“Armageddon Lobby”: How Christian Zionists Influence U.S. Policy

Despite the fact that not only hospitals and mosques but also Christian churches were destroyed during the bombardment of the Gaza Strip by Israeli forces, many people who call themselves Christians and who are not ethnic Jews actively support Israel’s actions. Where did this phenomenon come from?

The fact is that Zionism as a Jewish political movement emerged in the late 19th century, but similar ideas appeared much earlier. And, paradoxically, they were born in a Christian environment.

The Birth of Puritan Zionism

One of the first supporters of the immigration of European Jews to Palestine were the Puritans. This Protestant sect emerged in the late 16th century and became quite influential in England and later in the American colonies. They showed considerable interest in the role of the Jews in eschatology, or end-time theology.

For example, John Owen, a seventeenth-century theologian, member of Parliament, and administrator at Oxford, taught that the physical return of Jews to Palestine was necessary for the fulfillment of end times prophecy. And in 1621, Sir Henry Finch wrote a sermon calling for the support of the Jewish people and their return to their biblical homeland.

One of the most influential strands of Christian Zionism has been dispensationalism, a system of interpretation that uses information from the Bible to divide history into different periods of administrations or dispensations and views the biblical term “Israel” as referring to the ethnic Jewish nation established in Palestine.

Dispensationalism was originally developed by Anglo-Irish preacher John Nelson Darby in the nineteenth century. Darby believed that the God-ordained destinies of Israel and the Christian church were completely separate, with the latter to be physically “raptured”—raised to meet Jesus—before the period of upheaval predicted in the Apocalypse, called the Great Tribulation.

According to Darby, the Great Tribulation will begin after the construction of the Third Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. During the Great Tribulation, according to this teaching, 144,000 Jews will convert to Christianity, and this will reveal to them the true intentions of the Antichrist. Thus, they will become the epicenter for the conversion of all unbelievers who have not been raptured to the Christian faith.

It is these 144,000 converted Jews who will meet Antichrist in the final battle known as Armageddon and defeat the Antichrist. After this battle, the seven years of tribulation will end and Jesus will return to imprison Satan and establish a thousand-year Messianic Kingdom on earth.

Despite its absurdity and lack of any reference in the Bible, the concept of physically moving Christians to heaven on the eve of Armageddon has been enthusiastically embraced by some churches in England and especially in the United States.

Darby’s approach to Christian eschatology coincides with similar developments in Jewish eschatology, namely, the ideas of Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer and the creation of a new branch of Jewish messianism. Its representatives believed that Jews should actively work to hasten the coming of their messiah by immigrating to Israel and building the Third Temple on the site of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, where the Al-Aqsa Mosque is located.

Darby himself traveled throughout North America and several other countries to popularize his ideas, meeting with several influential pastors throughout the English-speaking world. Among them was James Brooks, Cyrus Scofield’s future mentor, who later disseminated the concept; and his interpretation was published widely in the United States and is known as the Scofield Bible.

Another figure influenced by Darby’s doctrine was the American preacher Charles Taze Russell, whose church later gave rise to several different sects, including the Jehovah’s Witnesses (an organization banned in Russia). Decades before the founding of modern political Zionism, Russell began preaching—not only to Christians but also to Jews in the United States and elsewhere—the need for mass Jewish immigration to Palestine.

Russell wrote a letter in 1891 to Edmond de Rothschild, a member of the Rothschild banking family, as well as Maurice von Hirsch, a wealthy German financier of Jewish descent, about his plan to settle Palestine. He described his plan as follows: “My proposal is that wealthy Jews buy from Turkey at a fair value all her property rights in these lands: that is, all public lands (lands not belonging to private owners), provided that Syria and Palestine are formed as free states.”

The book, The Jewish State by Theodor Herzl, considered the founder of Zionism, was published only in 1896.

American preacher William E. Blackstone, greatly influenced by Darby and other dispensationalists of the era, also spent decades advocating Jewish immigration to Palestine as a means of fulfilling biblical prophecy. His efforts culminated in the Blackstone Memorial Petition, which called on then-United States President Benjamin Harrison and his Secretary of State James Blaine to take action “in favor of the return of Palestine to the Jews.”

Signers of the petition included bankers J. D. Rockefeller and J. P. Morgan, future President of the United States William McKinley, Speaker of the House Thomas Brackett Reed, Chief Justice Melville Fuller, the mayors of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston, and Chicago, the editors of the Boston Globe, New York Times, Washington Post, and Chicago Tribune, as well as members of Congress, influential businessmen, and clergy.

Although some rabbis were included among the signers, most American Jewish communities opposed the content of the petition. In other words, the primary goal of Zionism, even before it became a movement, was widely supported by the American Christian elite.

Modern Rise

Yet for the first half of the twentieth century, Christian Zionism was not very widespread or influential in the United States.

However, then preacher Billy Graham enters the arena and had close relationships with several presidents, including Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon. Finally, dispensationalism entered the mainstream of American political discourse with evangelical preacher Jerry Falwell, who founded the Moral Majority organization in 1979.

Another prominent dispensationalist of great political and literary influence was Hal Lindsey. Ronald Reagan was so moved by his books that he invited Lindsey to speak at a National Security Council meeting on nuclear war plans and made him an influential adviser to several members of Congress and Pentagon officials.

To this day, the Republican Party still leans heavily on Christian Zionists for both cash and votes. They have a profound influence on party ideology.

Christian Zionists in the United States now have many names. Some call them the “Armageddon Lobby,” others call them the “Christian AIPAC” (American Israel Public Affairs Committee).

Christian Zionists themselves number about 20 million in the United States, and they sponsor the migration of Jews to Israel from Ethiopia, Russia, Ukraine and other countries. That is, in fact, there are more of them than ethnic Jews around the world, although not all Jews support Zionism.

During the administration of George W. Bush Jr. and especially on the eve of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, the administration was also heavily influenced by Christian Zionists in the form of neoconservatives. During a 60 Minutes interview in October 2002, Jerry Falwell even stated, “I think we can now count on President Bush to do the right thing for Israel every time.”

Falwell was referring to President Bush’s actions in April 2002 when he turned a blind eye to Israeli actions in the West Bank during Operation Protective Wall. Falwell met with President Bush several times during his first term, specifically to discuss United States support for Israel. According to him, the president’s views on Israel were in line with his own.

Christian Zionists also helped oust Democratic Congressman Jim Moran, who suggested that it was done for Israel’s benefit by the Jewish lobby. And the Apostolic Congress and the group Americans for a Secure Israel effectively derailed Bush’s plan to resolve the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians by flooding the White House with petitions.

There is also an organization in the U.S. called United Christians for Israel, which was founded in 2006 by Pastor John Hagee and has more than seven million members. Its members include former CIA head and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former Vice President Mike Pence and well-known hawk John Bolton. All of them were quite active during Donald Trump’s presidency.

During a speech in Kansas in 2015, Pompeo openly stated that he believes in the “rapture of Christians,” and in an interview said that as a Christian he believes that “God chose Trump to help save the Jews from the threat of Iran.”

It was Christian Zionists who lobbied Donald Trump to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and its sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights. Pastor Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Church in Dallas and Trump supporter led a prayer for peace in Jerusalem during the relocation of the United States embassy from Tel Aviv on May 14, 2018. He called it “a momentous event in the life of your nation and in the history of our world.”

Another entity from the U.S. called, Proclaiming Justice for the Nations, also lobbies for Israel’s interests. At the end of October 2023, they began calling for the resignation of the UN Secretary General for his criticism of Israel’s actions towards the Palestinians.

As we can see, the issue of support for Israel has a longer and more complex history than even that state’s creation in 1948.

Whereas many Jews deny even the very statehood of Israel, calling it a violation of Talmudic commandments (e.g., the Hasidic Naturei Karta movement), there are ardent supporters of Israel among the followers of Christian denominations, including justifications for any of its government’s actions, including repression of Palestinians.

And, of course, American Protestants, who link Israel’s fate to their eschatological worldview, play a huge role in this. And among them are influential political figures who make decisions on U.S. foreign policy.

Leonid Savin is Editor-in-Chief of the Geopolitika.ru Analytical Center, General Director of the Cultural and Territorial Spaces Monitoring and Forecasting Foundation and Head of the International Eurasia Movement Administration. This article appears through the kind courtesy of Geopolitika.

An Act of State Terrorism

Introduction

In Part One of “An Act of State Terrorism,” our article examining the decision by the United States to drop a plutonium bomb on the largest Catholic community in Japan in 1945, we explored five aspects of this tragedy and this crime.

We discussed the 400 year old Catholic heritage of Nagasaki; the frightful death toll and ghastly material devastation wrought by the detonation of the 21 kiloton Fat Man bomb over that city; the unresolved question of how Nagasaki appeared, suddenly, almost at the last minute, and by an anonymous hand, on the target list for nuclear incineration; the opposition of many American military leaders to the use of atomic weapons against civilians; and, finally, the false narrative of bomb proponents who claimed that the Soviet declaration of war against Japan was unexpected, reactive and opportunistic.

In Part Two, I propose to begin the examination of those, in the United States government, who were responsible for the unprecedented decision to terrify an enemy into surrender, by utilizing the then unimaginable destructive force of nuclear weapons, and using it on civilians, resulting in the deaths of perhaps two hundred thousand innocent human beings.

Our focus in this installment will be on the Cabinet official under whose authority the bomb was developed and deployed, the Secretary of War, Henry Stimson.

An Act of State Terrorism, Part Two

At the end of 1945, following the conclusion of the Second World War, the Armed Forces of the United States of America had eight five star officers, four Fleet Admirals — William Leahy, Ernest King, Chester Nimitz and William Halsey — and four Generals of the Army — George Marshall, Douglas MacArthur, Henry “Hap” Arnold and Dwight Eisenhower.

Leahy and MacArthur would later express moral objections to the atomic bombing of civilians. Halsey called it “a mistake.” Eisenhower thought the first use of such weapons by America was inexpedient. All, with the exception of Marshall, thought their use was unnecessary.

Even Army Chief of Staff George Marshall, who would later defend the dropping of the two atomic bombs, initially advocated for their deployment against military targets only. After the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Marshall urged that the atomic bombing of cities be halted, as America’s limited supply of these new bombs needed to be conserved as potential tactical weapons, for battlefield use, in the invasion of Japan.

It was America’s political leadership, not its military and naval commanders, who wanted and decided to use nuclear weapons in 1945.

A Very Different Government

Hilaire Belloc warned of the danger of “reading history backwards,” of assuming that the standards, structures and practices of today obtained in the past. Compared to 2023, America had a profoundly different federal government in 1945.

At the end of the Second World War, the vast civilian architecture of the modern national security state had not yet been created. That creation would come in two phases, the first in the immediate post-war period, and the second, after the 9/11 attacks.

When the U.S. government considered the military application of atomic power in 1945, those advisory, policy making, and executive institutions so preeminent in our own time — the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Council and the Department of Defense — did not yet exist.

There was no Cabinet level Ambassador to the United Nations, and there was, certainly, no all powerful Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, who could, like Henry Kissinger or Zbigniew Brzezinski, rival or displace the Secretary of State in influence.

The National Director of Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security would be 21st century constructions.

That contemporary Colossus of centralized power, the Executive Office of the President, with its cabinet department size and its myriad councils and agencies, was unknown in 1945. Nor was there a prime ministerial White House Chief of Staff, who could treat Cabinet secretaries as functionaries, and control, or even restrict, their access to the President.

In 1945, the Vice-President had no voice in the counsels of the Executive branch, and no presence or staff in the White House. In fact, he had, virtually, no staff at all, only a small office in the Capitol, from which he would emerge to discharge his constitutional obligation to preside over the Senate.

As the 25th Amendment, governing presidential and vice-presidential succession, was only proposed after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, the office of Vice-President was vacant during the first Truman administration.

In the eighty-two days, from January 20 to April 12, 1945, during which time Harry Truman served as Vice-President of the United States, he only met with President Franklin Roosevelt, alone, on two occasions. On neither of those occasions, did FDR bother to tell him about the Manhattan Engineer District Project, a.k.a., the atomic bomb.

Three Civilian Advisors

At the end of the Second World War, the President of the United States had just three principal civilian advisors in matters of foreign policy and national defense. These were the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, and the Secretary of the Navy.

Their significance in the government was underscored by their proximity to the President. Their offices were located in the Old Executive Office Building, colloquially referred to, simply, as the State, War and Navy Building — that great, 19th century Second Empire edifice next to the White House, and connected to it by an underground passageway. It is now called the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

In 1945, the U. S. Secretary of State was James F. Byrnes. The Secretary of War was Henry L. Stimson, and the Secretary of the Navy was James Vincent Forrestal. Both Byrnes and Forrestal were baptized Catholics. Only one however, still adhered to the religion of his baptism.

The Grey Eminence

The actual management of the atomic bomb project was in the hands of the War Department.

Seventy-seven years old in the summer of 1945, Secretary of War Henry Stimson was the U.S. government’s most distinguished and experienced grey eminence. Harry Truman was the sixth American President whom he served.

By birth, ancestry, religion, economic status and education, Stimson was an archetypical member of the American nomenklatura, sometimes called the Eastern Establishment.

Born in New York City in September of 1867, to a family of pious Presbyterians, he was the son of a surgeon and the grandson of a banker. His father sent him to Phillips Andover Academy, Yale University (where he joined Skull and Bones) and Harvard Law School.

A successful Wall Street attorney with the white shoe firm of Root and Clark, Stimson, by the time he was in his mid-thirties, was earning an annual income of $20,000, the equivalent of nearly $700,000 per year today.

Appointed, by President Theodore Roosevelt, as United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York in 1906, Stimson served until 1909, prosecuting antitrust cases. In his only attempt at elective office, Stimson became, with Roosevelt’s endorsement, the Republican nominee for Governor of New York in 1910, losing in the general election to Democrat John Dix.

From 1911 to 1913, Stimson served in the Cabinet of President William Howard Taft as the U.S. Secretary of War, the same office he would hold thirty years later in the Second World War. As a Regular Army Colonel in the Field Artillery in the First World War, he spent nine months in France, from 1917 to 1918, at the American General Staff College in Langres.

After the war, Stimson resumed his law practice, was made a Brigadier General in the Reserves, and became, in 1921, one of the founders of the Council on Foreign Relations.

In 1927, President Calvin Coolidge named Stimson an Envoy Extraordinary to the Republic of Nicaragua — then a de facto American protectorate — to settle that country’s electoral dispute. Later that year, Coolidge appointed him Governor-General of the Philippines.

In 1929, President Herbert Hoover recalled Stimson to Washington to confer upon him the highest gift in the providence of the Presidency. Hoover appointed him U.S. Secretary of State.

Serving until the end of the Hoover Administration in 1933, Stimson was the American delegate to the London Naval Conference in 1930, and would later proclaim the Stimson Doctrine, a policy of sanctions and non-recognition, aimed at containing Japanese aggression in Manchuria.

In July of 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, intent on running for an unprecedented third term, and seeking bi-partisan support for his foreign policy of all aid to Britain short of war, returned the 72 year old Henry Stimson, after an absence of 27 years, to the War Department.

For Roosevelt’s purposes, Stimson was an inspired choice. Although a prominent Republican with an impeccable reputation, Stimson was an internationalist, and therefore an interventionist, and more significantly, was an old retainer to the Oyster Bay branch of the Roosevelt family.

A Bureaucratic Interest

No cabinet official had a more compelling bureaucratic self interest in the successful use of atomic weapons than Henry Stimson. After all, he had just spent more than two billion, in 1940’s dollars, ($33 billion today) on the Manhattan Project, and he spent it surreptitiously, without the direct knowledge of Congress.

One of the congressional officials from whom he concealed the details of the project was the Chairman of the Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program, the junior Senator from Missouri, one Harry S. Truman.

Stimson then spent another three billion dollars ($49 billion in today’s money) on the development and production of the delivery system for the atomic bomb, the Boeing B-29 Superfortress, the most expensive weapons system in the history of the planet up to that time.

The B-29 proved to be a spectacular triumph of American aircraft design and engineering, a veritable quantum leap in aviation technology. It remained a front line American aircraft into the jet age of the Strategic Air Command, and was the principal U.S. heavy bomber in the Korean War.

In the middle of World War II however, Stimson had no way of knowing that. So, hedging his bets against the possible failure of the B-29 program, he then spent another $124 million ($2 billion in 2023 dollars) on a second delivery system, the now forgotten Consolidated B-32 Dominator.

In total, Stimson’s War Department expended $84 billion, in real dollars, to develop and deliver the atomic bomb.

Far from being an enthusiast for his own creation, Stimson was afflicted with a moral ambivalence about the bomb that bordered on schizophrenia. In policy terms, Stimson’s position was one of protracted inconsistency about the use of the weapon.

The Targeting of Civilians

In May of 1945, the Truman Administration established an inter-departmental Committee, known as the Interim Committee on the Military Use of the Atomic Bomb, to formulate policy about the deployment of the bomb, and to craft public statements explaining its existence to the American people.

The Chairman of the Interim Committee was Henry Stimson. The Committee was advised by a technical body called the Scientific Panel.

From its very beginning, the committee determined that civilian losses concomitant with the use of the bomb were not to be viewed as collateral casualties. The bomb was specifically intended to be a terror weapon which explicitly targeted civilians and maximized civilian deaths.

The second of the committee’s first three recommendations, adopted unanimously and issued on June 1, 1945, was: “It should be used on a dual target plant surrounded by or adjacent to houses and other buildings most susceptible to damage;”

The Target Committee, headed by the Director of the Manhattan Project, Major General Leslie Groves, had already come to the same conclusion. On May 12, 1945, that committee decided that the bomb should be used against “important targets in an urban area of more than three miles diameter,” — area bombing on an immense scale.

On June 6, 1945, Stimson met with President Truman to discuss the Interim Committee recommendations. According to Stimson’s memorandum on the meeting, Truman, already briefed by his aide, (and soon to be Secretary of State) James Byrnes, expressed no concerns with the committee report, beyond what to tell the Russians in the upcoming Potsdam Conference.

Nor did Stimson register any objection to the targeting of homes in a nuclear attack. At the very end of the meeting, however, Stimson, in a reference to the conventional firebombing of Japanese cities, told Truman “I did not want to have the United States get the reputation of outdoing Hitler in atrocities.”

