is immense, as it has got people talking and questioning. You are quite right to say that everybody should be able to have their say, and I share your opposition to credentialism, while also hoping that extensive study of a given subject may permit a level of friendly criticism - mine, I think you are right to point out, was not quite friendly enough.
My view is not that Kingsnorth is insufficiently Orthodox, by any stretch, but that his position vis-a-vis Church-state relations bears a closer similarity to that of the radical Reformation than to much (though not all) Orthodox theology. The latter is of course not monolithic, and offers a wide range of views. I would gently return to you your plea against credentialism, this time on religious grounds: there is no reason why an outsider who has studied Orthodox or Catholic theology for many years might know more about certain aspects of it than even the most committed believer. There are non-Anglicans who know far more than I do about aspects of Anglican thought and history, and I would do well to listen to them.
You are being honest, and for that, boldness is required. I can see where my response to Kingsnorth, which was at first more heated than it should have been, resembles that of the neo-cons, but I am not one. Rather, I think it vitally important that Christianity informs and forms civilisation, and this is something which needs to be argued with equal vigour to Kingsnorth's position. That said, following very friendly and considerate correspondence from him, I think that we are not perhaps as far apart as I had first feared.
I thought about revision (though not retraction), but think that the comments here are enough to clarify for now what should or should not have been said, and any deletions/amendments would destroy the sense of people's responses and objections to it. I think a better option would be a later post, separately. What has been said can stand, warts and all, and I am after all a sinner with my fair share of pride and arrogance, and moments (or more) of excess, error and want of charity.
I take your point about the title. It has got people reading the thing, for which I am grateful, but is an oversimplification. The best I can do, I think, since it is now published, is to put "Protestantism" in scare quotes!
A cogent, insightful response to Kingsnorth, Father. You've picked up on some threads that I have intuited but hadn't taken the time to articulate. You brought to the surface the tendencies of his previous worldview-born impulses as they persist in his current thinking.
You really get at the heart of the matter here: "The sure mark of a radical Protestant is the inability to distinguish between an idol and an icon." And then applying those categories (icon and idol) to nature and civilization was a brilliant stroke.
I pray he has a spiritual father that can be as Aquila and Priscilla to him and "expound unto him the way of God more perfectly."
You are kind. I must own myself in need of correction and spiritual guidance as much as anybody, and hope that that line did not come across as patronising. Indeed, I am very fond of Paul Kingsnorth's writing in general, and find him likeable on podcasts etc. May we all strive for greater godliness in knowledge and love of Christ our Lord!
I appreciate Kingsnorth’s storytelling—his reflections on the wild saints and visits to holy wells are interesting to me. But his First Things lecture reveals that he’s in over his head theologically and historically. Applying the vocation of holy orders to everyone is a fundamental misstep. Not everyone in the world is called to be a Schema monk.
I almost have been: I was a catechumen. And never say never. But I assure you that I love the Orthodox Church, her theology, her liturgy, her prayer and miracles. I also love what is best in the West, while deploring what is worst in it. Letting go of all of the English Christian tradition that I love - or mass, our Daily Office, our hymns, the theology of our great divines - was part of what held me back. I am glad to see Western Rite churches finding their feet under the East, though.
A very good docu on substack is titled Escaping Calypso Island : a journey out of our green delusion by Cynthia Chung. It certainly deals with the fantasy.aspect.of living in a fantasy edenlike world here on earth.
‘We are builders and civilisers not because we are fallen…’ - I think as an ex new ager and both Kingsnorth and I are, it’s hard to let go of the spirit as superior to the Flesh indeed.
Thank you for addressing these points. I have been disturbed by some of Kingsnorth's writings. I appreciate a more holistic view of the Gospel, such as the one you describe, where everything we do is viewed in light of and a means of building the Kingdom.
It strikes me that Brother Kingsnorth's church itself is cultural. Every Orthodox parish is, after all, rooted in a specific cultural tradition with nation specific leadership, whether Greek, Russian etc.
