By Walt Garlington, an Orthodox Christian living in Dixieland. His writings have appeared on several web sites, and he maintains a site of his own, Confiteri: A Southern Perspective.
What is the culture of Americanism?
Retail stores and blood sports, apparently. Various essays and news stories spell this out.
-First, the experiences of a World Cup fan as he traveled about the States:
But most posts… whether admiring the gulf coast, experiencing a pit-stop at a Buc-ee’s, or grabbing quick bites at Wendy’s, Waffle House, or Taco Bell… are at “mundane” stops. Yet each elicits scores of comments about other “essential” sites Freddy should see. He seems to have reignited local pride in people who receive his posts.
. . . He’s marveled at the arboreal canopy that covers Atlanta. Was awestruck by an eagle flying in the “Loveliest Village”. Visited WalMart with a sense of wonder. Is taken aback by gun racks at a Bass Pro Shop. “Chilled” in a hotel room watching the NBA Finals while eating Chipotle (something thousands of Americans were doubtless doing at the same time).
-There is an in-depth poll of Americans’ favorite fast-food restaurants, the American Consumer Satisfaction Index. And, don’t you know, there’s big news from it!
A sandwich chain born in a small New Jersey boardwalk town has pulled off what no other competitor managed in over ten years: toppling Chick-fil-A from its perch atop America’s most-watched fast-food satisfaction survey.
Jersey Mike’s now sits in the number one position of the American Customer Satisfaction Index’s quick-service restaurant rankings, a title Chick-fil-A had held firmly since 2025.
The numbers were tight. Jersey Mike’s pulled in a score of 84 out of 100, while Chick-fil-A trailed by a single point at 83.
Industry watchers note that no other chain had managed to seize the QSR crown in more than a decade, making this shift a rare and notable event in the fast-food world.
Behind the rankings sits a substantial body of data: researchers compiled responses from 16,464 completed surveys, all gathered through email outreach spanning April 2025 through March 2026.
Yes, this really is what passes for important news in the pop culture of the US of A.
-The combination on the White House lawn of burly men beating each other into senility with the sentimental honoring of those involved in the American Empire’s wars of conquest rounds out this survey of ‘American culture’:
The fights themselves were extraordinary, not just in athletic prowess but as emblematic American moments. Fighters entered the arena from the Oval Office, wrapped in the Stars and Stripes, each bout ending in a knockout or technical knockout. The audience, filled with active-duty service members and first responders, was a testament to American valor and sacrifice. Medal of Honor recipients walked side by side with the fighters, epitomizing the spirit of the nation.
With a culture this shallow, it is no wonder that so many throw themselves so completely into politics and strange religions/cults (like UFOs) to try and give their lives some level of meaning:
Colman Domingo, the actor who plays Hugo, was recently asked by Variety if he believes in aliens:
“I absolutely do,” he answers. “And I don’t know what they look like, what they feel like, what their objectives are, but I do believe that there has to be more. It can’t just be us.”
He adds, “I mean, I stand outside, look at the stars, believing that someone’s staring back at us, and at some point we’ll come together. So I believe that with whatever the unknown brings to us, maybe it’ll be good for all of us.”
This vacant, well-meaning receptivity is where most Americans are today, I think. Look at the numbers in this recent CBS News poll. Excerpt:
The percentage who believe intelligent life exists on other planets has become more widespread in recent years. Looking back just to 2010, fewer than half of Americans believed that. Since that time, higher numbers of men, women and people across age groups and education levels now believe in the existence of intelligent life.
That same poll found that nearly one in five Americans has seen what they believe to have been a UFO. That’s approximately 59 million people — a massive number. Sure, you could say that what they saw was something that could be explained, though how you or I would know this is a leap of faith. The point is not whether what an individual saw was real or not; the point is that they believe it was a UFO. This tells us something important about their mindset.
Many in the younger generations have had enough. A Zoomer from the South put out a plea for the restoration of the Southern Tradition that is worth your time to read, but we would like to focus for a moment on New England. We have spent our share of time criticizing the Yankees, but there are positive things about that culture, particularly the roots it grew out of, if one looks closely enough. But first we must look again at some of the negative things from that culture which are largely responsible for giving us the present culture of Americanism:
From its initial seventeenth century settlement, Puritan austerity steered the religiously-infused political culture of this “New England”: earnest and painfully introspective (“Am I saved?”), but also industrious, reserved and insular, thrifty on a rocky land, and fiercely democratic. It made Boston into a busy wealthy port (filling descendants of Winthrop and Mather with angst over mixing wealth and piety) and a region sensitive over its traditional British liberties. Then came three waves of independence, the first political at Lexington and Bunker Hill, the second economic with Lowell’s looms, and the third cultural with the Boston-Concord axis of Emerson, Melville, and Hawthorne. The godlike Daniel Webster fused the strains together in a brilliant rhetorical effort at Plymouth in 1820, transforming New England’s Pilgrim founding into the American founding. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Merchants and industrialists supplanted the ministers, the Athenaeum overshadowed the Unitarian church, and Boston became the “Athens of America.”