It makes no sense, of course, to support the atomic bombing of civilians while condemning conventional area bombing as Hitlerian. Was Stimson reluctant to challenge the findings of his own committee? Why did he not raise this issue in the committee which he chaired? Was this remark a subtle means of implanting doubt in Truman’s mind?

Stimson Begins To Dissent

Twelve days later, on June 18th, President Truman held a meeting at the White House, with both his military and civilian advisors, to discuss the invasion of Japan. While most of those present supported a landing in the Japanese Home Islands in November, Stimson, seconded by his Assistant Secretary of War, John McCloy, suggested that an invasion would solidify Japanese resistance in a fight to the death.

An even more dramatic intervention was made by Fleet Admiral William Leahy, who told the President that the unconditional surrender of Japan was not necessary to the successful conclusion of the war.

Truman, revealingly, told Leahy that he could leave the issue to Congress, but he could not change public opinion in this matter.

On July 2nd, Stimson sent a memorandum to the President, entitled a Proposed Program for Japan. It is a remarkable document. While arguing, ostensibly, against an invasion of Japan, Stimson raises issues directly related to the use of atomic weapons.

Stimson told Truman that Japan was under blockade, had no allies and no navy, and was increasingly vulnerable to air attacks. He went on to say, contrary to the pervasive racial hatred of the time, that “Japan is not a nation composed wholly of mad fanatics of an entirely different mentality from ours.”

Addressing the policy of unconditional surrender, Stimson asserted that a Japanese surrender could be facilitated if we “do not exclude a constitutional monarchy under her present dynasty.”

In a seeming repudiation of his own committee, Stimson concluded the memorandum by stating that “Our own bombing should be confined to military objectives as far as possible.”

Stimson would lose the first of these arguments, and only prevail, belatedly, in the second. The bomb would be used on civilians, and Truman would only agree to the preservation of the monarchy after the destruction of Nagasaki.

With the successful test of the atomic bomb at Alamogordo in New Mexico on July 16th, the bureaucratic momentum for its use became inexorable. By the beginning of August, 1945, Stimson, the Administration loyalist, was busy monitoring last minute preparations for the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Saving Kyoto, Sacrificing Nagasaki

Henry Stimson’s last known intervention about the use of the atomic bomb, prior to the bombings, was his direct appeal to President Truman on July 24th to spare the city of Kyoto, the historic center of Buddhism and Shintoism in Japan, by removing it from the target list. It was immediately thereafter that Nagasaki was added to the list.

Was Henry Stimson the anonymous decision maker who selected Catholic Nagasaki for destruction to save pagan Kyoto? The archival record offers no clues, but we do know that Stimson embraced all the prejudices of his time, his class, and his religious sect.

As a young lawyer in the 1890’s, Stimson was a committed “goo-goo,” a member of the Good Government Club of New York, dedicated to stamping out patronage and corruption in local government, i.e., Irish control of municipal politics.

Stimson entered government as an appointee and a disciple of Theodore Roosevelt, a President notorious for his nativism and bigotry. As a diplomat and colonial administrator, Stimson believed that Catholic Filipinos and Latin Americans were incapable of democratic self-government, requiring, instead, the firm hand of Anglo-Saxon tutelage.

Like every other rich WASP in the FDR Administration, Stimson had a visceral animus against the Catholic leader of Free France, once telling Harry Truman that Charles De Gaulle was “psychopathic.”

In his last public comments, a few months before his death in 1950, Stimson, in a letter to the editor of The New York Times, denounced Senator Joseph McCarthy.

The Tragedy of Henry Stimson

An attorney represents the position of his client. A mandarin — a high civil servant — learns the values of obedience, discretion, compliance with the institutional consensus, and acquiescence in decisions, once made.

Stimson was both of these in his long career. The tragedy of Henry Stimson was that he was inclined to do right, in a vague, Protestant/humanitarian sort of way, but lacked the moral clarity that the Catholic Faith would have imparted.

He had principles, and personal probity, but no concept of unbreachable moral prohibitions, rooted in Divine and natural law. In the end, everything was negotiable, where compromise was permitted and expected.

Like Pontius Pilate, Henry Stimson was morally discomforted by the decisions confronting him, and like Pilate, he preferred the acceptance of a crime to the uncertainties and unpleasantness of political discord.

On two occasions in his career, Stimson rejected the elite consensus. He argued against the vengeful Morgenthau Plan, which would have destituted the German people and depopulated the country by de-industrializing Germany.

Like General George Marshall, Stimson believed that American support for a Jewish National Home in Palestine would be inimical to U.S. interests in the Middle East.

On August 10, 1945, the day after the bombing of Nagasaki, Stimson, with the support of the Secretary of the Navy, James Forrestal, appealed to the President to halt all attacks, both atomic and conventional, on Japan, to give that country an opportunity to surrender.

Stimson and Colonel William H. Kyle (right) arriving at the Gatow Airport in Berlin, Germany to attend the Potsdam Conference (July 16, 1945). Source.

After the war, towards the end of his life, Henry Stimson’s institutional loyalties and ruling class sensibilities proved impossible to discard. In a February, 1947 article in Harper’s Magazine, Stimson not only defended the killing of innocent civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but assumed responsibility for carrying out the decision: “I approved four other targets including the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

Ironically, Stimson, one of the few cabinet officials who expressed moral reservations about the killing of civilians in wartime, would, in this article written in his retirement, provide the official narrative justifying the use of atomic weapons on the innocent as “our least abhorrent choice.”

C. Joseph Doyle is the Executive Director of the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts. Doyle is also the Director of Communications for the Friends of Saint Benedict Center.

Featured: Henry Lewis Stimson, by Ellen Emmet Rand; painted in 1933.

Mainstream Christian Zionism

Zionism and its impact on contemporary Israel and Palestine are topics of enormous import and therefore demand careful examination, yet they are widely misunderstood. Zionism is often regarded as a Jewish movement. In fact, the vast majority of Zionists are Christian. Moreover, Christian Zionism is usually considered to be a subset of Zionism. In contrast to this popular misconception, we should understand that Christian Zionism is the majority expression of Zionism; Jewish Zionism is an outgrowth of Christian Zionism. While many consider Christian Zionism to be a phenomenon of the religious right, most Christian Zionists are mainstream, liberal Christians. For example, Reinhold Niebuhr, the iconic twentiethcentury American liberal theologian, was selfconsciously and consistently Zionist throughout his career.

Christian Zionism is generally associated with Christians from the “Christian right,” who are loosely labeled fundamentalists or evangelicals. Sometimes, Christian Zionists are referred to as “the lunatic fringe.” Understood narrowly, Christian Zionists see the establishment of the State of Israel as a necessary step in God’s plan of salvation history. This is the best known form of Christian Zionism. This Christian form attracts the most critical attention, especially from mainstream Christians. However, it represents a distinct minority of Christian Zionists. The popular preoccupation with this select band on the Christian Zionist spectrum ignores the vast majority of Christian Zionists. I will refer to this strain of Zionism as fundamentalist or narrow Christian Zionism. In contrast to this narrow view, Christian Zionism, properly understood, covers a much broader range of Christians.

As a phenomenon, Christian Zionism is older than Jewish Zionism. In 1621, Sir Henry Finch wrote a discourse calling for support for the Jewish people and for their return to their biblical homeland. Further development of its primordial form dates to the first quarter of the nineteenth-century in England and in the United States. In the nineteenth century, Christian Zionism was, indeed, a fundamentalist ideology, but it has spread far beyond the narrow boundaries of evangelicals and biblical literalists. Over the past twenty years, Christian Zionism has attracted more and more scholarly attention, but that attention has been focused almost exclusively on this select band of the fundamentalist Christian Zionist spectrum, leaving wider and more conspicuous bands of the spectrum almost totally ignored—hiding in plain sight. This preoccupation of mainstream Christians with fundamentalist Christian Zionism is both misguided and misleading. Zionism is far more pervasive among “mainstream” Christians than it is usually regarded to be. Christian Zionism is not usually associated with mainstream, progressive Christians. This error needs to be corrected.

Christian attention to the phenomenon of Zionism is appropriate, because, paradoxically, Zionism originated as a Christian phenomenon and continues to be overwhelmingly Christian. How do I arrive at this conclusion?

Estimates of the number and percentages of fundamentalist and/ or evangelical Christians in America vary depending on how one defines these terms, but most surveys estimate that about twentythree to twenty-seven percent of the US Christian population is evangelical.1 In 2014, for example, a Pew Research poll of 35,000 Americans put the Christian population of America at seventy percent (210 million Americans). It found that evangelical Christians make up about one quarter of the Christian population (52.5 million Americans).

By way of contrast, consider that the world’s Jewish population is about 14 million people, i.e., about one quarter of the population of evangelical American Christians. At the risk of oversimplification, but to help demonstrate my point, consider that if all Jews in the world are Zionist, but only half the evangelicals in the USA are Zionist, then American fundamentalist Christian Zionists would outnumber all Jewish Zionists in the world by about 2:1. Thus, even if all Jews in the world are Zionists—and we know this is not correct—and only half of evangelicals in the US are Zionists, then Zionism is an overwhelmingly Christian phenomenon. The ratio of American fundamentalist Christian Zionists to American Jewish Zionists is closer to 5:1. Once Christian Zionism is properly understood
to include many progressive Christians as well, we will see that for every Jewish Zionist, there are at least ten Christian Zionists.

The significance of this point should not be ignored, because Zionist apologists often advance the erroneous and specious complaint that criticism of Zionism is a new and evolved form of anti-Semitism.

Zionism, however, should not be overly identified with Jews and Judaism for a number of reasons, most importantly because Christian Zionists vastly outnumber Jewish Zionists, especially once Christian Zionism is properly understood. Since Zionism has had enormous and far-reaching consequences on a national and global level and because it is overwhelmingly Christian, the examination of Christian Zionism by Christians of all persuasions is an important historical and ethical enterprise. What is more, since Zionism has produced catastrophic consequences for many people, Jews as well as non-Jews, Christian examination of Zionism, especially in its Christian forms, is a moral obligation as well. In any event, Christian examination of Christian Zionism is first and foremost an examination of Christians, Christian ideology, and Christian ethics.

My own consideration of Christian Zionism dates to the mid-1990s, when I was first introduced to it in its fundamentalist form. It was about that time that the phrase Christian Zionism was coined. My first essay on the subject—and I believe the first time the phrase mainstream Christian Zionism was employed and examined—was published in Michael Prior’s last book in 2004. By that time, Christian Zionism had gained considerable media attention, including a thirty-minute segment of 60 Minutes in 2003 and feature articles in the Washington Post and USA Today. However, those segments focused on what we should consider to be only a subset of Christian Zionism (i.e., the fundamentalist version represented by John Hagee, Hal Lindsay, and the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem). It is also illustrated in the popular Left Behind series of fiction books. Critics frequently refer to this subset pejoratively as a Christian heresy or as the “lunatic ravings” of the Christian right.

Stephen Sizer, an English Episcopalian priest, wrote his doctoral dissertation on Christian Zionism. The dissertation is exclusively preoccupied with evangelical, fundamentalist Christian Zionism, ignoring the dominant mainstream variety, and he continues to focus his critique of Christian Zionism on this subset. In 2012, Steven Paas published Christian Zionism Examined. It focused exclusively on the fundamentalist form. In 2013, Paul Louis Metzger posted at Patheos a critique of Christian Zionism that focused exclusively on the fundamentalist Christian version. In 2014, at a conference on Christians in the holy land, sponsored by the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries in Ginghamsburg, Ohio, Alex Awad, a Palestinian American Baptist minister, lectured on Christian Zionism. He focused exclusively on its fundamentalist form. David Wildman, also with the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries, held forth frequently on the topic of Christian Zionism, always in its narrow form.

Fundamentalist Christian Zionism An Easy Target for Liberals

It is not surprising that most contemporary attention focuses on fundamentalist Christian Zionism. Fundamentalist Christian Zionists are vocal and visible, and therefore easily identified. Due to their distinctive and sometimes bizarre biblical interpretations, they are also easily critiqued. Recent popular and scholarly assessments of fundamentalist Christian Zionism are not wrong, but they are misleading. The problem is that defining Christian Zionism as a form of biblical literalism is a mistake. If biblical literalism defines Zionism, then most Jewish Zionists, including the foundational Jewish Zionists, like Theodore Herzl, would not qualify.

That Christian Zionism does not require a fundamentalist reading of the Bible is well recognized by fundamentalist Christian Zionists. The Rev. Malcom Hedding, a spokesperson for the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, writes:

If Zionism is the belief in the Jewish people’s right to return to their homeland, then a Christian Zionist should simply be defined as a Christian who supports the Jewish people’s right to return to their homeland. Under this broad and simple definition, many Christians would qualify no matter what their reasons are for this support.

Understood more broadly and more correctly, the ranks of Christian Zionists include renowned mainstream Christians such as Reinhold Niehbur, Krister Stendahl, Robert Drinan, William Albright, and W. D. Davies. Public figures including John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and the journalist James Carroll must be included among Christian Zionists. None of these are biblical literalists. All of them are Zionists. Further, almost the entire biblical academy is, if not selfconsciously and directly in the service of the Zionist agenda, then at least indirectly engaged in promoting the Zionist narrative. The same can be said for mainstream churches that promote and reinforce the Zionist narrative in their Sunday school curricula, hymnody, and liturgies. Finally, almost all so-called Christian-Jewish dialogue is dominated by sympathy for the Zionist agenda. Indeed, most forms of so-called Christian-Jewish dialogue exclude any consideration of the effects of the Zionist agenda on the peoples of Palestine. Mainstream Christian Zionists are progressive and liberal. They often do not declare their Zionist orientation. Their affinity for Zionism is often masked by a sincere and notable concern to correct past wrongs by Christians against Jews. They usually do not endorse the extreme policies of the State of Israel against the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, although their sensitivity toward Palestinians does not usually include the Palestinian experience in 1948. One might reasonably wonder how Christians can reject on moral grounds the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 and its aftermath, but at the same time accept the occupation of Palestine in 1948, which was far more devastating to Palestinians without any moral compunctions whatsoever?

What Then Defines Zionism and How Do We Recognize That It Is Mainstream Christians?

If Zionism does not require biblical literalism in either its Jewish or Christian forms, then what defines a Zionist and Zionism Zionism is a nationalist movement bearing a family resemblance to all other nationalist movements of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and containing its own idiosyncrasies. Like any nationalist movement, it is subject to critique and it is subject to the same critique to which all nationalist movements must submit. All nationalism is exclusive. All exclusivity is divisive. All divisiveness is unstable. In my opinion, to be clear and in the interests of full disclosure, all nationalism is perverse and anachronistic. The advent of the nationstate is a modern phenomenon that has resulted in unprecedented ethnic conflict and unspeakable and unparalleled violence by peoples against each other. Zionist nationalism is no more violent than, for example, American nationalism, and no less violent, either. While they are different currently, neither is exceptional in that way. It is important to note, however, that people are sympathetic to Zionist nationalism because first they are sympathetic to the concept of nationalism.

There is no simple formulaic definition of Zionism. However, any articulation of Zionism, such as the one above by Malcolm Hedding, must express, one way or another, the ideas that 1) the Jewish people are a distinct people; 2) like other peoples, Jews are, and Jewishness is, best actualized in a nation-state characterized by national institutions and distinct boundaries; and 3) that this organization into a nationstate is not only a political and historical necessity, but a moral imperative as well. None of these essentials is unambiguous and none is beyond question, but whenever you find these ingredients, you will find a Zionist, whether he or she is Christian or Jewish, religious or secular, fundamentalist or progressive. When one considers these three characteristic features—each of which involves elaborate corollaries—one begins to get a feel for mainstream Zionism in contradistinction to fundamentalist Zionism. These three characteristics—that for the Jewish people, the establishment of the State of Israel is both a political necessity and a moral imperative—are common to those who identify themselves as Zionists.

Where do we find exponents of Zionism, so defined, among mainstream Christians? Let’s start with Reinhold Niebuhr, the iconic Protestant liberal Christian. Niebuhr was educated at Yale and wrote prolifically for The Christian Century, The Nation, The New Republic, and his own Christianity in Crisis. He was eventually appointed professor of ethics at Union Theological Seminary. He was by no means a

fundamentalist. There is no hint of any reference to the fulfilment of biblical prophecy in his writings. Indeed, he denigrates such views. Niebuhr’s unwavering support for Jewish causes was nurtured by strong philo-Judaism. He was motivated not by restorationist theology and informed not by biblical literalism, but by moral outrage over the experience of Jews in Nazi Germany and throughout Europe and central Asia. For him, support for the Jewish people required support for the Jewish state and both were moral imperatives. His conscience was attuned to issues of justice and the moral obligation of Christians to respond to social challenges. He spoke frequently in support of Zionism to Jewish audiences. Leaders of Zionist organizations identified him as one who could be counted on to advance their agenda among Christians and he agreed to write a two-part pro-Zionist article that appeared in The Nation. He wrote:

The problem of what is to become of the Jews in the postwar world ought to engage all of us, not only because a suffering people has a claim upon our compassion but because the very quality of our civilization is involved in the solution… The Jews require a homeland…

Clearly, Niebuhr was predisposed by his theological orientation toward empathy for Jews. Just as clearly, he had no interest in fundamentalist biblical hermeneutics. Does that fact alone, however, disqualify him from the ranks of Zionists? On the contrary, his orientation toward Zionism perfectly illustrates that fundamentalism is not a precondition for Christian Zionism. He wrote:

Many Christians are pro-Zionist in the sense that they believe that a homeless people require a homeland; but we feel as embarrassed as anti-Zionist religious Jews when messianic claims are used to substantiate the right of the Jews to the particular homeland in Palestine… History is full of strange configurations. Among them is the thrilling emergence of the State of Israel.

Zionism and the Mainstream Academy

Turning to the arena of Christian biblical scholarship, Christian Zionism is ubiquitous. In recent years, prominent biblical scholars, including Keith Whitelam, Thomas Thompson, and Michael Prior have produced groundbreaking works demonstrating that both biblical archaeology and the broader field of biblical studies are dominated by scholars whose ideas are sympathetic to and have the effect of validating the Zionist enterprise. This is particularly obvious when one travels through Israel, where virtually every archaeological endeavor is pressed into Zionist service to reinforce the Zionist narrative of Jewish return and validate exclusive Jewish claims to the land.