Kingsnorth himself wants to differentiate culture from civilisation, but I think your point stands: the national cultures of each Orthodox church represent discrete forms of civilisation, formed both by their mother churches and by local practice. The same can be said of those churches which originate in the Church of England, which have a flavour of English culture but also played a part of the apparatus of British civilisation, both forming and being formed by it. And certainly, after Trent imposed greater uniformity on the national churches in communion with Rome, Roman Catholicism became more culturally Italian, as well as being built on the civic (i.e. civilised) traditions of ancient Rome. Nor can one doubt that Byzantine Christianity has been formed by the civilisation of imperial Constantinople and Slavic by the "Third Rome." That this has in every case led to excess and error, I agree with Kingsnorth: but that such influence is universally, essentially or even mostly negative, I do not agree.
Thanks for engaging with my talk.
There is plenty to argue about here (not least the jaw-dropping assertion that Christ was not in favour of renunciation!) but argument is rather futile beyond a certain point, I think. I have responded to some of my critics here, and much of what I wrote also applies to your arguments:
https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/the-vagabond-king
The only thing I would add is a response to the notion that these ideas are 'protestant.' I would say the opposite (and it's notable to me that most of my critics seem to be protestants.) The protestant shattering of the Church brought Christianity down into this-world with a bump. Protestantism invented modernity, and led repeatedly to attempts to build the kingdom of God on Earth - which is what puritanism represents.
You are right to say that I have a lot of sympathy with the likes of Winstanley (I wrote about that here last year: https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/and-did-those-feet). They were trying to live a Christ-like life in the midst of power-worshippers who only spoke of Christ for worldly reasons.
But I am an Orthodox Christian, and everything I wrote is entirely in line with Orthodox theology (which I studied for two years). Read almost any of the eastern church fathers and it will become apparent: just one page of St Isaac the Syrian should do it. The Orthodox know better than anyone what icons are, after all. We are stumbling towards theosis, not towards the city of God on Earth. You may choose to believe that God's plan involves progress from a garden to a city, but that's little more than modernist ideology in disguise, in my small opinion.
But as I say, I appreciate the engagement. All the best to you.
My dear brother in Christ
You are doing wonderful work for the Kingdom and I am among the many who are grateful for it.
Of course Our Lord counsels renunciation – who could doubt it? – but renunciation comes in many forms. Isaac the Syrian does not mean for everyone to become Isaac the Syrian. That is behind the reach of most of us, me included. I must be content with being Thomas Plant. I still have much more to renounce than I presently do, no doubt about it, but carrying on earning my keep and tending to my family and flock is itself a renunciation of other things I might do.
You may be surprised to find that the English spiritual tradition represented before the Reformation by Anselm, Walter Hilton and Julian, and after it by Hooker, Andrewes, Herbert, Taylor and Traherne among others is very much, and explicitly, directed towards theosis. With the exception of a few years of Calvinism under Cromwell, the Reformation in England and its Prayer Book system were very much a continuation and restoration of that emphasis, by means of considerable reference to Eastern sources. The fathers take second place only to Scripture in Anglican tradition.
That the Church of England has reached the deleterious state you rightly observe today is a failing to be what is truly is, not the result of a straightforward trajectory from Protestantism to modernity. We are in a period of what I hope is only a temporary decline, which certain Orthodox churches have also faced in the past and, by the grace of God, recovered.
As for the invention of modernity, I think that is better traced back to the late Franciscans and particularly to Ockham’s nominalism. This and the voluntaristic affective spirituality of the Franciscans give the background to Luther and Calvin. There is God as well as bad to be found in both, though I (perhaps like you) would sooner go back to the theology of the 6th century than the 16th.
The genius of the fathers, it seems to me, especially St Augustine, St Athanasius, the Cappadocians, my beloved Dionysius and St Maximus, is that they refuse to polarise this world and the next, discerning the transcendent God (who is both King and Kingdom) immanently at work in this world. God sings through His cosmos. This is emphatically neither the same thing as immanentising God to such an extent that He becomes the cosmos and the Kingdom is something we in Pelagian fashion build here on earth, as liberation theologians would have it; nor, though, is it positing such a divide as to lead to a Gnostic hatred of the world, against which the Fathers fought hard. The Puritans, in my view, are guilty of such Gnosticism. Hence, they can allow no doctrine of cooperation with divine grace such as the Orthodox and Anglican divines insist on, rendering spiritual progress and theosis impossible: theirs is a zero-sum game of salvation or damnation, and since there’s nothing you can do about the result, you might as well just make money. My criticism of your position is that, ironically, by turning your back on civilisation, you leave it to such unscrupulous use. I maintain still that Orthodox theology as much as Anglican, both of which I have enjoyed the benefit of studying for some time now, demands the hallowing and sanctification of the social order, not to its abandonment to the Devil. I cannot think of anything in Staniloe, Schmemann, Lossky, Behr et al which would contradict that point, let alone in the Fathers. Exhortations to monks are another matter, but context is everything.