Those three revolutions – bringing about political individualism, modern industry/technology, and religious freedom/experimentation – have brought the States to the low point where they are now. But just beyond the horizon of New England’s history, there is something extraordinarily wonderful – the connection of her people with the Orthodox Church.
Those who settled New England were from the southeastern coastal area of Old England: mainly Essex, Norfolk, and Suffolk. The English people of those lands shone with a brilliant and holy light prior to the Roman Catholic Norman Conquest (1066) that destroyed the Orthodox Faith in all of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. Those counties were the home of many praiseworthy saints – Audrey of Ely, Edmund the Martyr-King of East Anglia, Guthlac of Crowland, and others.
The leading city of New England, Boston, bears witness to the Orthodox past of the settlers of Yankeedom, for it is named precisely for St Botolph of Iken, a key enlightener of England’s southeast. Boston is a contraction of ‘Botolph’s stone’ or ‘Botolph’s town’. But what made St Botolph so special? Some of the details of his life will answer that question:
. . . the holy Botolph came to Rendlesham in Suffolk, the royal centre of the East Anglian court. After some negotiation, King Anna granted him land at Icanho, now Iken, a marshy place surrounded by the branches of the River Alde. Thus the saint planted a monastery in a place set apart by waters, like an East Anglian holy island.
The site stood near the royal court and not far from Dommoc, where Saint Felix had established the episcopal see. In this place Botolph and his brethren began the work of prayer, learning, and mission. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that in the year 654 Botwulf began to build his minster at Icanho.
During those troubled years, the pagan Penda of Mercia ravaged East Anglia, and many churches and monasteries suffered destruction. It is likely that Botolph travelled widely by river and road, preaching the Gospel and strengthening the faithful. Some traditions also connect him with missionary labour beyond East Anglia, and with churches dedicated to the holy Apostles Peter and Paul.
. . . The later tradition remembered him as a mighty intercessor and exorcist, conquering the demon-haunted wilderness by the sign of the Cross. Around Iken there grew not merely a single house, but a small monastic landscape of churches and holy places, centred upon the minster which he built.
In the year 670, Abbot Coelfrith of Jarrow, the teacher of Bede, came to Botolph’s monastery after his ordination by Bishop Wilfrid and stayed there for some months. The Life of Coelfrith calls Botolph a man of unparalleled life and learning, and full of the grace of the Holy Spirit.
Having guided his brethren in monastic discipline, sacred learning, and missionary zeal, the venerable Botolph reposed on the seventeenth day of June in the year 680, in the monastery which he had built.
. . . Thus the father of Iken became a helper of those who pass through uncertain places, and a guardian for those who travel between settlements, across waters, through borders, and along the roads of this life. His memory remained like a lamp set in the marshes, guiding the faithful towards the safe harbour of Christ.
Our times are very confused, dark, and uncertain, so a guide, a lamp, like St Botolph is especially needed. Particularly with demonic UFO/UAP/alien phenomena becoming more prevalent, we need a vanquisher of the demons with his unconquerable might.
The veneration of the Orthodox saints, the keeping of the holy days of the Orthodox Church’s calendar related to the life of the Lord Jesus Christ and His Most Pure Mother, receiving the Grace of God through the Mysteries of the Church, through prayers, pilgrimages, and other services – all of these things and more are true culture, the basis of a deep and resilient culture, because they flow directly from the All-Holy Trinity and unite us to Him, the Source of all good things, He Who is Being Itself. This is the culture that England used to know. One can read good descriptions of it in Eleanor Parker’s book Winters in the World, or in Fr Andrew Phillips’s long essay ‘Orthodox Christianity and the Old English Church’.
This is the life that New England’s forefathers and mothers used to know and live. It is the life they could live again. And how fitting would it be, that those who have done so much to obliterate the authentic cultures of the various regions within the current union of States by imposing their materialistic Machine culture upon them all – how fitting would it be for New England to lead the way to repentance into the Orthodox Church, shining the light of the True Faith from Beacon Hill and other historic areas of Boston, the Massachusetts city whose name will always be a reminder of the Orthodox roots of New England?