Neil Asher Silberman explores this theme vigorously as it pertains to Zionist historiography. One outstanding example, among many, is the archaeological excavation of Masada. Yigal Yadin, an avowed Zionist who directed the dig and who first published its findings, is the author of the popular myth of Masada. Yadin’s findings and the Masada story were subsequently debunked, but, nevertheless, live
on because they fit so well with the worldview of contemporary Israelis. Twenty-five years after Silberman published his work, Christian pilgrims, no less than Israeli school groups, are saturated with the fiction of Jewish Zealots heroically defying overwhelming odds, just as the Israeli Defense Force is said to do today in its aggressive wars of “selfdefense.” Biblical scholars reinforce this link by happily adopting Zionist language of Jewish return to the land. That Jesus and his compatriots, both those who were his supporters and those who were his detractors, belonged to one unified Jewish people is almost uncontested in biblical scholarship. English translations of the New Testament routinely refer to Jesus, his followers, and his opponents all as Jews, even though careful translation of the original languages of the texts would call for more nuanced translation.

Just as astonishingly, modern biblical scholars constantly refer to Jesus or Paul as practitioners of Judaism without nuance. The diversity of conceptions implied by the Greek noun Ioudaios and its cognates is consistently undermined in contemporary Biblical translations. In fact, the contrast between the scarcity of the unnuanced references to Judaism in firstcentury literature and its frequency in contemporary biblical scholarship is striking and well illustrates the degree to which mainstream Christian biblical scholarship helps to cement the connection between modern Zionist Jews and their claim to the territory of ancient Israel. Interpretation matters. Words not only describe reality. Words also condition the way we think about reality. The words biblical scholars use to describe the ancient past promotes an identification of modern Jews with ancient Jews and reinforces the Zionist claim of a direct line between past and present and the natural return of the Jews to their ancestral land. It should be observed that the archaeologists and historians whose historiographies are so harmonious with the Zionist enterprise, more often than not, are Christians who are neither fundamentalist nor dispensationalist.

Zionist ideology depends heavily on the idea of a distinct modern ethnic group which originated in the territory of ancient Israel and which can trace an uninterrupted lineage to ancient Israel. This historical oversimplification undergirds many modern Zionist claims to the contemporary real estate in Palestine. Such Zionism appeals to biblical archaeology to validate its contemporary claims to ethnic identity and territorial integrity. But the scholarship is not merely congenial to Zionist ideology. Biblical scholars themselves often uncritically presume the ethnic identity, territorial legitimacy, and nationalist aspirations at the root of Zionism. If the assumptions of the scholars are identical with those of Zionists, why do we not consider those scholars Zionists?

Mainstream Christian Zionism also pervades one of the most hallowed precincts of liberal, mainstream Christianity, namely so-called JewishChristian dialogue. It is no surprise that Jews involved in the dialogue display obvious Zionist sympathies, but their Christian counterparts are often equally and unapologetically Zionist. It is also in this realm that the challenges associated with identifying and critiquing mainstream Christian Zionism are most apparent. Unlike the ranks of fundamentalist Christian Zionists, whose opinions are often shrugged off as “lunatic ravings,” mainstream Christian Zionists are not easy targets. Not only does mainstream Christian Zionism include icons of liberal, progressive Christianity, their motivation for assuming obviously Zionist positions is motivated by and grounded in sincere moral concern.

The reality of Jewish suffering should be prominent in all Christian thinking, but in the formal circles of Jewish-Christian dialogue, it propels Christian participants to adopt clearly Zionist positions. Almost without exception, their concern grows out of sincere
regard for Jewish suffering and the demands of justice and restitution. Rarely, however, does their concern extend equally to the Palestinians who experience Zionism as an instrument of catastrophe. One notable example among many is Father Robert Drinan, formerly Dean of the School of Law at Boston College and professor of law at Georgetown University. Drinan was a well-known activist in liberal social causes throughout his long and illustrious career. However, in describing Zionism, Drinan uses language that would have surprised even Herzl, whom, he says, pursued his “messianic pilgrimage” with a zeal “infused with a compelling humanitarianism combined with traces of Jewish mysticism.” The “mystery” and “majesty” of Zionism appears in its glory from Herzl’s tomb. Now
that the state is established, Christians should support it “in reparation or restitution for the genocide of Jews carried out in a nation whose population was overwhelmingly Christian.” Let’s not ignore Father Drinan’s distinguished ten-year career as a member of the US House of Representatives (DemocratMassachusetts), during which he had numerous opportunities to express his enthusiasm for Zionism by voting in favor of legislation and resolutions that were staunchly pro-Israel. He is, thus, also an example of the way in which mainstream Christian Zionism pervades US political institutions.

Conclusion

Very few topics generate fervent debate, arouse passions, and evoke confusion like the IsraeliPalestinian conflict. This is because it veers into the volatile areas of religion and politics. Personal faith, interpretation of scripture, personal loyalties, moral convictions, and deeply-held political opinions overlap and collide in a confused sea of facts, perceptions, images, and realities. Notwithstanding these treacherous emotional waters, conscientious American Christians have no choice but to attempt to navigate them, because their churches and their government are both deeply complicit in the sadness and suffering of the people of Israel and Palestine.

In spite of the often repeated critiques of fundamentalist Christian Zionism, a more pervasive, pernicious, and sophisticated form of Zionism has been overlooked. I call it mainstream Christian Zionism. I believe that most American Christians should be included in this category. But if only half of mainstream American Christians are Zionists, then mainstream Christian Zionists outnumber American Jewish Zionists by 14:1. Were it not for this form of Christian Zionism, the more easily identifiable, easily critiqued, unsophisticated form of Christian Zionism would not have the effect that it has. The minority wields great influence and exerts great energy, but they still need the majority to effect policy and the majority is only too happy to play its part. Mainstream Christian Zionism does not depend on biblical authority for its legitimacy. It is rooted in genuine moral sensitivities. Its appeal is to moral imperatives and political necessity rather than personal piety. It assumes uncritically that nationalism is natural and necessary and so starts with a predisposition to Jewish nationalism. It is far better organized, far better funded, and far more politically potent than its
fundamentalist cousin

Reconsidering Christian Zionism in its mainstream form leads inevitably to vexing moral conflicts. It requires re-examination of widely held assumptions about ethnic identity and nationhood and the moral implications of these. It raises issues that are considered taboo in the Church and takes us into perilous moral and academic “no-fly zones.” But intellectual honesty requires no less.

It is, of course, quite convenient for mainstream Christians to identify Christian Zionism exclusively with evangelical, fundamentalist Christians. It is always easier to identify other people’s defects than one’s own. Mark Twain reportedly once said, “Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.” Jesus said, “First take the log out of your own eye…”

Mainstream, liberal Christians cannot absolve themselves of complicity in the Zionist enterprise simply because they are not fundamentalists. If they espouse views that are identical to the nationalist assumptions of self-confessed secular and religious Jewish Zionists, then they themselves should be identified as Zionists.

Equating Christian Zionism so thoroughly with evangelical, fundamentalist Christians, or with the Christian right, is highly misleading, and ignores the reality that Christian Zionist support for the State of Israel comes overwhelmingly from mainstream Christians. Until we understand Christian Zionism in its mainstream aspects, however, we have not begun to appreciate how pervasive—and, therefore, how dangerous—Zionism really is.

Peter J. Miano teaches courses in New Testament studies, biblical archaeology, biblical geography and biblical history. He also teaches courses in missiology. He specializes in the history of the Middle East, its contemporary development and the role of the Church in the Middle East during the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.

Featured: Engraving by Ephraim Moshe Lilien, produced for the 5th Zionist Congress, which took place in Basel, Switzerland in 1901. The Hebrew inscription at the bottom is the prayer “May our eyes behold your return in mercy to Zion.” This is an excerpt from Prophetic Voices on Middle East Peace.

Libertarian Autobiographies: Moving Toward Freedom in Today’s World

The following is an amended excerpt from Libertarian Autobiographies: Moving Toward Freedom in Today’s World, co-edited by Jo Ann Cavallo and Walter E. Block. The book gives voice to 80 libertarians from around the world who share their hopes, fears, expectations and achievements, in their efforts to acheive a freer world. Please consider supporting the work of Professors Cavallo and Block and purchase a copy of this inspiring work.

It is our fervent belief that libertarianism is the last best hope for humankind with regard to economics, liberty, justice, prosperity, peace, and thus even survival (pardon us for hyper-ventilating, but we maintain this is indeed the case). This belief of ours is predicated upon the crucial importance of the non-aggression principle (NAP): proper law should allow all people to engage in whichever acts they prefer, with the one exception being any behavior that violates this precept or any threat thereof. Thus, murder, rape, theft, kidnapping, fraud, and similar evil actions should be prohibited, and virtually everything else should be legally permitted.

But why assemble a collection of autobiographies penned by libertarians? Why not, instead, offer a collection of scholarly articles demonstrating the benefits of liberty? Many of the contributors to this volume have published just that sort of work on numerous occasions. Why not do so one more time? Although people may gain an understanding of this philosophy via rational argument, it cannot be denied that autobiographies, too, are important for the promotion of liberty. The personal touch may reach some people not approachable via any other means. Additionally, we all want to know the libertarian stories of people such as those who appear on these pages. Indeed, we find that libertarians have the most interesting stories to share because they often embrace this philosophy as the result of intense encounters with foundational texts or life-changing experiences.

One of the big “problems” we have with some of the best-known libertarians throughout history—such as John Locke, Lord Acton, Ludwig von Mises, Isabel Paterson, Henry Hazlitt, Friedrich Hayek, and Murray Rothbard—is that they never wrote an autobiography. Of course, if they had, alternative costs being what they are, they would likely not have been able to write other precious publications of theirs. But what about libertarians alive today? Would they be willing to share their stories? We already have the example of two volumes of libertarian autobiographies: Why Liberty: Personal Journeys Toward Peace & Freedom (Cobden Press), with 54 autobiographies edited by Marc Guttman, and I Chose Liberty: Autobiographies of Contemporary Libertarians (Mises Institute), with 82 autobiographies edited by one of the co-editors of this present volume, Walter Block (available as a free pdf at https://mises.org/library/i-chose-liberty-autobiographies-contemporary-libertarians). Both volumes were published over a decade ago, however, in 2010. We wanted to learn more about the lives of contemporary libertarians not covered in these two volumes and of others who have emerged since the time of these publications.

We therefore reached out to a number of influential scholars, activists, professors, journalists, and cultural icons who have worked toward a freer society across the globe, inviting them to write a brief autobiography for this collection. We asked them to articulate, for example, what their lives and thoughts were before they embraced libertarianism; which people, texts, or events most influenced their intellectual formation; what experiences, challenges, tribulations, and achievements they have had as participants or leaders in this movement; and how this philosophy has affected their personal or professional lives.

A volume of autobiographies on the part of libertarians immediately raises the question of precisely what constitutes this political economic philosophy. In our “big-tent” view, it comprises several strands. They all have something in common, such as an appreciation for individual liberty, private property rights, the rule of law, and free enterprise, but there are also discernible differences. That is why if you get ten libertarians in a room and ask them a question, you’ll likely get eleven (or more!) different responses. In this volume, we invited libertarians across the political-philosophical spectrum, including (1) anarcho-capitalism; (2) minimal government libertarianism, or minarchism; (3) constitutionalism; (4) classical liberalism; (5) thick libertarianism. The contributors to this volume range over the five main viewpoints mentioned above, and also fill in the gaps between them. Their essays express different perspectives on many issues even while articulating the same core principles. In fact, it is our desire that their very differences of opinion on some matters will invite readers to think for themselves. What we have sought to present is a sampling of the myriad individual journeys toward libertarianism, however defined.

Although the majority of contributors to the volume live in the United States, we are grateful to the libertarians from around the world who accepted our invitation to share their stories. This volume thus includes voices from Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Czech Republic, England, Germany, Guatemala, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Korea, Nigeria, Peru, Poland, Romania, Russia, Scotland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, and Ukraine.

It is the hope and expectation of the editors that by bringing together a range of contemporary voices from outside the dominant left–right paradigm, this volume will contribute to the viewpoint diversity that is crucially needed in today’s public discourse. Moreover, these personal and intellectual journeys not only offer compelling insights into their individual authors and the state of the world in our lifetime, but may also serve as an inspiration for the next generation who will feel called upon to make our society a freer one.

Sexism Rears its Ugly Head in an Airplane

I took an airplane trip the other day. It was a direct flight from Seattle to New Orleans on Alaska Airlines, if you must know. I had the occasion to use the rest rooms three times. Hey, it was a four-hour flight and I’m not as young as I used to be. (I used a different one each time. I even once snuck into the first-class lavatory, but don’t tell anyone).

There, staring me in the face as I concluded my business (doing research for this essay!) was a pull-down shelf, stretching the entire width of the commode. It was the appropriate size for changing a baby’s diaper. That was not what horrified me. Rather, it was the illustrated sign posted on this apparatus indicating its purpose. There were two figures indicated therein. One, a little baby, lying on his back. That was quite alright with me. The younger set needs help in this regard. However the other depiction was entirely offensive. It indicated an adult person (you could judge by the relative size of the two figures) standing above and leaning over the baby. That was the offensive part.

At this point I feel compelled to offer a trigger warning. Some readers, with delicate sensibilities, might be so offended by what I am now about to relate that they will keel over in a dead faint and need medical attention. Yes, they will feel “unsafe” without this trigger warning, and maybe, even so, with it. Having fulfilled my obligation to be sensitive (I’m a college professor and I have been inculcated with the wokeism now reigning on campus; I have learned how to deal with snowflakes) I can now relate what offended me: the adult leaning over the baby, ready to diaper the baby was wearing a dress!

I just knew that would shock your socks off! I gasped in dismay when I first saw this. It indicated that a woman (or a transgendered man; I have to be careful here; I am now treading in a veritable land-mine; I might be accused of violating the strict strictures of “inclusion” and “belonging” now rampant in higher education) was changing the baby’s diaper. Oh, woe! As a man, a husband, married with children, I have indeed changed my fair share of diapers (ok, ok, far fewer than my wife) but still, I found this highly offensive. Why should it be assumed that a woman would be diapering a baby!? This is sexism run rampant! Men, too, can get pregnant, have babies, and change their diapers. Arnold Schwarzenegger did so in his 1994 movie Junior. That’s proof enough for me. If it isn’t for you, you’re a sexist pig!

Then, to my utter dismay, I espied yet another offensive statement, accompanied by a picture, also in this very same set of washrooms, again, all three of them! Well, the statement was alright. ‘twas not offensive. It indicated that only bathroom tissue was to be placed in the commode and flushed down. The problem was the figure placed next to this message. It was the picture of a man (well, at least “he” was not wearing a dress; as I say, one can’t be too careful nowadays, at deducing this sort of thing. If truth be told, it is extremely dangerous for academics such as I, even with tenure, to deduce anything at all in this context, while under the baleful eye of deans and provosts on campus). Nevertheless, courageous professor that I am, I am willing to go out on a limb here.

What is my conclusion on the basis of this figure? It is that men, but not women, are slobs. Now, this is perfectly acceptable to me; men, after all, are tyrants, exploiters, rapists (they have a penis; this must be true) responsible for all the ailments afflicting society. However, this only applies to straight white males. Men from other races are certainly not implicated in this charge; they are all angels, come down to earth to inspire the rest of us. Nor are even white males a threat to all that is good and holy, provided they are not heterosexual. The problem with the figure on the toilet was that it did not make this distinction! It indicted all males! This is something up with which we wokesters simply will not put!

So I urge my fellow snowflakes to boycott Alaska Airlines and all other air carriers who are so insensitive as to engage in these sexist, racist, offenses. Soon, your intrepid Paul Revere (me, that is) will examine railroads and bus lines to ensure there are no offenses against political rectitude therein.

Walter Block is the Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair and Professor of Economics at Loyola University, New Orleans. Read more of his work on his Substack.

School of Prayer, Medicine of Life: The Divine Office as Social Salve

Setting Out

One of the features which has accented Apocatastasis Institute from the word go has been the inclusion of the Divine Office in our daily schedule. I mean in this essay to explain why this is. Other and better men have done other and better jobs at explaining what the Office is, its mechanics, history, and spirituality. We are not rehashing that necessary material here. If you are deficient in those sciences, dear reader, put aside this paper and digest those topics before returning. By way of house rules, I will be using the terms Divine Office, the Office, the Discipline, the Liturgy Of The Hours, the Prayer (with a capital p), and the Liturgy (with a capital L) interchangeably.

In this exploration we will look at the Divine Office as a medicine for social wounds, one that is rightly administered in a school setting as schools ought to be directed toward this same end. It is a salve for the wounds of secularism, abstracted pedagogy, personal foibles, and historical accidents. Like any treatment it does not contain the totality of the solution. It nudges, it points, it guides towards the correction.

The Sickness

We are unrooted. Just as one’s posture can be thrown off by flat feet or a bum knee, from unrootedness come a flurry of other ills such as a low trust society, lack of agency, and discouragement. Exploiting these social and personal failures are unscrupulous men operating in unscrupulous combinations. Foundations once destroyed, what can the just do (cf. Ps.10/11)?

Part of our unrootedness stems from economic developments at first affecting Western man, and after the Second World War, all mankind. Part of this condition stems from deliberate schemes to make unrooted men. Modern education, marital laws, and telephonic communication, for example, appear deliberately to trip up natural personal, familial, and social harmony. Part of our unrooted condition is our own concupiscence, particularly our going with the flow of deracinating and deracinated culture. We may blame social institutions all we like, but at a certain point we must hold ourselves responsible for our cooperation with McWorld. The Office is a skeleton upon which to hang real life once more, and a school setting is an opportune place to do this. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and McWorld wasn’t either. If we are to build Christendom, we will need discipline. Hour by hour, brick by brick, the Divine Office is an handy trowel for this erection.

The Myopia of Alt Ed

When I was a little bit younger, I was quite enamored with the educational critique of homeschoolers and unschoolers. To a certain
extent my subsequent exasperation with those communities is that they have not developed their insights into anything more significant than personal necessity. Singular interest is the mark of an immature mind. It is the manful intellect which grasps that the individual is a cell of a larger society; it is the manful body which labors to bring this about.