If you will forgive me a word of counsel, I would only advise a little caution before dismissing things you have perhaps not studied in their fullness: the Church of England isn’t all Vicar of Dibley, thank God. Martin Thornton’s English Spirituality is an excellent primer on our native tradition, should you have time to read just a single volume summarising its depths before you speak out to tens of thousands of followers on it again. Even an Orthodox Christian may find it worthy of attention. You will discover there the spiritual grounds on which Walsingham (of which I am a Priest Associate) was revived - and I am grateful for your recent attention to our little Nazareth.
Godspeed you in your splendid work!
Fr Thomas
Many thanks for your very thoughtful reply, father. Much to think about here.
I think a lot of this is covered in the response I wrote, which I linked to above. Of course we are not all to become monks. My personal question now is what renunciation of the world looks like to those of us who live in it. The world is a different arena of struggle to the monastery, and the one that most of us live in.
Much of what animated my talk was the sense that so many of us play down Christ's radical and very difficult teachings in that regard - including many in the Church hierarchies. I want instead to stare them down, and not make excuses.
It's worth getting back to the focus of the talk, which was not about why we should all be monks, but why we should not confuse Christ and culture. I gave that talk because I can see a rising movement of people - some Christian, some not - who are using the Way of Christ as a political tool. It sticks in my throat to hear the defence of Mammon dressed up as the defence of something called 'Christianity.'
I take your point about modernity: I wouldn't claim that the reformation invented it (could we trace it back to the Schism? these questions are often circular) but I don't think we could deny that the Christianities which emerged from it were very much attuned to the new rising bourgeois mercantile world. In that sense, 'protestantism' has been a much more worldly version of the faith. Even the puritans were trying - quite explicitly - to build a shining city on a hill, or God's kingdom on Earth. Medieval Christianities of both east and west, as you say, have a very different emphasis.
I appreciate your words on English spirituality and will certainly look into the Thornton book. I am in fact deeply interested in the question of how the English can get back to their Christian roots, and what those roots were. I have much more reading to do on that question. I did write a small essay touching on it last year:
https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/and-did-those-feet
I have never dismissed the English tradition - only the state of the current CofE. I do so as a disappointed family member. The CofE at present offers me no prospect of spiritual transformation and very little Christian strength or tradition: if it had done, I wold not have needed to go east. That's not to say those things don't exist in the English/British tradition, though, and I have never suggested that. Quite the opposite: that tradition is rich, and most English people have forgotten it. Their church is currently very bad at reminding them. It's too busy holding raves in the naves instead.
We may never agree about whether civilisation is an icon or an idol, but perhaps we can agree on the need for the English to rebuild that tradition by going back to its roots. Whether the CofE can help that to happen might influence their future, or if they even have one.
Incidentally, given that interest, and our shared mentions of Walsingham, I wonder if you have seen Marcus Plested's new Substack on that very matter:
https://substack.com/home/post/p-157345147
All the best to you.
Paul
Dear Paul (if that’s not overfamiliar)
You have been very generous and patient in responding to what, in hindsight, was exaggerated criticism from me, for which I am sorry. Thank you.
Your talk has achieved a great deal of good just in getting people to talk about this. Sometimes an excess of zeal - an Elijah or St John Baptist - is just what the Church needs to wake us all up. On reading your post from today, I see where your targets lie more clearly, and appreciate your rather daring use of First Things to make your point. All credit to them, too, for deviating from their majority narrative. The abuse of Christianity to prop up a political agenda is a very legitimate object of ire.
I am sorry to say that I agree with you about the state of my own church, the raves, knaves and crazy golf helterskelters. We have bored the nation into apostasy. There is hope in some quarters, though, not least under the Bishop of Oswestry, and in the Anglican movement in the US. You have sympathisers among them (and a small following here in Japan). I think that changes are afoot in the Anglican world, which is thankfully bigger than the C of E. Many of us are great admirers of Orthodoxy. Some are on Substack.
I’m very much looking looking forward to “And did those feet?” (I’m interested to discover your answer. Most say “no.” I’m a hopeful “maybe.”) Thanks too for pointing out Dr Plested’s Substack. We met many times when I was studying Dionysius and he was involved in the splendid work of IOCS.
Godspeed to you, and of your charity, pray for us!
PS I will of course read the further links you kindly supplied. Pax et bonum.
wonderful and brilliant! thanks for writing this father.
You are as ever generous with your praise. Thank you, and may God continue to bless you in your vocation.
Here is a quick and easy way to determine whether The West is an idol:
Does Christendom need The West? If you believe do, The West is your idol. You think the west has power over your life and the future, and it is your primary source of hope.
The West needs Christendom more than Christendom needs the West, for sure. The Kingdom needs nothing, though it demands everything. In that sense, it is only complete once God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven, and so will not be perfected until all is all in Christ: the West included.
I would say this is a severe misread of Kingsnorth; per comments he has made about similar rebuttals. Also, with all due respect, I would say a somewhat petty and patronizing take (equating his view with ignorance/simpleness - a symptom of his "new" Christian faith), especially the lazy dismissals and implications which cast Kingsnorth's call as one for "lazy layabouts"..."incapable of self-defense."
It is precisely because we don't choose Christ, or fall away from abiding in Him as the actual primary thing, that civilization becomes an end in and of itself; and crumbles eventually in repeated cycles. Civilization will spring forth naturally from a Christ-centered ethos, the New Jerusalem is real, but we are arrogant to think we can usher it in ourselves with a veneer of cultural Christianity. Yes, Kingsnorth is not underlining this latter reality in his initial talk but he has clarified and it does nothing to diminish the purpose of his initial challenge...to remember the radical call (for all of us who profess Him) his life and teaching requires of us all; not just select people mentioned in the scriptures with ZERO application/implication for us ongoing.
Labeling Kingsnorth's view as essentially being "too-Protestant" while yourself being one, and along with the petty dismissals and inferences betrays the fact that you maybe don't really understand what he is calling us to remember about the Christ of scripture and is ultimately hard to take seriously as a response.
I take your comment about being patronising very seriously, and feared that it might be the case: I was trying to think of the kindest way of saying that after a considerably longer time studying theology, both eastern and eastern, I think Kingsnorth is rather more assured in his thesis than his experience and learning allow. I wish that I could find a less patronising way of saying that.
Nor by any means do I think that Kingsnorth is counselling us all to become layabouts, and I certainly don’t think of monks as such. But his point about Jesus never telling us to get jobs simply doesn’t add up to the conclusion he reaches. He never told us to go the lavatory, either. Forgive me if my humour here gets in the way of the point I’m trying to make, which I think still stands.
I think there’s an element of sleight of hand in equating cultural Christianity with a Christian culture. The former is certainly a veneer; the latter need not be, and historically has at times and in places been far more than skin-deep. This includes Protestant countries.
I am part of an historically Protestant church, yes, but our protest was against Rome and not the East, still less the Fathers. My wording of “Radical Protestant” was deliberate. In England, it was the Radical Reformers who fought against king and civilisation: the Anglican divines strove to preserve the sacred order of monarch and episcopate, and the spiritual riches of a common liturgy for all the people of the land. This is a far cry from the laissez-faire individualism and libertarianism which Kingsnorth rightly decries. I just don’t think that it’s a period of history or a narrative he is especially interested in: he’s made his decision that “Protestantism” is one thing and that it’s not worth studying now that he had found the Orthodox truth. I don’t blame a convert for zeal, and I admire it, but I think it’s reasonable to point it out.
I quite agree that we cannot usher in the new Jerusalem. We can and must, however, cooperate with God’s grace for the best interest of His children. This synergy is a matter of traditional theology maintained by the Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans, but which the Calvinists’ opposition of grace and works dismisses. Hence I continue to maintain that a rejection of attempts to hallow the secular order is more redolent of that school than of the Orthodoxy which Kingsnorth professes. But of course, you are right that the hallowing of ourselves by prayer and ascesis must come first.
As someone who works in schools with children with disabilities, I can say that I am thankful for the presence of civilization that makes this possible, albeit very imperfectly. I am not a theologian, but an average layperson. But I see so much value in the ordinariness of life within this civilization, where there is beauty and suffering.