Howsomeever, I remember at one conference a mot just out of high school—or at least she was of that age, as unschoolers of course don’t go to high school—was asked how to make unschooling more popular. I’ll never forget what she said; it was wisdom in a nutshell, for all true wisdom is pithy. The girl said she didn’t want unschooling to become popular because more people would necessarily mean a watering down of that modality.

Well, she was right. For those of us who have dedicated our energies towards alternative education, we ought to have been careful what we wished for. Our educational critique has become popularized, and much of that critique has become sloganized. As so often happens in history, the subtleties of maxims which slogans assume are lost over time and after a while only the naked maxims are known without the scaffolding of assumptions the sayings originally assumed.

Thus, in Rabbinic Judaism their concept of “the Torah” migrated from the Pentateuch to first include, then prefer, the Talmud. This enlarged “Torah” became unwieldy and was condensed into a third collection, the Gamara, before the rebbes ignited a “back to sources” reaction which began the same cycle of condensation-cum-back to basics cycle again.

In the same way the Christian Fathers were summarized in the Summa and Sentences of Scholasticism which were further condensed into catechisms before triggering a “back to sources” Reformation which shortly found—to the horror of its instigators—that the meaty “Sola Scriptura” rule of thumb was being taken literally. Likewise, the educational critique has fallen fast and far in the last fifty years.

All of this is a long way of saying that men do not think twice in saying, and they’ve all started podcasts to say, that “Public schools should be ended,” “We don’t need schools,” or, my favorite, “Schools are brainwashing camps.” Hey, teacher, leave those kids alone! How men of mature years say such things without reddening at the stupidity of such statements is a testimony to what the media, even—perhaps especially—the conservative media, does to one’s thinking process. Fifty years ago, the likes of John Holt, Raymond Moore, Ivan Illich, and other early pedagogical pioneers made like statements, but they did so from a place of erudition and nuance. It is we, their unlettered grandchildren, who rehash their ideas sans the mountain of meaning they assumed.

As I have often written, the problem with the rainbow of religious and secular conservativisms is that they have no grasp of solving their problems. They spend so much time talking about how they want things to be that their comprehension of things as they are is retarded. Thus the conserved have a fair knowledge of what’s amiss with industrial learning but they have no ability of how to solve these problems, problems which they assert do great harm to souls. Perplexed, they self-contentedly stall out at, “I only have to worry about my family.” What traitors. To conservatism? No, to mankind. To see an evil and not move might and main to right it is cowardice. If one sees a social problem, and they merely respond to it personally, this is effeminate. Prophet Ezekiel said to these epigones of Burke, “When I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life; the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand” (Ez. 3:18).

So Here We Are

Into this cooling of public sentiment towards formal education came the COVID shutdowns and what is called Artificial Intelligence. As in many areas of life, these developments sped up processes already in motion. Casualizing trends of life were furthered. If education is simply the individual accrual of data, why not watch an appointed number of pre-recorded classes until the sufficient number of boxes are checked? Added to this is the demographic reality. Babies were not born 12 years ago during the Bush-Obama depression, what the Madison Avenue boys still spin as the “Great Recession,” babies who would just now be entering college. This has caused despair for private schools, who must shift for themselves, and glee for municipalities ever eager to trim the budget.
So here we are. Schools are challenged to explain why they exist. We ought to embrace this challenge.

Whatever the level schools ought to begin at the beginning, we ought to encourage rootedness. Only from this stability can we as educationalists and as citizens address those above-mentioned foul fruits of unrootedness, and only from this can we strike a blow against predatory political, economic, and social combinations.

For twenty years I have seen men appraise what we broadly call the New World Order only to stall out in their attempt to push back. We must start with rootedness in our lives, in our children’s lives, and in those communities which ripple out from that. The environment of formal education is the ideal place to do this, and the Divine Office is the ideal framing of a school day.

Filling The Void

The godlessness of a child’s day is the greatest strike against modern education. Note that I did not say “god-againsted-ness,” but god-less-ness. It is worse to be blasé of the divine than to be hostile. The opposite of love is not hate; the opposite of love is indifference. Before the carousel of errors which attend modern education, the absence of God is the greatest strike. It is the void of what should be there, like a missing limb or an empty seat so lately occupied by a departed. It is a crime that a young one not be told who made them and why they are on this earth. It is this void of meaning which chiefly explains the ever-rising percentage of teens who go mad.

You see, though, it is not enough to establish the fact of a student’s Creator, this must be often and commonly acknowledged. The school day is a liturgy of a sort, it certainly is ritualistic. The warm presence of God ought to assert itself in the educational rhythm just as formally and regularly as the schedule of instruction. Ergo, the Office.
Rhythm

The holy Office grounds us in time as the holy Mass does in space. This is to say, the Divine Liturgy accents the physicality of Christianity while the Office highlights our temporal rootedness. In both instances the holy Liturgy insists that religion is not an amalgam of beliefs one ascribes to. This error of definition is the result of the one-two punch of the Reformation and Enlightenment. By assembling for the Prayer in groups at the regular times we are reminded that the Kingdom Of God is already on this earth, that Christian life is a social reality not a me-and-Jesus duo, and that a soul wherein God dwells is in heaven now.

An Inconvenient Truth

Religion ought to have a certain inconvenience to it; its very imposition asserts its importance. You may remember that nugget the next time a Day of Devotion—what is now flatly named an Holy Day of Obligation—rolls around. Yes, the point of religion is to be inconvenient, to impose itself upon the mundane.

Let us recall the old apologetic for Abraham’s sacrifice of Issac: What one will not sacrifice automatically becomes one’s god. If something, someone, or some habit stands in the way of God, that thing in se is one’s deity. Congratulations Liquor, Anger, and Sloth, you’ve been promoted! But once God busts those fellas down to size one gets God back and not some idol. The clock can be an idol as soon as anything else. Musha, in a school the clock is more liable to be an idol than anywhere outside of a stock exchange, a racetrack, or a prison. That the Prayer interrupts a school day reminds both pedagogues and learners that there is a divine order greater than our daily concerns.

While this dynamic is true for genuinely sinful things it also holds that legitimate pleasures, persons, and habits may be sacrificed to stay in good form. The sacrifice of time, of my precious personal schedule, is just as fitting a way for the inconvenience of God to assert himself as in my diet (fasting) and sleep (vigils). St. Paul gave up his persecution (Acts 9), but he also gave up his hair in a vow (Acts 18), one was a sacrifice of his sin, the other was part of an optional vow, both moved him closer to God.
It is the genius of Catholicism to knead into daily life many opportunities to, “offer it up.”

The Office is a medicine to anomie by relentlessly and repeatedly squishing us together time and time again. It is a medicine to meaninglessness by taking our class time and sacrificing some of it to God.

Sacrifice is not a destruction, as Pope Benedict reminds us, “What then does sacrifice consist of? Not in destruction, not in this or that thing, but in the transformation of man. In the fact that he becomes himself conformed to God. He becomes conformed to God when he becomes love. ‘That is why true sacrifice is every work which allows us to unite ourselves to God in a holy fellowship,’ as Augustine puts it.” The Office provides the individual and social groups the opportunity to remember the imposition of the divine so often as he takes the Church up on the Discipline. The Prayer is work, and the manful soul does not shirk from the same. Whether I feel like praying or not, the Discipline reminds me that faith is not a feeling. In fact, the more disinclined I am to pray canonically the more I may learn this lesson.

Generosity

Manys the father has warily contemplated how the generosity of manys his daughter may find itself in the arms of some roguish and unworthy Chad. Yet behind this so middle class of anxieties is a calm and beautiful observation. Young people are in fact generous by nature. Youth may benefit from the mature mien of the Divine Office precisely in proportion to the delightful excess of sentiment which characterizes that chapter of life.

The other-directed focus of liturgy is a defining characteristic of this highest of prayers. When this is rightly conveyed to young ones their natural generosity of spirit will ignite great attraction towards the Liturgy. Present to students the other-centeredness of the liturgy with the same tone of voice as one speaks of the Peace Corp, Teach For America, military service, and environmental protection and you will see them rise to the occasion.

We have seen the popularization of “service hours” as part of both grade and tertiary education in these states United. On the one hand it is laudable students be led to understand education is not the isolated accumulation of knowledge and successful completion of hoops jumped; on the other this codification is a sure sign of social decomposition. The moment virtue can only be furthered by institutionalization is the moment that virtue has died in a people. Ask Augustus if his sumptuary and fertility laws revived the Arcadian manliness of the early Republic. Forsooth, if authority must impose on students artificial charity via service hours this is a greater commentary on the sour parental souls which reared such lead-eyed children. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Join students at the generous prayer for the world which is the Liturgy Of The Hours and you will prime the pump for civic generosity in later life, Chads notwithstanding.

The Office in schools is advisable because it trains the student to a regime of prayers offered chiefly for others, not himself. The Discipline breaks the consumerist attitude which does such damage at present in the religious and academic spheres. It is a sacrificial work of charity where the young pray-er learns quickly he is not the star of the show.

Community

The Discipline roots us in our neighborhood. Another poverty of Modernity which the Divine Office enriches is community. Over the last decade every Freemason town council from coast to coast has slapped “community” on their letterheads and welcome signs. Like “fresh” food and “democratic” government, it may be the use of the word expresses the desires for the thing more than the thing itself contains, but it’s a start.

The Divine Office forms community. It ought always be done in a group, and preference must be given to this aspect of the prayer over every other. Community before everything with it comes to the Office. Here we see once again how the Prayer checks our own eccentricities. It happens that when I say the Prayer myself I do tick off many liturgical boxes I do not when I go to my local parish. When I’m by myself I strike off, “Ad Orientem,” “Latin,” “posture,” and “chant.” Yes, in some ways my private performance of the ritual is in tighter conformity with the history and mind of the Church than it is at the church down the street, but those ways, alas, are Orthodox and protestant (sic) ways.

This is to say that Catholicism is the only Christian group which is realistic; Catholicism is the only group to say that the Church is a present reality, not a fetish of the First Century or the First Millenium. “Realistic” and “reality” come from the Latin word “res,” physical thing. Catholicism is the church par excellence which believes the Church is a social reality now, one may join its ceremonies now, pray with its adherents now, and phone up its ministers now. Most importantly, the Church Of Rome is the only church which at once umpires Christian heritage while adamantly refusing to become a slave of the past or of the present. It is the only church to see the Holy Spirit’s role in history in the eternal now, to see it in kairos time. It is on this point one must always prefer common celebration of the Hours over private.

At manys the church I’ve joined in at the Office there has rarely been a consciousness of orientation, sacred language, physicality, or musical quality. In fact, in the best bare bones American liturgical tradition, I am certain that the people at the local parishes I join at the Office haven’t the slightest idea that the normative setting of the Office is recto tono chant to say nothing of the other niceties. Theirs is a celebration as banal as we’ve come to expect from all suburban religion. The people there are befuddled by even minor calendric variations, even if those variations have been encountered hundreds of times before. These dear souls are like the forgetful Dory in Finding Nemo. I sometimes wonder how they operated a vehicle competently enough to get to the building. Nevertheless the communal dimension of the prayer outweighs all other considerations, and their common banality outweighs whatever traditional elements I may personally bring to the ritual.

This supremacy doubly wars against individuality, it wars against the inherent protestant tendency Americans are drawn to as a feature of our national character, and it wars against the individuality consumerism is eager to stoke in men. It’s all the easier to sells tchotchkes to isolated and lonely people than those who know they are cells in something great, be it a family, country, or church. When one is unrooted, your capitalist moneyman is the least of your problems. If one is isolated, he is prey to all sorts of personal and political tyrannies. If you think it is rough falling into the hands of the living God, you should try the embrace of a dead god. Isolate men and watch the attorney, the drug man, and the usurer come into their own… on your neck. Isolate men and you will learn what real chains are. But welcome school children into a living community in conversation with the living God, and all liturgy is conversation, and those ones will grow up and put to flight those pimps. One appreciates the common Office as one matures, and a chronic solo prayer when community participation is possible must be scorned as the fruit of a juvenile soul.

As Fr. Charles Miller writes in his handy commentary Making The Day Holy, “It is true that bishops and major religious superiors have the authority to commute the Office to some other form of prayer [for those under vows]. Such commutation may be justified in individual cases and for a period of time, but the arrangement and content of the Office allow for and even occasion a spiritual development and maturity which cannot be found elsewhere.” Vows or no’, the liturgy teaches the participant maturity.

The Office’s job is to cramp my style and yours. It’s easier to stay home and pray by myself. When online celebration of the liturgy came in vogue during the COVID days, it was easier not to boot up the computer. While the ease of saying the Office increased, I still was making excuses. What the Liturgy was inviting me to was to reach outside of myself into community.

What makes the Office especially appropriate to schools is the existing congregation of learners. In a sense the Office in schools sacramentalizes the academic community. This is nothing more than what all liturgy ought to do, take the work-a-day and point it, if only from time to time, towards God. This is true for sacramental ceremonies and the Divine Office all the way down to the objects of the Rituale, be it a blessing for a mug of beer, a motorcycle, or a puppy dog.

How often does the student ask quietly and out loud, why are we doing this? It is often an unsatisfactory or absent response from a teacher which triggers a life of intellectual apathy. If one’s teachers were not able to pitch a life of the mind, the student sensibly concludes, it probably isn’t worthwhile. The Office allows all those involved in an educational setting, instructors, students, and—my enemies until I had to become one—administrators—to take our time in school and in a concrete, ritualized fashion offer it in a meaningful way to God, the ground of meaning.

Finally, the regular celebration of the Hours breaks the isolation which the modern top-down classroom nurtures, and which the COVID days exacerbated. Surely, I cannot be the only man who has noticed the rise of people averting their gaze in daily interactions. Lowering eyes were once the province of the young child and the cutpurse. What does it say that a nation’s people comport themselves as such? Externals show internals, and you know as soon as I the feeble spirit which shifty eyes announce.

At Apocatastasis we smash shyness by lassoing all, including the reticent, into the ceremony. We do this by developing a schedule of who will be cantor and hebdomadarian from day to day; these roles throw the shy student into a role of leadership. In a low-stakes setting it breaks the shyness of our time. By inches student participation at the Divine Office builds confidence in the young learner, confidence being the necessary footing of an agentic life in years to come. Rear a generation weaned on agency and watch the tyrants run like rabbits.

A Gentle Reminder

It is the hour of the times that just as the nature of Postmodernity is making itself known, that the last fumes of Christianity are wafting off from the West. The Baby Boomers were hardly evangelized, but they had enough of the old-time religion to keep up some Christian habits. If they wouldn’t go to church each week, they’d at least go quarterly or annually; if their tongue wasn’t squeaky clean, they at least didn’t want cussing on television; if their personal creed likely had all sorts of heresies imbibed from pop culture, they at least put their child in CCD. Those Boomers have now aged out of active society. But as lukewarm as that generation was, they acted as a dam against nasty social developments. Should you wonder why one sees a quickening of unchristian social trends, know it is because that lamely Christian generation are going to their fathers. What is worse than lame faith? No faith. Lame religion at least is a start. Go ask Apollos if he had an easier time working with people who knew of the Holy Spirit or with those who didn’t (Acts 19). One has a better chance reaching people with a distant, sentimental memory of God than people who’ve no foundation a’tall.

Ecumenism

The Great Speckled Bird is looking a bit rough. If we see a paganization of society, what purports to be Christianity itself has seen better days. The mainline protestant denominations have gone the way of all flesh. The old-time protestants who have successfully maintained the “mere Christianity” of the Reformation, those who have not been swept into the Church Of What’s Happening Now, are shattering into a hundred (more) ham-fisted sects in response to the stresses of Postmodernity.

If the secular conservative who baldly asserts, “We don’t need no education,” is incapable of seizing the authority in society—the actual authority, what we might call gravitas—worse by far is Pastor Billy’s Bible Church. The protestants are good men, and they’re Christian men, and they’re holy, but the Radical Reformation protestantism which defines American religion is hopelessly shattered. Unmoored from tradition, canon law, hierarchy, and the example of the saints, American low down, hoedown Christianity is more apt to speed up secularism as anything else. Who can blame men scandalized by these sectarians when they conclude that the husks of the World are more tolerable than the fads and eccentricities of the Saved.

Protestantism can do fughall in the face of an organizationally unified New World Order and the secularism which philosophically undergirds it. In fact, I make bold to say the abysmal failure of conservatism, particularly religious conservatism, to conserve anything stems from the absence of a liturgical consciousness. Until they put on this mind they will continue riding around as so many Lone Rangers. Then again, there’s a strange thrill many of the conserved get fancying they’re the last of the Mohicans. Anyone up for an hotel room Latin Mass or Gab group?

Mind you, all is not well in Catholicville. Near as I can tell, the Roman Catholic faithful are split on the one hand between normies who have no understanding of present dechristianization, and on the other hand, nervous Savonarola types who’ve made totems of the past, and the neither of them has the slightest interest or energy for evangelization. Sure, life gets you coming and going.

The Church Reaches Out

As we labor in the classroom to form an intelligent and agentic generation we see the Divine Office extending two arms, one to the lost World and one to a shattered and anemic Church.

Towards the Postmodern world it offers beauty. Things are far too far gone to make rational appeals to men. A wallop upside the head by beauty is the surest way to attract the lost. As Dostoevsky’s Idiot says, “Beauty will save the world.” Of course, rational appeals can be beautiful, but for a society given to images it is the physical which is fetching.

It is on this account care ought to be shown towards the chant tradition and posture, even in humble, mundane, and yes—grouch as I might—in individual celebration. While clerics are too easy to dismiss liturgical complexity on pastoral grounds, perhaps those with the care of souls have their finger on a pulse which ought to be heeded. Allahu a’alam. In a school, however, greater attention ought to be given to posture and music in the beautiful drama of the Office and the liturgy in toto. As scholastics we must see ourselves as marking time until general society has the maturity and appreciation of these elements of the liturgy once more.

What people often forget when discussing the simplification of the liturgy in the Twentieth Century is that the educational soil of the masses, which once had been fairly grounded in the Classics, including not just the rudiments of Latin but a familiarity with a canvas of ancient literature and allusions, was so eroded by the 1930s and ‘40s that the ceremonial of the Church necessarily had to change to be intelligible. This was not the fault of clerics but of schoolmen. That the New American Bible, the liturgical version of the scriptures used in Yankeeland, is written for a seventh-grade reading level is proof of how far general education has gone down the tubes. The liturgical simplifications we see are a loving condescension of the Church to the aliteracy of the modern man. Perhaps if enough teachers and students take our vocations seriously, we will raise the sophistication of mankind high enough to forge a people once again capable of enjoying a fuller rituale.

You never know who is watching, nor who might be struck by your diligent performance of the Prayer. In manys the field trip and like outing of Apocatastasis’ we have had occasion to establish the Prayer in public. The students always bring beauty and poise to the workaday bustle. The celebration of the Office is neither preachy, lengthy, nor self-important; three strikes against protestantized America Christianity (and I include much of Catholicism under this umbrella). Those elements of formal faith which has so turned off the mass of our countrymen are not present in the Liturgy. It is a chaste prayer, deliberately short and to the point in the Western tradition.

Towards those souls baptized into Christ but outside Christ’s Church, the Office poses neither the sacramental nor the sacerdotal difficulties encountered when the topic of ecumenism meets that of the holy Mass. At an hour where, on the one hand, Catholic schools for financial reasons must allow students from diverse faith traditions or none a’tall (and “nones” are the fastest growing religious demographic at present), and at an hour where the general population is more and more seeking alternatives to public education, many are the ecumenical possibilities of the Divine Office. You see, ecumenical celebration of the holy Mass runs aground because the sectarian is necessarily unable to receive communion, whereas the Office allows for full participation of the Catholic, the protestant, and the Orthodox, hell, even of your Druids and your voodoo men, without the climax of the prayer leaving some excluded. The Office may be an ecumenical halfway house between private prayers and that full liturgical participation which must await reception into the Catholic Church to enjoy. The Office is a gentle introduction of liturgical prayer which may in time, please God, invite the worshiper into the fullness of the Church.

At the same time the Hours pointedly assert the grave wound ecumenism means to address and heal: authority. By participating in the liturgy one de facto acknowledges the authority of the magisterial Church. One doesn’t make a de jure submission to the Church of Christ, true, but one at least verbs submission to the hierarchy and all that means, if only in the interest of practicality and order.

It is in the Office celebrated over a lengthy period one can see the Church’s mind on topics brought into contention by sectarians such as the sacraments, the role of Mary, and even the hierarchy itself known not as a statement to be asserted intellectually but as a reality manifested in living contact with the living God. Those doctrines proper to Rome are massaged into the rhythm of prayer in a manner disarming to American protestants so used to polemical disputation.
Patience

The Office teaches patience with myself and with others. It teaches us that the perfect and be the enemy of the good. It does not take long with students new to the Prayer is realize that, “Today things won’t look like Solesmes!” This is good. The halting, the wrong pages and antiphons, the rough pronunciation, all of these are good in learning the beauty of imperfection; they check whatever of the anal retentive we may have.

The imperfection of our celebration is itself a sacramental. Various trends presently combine to make men more apt to sever ties. Regardless of one’s worldview, those others of his mind are more liable to end relationships as they purity spiral off their high horses. This is hardly a leftist or secular trait. The Office teaches us to bear with each others’ superfluities in patience.

Liberality

It also instructs us in liberality. There was a time, and more than a passing phase, when I was personally quite strict with the easterly direction of prayer, chant, posture, and the like. The high point of this energy was when I said Terce on and in a MetroNorth train bathroom.

As I’ve gotten older, I turned into a terrible liberal. While I still keep up with the whole cursus of the Liturgia Horarum, I only mind the above trappings twice a day. The other hours are apportioned between online groups and pacing recitation; I’ve even taken to combining hours, using the Angelus as a palate cleanser between one prayer and another. Ah, musha, if I keep up like this, I’ll be a grunting Hottentot in no time!

In later years I’ve worked in a balance between the present books and prior editions of the Office. In doing so I’ve come across the subtleties different rites and orders have developed in their prayer. An especially happy invention and subsequent addition to my celebration has been the reading of monastic rules as part of the morning cursus. This develops of width of vision when it comes to life which nothing else can offer. The diversity of the Divine Office undermines the “my way or the highway” mien which affects both modern religious life, and—as politics serves the role of religion for many skins—differences of worldview.

A maturity develops in all of these. As one learns of the vastness of the liturgical tradition in one’s rite and in the Church at large it becomes obvious that one cannot reasonably do each facet of the Office each day and still see to their duty of state. In fact, the tradition is so grand that a monastic could not do as much. In response to this one, learns moderation, one learns that the liturgy is an organ which pulses on beyond oneself. Rather than being a watering down, this necessary moderation teaches one they are a living cell, part of a larger whole.

Applied Education

As a teacher of the humanities, the Prayer drives home points taught in class which only repetitious ceremonies can develop over months, years, and decades. Because of the nature of industrial education, a model which has largely been adopted into homeschooling, it happens that students come to the Institute with a nigh on impossible ability to imagine different sciences connected one to another. Because of the way disciplines are broken up, the learner’s mental muscle of seeing life in a united whole is atrophied.

The Liturgy Of The Hours is a corrective to this handicap. The hymns, antiphons, Psalms, lessons, and collects were written at widely different times, yet they speak of a united reality. It is a literary museum of sorts, with the different elements a pastiche of various cultures and personalities. The Office teaches not only a liturgical tradition, but it trains the mind to grasp what academic traditions are.

Rebuilding

The Office is nothing more than the spiritual radio station of the Church. What an honor for schools to participate in educating a people fit to tune into this station. Yes, it is true that vernacular liturgy is permissible at present, and doubly yes, it is true that vernacular celebration is the expressed policy of the American episcopate. This is a sign not of liberalism or watering anything down; vernacular celebration is a pastoral allowance in the face of the population’s receding education. As hours in class increase, and more and more men sport advanced degrees, it seems the actual general education declines.

While acknowledging pastoral necessity—it may be the population is too dull to appreciate things like chant, for example—it is the charge of schoolmen to not just meet present needs but to make provision for a future society better educated. When that time comes what laurels teachers will have for having formed men capable of joining in the Church’s rich caeremoniale with all of its august trappings. Yes, it is as clear as clear can be the Church does not care about its liturgical heritage. Let us mark time until it does once more.

The Big Picture

Never have I ever blushed in saying that the fundamental telos of Apocatastasis Institute has been to form a people capable of personal, economic, political, and cultural self-defense. Indeed, the role of all right schools is to form such a people, men capable of asserting their rights against bullies and pimps. Forsooth, the Lord above only game man a body so that he may throw it against evil.

Here at home, it is certain that the tyranny which is building in one corner, and the liberty which men are nurturing in another, will meet in a fight. These two energetic lines will have it out in physical force. It is the solemn duty of all right education to form men mentally, spiritually, and socially capable for this exertion. Unlike what the goofy conservatives and truth community hold, that this row will happen when The Cathedral pushes too many people too far, this fight to the knife will not be won by free mankind for some generations out, not in this part of the world at least. Those who think they have a bead on events are bugged the hell out on The Patriot and Rambo films; the conservatives speak like little boys watching Westerns.

Hayya ‘Ala-l-falah

It is a point of record that the most muscular and competent response to the New World Order has been from the Ummah of Mohammed. If my above assertion about schools and self-defense is correct, then it behooves us to observe the role which canonical prayer played in forming a homogeneous Islamic population capable of the discipline of physical exertion. The point, and it is a point best learned early, is that spiritual liberation precedes physical efforts at the same. That is what the Muslims’ manly striving teaches us.

There will be a fight, forsooth, but it will not be in our time if it’s to be successful. It is for schoolmen to prepare a people fit for a national liberation struggle which is generations distant. Before men can responsibly assert themselves in arms, for a physical force struggle is the highest test of a community’s coherence and competence, there must be a spiritual, mental, and interpersonal revival.

I do not say it is given to us to arrange what must be, I do not say it is for us to advocate for it, I do not even say that when the time ripens to bring the tyrants to heel that it will be advisable to engage in a fight. I say that what goes for individuals goes for societies, that vigilance is the price of security, and that complete men capable of spiritual, mental, and physical self-defense can check criminals when they come looking for trouble. It is for schools to form such a pacific but prepared people.

Of all the lessons learned in school, the daily Office teaches a master class in the lessons of dedication, piety, patience, and comity, those things which prevent physical striving for liberty from becoming seven times more unjust than what preceded it. The errors of Islam notwithstanding, the discipline which their salah instilled in them was the biggest ingredient in their drubbing of the globalists’ armies.

Remember Baghuz!

Yes, the greatest opposition the confederates of the New World Order have faced in our day was from the Muslims when they trespassed on their lands. I have lost count of the number of amputees of a certain age I have come across hobbling about Connecticut as a grim testimony of this fact.

It is advisable that patriots note how the men of other lands have struggled against the New World Order. In all the times and climes, we may observe, the victory of the Taliban is the greatest triumph of self-determination in our lifetime. Close on the heels of that I adduce the insurgency of the Second Iraq War and elements of the Arab Spring. Now don’t worry, I’ll not be going in for that damn Islam anytime soon, and I am well aware of the fanaticism, insanity, criminality, and infiltration which characterized the Middle Eastern, if not the Central Asian, Islamic response to the New World Order. Still and all, the globalists were dressed down in their attempt to lasso the Dar al-Islam into their banking network. This Western banking scheme explains in a nutshell the last 20 years of the Western and Islamic tussle. Still and all, who is sitting in Kabul?

I followed the saga of the War On Terror closely, I follow it yet. How many stories are there of Muslims praying Salawat in the middle of military operations, sometimes amidst the red rush of battle itself. Who did not stare in awe to see the men of ISIS maintaining to the last their liturgical cursus even as the Kurdish communists set upon them in the football field of Baghuz Fawqani. I care not that Islam is a false religion, nor that ISIS represented the worst of the Muslim people, nor that the group was riven with supergrasses and madmen. What I hold up from that strange group at that desperate hour is the sociological value of canonical prayer as a stiffener against overwhelming odds.

Conclusion

The Divine Office is particularly fitted to a school because it grounds the student’s life and study in meaning, teaches by rote academic lessons which cannot be grasped in a lecture, refines our etiquette, and offers a calm onramp to liturgical prayer to a multiconfessional people.

Being an other-centered-prayer, the Office teaches us piety classically understood, piety as the outlay of energy and attention given for the health of the polis. The Prayer formalizes good citizenship as it calls us in the classroom and neighborhood together again and again and again and reminds us of our Creator and the symphony of salvation of which we are all a part. In so doing, the Divine Office checks the antisocial habits telephonic interaction not only tolerates but encourages. The Prayer is a gentle curative to the schisms of the last 500 years.

Finally, the discipline of the Office nurtures a cornucopia of sentiments and virtues which are prerequisites of any national liberation effort. We may say that the percentage of the community who regularly join in the Prayer will broadly be an indicator of the percentage of men capable of putting bullies in their place. All of this, bully banging as soon as anything else, are lessons best introduced during one’s formative school years. Root a child in his Creator, his community, and in meaning and watch an oak of a man grow.

Well, that’s that, as the girl said to the sailor.

John Coleman co-hosts Christian History & Ideas, and is the founder of Apocatastasis: An Institute for the Humanities, an alternative college and high school in New Milford, Connecticut. Apocatastasis is a school focused on studying the Western humanities in an integrated fashion, while at the same time adjusting to the changing educational field. Information about the college can be found at their website.

Featured: Modi orandi sancti Domini, ca. 14th-15th centuries.

Martians!

What will happen when Putin signs an alliance with the little green men?

There is a danger greater than Putin, greater even than Trump—it is aliens, those that in our childhood we knew as Martians. The Yankee establishment seems very interested in drawing the attention of the American public to non-human technologies and extraterrestrial threats, which seem as problematic to demonstrate as the climate apocalypse. The Pentagon declassifies files with a transparency that would delight the late Dr. Jiménez del Oso. Those who once laughed at UFOs now seem to be convinced that we already have them here. The viewer cannot believe his eyes, while the shadow of a mothership looms over the defenseless United States: What will happen if Putin signs an alliance with the little green men? We can imagine panic on the West Coast, chaos in Washington and desperation in London: Putin is going to enter Paris, escorted by scaly Cossacks.

Such a threat to national security well deserves an increase in the Defense budget, two, three, four, five, as many times as necessary to provide us with the reverse technology that will allow us to overcome the challenge posed at Roswell. Soon, without a doubt, we will see the autopsies of the big-headed Martians who crashed their saucer after a reckless maneuver. And the public will swallow the millstone and cry out for the Military-Industrial Complex to defend them from the legions of Ummo or Ganymede. If intellectual and scientific credit is given to the girl Greta, why not give it to the abductees? At least these have been through a psychiatrist.

Popular Revolutions in Black Africa

Further down, a few thousand kilometers away from this decomposing Spain, in that Africa which we care so little about and from which so many problems come and will come to us, the wrongly labelled “European” Union is witnessing the volatilization of its influence in the Sahel, because of Russia, according to the press addicted to the Regime? Of course, since Putin replaced the coronavirus, all the evils of humanity come from Moscow.

However, the African military leaders who have taken power in recent years in Mali (2021), Burkina-Faso (2022), Guinea (2021) and this year in Niger have not resorted to the Wagner coup d’état, unlike in the past with French paratroopers and mercenaries hired by Paris. They have been military and popular coups that were fueled by France itself, a mere executor of the policies of the American Africom. After the overthrow of the Libyan state in 2011, the jihadists have found a terrestrial paradise in the lands of Fezzan and from there have intervened in Niger and Mali. France orchestrated two interventions to halt the march of the Tuareg fundamentalists on the Sahelian space, but soon discovered that it was much more practical to appease the Salafists in order to maintain their influence in Africa. The military of these countries began to see from their sad experience that the French services always had time to warn the members of the Islamic State of government attacks, in time for them to get their Qatari instructors to safety, for example. Meanwhile, and taking advantage of the occasion, Nigerian uranium was transported to France at ridiculous prices. Somehow the “protection” had to be paid for.

The Sahelian coups are true popular revolutions, like the Egyptian one of 1952, and which have been greeted with enormous popular support. Russian flags and portraits of Putin are more an expression of rejection of French (and European) perfidy than anything else. Macron, completely overwhelmed by his African debacle, has urged a military intervention by ECOWAS (a sort of African NATO) in Niger, as this country provides more than thirty percent of France’s nuclear fuel. However, knowing the internal rejection that an intervention by the sepoys would bring to their regimes, the governments of the zone refuse to move their forces. The United States, that faithful ally of Europe, has already negotiated on its own with Niger and has left Macron and dressed up and nowhere to go, as our grandmothers used to say. It was not for nothing that it was Victoria Nuland—she of F**k Europe!—who was in charge of negotiating the new state of affairs with Niger’s leaders. In case anyone thinks that this does not affect them, they should check their electricity bill in the coming months. France is the powerhouse of Europe.

Nor does it seem to be news that a good part of the weapons destined for Ukraine by NATO are turning up in Africa, where a certain power, very concerned about gender identity, climate change and aliens, is training its jihadist partners for a future pan-African war. Apparently, they can’t find a better way to end the growing influence of China and Russia on that continent. The Sahel and the Caucasus seem to be the next theater of global warfare. And we are not talking about aliens here, but surely the well-informed viewer, who knows where the star Sirius is and also knows that there are sixty genders, has no idea what Nagorno-Karabakh is or who the members of Boko-Haram are. He will find out eventually. And at his own expense.

Sertorio lives, writes and thinks in Spain. this review comes through the kind courtesy of El Manifiesto.

Featured: “Watching From Mars,” number 13, from the Mars Attacks! trading card series (1962). Drawings by Wally Wood, painted by Norman Saunders.

Eschatologies of a Multipolar World

BRICS: The Creation of Multipolarity

XV BRICS Summit: The Multipolar World is Established

The XV BRICS summit made a historic decision to admit six more countries to the organization—Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Thus, in fact, the formation of the core of the multipolar world was completed.

Although BRICS, formerly BRIC, was a conditional association of semi-peripheral (according to Wallerstein) or “second world” countries, the dialogue between these countries, which are not part of the structure of the collective West (NATO and other rigidly unipolar organizations dominated by the United States), gradually outlined the contours of an alternative world order. If the Western civilization considers itself to be the only one, and this is the essence of globalism and unipolarity, the BRICS countries represented sovereign and independent civilizations, different from the Western one, with a long history and a completely original system of traditional values.

Initially, the BRIC association, created in 2006 at the initiative of Russian President Vladimir Putin, included four countries—Brazil, Russia, India and China. Brazil, the largest power in South America, represented the Latin American continent. Russia, China and India are of sufficient scale on their own to be considered civilizations. But they also represent more than nation-states. Russia is the vanguard of Eurasia, the Eurasian “Greater Space.” China is responsible for a significant area of the contiguous powers of Indochina. India also extends its influence beyond its borders—at least to Bangladesh and Nepal.

When South Africa joined the BRIC countries in 2011 (hence the acronym BRICS—the “S” at the end of South Africa), the continent was symbolically represented as the largest African country.

7 Civilizations (1 vs. 6)

At the XV summit, held from August 22 to 24, 2023 in Johannesburg, the final formation of the multipolar club took place. The entry of three Islamic powers—Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia and the UAE—was fundamental. Thus, the direct participation in the multipolar world of the entire Islamic civilization, represented by both branches—Sunnism and Shiism—was secured. In addition, along with Portuguese-speaking Brazil, Spanish-speaking Argentina, another strong and independent power, joined BRICS. Back in the mid-twentieth century, theorists of South American unification into a consolidated large space—above all Argentine general Juan Perón and Brazilian president Getúlio Vargas—considered a decisive rapprochement between Brazil and Argentina to be the first step in this process. If this were achieved, the process of integration of the Latin American ecumene would be irreversible. And this is exactly what has happened now in the context of the accession of the two major powers of South America, Brazil and Argentina, to the multipolar club.

Ethiopia’s acceptance is also highly symbolic. It is the only African country that has remained independent throughout the colonial era, preserving its sovereignty, its independence and its unique culture (Ethiopians are the oldest Christian people). Combined with South Africa, Ethiopia is strengthening its presence in the multipolar club of the African continent.

In fact, in the new composition of BRICS, we get a complete model of unification of all poles—civilizations, large spaces, except for the West, which is desperate to preserve its hegemony and unipolar structure. But now it faces not disparate and fragmented countries full of internal and external contradictions, but a united force of the majority of humanity, determined to build a multipolar world.