God bless your sacred work.
Thanks for the reply, Father.
I still feel in your reply here you are expressing an unfortunate type of credentialism where only the "experts" or the "adults in the room" should be allowed to speak on a given topic. I do agree that converts should probably spend years being quiet, as recommended by many a monk/priest, but sometimes the zeal of a convert can pull us all back from the edge, especially when done quite solemnly as Kingsnorth. He was invited and was clearly uncomfortable to a degree, understanding the history of the lecture itself, but spoke forth truth in a non-inflammatory tone/manner. The actual content and challenge of his talk sure has raised some hell though! ;)
I find it interesting that Kingsnorth's talk has become a bit of a Rorschach test, with many (maybe even myself) not really engaging with what he actually said overall but simply respond with reactive assumptions and weak dismissals (yours was not weak per se, but misguided I feel). I for one am clearly surprised why anyone who took his original talk seriously would have come away with him as advocating for a "full retreat" or "head for the hills", but rather a sober reevaluation of our actual values and impulses to "save" culture...western or otherwise.
Also, I know many Protestants who make similar claims to their particular expression being the "middle way" between the Catholics and the rest. I still fail to understand why you as an Anglican are in a position to label Kingsnorth (or anyone) as not sufficiently Orthodox (by implication), just because you disagree with (I would say misunderstand) him on the thesis of his lecture.
Anyway, It is good to see you interacting with Mr. Kingsnorth directly now. Much more fruitful than missives via Substack with click-bait titles. Franky, this seems a bit beneath someone of ordained clergy and looked/felt very similar to caustic responses I've read from neo-conservative think-tanks in America. Would a revision or retraction be in order? Forgive me if I am being too bold.
Here is another example of healthy dialogue in regards to the topic at hand.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrjdaVol2TA
Peace
Dear Drew
I think your criticism is fair and the good that Kingsnorth's talk has done is immense, as it has got people talking and questioning. You are quite right to say that everybody should be able to have their say, and I share your opposition to credentialism, while also hoping that extensive study of a given subject may permit a level of friendly criticism - mine, I think you are right to point out, was not quite friendly enough.
My view is not that Kingsnorth is insufficiently Orthodox, by any stretch, but that his position vis-a-vis Church-state relations bears a closer similarity to that of the radical Reformation than to much (though not all) Orthodox theology. The latter is of course not monolithic, and offers a wide range of views. I would gently return to you your plea against credentialism, this time on religious grounds: there is no reason why an outsider who has studied Orthodox or Catholic theology for many years might know more about certain aspects of it than even the most committed believer. There are non-Anglicans who know far more than I do about aspects of Anglican thought and history, and I would do well to listen to them.
You are being honest, and for that, boldness is required. I can see where my response to Kingsnorth, which was at first more heated than it should have been, resembles that of the neo-cons, but I am not one. Rather, I think it vitally important that Christianity informs and forms civilisation, and this is something which needs to be argued with equal vigour to Kingsnorth's position. That said, following very friendly and considerate correspondence from him, I think that we are not perhaps as far apart as I had first feared.
I thought about revision (though not retraction), but think that the comments here are enough to clarify for now what should or should not have been said, and any deletions/amendments would destroy the sense of people's responses and objections to it. I think a better option would be a later post, separately. What has been said can stand, warts and all, and I am after all a sinner with my fair share of pride and arrogance, and moments (or more) of excess, error and want of charity.
I take your point about the title. It has got people reading the thing, for which I am grateful, but is an oversimplification. The best I can do, I think, since it is now published, is to put "Protestantism" in scare quotes!
Thank you for this post FATHER. 🤔⛪☘️⚖️
Always a good place to ponder both sides!
Anglicans in Japan, orthodox in Ireland and Okies out on the Plains. Technology ain't all bad, GOD BLESS SUBSTACK! 🌐⛲✍🏼📚📯
GRACE🔥 AND PEACE⛲ TO YOU......
......Happy Valentines Day, 2025AD 💖💘💖💘
Funny enough the book I’ve just finishes takes the Christian journey from Eden to the New Jerusalem. There is no return to Eden.
Thank you, Fr. Thomas. Your comments put me in mind of J. H. Newman's words, expressed by the Second Choir of Angelicals in Gerontius:
O man! a savage kindred they;
To flee that monster brood
He scaled the seaside cave, and clomb
The giants of the wood.