This multipolar world consists of the following civilizations:

  1. The West (USA+EU and their vassals, which includes, alas, the once proud and distinctive Japan);
  2. China (+Taiwan) with its satellites;
  3. Russia (as an integrator of the entire Eurasian space);
  4. India and its zone of influence;
  5. Latin America (with Brazil + Argentina at its core);
  6. Africa (South Africa + Ethiopia, with Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, etc., emerging from French colonial influence).
  7. Islamic world (in both versions—Shiite Iran, and Sunni Saudi Arabia and UAE).

At the same time, one civilization—the Western one—claims hegemony, while the six others deny it this right, accepting only a multipolar system and recognizing the West only as one of the civilizations, along with others.

Thus, the rightness of Samuel Huntington, who saw the future in the return of civilizations, was confirmed in practice, while the fallacy of Fukuyama’s thesis, who believed that the global hegemony of the liberal West (the end of history) has already been achieved, became obvious. Therefore, Fukuyama can only doomedly lecture Ukrainian neo-Nazis, the last hope of globalists to stop the onset of multipolarity, for which Russia, in Ukraine, is fighting today.

August 2023 can be considered the birthday of the multipolar world.

Having outlined multipolarity, it is time to take a closer look at how the civilizational poles themselves interpret the situation in which they find themselves. And here we should take into account that virtually every sovereign civilization has its own idea of the structure of history, the nature of historical time, its direction and the end of history. Contrary to Fukuyama, who ambitiously proclaimed a single end of history (in his liberal version), each sovereign civilization operates with its own understanding, interpretation and description of the end of history. Let us briefly review this situation.

Each Civilization has its own Idea of the End of the World

Each pole of the multipolar world, that is, each civilization, has its own version of eschatology, somewhere more and somewhere less explicit.

“Eschatology” is the doctrine of the end of the world or the end of history. Eschatologies form a significant part of religious doctrines, but have secular versions as well. Any idea of the linear direction of the historical process and its supposed finale can be considered an “eschatology.”

The multipolar world consists of several civilizations or “big spaces” with a completely unique and original system of traditional values. This is the pole (not the individual state). A pole is precisely a civilization. Each civilization has its own idea of the nature of the historical process, its direction and its goal, and thus its own eschatology.

In some “large spaces” there are even several versions of eschatology, and a number of relatively small political formations, which cannot claim the pole in any way, nevertheless sometimes have a special and even developed eschatology.

Let us outline the different types in the most general terms.

Eschatologies of the West

Eschatology in Western Christianity

Western Christianity originally had the same eschatological doctrine as Eastern Christianity, being one. In Christianity—in both Catholicism and Orthodoxy (and even Protestantism)—the end of the world is considered inevitable, since the world and its history are finite and God is infinite. After the coming of Christ, the world moves toward its end, and the return of Christ itself is seen as taking place “in the last days.” The entire history of the Christian Church is a preparation for the end times, the Last Judgment, and the Second Coming of Christ. Christianity teaches that before the Second Coming there will be a general apostasy in mankind, nations will turn away from Christ and His Church, and will rely only on their own strength (humanism). Later, mankind will degenerate completely and the Antichrist, the messenger of the Devil, the “son of perdition” will seize power.

The Antichrist will rule for a short time—3.5 years, “a time, two times and half a time”), the saints and the prophets Elijah and Enoch, who will have returned to earth, will denounce him, and then the Second Coming, the resurrection of the dead and the Last Judgment will take place. This is what every Christian is obliged to believe.

At the same time, Catholicism, which gradually separated from the united Orthodox trunk, believed that the stronghold of Christians should be the Catholic Church under the Pope, the “City of God,” and the retreat would affect only earthly political entities, the “City of Earth.” There is a spiritual battle between the heavenly politics of the Vatican and the earthly politics of secular monarchs. In Orthodoxy, unlike Catholicism, the main obstacle in the way of the Antichrist is the Holy Empire, eternal Rome.

Traditional Christian eschatology and exactly this—partly pessimistic—view of the vector of history prevailed in Europe until the beginning of the New Age. And this is how traditional Catholics, unaffected by the spirit of modernity, who are becoming fewer and fewer in the West, continue to think about the end of the world.

Protestant eschatologies are more bizarre. In the Anabaptists of Münster or the Czech Hussites, the Second Coming was preceded by the establishment of universal equality (eschatological communism), the abolition of class hierarchies and private property.

Recently, under the influence of modernization and political correctness, many Protestant denominations and the Anglican Church have revised their view of eschatology, finally breaking with the ancient Christian tradition.
Masonic Eschatology: The Theory of Progress

At the origins of the Western European civilization of Modernity is European Freemasonry, in the midst of which the idea of “social progress” was born. The idea of progress is a direct antithesis of the Christian understanding of history; it rejects apostasy, the Antichrist, the Last Judgment, the resurrection of the dead and the very existence of the soul.

Masons believed that humanity develops progressively: in the beginning savagery (not earthly paradise), then barbarism (not traditional society), then civilization (culminating in the European New Age and the Enlightenment, i.e., secular atheistic societies, based on a materialistic scientific worldview). Civilization in its formation passes a number of stages from traditional confessions to the humanistic cult of the Great Architect of the Universe and further to liberal democracy, where science, atheism and materialism will fully triumph. And conservative Freemasonry (Scottish Rite) stopped usually with the cult of the Great Architect of the Universe (that is, with deism—the recognition of an undefined non-denominational “god”), and the more revolutionary, the Grand Orient rite was called to go further—to the complete abolition of religion and social hierarchy. The Scottish Rite stands for classical liberalism (big capital), the Grand Orient and other revolutionary lodges stand for liberal democracy (intensive growth of the middle class and redistribution of capital from the big bourgeoisie to the middle and small bourgeoisie).

But in Freemasonry, in both versions, we see a clearly directed vector to the end of history; that is, to the construction of modern progressive global civilization. This is the ideology of globalism in two versions—conservative (gradual) and offensive (revolutionary-democratic).

England: The Fifth Monarchy

During Cromwell’s English Revolution, the theory of the Fifth Monarchy developed in Protestant circles under the influence of Jewish circles and Sabbataism (notably the Dutch Rabbi Manasseh ben-Israel). The traditional Christian doctrine of the Four World Kingdoms (Babylonian, Persian, Greek and Roman) was declared insufficient, and after the fall of Rome (which for Protestants meant the refusal to recognize the authority of the Pope and the overthrow of the monarchy, regicide) the Fifth Kingdom was to come. Earlier, a similar idea had arisen in Portugal in relation to the maritime Portuguese Empire and the special mission of the “vanished King” Sebastian. The Portuguese and Portuguese-centered (mystical-monarchical) version was passed on to the Portuguese Jewish converts (Marranos) and Jews exiled to Holland and Brazil. One of them was Manasseh ben-Israel, from whom this theory passed on to English Protestants and Cromwell’s inner circle (Thomas Harrison).

Proponents of this theory considered Cromwell himself to be the future world Monarch of the Fifth Monarchy. The Fifth Monarchy was to be distinguished by the abolition of Catholicism, hereditary monarchical power, estates and to represent the triumph of bourgeois democracy and capitalism.

This was continued by the current of “British Israelism,” which declared the English to be the “ten lost tribes of Israel” and spread the belief in the coming world domination of England and the Anglo-Saxon race. The world rule of the “New Israelites” (Anglo-Saxons) was seen beyond the Four Kingdoms and broke with traditional Christian eschatology, as the Fifth Monarchy meant the destruction of traditional Christian kingdoms and the rule of the “chosen people” (not Jews, but the English).

From England, extreme Protestant sects transferred these ideas to the USA, which was created as a historical embodiment of the Fifth Monarchy. Hence the American eschatology in the mythologies of William Blake (in America a Prophecy the USA is represented by the giant Orcus freeing himself from the chains of the old god), who was also an adherent of the theory of “British Israelism.” Blake embodied these ideas in his poem “Jerusalem,” which became the unofficial anthem of England.

USA: Dispensationalism

In the United States, the ideas of “British Israelism” and the Fifth Monarchy were developed in some Protestant denominations and became the basis for a special current of dispensationalism based on the ideas of the Plymouth Brethren (preacher John Darby) and the Scofield edition of the Bible, where the eschatological interpretation in a dispensationalist way is incorporated into the biblical text in such a way that to ordinary people it seems to be a single narrative.

Dispensationalism considers Anglo-Saxons and Protestants (“twice born”) to be the chosen people, and applies to them all the prophecies about the Jews. According to this doctrine, mankind lives at the end of the last “dispensation” of the cycle, and the Second Coming of Christ will soon take place, and all the faithful will be raptured into heaven (the Rapture). But this will be preceded by a final battle (Armageddon) with the “king of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal,” which from the 19th century to the present day has meant Russia. Before this Russia would invade Palestine and, there, fight with the “twice-born” (Anglo-Saxons), and then be defeated by them. After that, there would be a mass conversion of Jews to Protestantism and an ascent to heaven (by means of miracles or spacecraft).

In recent decades, this current has merged with political Zionism and has become the basis of the ideology and geopolitics of the American neocons.

France: The Great Monarch

In France, as early as the late Middle Ages and the dawn of the Modern Age, an eschatological theory of the Great Monarch developed, which claimed that a secret French king, chosen by God, would appear at the end of time and save humanity—from decadence, Protestantism, and materialism. This version of eschatology is Francocentric and conservative, and circulated in mystically oriented circles of the aristocracy. The difference from traditional Catholic eschatology is that the French king, rather than the Vatican See, is the barrier to the Antichrist.

Some researchers consider Gaullism to be a secular and simplified geopolitical version of the Great Monarch’s eschatology. General De Gaulle advocated the unification of the peoples of Europe (primarily the French, Germans and Russians) and against NATO and Anglo-Saxon hegemony. The French writer Jean Parvulesco (following Raymond Abellio) called it “the mystical dimension of Gaullism.”

But the vast majority of the French ruling class is dominated by Masonic eschatology—with the exact opposite understanding.

Italy: The Ghibellines and the Greyhound

In the Middle Ages, the confrontation between the Roman throne and imperial power—after Charlemagne proclaimed himself “Emperor”—at times became extremely acute. This led to the creation of two parties—the Guelphs, supporters of the Pope, and the Ghibellines, supporters of the Emperor. They were most widespread in Italy, the possession of which was the basis for German kings to be recognized as Emperors of the (Western) Roman Empire after coronation in Rome.

The poet Dante was a supporter of the Ghibellines and encoded in his poem, Divine Comedy, eschatological teaching of the Ghibellines that after the temporary rule of the Ghibellines and the complete degradation of the Catholic Church, a true Ghibelline monarch would come to Europe, who would revive the morals and spirituality of Western civilization. He is symbolically represented in the figure of the greyhound (veltro) and the mystical number DXV (515), which yields, after rearrangement of letters/digits the word, DVX, “leader.” Dante expounded the ideas of the World Monarchy in a separate treatise. Here again the eschatological theme is connected with monarchical power—and to a greater extent than with the Catholic Church. For Dante, the French monarchy was seen as being on the side of the Antichrist, as was the Roman throne that had risen against the Emperor.

Germany: Hegel and the End of History

The original version of eschatology is given in Hegel’s philosophy. He sees history as a dialectical process of the scattering of the Spirit through Nature, and then a new gathering of the particles of the Spirit in an enlightened society. The culmination of this process according to Hegel would be the creation of a unified German state on the basis of the Prussian monarchy (during his lifetime it did not exist). In this enlightened monarchy, the cycle of the history of the Spirit would be completed. These ideas influenced the Second Reich and Bismarck, and later in a distorted form Hitler’s Third Reich. It was Hegel who put forward the thesis of the “end of history” in a philosophical context, combining in a peculiar combination Christian eschatology (including the figure of the Christian ruler) and a special mystical-monarchical interpretation of social progress (as a preliminary stage before the creation of the world empire of philosophers).

The German philosopher (Catholic) Carl Schmitt correlated the idea of the Reich with the function of the Katechon, the restainer, which was the meaning of imperial power in Byzantium and which was usurped (according to the Orthodox) in the ninth century by the Frankish Emperor Charlemagne. This line was partly in line with the Ghibelline tradition.

The German Jew, Karl Marx, built a theory of communism (the end of history) on an inverted materialist version of Hegelianism, and the Russian philosopher Alexandre Kojève tried to identify the end of history with globalism and the planetary triumph of liberalism. But it is important that Hegel himself, unlike his sectarian interpreters, was an eschatological, Germano-centered monarchist.

Iberia: The Habsburgs and Planetary Evangelization

Eschatology in the Spanish version was linked to the colonization of the Americas and the mission of Charles V Habsburg and his dynastic successors. Since in the prophecies about the end of the world (Pseudo-Methodius of Patara), the sign of the end of the world was the spread of the Gospel to all mankind and the establishment of a worldwide Christian empire under a Catholic world king. The geographical discoveries and the establishment of vast colonies by Spain gave reason to consider the Spanish Habsburgs—above all Charles V and Philip II—as contenders for the role of world monarch. This Catholic-monarchical version, partly consonant with the French version, but in contrast focused on the Austrian Emperors, the traditional opponents of the French dynasty. Christopher Columbus was a proponent of an eschatological world empire during the reigns of the Catholic kings Isabella and Ferdinand, and reflected his eschatological views in The Book of Prophecies, compiled on the eve of his fourth voyage to the Americas and completed immediately after his return.

After the Bourbon reign in Spain, this eschatological line disappeared. Its echoes, partly, can be found in Catholic circles in Latin America and especially in the Jesuits.

The Fifth Empire in the Portuguese version and its Brazilian offshoot are generally close in type to this version of eschatology.

Israel: The Territory of Mashiach

The State of Israel was established in 1948 in Palestine, as a realization of the eschatological aspirations of the Jewish Diaspora, who had been waiting for two millennia for a return to the Promised Land. Jewish eschatology is based on the belief in the chosenness of the Jews and their special role in the end times, when the Jewish Mashiach will come and Jews will rule the world. It is the best studied. In many ways, it is Jewish eschatology that has determined the main scenarios of end-of-the-world visions in monotheistic traditions.

Modern Israel was created as a state prepared for the coming of Mashiach, and if this function is taken out of the picture, its very existence loses its meaning—first of all, in the eyes of the Jews themselves.

Geopolitically, Israel cannot claim to be an independent civilization, an empire, whose scale is necessary for full participation in global eschatological processes. However, if we take into account the rapprochement of political Zionists in the United States with neocons and Protestant dispensationalists, the role of Jews in the last century in the Masonic lodges, the influence of the Diaspora in the ruling and especially economic elites of the West, then the whole picture changes, and the basis for serious eschatological events turns out to be significant.

The Kabbalistic interpretation of the migration route of the bulk of the Jewish Diaspora describes it as following the Shekhinah (God’s Presence) in exile (according to Rabbi Alon Anava). At the beginning of the Galut (dispersion), the bulk of the Jews were concentrated in the Middle East (Mizrahi). Then the Shekhinah began to rise to the north and the Caucasus (Khazar Kaganate). From there, the path of the Shekhinah led to Western Russia, to the Baltics and to Eastern Europe (Ashkenazi). Then its movement led the Ashkenazi to go deeper into Western Europe, and made the Sephardim move from the Iberian Peninsula to Holland and the American colonies. Finally, the bulk of the Jews concentrated in the United States, where they still represent a majority compared to Jewish communities in other countries. Thus, the Shekhinah remains in the United States. The second largest community of Jews is in Israel. When the proportions shift in Israel’s favor, it will mean that the Shekhinah, after a two-thousand-year circle, has returned to Palestine.

Then we should expect the building of the Third Temple and the coming of the Mashiach. This is the logic of Jewish eschatology, clearly visible in the political processes unfolding around Israel. This idea is adhered to by the majority of religious Zionists, who make up a significant percentage of Jews both in Israel and in the Diaspora. But any Jew, wherever he or she may be and whatever ideology he or she may share, cannot fail to recognize the eschatological nature of the modern state of Israel and, consequently, the far-reaching goals of its government.

Orthodox Eschatology

Greeks: The Marble Emperor

In the Orthodox population of Greece, after the fall of Byzantium and the seizure of power by the Ottomans, an eschatological theory developed about the coming of an Orthodox liberator-king—the Marble Emperor. His figure was sometimes interpreted as the return of Constantine XII Paleologos, who, according to legend, did not die when the Turks took Constantinople, but was carried away by an angel to the Marble Gate and there awaits his hour to free the Orthodox (Greeks) from the oppression of foreigners.

In some versions of the eschatological legend this mission was entrusted to the “red-haired king of the north,” by whom in the 18th century many Athonite monks understood the Russian Emperor.

These are echoes of the classical Byzantine doctrine of the Katechon, the “restainer” who is destined to become the main obstacle in the way of the “son of perdition” (Second Epistle of Saint Paul the Apostle to the Thessalonians) and of the Tsar-Savior from the book of Pseudo-Methodius of Patara. Greek political-religious thought retained this eschatological component during the Ottoman period, although after the liberation from the Turks, Greek statehood began to be built on Masonic liberal-democratic models (despite the brief period of rule by a number of European dynasties), completely breaking with the Byzantine heritage.

Russia: The King of the Third Rome, the Savior of the Sects, and Communism

In Russia, eschatology took a stable form by the end of the fifteenth century, which was reflected in the theory of Moscow as the Third Rome. It asserted that the mission of the Katechon, the restainer, after the fall of Constantinople passed to Muscovite Russia, which became the nucleus of the only Orthodox Empire—that is, Rome. The Grand Duke Moscow changed the status and became Tsar, Vasilevs, Emperor, restraining.

Henceforth, the mission of Russia and the Russian people was to slow down the coming of the “son of perdition,” the Antichrist, and to resist him in every possible way. This formed the core of Russian eschatology, and formalized the status of the Russian people as “God-bearers.”

Forgotten in the era of the Western reforms of Peter and his followers, the idea of Moscow as the Third Rome revived again in the 19th century, under the influence of the Slavophiles, and then became a central theme in the Russian Orthodox Church beyond the Frontier.

After the schism, eschatology became widespread among the Old Believers and sectarians. The Old Believers generally believed that the fall of the Third Rome had already irreversibly taken place, while the sectarians (Khlysty, Skoptsy), on the contrary, believed in the imminent coming of the “Russian Christ.”

The secular version of sectarian “optimistic” eschatology was taken up by the Bolsheviks, hiding it under the Marxist version of Hegel’s end of history. In the last period of the USSR, the eschatological belief in communism faded, and the regime and the country collapsed.

The theme of Russian eschatology became relevant again in Russia after the beginning of the Special Military Operation, when the confrontation (with the Masonic-liberal and materialistic-atheistic) civilization of the West became extremely acute. Logically, as Russia establishes itself as a separate civilization, the role of eschatology and the central importance of the function of the Katechon will only increase.

The Islamic World

Sunnism: The Sunni Mahdi

In Sunnism, the end of the world is not described in detail, and the visions of the coming leader of the Islamic community, the Mahdi, pale before the description of the Last Judgment that God (Allah) will administer at the end of time. Nevertheless, this figure is there and is described in some detail in the hadiths. It is about the emergence of a military and political leader of the Islamic world who will restore justice, order and piety, which has fallen into decay by the end of time.

The authoritative Sufi, Ibn Arabi, specifies that the Mahdi will be assisted in ruling by “viziers,” forming the basis of the eschatological government; and according to him, all the viziers of this “metaphysical government,” as assistants and projections of the unified pole (kutbah) will come from non-Arabic Islamic communities.

The Mahdi will defeat al-Dajjal (the Liar) and establish Islamic rule. A peculiar version of Islamic eschatology is also professed by supporters of the Islamic State (banned in Russia). Various figures in Islam claimed for the role of Mahdi. Most recently, the head of the Turkish PMC SADAT Adnan Tanriverdi proclaimed Erdogan as the Mahdi.

Iran: The Twelfth Imam

In Shi’ism, the Mahdi theme is much more fully developed, and eschatology underlies the very political-religious teachings of the Shi’ites. Shi’ites consider only the followers of Ali, the Imams, to be the legitimate rulers of the Islamic community. They believe that the last, Twelth, Imam did not die, but withdrew into concealment. He will appear to people again at the end of time. This will be the beginning of the rise of the Shia world.

Then there will be the appearance of Christ, who together with the Mahdi will fight with al-Dajjal and defeat him, establishing for a short period—just before the end of the world—a just, spiritual order.

Such views are espoused by the majority of Shiites, and in Iran it is the official ideology, largely determining the entire political strategy of this country.

Shiite eschatology in many respects continues the Iranian pre-Islamic tradition of Zoroastrianism, which had a developed theory of the change of cycles and their culmination in the Great Restoration (frashokart). There the image of the coming King-Savior, Saoshyant, who is destined to be born magically from a pure Virgin and defeat the army of the dark beginning (Ahriman) in the last battle, also plays an important role.

Probably, it was the ancient Iranian doctrine about the struggle of light (Ormuzd) and dark (Ahriman) began through history, as a key to its meaning and about the final victory of the warriors of light, became the basis for the eschatological part of monotheistic teachings. But in any case, the influence of Zoroastrianism on Shi’ism is obvious, and this is what gives Iranian eschatology such a sharp and vivid political expression.

Southeast Asia

India: Kalki

In Hinduism, the end of the world has little significance, although a number of sacred texts associated with the Kalachakra cycle tell of kings of the mystical land of Shambhala, where the conditions of the golden age reign. At the ultimate moment in history, one of these kings, Kalki, believed to be the tenth avatar of Vishnu, will appear in the human world and fight the demon Kali. Kalki’s victory will end the dark age and signify a new beginning (satya-yuga).

Kali-yuga (the age of darkness) is described as an era of the decline of mores, traditional values and the spiritual foundations of Indian civilization. Although Indian tradition is quite detached from history and its cycles, believing that spiritual realization can be achieved under any conditions, eschatological motifs are quite present in culture and politics.

In contemporary India, the popular conservative politician and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is recognized by some traditionalist circles as a divine avatar, either of Kalki himself or his harbinger.

Buddhism: The Buddha of Times to Come

Eschatological motifs are also developed in the Buddhist tradition. The end of time is seen in it as the coming of the future buddha, Maitreya. His mission is to renew the spiritual life of the sangha, the Buddhist community, and to turn humanity to the salvific path of awakening.

On Buddhism were based some political systems of the countries of southeast Asia—Japan, combined with the autochthonous cult of Shinto, centered on the figure of the divine Emperor, and a number of states of Indo-China. In some cases, the appeal to the figure of the coming Buddha Maitreya became the basis for political movements and popular uprisings.

Sometimes eschatological Buddhism found support in communist ideology, giving rise to syncretic forms—Cambodia, Vietnam, etc.

China: The Heavenly Mandate

Eschatology is virtually absent in Confucianism, which is the dominant political-ethical mainstream of Chinese tradition. But at the same time, it is developed in some detail in the religion of the Chinese Taoists and in Taoist-Buddhist syncretistic currents. According to Taoist ideas about cycles, the history of the world is reflected in the change of ruling dynasties in China. This change is the result of the loss of what the Taoists call the “heavenly mandate,” which every legitimate ruler of China is obliged to obtain and retain. When this mandate runs out, China is in turmoil, with civil war and unrest. The situation is saved only by obtaining a new heavenly mandate and enthronement of a new dynasty.

The Chinese Middle Empire is perceived by the Chinese themselves as an image of cosmic hierarchy, as the Universe. In the Empire, culture and nature merge to the point of indistinguishability. Therefore, dynastic cycles are cosmic cycles by which epochs are measured.

The Chinese tradition does not know the absolute end of the world, but believes that any deviation of the world order, in any direction, requires symmetrical restoration. This theory implicitly contributed to the Chinese revolution and retains its significance to the present day.

In fact, the figure of the current chairman of the CPC Central Committee, Xi Jinping, is seen as a new appearance of a legitimate Emperor who has received a heavenly mandate.

Africa

Garvey: Black Freemasonry

One of the founders of the movement to restore dignity to African peoples was Jamaican-born Freemason, Marcus Garvey, who applied Masonic progressivism to blacks and called for rebellion against whites.

Garvey took a series of actions to bring American blacks back to the African continent, continuing a process that began in 1820 with the creation of an artificial state on the west coast of Africa, Liberia. Liberia’s government copied the U.S. and so too was composed predominantly of Freemasons.

Garvey interpreted the struggle for the rights of blacks not just as a means to gain equality, but actively promoted the theory of the chosenness of Africans as a special people, which after centuries of slavery was called to establish its dominance—at least in the space of the African continent, but also to claim and assert the rights to power in the U.S. and other colonial countries. And in the center of this world movement should stand the Masonic lodges, where only black people are allowed.

The extreme representatives of this current were the organizations Black Power, Black Panthers and later BLM.

Great Ethiopia

In Africa, among the melanodermatic (black) population, their own original versions of eschatology have developed. All of them (as in Garvey’s eschatology) regard African peoples as endowed with a special historical mission (blacks = New Israel) and foretell the rebirth of themselves and the African continent as a whole. The general scheme of African eschatology considers the era of colonization and slavery as a great spiritual trial for the black race, to be followed by a period of reward, a new golden age.

In one version of this eschatology, the core of African identity is Ethiopia. Its population (Kushites and Semites with dark skin) is seen as the paradigm of African civilization, as Ethiopia is the only African political entity in Africa that has not been colonized, either by European powers or by Muslims.

In this version, all African peoples are considered to be related to Ethiopians, and the Ethiopian monarch, the Negus, is perceived as a prototype of the ruler of the great African Empire. This line was the basis of Rastafarianism, which became popular among the blacks of Jamaica and further spread among the black population of Africa and America.

This version is prevalent among Christian and Christianized peoples. Christian eschatology of Ethiopians (Monophysites) acquires original features connected with the special mission of Ethiopia, which is considered to be the chosen country and the chosen people (hence the legend that the ancestor of Ethiopians was Melchizedek, the King of Peace). In Rastafarianism, this Ethiopian eschatology acquires additional—sometimes quite grotesque—features.

Black Islam

Another version of African eschatology is the Nation of Islam, which emerged in the United States. This doctrine claims that both Moses and Muhammad were black, and that God incarnates in black politico-religious leaders from cycle to cycle. The founder of this current, Wali Fard Muhammad, considered himself to be such an incarnation (this is consonant with the Russian Khlysty). After the death of Wali Fard Mohammed believers expect his return on a spaceship.

Parallel to this is the proclamation of the need for black struggle in the United States and around the world—and not just for their rights, but for recognition of their spiritual and racial leadership in civilization.

Under the contemporary leader of the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan, this current has achieved great influence in the United States and has had a significant impact on the ideological formation of black Muslims in Africa.

Black Egypt

Another version of African political eschatology is the KMT current (from the ancient Egyptian name of Egypt itself), which develops the ideas of the African philosopher Sheikh Anta Diop. He and his followers developed the theory that ancient Egypt was a state of black people, which is evident from its name “KMT,” in the Egyptian language meaning “Black Land” or “Land of Blacks.” Anta Diop believed that all African religious systems are echoes of Egyptian religion, which must be restored in its entirety.

His follower Kemi Seba developed the thesis of African monotheism, which is the basis of a religio-political system where power should be vested in a Metaphysical Government expressing the will of God (like the Mahdi viziers in Ibn Arabi’s version). Life should be based on the principle of closed black communities—kilombo.

At the same time, Africans should return to the traditions of their peoples, fully control the African continent, restore as dark a skin color as possible (through melano-oriented marriages) and carry out a spiritual revolution in the world.

The single, sacred Pan-African language should be the restored ancient Egyptian language (medu neter), and Swahili should be used for practical needs. According to the proponents of KMT theory, black people are the bearers of sacredness, Tradition and the people of the golden age. White civilization, on the other hand, represents perversion, pathology, and anti-civilization, where matter, money, and capital stand above spirit.

The main enemy of Africans and blacks around the world is whites, who are considered the bearers of modernization, colonialism, materialism and spiritual degeneration. Victory over whites is the guarantee of blacks’ fulfillment of their world mission and the crowning achievement of the decolonization process.

Latin America

Ethno-eschatology: Indigenism

In Latin American countries, a number of aboriginal Amerindian peoples see the logical end of colonization as the restoration of ethnic societies (indigenism). These tendencies are developed to varying degrees depending on the country.

Many consider the rebellion of Tupac Amaru II, a descendant of the last Inca ruler, who led an Indian revolt against the Spanish presence in Peru in 1780, as the symbolic beginning of Indian resistance to colonizers.

In Bolivia in 2006, Evo Morales, the first-ever representative of the Aymara Indian people, was elected president. Increasingly, voices are being heard—primarily in Peru and Bolivia—in favor of declaring the ancient Indian cult of the earth goddess Pachamama an official religion.

As a rule, the ethnic eschatology of Latin American Indians is combined with leftist socialist or anarchist currents to create syncretic teachings.

Brazilian Sebastianism

A particular version of eschatology, linked to Portuguese ideas about the Fifth Empire, developed in Brazil. After the capital of the Portuguese Empire was moved to Brazil because of a republican coup d’état in Portugal, the doctrine arose that this transfer of the capital was not accidental and that Brazil itself had a special political-religious mission. If European Portugal lost the doctrine of King Sebastian and followed the path of European bourgeois democracy, then Brazil must now assume this mission and become the territory where, in the critical conditions of the historical cycle, the missing but not dead King Sebastian would be found.

Under the banner of such a doctrine the conservative Catholic-eschatological and imperial revolts against the Masonic liberal government—Canudos, Contestado, etc.—took place in Brazil.

Eschatological Map of Civilizations

Thus, in a multipolar world, different eschatologies clash or enter into an alliance with each other.

In the West, the secular model (progressivism and liberalism) clearly prevails, with a significant addition in the form of extreme Protestant dispensationalism. This is the “end of history,” according to Fukuyama. If we take into account the liberal elite of European countries under full American control, we can speak of a special eschatology that unites almost all NATO countries. We should also add the theory of radical individualism, common to liberals, which demands to free people from all forms of collective identity—up to freedom from sex (gender politics) and even from belonging to the human species (transhumanism, AI). Thus, the new elements of Masonic progressive eschatology, along with the “open society,” are the imperatives of gender reassignment, support for LGBTQ principles, posthumanism, and deep ecology (which rejects the centrality of the human being in the world that all traditional religions and philosophical systems have insisted on).

Although Zionism is not a direct continuation of this version of eschatology, in some of its forms—primarily through its alliance with the American neocons—it partly fits into this strategy; and given the influence of Jews on the ruling elites of the West, these proportions may even be reversed.

Russia and its Katechonic function, which combines the eschatology of the Third Rome and the communist horizon as a legacy of the USSR, stands most blatantly in the way of this end of history.

In China, Western Marxism, already substantially reworked in Maoism, increasingly openly displays Confucian culture, and the head of the CCP, as traditional Emperor, is given a heavenly mandate to rule “All that is under Heaven” (tianxia—天下).

Eschatological sentiments are constantly growing in the Islamic world—both in the Sunni zone and especially in Shiism (primarily in Iran), and it is modern Western civilization—the same one that is now fighting Russia—that is almost unanimously presented as al-Dajjal for all Muslims.

In India, Hindutva-inspired sentiments (the doctrine of the independent identity of Hindus as a special and unique civilization) are gradually growing, proclaiming a return to the roots of the Hindu tradition and its values (which do not coincide at all with Western values), and hence outlining the contours of a special eschatology associated with the phenomenon of Kalka and the overcoming of the Kali-yuga.

Pan-Africanism is developing towards the strengthening of radical teachings about the return of Africans to their identity and a new round of anti-colonial struggle against the white world (understood primarily as colonial countries belonging to the civilization of the West). This describes a new vector of black eschatology.

In Latin America, the desire to strengthen its geopolitical sovereignty is based on both leftist (socialist) eschatology and the defense of Catholic identity, which is particularly evident in Brazil, where both leftists and rightists are increasingly distancing themselves from globalism and U.S. policy (hence Brazil’s participation in the BRICS bloc). The ethno-eschatologies of indigenism, though relatively weak, generally add an important additional dimension to the whole eschatological project.

At the same time, the French aristocratic eschatology (and its secular projection in Gaullism), the German version of the end of history in the form of the German Empire, as well as the Buddhist and Shinto line of the special mission of Japan and the Japanese Emperors—(for now, at least) do not play any noticeable role, being completely bought by the dominant progressive globalist elite and the strategies of the Anglo-Saxons.

Thus, we have a world map of eschatology, corresponding to the contours of a multipolar world.

From this we can now draw whatever conclusions we want.

Alexander Dugin is a widely-known and influential Russian philosopher. His most famous work is The Fourth Political Theory (a book banned by major book retailers), in which he proposes a new polity, one that transcends liberal democracy, Marxism and fascism. He has also introduced and developed the idea of Eurasianism, rooted in traditionalism. This article appears through the kind courtesy of Geopolitica.

Featured: Multipolarity I, by Roodslav.

Freedom’s Anchor: An Introduction to Natural Law Jurisprudence in American Constitutional History

In Freedom’s Anchor, Andrew P. Napolitano, the well-known American jurisprudent, vigorously demonstrates that the Natural Law is the very lifeblood of the United States—and without it the nation cannot truly and fully exist. The strength of the book lies in its rich array of caselaw, from Colonial America down to the present-day, in which the Natural Law has functioned as the dynamic “logic” for the rulings rendered. This book will not disappoint, so do make sure to get a copy.

Judge Napolitano is a graduate of Princeton University and the University of Notre Dame Law School. He is the youngest life-tenured Superior Court judge in the history of the State of New Jersey. He sat on the bench from 1987 to 1995 and presided over more than 150 jury trials and thousands of motions, sentencings, and hearings. Judge Napolitano taught constitutional law and jurisprudence at Delaware Law School for one and a half years, at Seton Hall Law School for 11 years, and at Brooklyn Law School for four years. He was often chosen by the students as their most outstanding professor. As Fox News’s Senior Judicial Analyst from 1997 to 2021, Judge Napolitano gave 14,500 broadcasts nationwide on the Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network. He is nationally known for watching and reporting on the government as it takes liberty and property. His newspaper column is seen by millions every week. He is an internationally-recognized expert on the U.S. Constitution and a champion of personal freedom. Freedom’s Anchor is his tenth book.

This excerpt comes through the kind generosity of Academica Press.

What is the Natural Law Tradition? Is the natural law related to the medieval church and the nature of man as a divine creation? Or is it a philosophical methodology linked to Enlightenment ideas of personhood? Perhaps it is a legal rule with specific form and content incorporated by the Ninth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution? The truth is that the natural law is often confounded among many of these questions, and as such, we must look backwards throughout history to discern its complete meaning if we are to look forward and see how we may use it to achieve the best form of government.

Even those who question or reject the existence of a Creator can embrace the concept of natural rights, for they can accept that our exercise of human reason leads us to discern right from wrong, and in turn, discover truth. An atheist will agree that there are certain basic values acknowledged everywhere, in all times and circumstances. After all, even a person deprived of senses has the ability to reason.

The Boston Massacre Trial: Self-Defense as a Natural Right for All

Indeed, “it was not uncommon for colonial lawyers and colonial courts to regard Natural Law and ancient principles of the common law as superior to ordinary legislative acts.” For instance, during the Boston Massacre trial of 1770, in which John Adams and Josiah Quincy II defended British soldiers accused of killing innocent colonial civilians, Adams asserted a self-defense justification. Adams was advised, Roscoe Pound maintained, by Jeremiah Gridley, “the father of the Boston bar, […] that [the] study of the natural, i.e. ideal, law, set forth in the Continental treatises on the law of nature and nations, if unnecessary in England, was important for the American lawyer.” Quincy argued for one of the soldiers by dispelling the notion forwarded by the Crown, that “the life of a soldier was of very little value; of much less value than others of the community.” Quincy argued that “we all reluct at death […] God and Nature hath implanted this love of life.—Expel therefore from your breasts an opinion so unwarrantable by any law, human or divine[.]” He then quoted Blackstone, who… unmistakably invokes the natural law: The law by which the prisoners are to be tried, is a law of mercy—a law applying to us all—a law, judge Blackstone will tell us “founded in principles that are permanent, uniform and universal, always comfortable to the feelings of humanity and the indelible rights of mankind.”