With now a fear, and now a hope,
With aids which chance supplied,
From youth to eld, from sire to son,
He lived, and toiled, and died.
He dreed his penance age by age;
And step by step began
Slowly to doff his savage garb,
And be again a man.
And quickened by the Almighty's breath,
And chastened by His rod,
And taught by Angel-visitings,
At length he sought his God:
And learned to call upon His name,
And in His faith create
A household and a fatherland,
A city and a state.
Dear Philip, thank you! And I am very sorry not yet to have replied to the Latin poem you sent me on LinkedIn. Please forgive my tardiness.
With Gerontius, you have added another book I should already have read by the age of 45 to my ever-growing list. I look forward to it.
It will be good to catch up in person before too long. Thank you for all you have taught me.
What is a ROFTer?
A Reader of First Things.
Ha!
Of which I am one!
A cogent, insightful response to Kingsnorth, Father. You've picked up on some threads that I have intuited but hadn't taken the time to articulate. You brought to the surface the tendencies of his previous worldview-born impulses as they persist in his current thinking.
You really get at the heart of the matter here: "The sure mark of a radical Protestant is the inability to distinguish between an idol and an icon." And then applying those categories (icon and idol) to nature and civilization was a brilliant stroke.
I pray he has a spiritual father that can be as Aquila and Priscilla to him and "expound unto him the way of God more perfectly."
You are kind. I must own myself in need of correction and spiritual guidance as much as anybody, and hope that that line did not come across as patronising. Indeed, I am very fond of Paul Kingsnorth's writing in general, and find him likeable on podcasts etc. May we all strive for greater godliness in knowledge and love of Christ our Lord!
I appreciate Kingsnorth’s storytelling—his reflections on the wild saints and visits to holy wells are interesting to me. But his First Things lecture reveals that he’s in over his head theologically and historically. Applying the vocation of holy orders to everyone is a fundamental misstep. Not everyone in the world is called to be a Schema monk.
Brilliant. Thanks.
I am humbled by your kindness.
You know not the beauty, richness, and depth of Orthodox Christianity.
How do you know?
I read your paper.
Not enough to know the man, Father!
Enough to know the Faith…and if you knew, you would be. God bless you!
I almost have been: I was a catechumen. And never say never. But I assure you that I love the Orthodox Church, her theology, her liturgy, her prayer and miracles. I also love what is best in the West, while deploring what is worst in it. Letting go of all of the English Christian tradition that I love - or mass, our Daily Office, our hymns, the theology of our great divines - was part of what held me back. I am glad to see Western Rite churches finding their feet under the East, though.
So how does one take a thread/conversation offline?
A very good docu on substack is titled Escaping Calypso Island : a journey out of our green delusion by Cynthia Chung. It certainly deals with the fantasy.aspect.of living in a fantasy edenlike world here on earth.
‘We are builders and civilisers not because we are fallen…’ - I think as an ex new ager and both Kingsnorth and I are, it’s hard to let go of the spirit as superior to the Flesh indeed.
Thank you for addressing these points. I have been disturbed by some of Kingsnorth's writings. I appreciate a more holistic view of the Gospel, such as the one you describe, where everything we do is viewed in light of and a means of building the Kingdom.
It strikes me that Brother Kingsnorth's church itself is cultural. Every Orthodox parish is, after all, rooted in a specific cultural tradition with nation specific leadership, whether Greek, Russian etc.
Kingsnorth himself wants to differentiate culture from civilisation, but I think your point stands: the national cultures of each Orthodox church represent discrete forms of civilisation, formed both by their mother churches and by local practice. The same can be said of those churches which originate in the Church of England, which have a flavour of English culture but also played a part of the apparatus of British civilisation, both forming and being formed by it. And certainly, after Trent imposed greater uniformity on the national churches in communion with Rome, Roman Catholicism became more culturally Italian, as well as being built on the civic (i.e. civilised) traditions of ancient Rome. Nor can one doubt that Byzantine Christianity has been formed by the civilisation of imperial Constantinople and Slavic by the "Third Rome." That this has in every case led to excess and error, I agree with Kingsnorth: but that such influence is universally, essentially or even mostly negative, I do not agree.