Quincy was quick to remind the jury of the earlier natural law claim he asserted with Adams, including a citation to John Locke. Adams, in his closing discussion of justifiable homicide, also invoked Blackstone and “the laws of nature,” signaling the powerful sway of natural law arguments on juries and the bench at the time.

Of course, as any trial attorney will attest, judges and juries often decide cases on many factors beyond the persuasiveness of the attorneys and compassionate presentation of the defendants or victims. A colonial Boston jury, some scant three-and-a-half years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, was not sympathetic to a cadre of British soldiers who had just killed or injured several of their fellow Bostonians. However, the natural law appeals of Adams and Quincy were rational rather than sympathetic; and they won the day resulting in the acquittal of six of the soldiers, and convictions for manslaughter, instead of murder, for the remaining two.

Madison, in crafting the Bill of Rights, needed to manage two competing arguments: the disingenuous argument of Alexander Hamilton, that any enumeration of rights “could be used to justify any unwarranted expansion of federal power” as the government is of enumerated powers, and to enumerate rights implies areas of rights the government can reach into beyond those enumerated, on the one hand; and, the Madisonian argument that “any right excluded from enumeration would be jeopardized,” on the other hand. Madison, in this initial proposal to the House “ran together both of these concerns.”

His proposals went to a select committee (of which he was a member) for consideration, and “[e]ventually, the two ideas were unpacked” into the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, which deal with “rights” and “powers,” respectively. That is the Barnett-libertarian view of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, which Professor Randy Barnett… termed as power-constraint: The two amendments act to constrain the federal government from either expanding its own powers at the expense of individual persons and of the States, or from infringing on the other unenumerated natural rights of individual persons.

Such a bundle of amendments dispels any argument that the founders disavowed natural law and natural rights.

Why else would such a clause exist? What other rights could there be? Of course, there were the state bills of rights, but Madison addressed that concern too! “The powers not delegated by this Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively.” So, after setting up the Bill of Rights to contain a provision to protect non-enumerated rights, Madison returned to protect the rights of the states which created the Constitution and to emphasize that the Constitution provided government only with the powers that the states ceded to it, and nothing more.

Whereas legal positivism dominated the judicial landscape of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, natural law theory jurisprudence began to reemerge and win small victories starting in the middle of 1946 and persisting through today. That is not to say that the Supreme Court adopted a doctrinal approach that examined matters before it with strong deference to natural law and natural rights, but rather that activist and conservative Courts alike ruled on matters in such a fashion as to incorporate into lofty stare decisis certain natural law principles. All of this occurred much to the chagrin of simple fairweather positivists, who grumbled about statutory law, and so-called legal realists, who believe in the importance and primacy of judicial precedent, though, it seems, only when such reliance suited their ends.

We see now that around the end of the second World War a return to Natural Law theories emerged with renewed vigor. During this time, the Third Reich had revealed to humanity the devastation and atrocities of which contemporary society became capable when deploying modern methods of engineering, science, and manufacturing to sinister, horrific and protracted ends and grounding them in positivism. We have also observed the means by which societies sought to safeguard against future abuses through the passage of laws and rules holding government more accountable, such as the Federal Tort Claims Act in 19462 in the United States, which allowed injured persons to sue the federal government in certain limited circumstances, and the Crown Proceedings Act in 1947 in England, which granted English “subjects” (how I loathe the word when referring to persons) the right to sue the Crown without first obtaining a royal fiat.

Though typically at loggerheads, Natural Law theory and legal positivism can find common purchase through soft-hearted approaches to Originalism that factor in the principles behind the Ninth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the most significant figures in the spread and modern development of Originalism, brought what he believed to be a greater sense of order and consistency to the bench by calling for judges to restrict their decisions in a narrow fashion by adhering to Originalism, a philosophy he believed would lead toward more authentic and honest interpretation of laws and the Constitution itself.

As time passes, language can undergo semantic shift in which the popular meanings of words change. So, in order truly to understand a statute, some argued, one needed to seize the mantel of the historian and endeavor to determine what was meant by a statute at the time of its passage rather than interpreting the statute according to the contemporary meaning of its words. In 1982, Paul Brest, then a professor at Stanford Law School, coined the term “Originalism” which he defined as “the familiar approach to constitutional adjudication that accords binding authority to the text of the Constitution or the intention of its adopters.” According to Brest, “[a]dherence to the text and original understanding arguably constrains the discretion of decision makers [i.e., judges] and assures that the Constitution will be interpreted consistently over time.”

Different flavors of Originalism focus on different original elements involved in the drafting, creation, adoption, and passage of various elements of the Constitution, its amendments, and legislation written under its authority. The textualists look to the language of the text in question.5 “The plain meaning of a text is the meaning that it would have for a ‘normal speaker of English’ under the circumstances in which it is used.”6 Though textualists focus mainly on the words of the text in question, they will occasionally consult outside sources to determine exactly what a word or a term of art meant to the general public at the time the particular provision was adopted or passed. In other words, they may look to newspapers, other legislation, books, speeches, circulars, broadsides, treatises, or treaties contemporaneous to the particular language they seek to understand. However, such an approach looks to extratextual material only in so far as it clarifies the meaning of the words involved in the piece in question and is not used to try to understand what may have been the intent of those who adopted the law. The textualists care only about the plain public meaning of the words at the time they were written, not the intent of the authors.

Intentionalists, on the other hand, seek to divine the intentions of those who adopted or passed a piece of legislation or provision. They endeavor to do so by considering the text of the law or provision as a persuasive—though not controlling—authority.

Intentionalists will look to a nearly endless variety of sources related, directly, or even imaginarily, to the piece in question. The camps of intentionalists diverge or sometimes disagree over whose intent they should consider. Some believe that the intent of the drafters of a piece should carry more weight when it comes to its interpretation, while others argue for heavier consideration of the intent of those who adopted it. Further wrinkles arise when others advocate for the inclusion of ideas of legal structuralism, calling for evaluation of the relationships between the various branches of government at the time of the passage of language in question to determine how different organs of government relate to and interact with one another.

Was Jefferson partly right about the tree of Liberty occasionally, and only when absolutely necessary, soaking up the blood of patriots and tyrants in order to survive? Or was he right when he observed that in the long march of history, governments grow and liberty shrinks? Or, were intellectual giants from Aquinas to Rothbard right when they argued that so long as we can reason, we will have liberty?

But to exercise reason, we must have free will. Both free will and natural law principles have been imprinted in us. Positive law not faithful to the natural law principles is an artificial fabrication of humans, usually for their own good or tenure in power. Yet all rational adults have natural inclinations to know good from evil.

The issues this work addresses are not those of individual fidelity to natural law principles, but government infidelity to them. Government fidelity to natural law principles assures individual choices, personal autonomy, and authorship of one’s own life. Isn’t that the definition of personal liberty – freedom bounded, as Jefferson said, only by the natural rights of others? Isn’t that the pursuit of happiness?

Short of a government committed to the preservation of natural rights, there is darkness and chaos.

Featured: The Tontine Coffee House, New York City, by Francis Guy; painted in 1797.

Atheistic Humanism, the Democratic Party, and the Catholic Church

David R. Carlin is a former Democratic state senator who was once a leading figure in Rhode Island politics. In his new book, Atheistic Humanism, the Democratic Party, and the Catholic Church, he explains that the “mind” of the Democratic Party has been converted to atheistic humanism, an ideology (or worldview) that is the deadly enemy of Catholicism. It is this ideology that has given America its present-day culture of sexual freedom, abortion, gay marriage, and transgenderism. More and more this atheistic ideology controls the chief propaganda organs of American culture, that is the entire Media-Education-Entertainment Complex, and of course the Democratic Party itself.

This excerpt from Atheistic Humanism, the Democratic Party, and the Catholic Church comes through the kind courtesy of Lectio Publishing.

When I had finished writing about ninety-nine percent of this book, I happened to be driving through my neighborhood one day (I was driving home following a periodic visit to my cardiologist) when I noticed a colorful cloth banner, rectangular in shape, hanging on somebody’s front porch. It said:

  • Pro-BLM
  • Pro-science
  • Pro-choice
  • Pro-feminism
  • Pro-LGBTQ
  • Pro-humanism
  • Pro-immigrant

I slammed on my brakes in order that I might pause for a moment or two to admire the banner, which is a nearly perfect summary of the dangerous anti-Christianity mentality I am denouncing in this book, a mentality I call atheistic humanism. The person who made the banner is, I suppose, an atheistic humanist, and so, very probably, is the person who owns the porch in question.

If you know how to read the language of atheistic humanism, you will know how to interpret the many “pro” labels listed above.

  • “Pro-BLM” means “the USA is a systemically racist society, ruled by white supremacists”
  • “Pro-science” means “we don’t believe in the Bible or any other divine revelation”
  • “Pro-choice” means “pro-abortion”
  • “Pro-feminism” means “we deplore toxic masculinity”
  • “Pro-LGBTQ” means “we endorse an immense variety of sexual perversions”
  • “Pro-humanism” means “anti-Christianity and pro-atheism”
  • “Pro-immigrant” means “pro-open borders”

Atheistic humanists are smart people, at least usually, and so when making propaganda they know how to clothe their dangerous ideas in harmless, often even attractive, words and slogans. And so, instead of saying, “Let’s mass-murder unborn babies,” they say, “Let’s defend a woman’s right to choose.” And instead of saying, “Almost all white Americans are racists,” they say, “Black lives matter.” Instead of saying, “The Bible is bull***t,” they say, “We believe in science.” And so on.

*****

Great civilizations sometimes collapse. If we have any doubts about that, we can read Arnold Toynbee’s multivolume work, A Study of History; or another multivolume work, Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. In the second and third and fourth centuries AD, the old pagan civilization of the Greco-Roman world gradually but (as we now can see in retrospect) inevitably collapsed and was replaced by a new civilization based on Christianity.

It is possible that those of us living today are passing through a somewhat similar crisis of civilization, a crisis in which an old way of life is dying while a new is being born. If in those ancient days paganism, an old thing, was being replaced by a new thing, Christianity, so in our time Christianity, which is now an old thing, is perhaps being replaced something new, a worldview based on atheism. It is not easy for those living through one of these great transitions to know what is happening. Only after the transition is complete, only after the old thing has quite definitely passed away, can we be sure that it is truly dead and that it is therefore too late to save it. As the philosopher Hegel, meditating on the mysterious course of history, once said, “The Owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.” So I’m not quite sure that our civilization is crumbling; perhaps we are simply going through a bad patch; maybe we’ll have to wait five hundred years before making a definitive judgment on that.

*****

But something is happening, something momentous, whether we call it a bad patch or a collapse of our old civilization. Christianity is under severe attack by a great enemy, and it is this enemy—along with its political arm, the Democratic Party—that I plan to examine in this book. Although this attack is underway in many places, not just in the United States of America…

…But what is this new thing, this new thing that is a great enemy of Christianity? What should we call it? Many Christians, both Catholics and others, like to call it a new paganism, a neo-paganism. I think this is a great misnomer. The ancient paganism of the Roman-Greek world, quite unlike today’s anti-Christianity, was religious. All paganism is religious, paganism being the generic name for polytheistic religions. Ancient paganism certainly wasn’t religious in a Christian or monotheistic way, but without question it was religious. It had multitudes of gods, altars, rituals, and holy days. By contrast, this new thing, this candidate to replace Christianity, is not at all religious. Either it involves outright atheism, or it leans strongly in the direction of atheism. It is a decidedly secular or non-religious faith; more than non-religious, it is anti-religious; very specifically, it is anti-Christianity. At the same time, it is humanistic; or at least in its outwardly most attractive form it claims to be humanistic. A more or less accurate label for it would be secular humanism. A more accurate name still would be atheistic humanism—for atheism is the most thoroughgoing kind of anti-Christianity, and atheism lies at the core of this new and superficially benign faith.

There are various kinds of atheists. Some of them are beastly; they give vent to their basest, most animalistic impulses (think of violent criminals). Others are demonic; they love evil, not for the eventual good it may produce, but for its own sake (think of Nazis). The atheists I will be focusing on in this book are the (apparently) best kind, the humanistic kind. They are neither beastly nor demonic. They make an honest attempt to be human and humane. They even make an attempt (albeit a very unsuccessful attempt) to mimic what they imagine to be the ethic of Christianity. It is atheists of this kind—the “good” atheists, so to speak—that present the greatest danger to Christianity in general and to Catholicism in particular. I should point out, however, that once these “good” atheists are in command of society, the way will open for the entry of atheists of the beastly and demonic.

*****

Ideological Structure of the Democratic Party

To understand today’s Democratic Party we must understand its ideological structure, and to understand this structure we have to see (a) who produces the party’s ruling beliefs and values, (b) who distributes these beliefs and values, and (c) who consumes them.

We may picture this structure as a pyramid. At the top of the pyramid are the producers, relatively small in number. Below them are the distributors, much larger in number. And at the base of the pyramid are the consumers, the enormous number of rank-and-file Democrats. The beliefs and values move downward, as with the force of gravity. They begin with the people at the top of the pyramid; they are eagerly seized upon by the people in the middle; and these middle people energetically pass these beliefs and values on to the party’s rank-and-file…

The producers of these strongly leftist beliefs and values are people who are commonly referred to as intellectuals, but who more correctly should be denominated as ideologues. “Intellectual” is a very broad category; it can refer to any highly educated person who has a lively and continuing interest in some field of thought. For instance, a Shakespeare scholar would be an intellectual, and so would a physicist, and so would a professor of constitutional law. But not all intellectuals are ideologues; in fact most of them are not. An “ideologue” is a sub-category of intellectual. He (or she) is an “activist” intellectual; an intellectual who is promoting a political agenda; an intellectual whose commitment to a more or less revolutionary outcome shapes his (or her) perception of political reality. The pure intellectual studies reality to see what conclusions ought to be drawn. The ideologue already “knows” the conclusions prior to beginning the study; he then shapes the evidence to fit his a priori conclusions.

The producers of the beliefs and values of the Democratic Party are ideologues, leftist ideologues—progressives they like to call themselves. They have a kind of ideal society in mind, and they believe that the Democratic Party is the political vehicle that can, if guided correctly—which is to say, if guided by themselves—contribute greatly to bringing this ideal society about.

Only rarely are these ideologues elected officials. Far more often they are professors at colleges and universities, including law schools; and these are often America’s very best colleges and universities and law schools. They can also be found in significant numbers at leftist “think tanks.” On some occasions they are journalists. Or they are writers of political or historical or sociological books (this last category largely overlapping with the earlier categories).

The distributors of these beliefs and values are persons who may be described as “passive ideologues” in contrast to the “active ideologues” just described. That is to say, they don’t create the leftist beliefs and values they adhere to, but they receive them with enthusiasm. These are the people who dominate what may be called the “command posts” of American popular culture—or what may alternatively be called America’s “propaganda industry.” I have in mind the leftists who dominate such fields as journalism (both electronic and print), the entertainment industry (Hollywood, TV, popular music, etc.), and our colleges and universities. It is also common for public school administrators to be distributors of these beliefs and values, less common (though far from unknown) for classroom teachers to be so. Minsters of liberal churches and theologian-professors at liberal seminaries are also distributors. Finally, we must count the great majority of Democratic elected officials, from local town councils up the President of the United States, as distributors—along with the political activists who help these officials get elected.

Some of these distributors are more enthusiastic in their leftism than others. Those who are very enthusiastic—an enthusiasm that sometimes, especially among young persons, verges on fanaticism—call themselves progressives, while the more temperate leftists prefer to call themselves liberals. Whether progressive or liberal, however, they take their beliefs and values from “above” and pass them along to the common people “below.” They are like missionaries, spreading a gospel they deeply believe in even though they didn’t invent it.

The producers and distributors of these leftist beliefs and values are of course also consumers of their beliefs and values. But the great majority, indeed the overwhelming majority, of consumers are rank-and-file Democrats who are for the most part non-ideological—or would be if left to their own devices. Their motives for adherence to the Democratic Party are various. Sometimes it is a matter of family tradition: “My parents were Democrats, my grandparents were Democrats,” and so on. Sometimes it is a matter of racial identity: “Most blacks are Democrats, I am black, therefore etc.” Sometimes it is a matter of labor union membership: “My union supports the Democrats, therefore etc.” Sometimes it is a matter of economic interest: “The Democrats are good for my paycheck or my welfare check, etc.” Sometimes it is a matter of personal inertia: “I have always voted Democrat, etc.”

Very often it is a matter of imagining that the Democratic Party today is essentially the same thing it was decades ago: “This is the party of FDR and JFK, so how can I not vote for it?” This is what may be called “the fallacy of essentialism.” Some things—geometrical figures, for instance, or numbers—have eternal essences. They never change. A square always was, is now, and always will be a plane figure with four equal sides and four 90-degree angles. Some people imagine that their favorite political party is rather like this; that it remains essentially what it was in its golden age.

Even though these Democratic voters are for the most part non-ideological, and even though they have little or no personal attachment to the leftist values of abortion, homosexuality, same-sex marriage, transgenderism, recreational drug use, and euthanasia, and even though they don’t believe that the USA is a “systemically” or “fundamentally” racist society, and even though the whites among them (most of them are whites) don’t believe it is racist to assign heavy penalties for crimes of violence committed by blacks and other “persons of color,” and even though they have no wish that public schools should teach little kids to adopt an attitude of tolerance toward a variety of sexual perversions—even though all this, these rank-and-file Democrats are willing to go along with the ideological agenda handed down by the ideological rulers of the party. Why? Because it is their party. It is a party they are in the habit of trusting, a party they are in the habit of supporting. Besides, they don’t like the other party, the rival party, the Republicans—just as Red Sox fans don’t like the Yankees. Like good team players, they operate on the assumption that if the captains of their team say ABC while the other team says not-ABC, they will have to agree with leaders of their team; they too will have to say ABC. To do otherwise in the midst of battle would be an act of disloyalty.

In sum, that’s how a small number of people (the ideological leaders of the party), having persuaded a much larger number of people (the propaganda arm of the party), can shape the political preferences of a vast number of people (the rank-and-file members of the party). And that’s how an intellectual elite whose ideas and values are far out of the mainstream can shape the destiny of a nation. A small number of leftist ivory tower intellectuals/ideologues (at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, great state universities, etc.) win converts at vital propaganda outlets (the New York Times, MSNBC, Hollywood, etc.), and these leftist propagandists in turn tell ordinary Democrats what political and cultural agenda they should support.