Of Fathers and Monarchs in the U.S.

By Walt Garlington, an Orthodox Christian living in Dixieland. His writings have appeared on several websites, and he maintains his own site, Confiteri: A Southern Perspective.

Fatherhood runs a strange and inconsistent course in the United States. Early on we have George Washington being referred to as the ‘Father of his country’:

‘George Washington’s critical role during the Revolutionary War, Constitutional Convention, and his two terms as the first President of the United States led to him eventually receiving the informal title, “Father of His Country.” The label, similar to the Latin phrase Patres Patriae, or Father of the Fatherland, honors Washington as the foremost figure in the founding of the nation.

‘References to Washington as a national father figure began upon his selection as Commander-in-Chief in 1775. On January 27, 1776, Levi Allen, younger brother of Ethan Allen, wrote to Washington, hailing him as, “Our political Father and head of a Great People.”¹ On November 26, 1777, Henry Knox wrote to Washington stating that, “the People of America look up to you as their Father, and into your hands they entrust their all.”²

‘ . . . By the time Washington was inaugurated as president in 1789, use of the title had become more common. During Washington’s journey to New York City for his inauguration, a Pennsylvania newspaper referred to him as “Father of the people” and “Father of his Country.” Officials from New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, as well as various correspondents, wrote to Washington with similar titles.

‘The term also became popular throughout mainstream American culture. In his bestseller, Life of Washington, Mason Locke Weems wrote that Washington deserved “that dearest and best of all appellations, ‘the father of his country.” Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Preacher William E. Channing both included the term in their respective works on Washington.’

Abraham Lincoln in the mythology of Americanism also has been given this name of Father:

‘It is no blasphemy against the Son of God and the Savior of men that we declare the fitness of the slaying of the Second Father of our Republic on the anniversary of the day on which he was slain.’

‘By the 1864 election, Lincoln was called Father Abraham, the father of the nation, the man who freed the slaves.’

But folks, particularly MAGA Protestants, in the States do a strange thing with this idea of fatherhood: They truncate it, they mutilate it, in order to justify their democratic/republican form of government. For if they gave full scope to the authority and teleology of fatherhood, they would have to crown a king rather than crow about the authority of The People.

The Orthodox priest Fr Grigory Diachenko, in an homily on the Accession of St-Tsar Nicholas II to the throne of Russia, explains:

‘Christian brethren! We have seen that the word of God teaches children clearly and unequivocally to obey and honor parental authority. But let us never forget that the same word of God also teaches us clearly and unequivocally to honor the imperial authority and obey it as an authority established by God, and to honor the emperor as the father of the great family that is the state.

‘The word of God proclaims to Christians—and through them to all nations and to all humanity—“There is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God” (Romans 13:1).

‘For the reverent and impartial inquirer, it is not difficult to discover and understand how, according to the teaching of the word of God, authority proceeds from God.

‘Whence comes that multitude of people united by religion, law, language, and customs, which we call a “nation”? Evidently, this multitude grew from a smaller tribe, and the tribe arose from a “family.” Thus, within the family, properly so called, lie the seeds of everything that later unfolded and grew into the great family called the state.

‘Consequently, it is within the family that we must seek the beginnings and the original model of authority and submission, which later developed within the larger family of the state.

‘The father, who by God’s natural gift has the ability to give life to his son and develop his faculties, is the first ruler. The son, who cannot develop his faculties or even preserve his own life without obedience to his parents and those who raise him, is naturally subject to their authority.

‘But the father did not create his own authority, nor was it bestowed upon him by his son. It arose with humanity from the One who created humanity. It follows, therefore, that the deepest source and highest origin of the first authority—and consequently of every subsequent form of authority among human beings—is God.

‘First, according to the word of God, every family in heaven and on earth is named from Him (Ephesians 3:15). Then, when the sons of sons multiplied into a people and peoples, and the family grew into a state too vast to be governed by a father’s natural authority, God gave that authority a new, artificial form and a new name in the person of the king. Thus, through His wisdom, “kings reign” (Proverbs 8:15). And however greatly peoples may multiply and however much states may change, through His all-active providence “the Most High rules the kingdom of mankind” (Daniel 4:17 in most English Bibles; Daniel 4:22 in the Septuagint numbering used by the source).

‘The king, therefore, is the father of the great family that is the state, and for this reason, the preacher concludes, each person ought to honor him even more than the father of an individual household. Amen.’

Countries like the United States invert the proper order of authority. Fr Grigory (and the Orthodox Church in general) says that authority flows from God to fathers who rule over their offspring, and from God to kings who rule over their people. The cult of Americanism (in its Right/Conservative/MAGA iteration) confuses this, proclaiming that authority does flow from God to fathers but denying that it proceeds from God to kings. In the extended family of the country, authority, per Americanism, bypasses the father/king and proceeds to the sons and daughters/people instead.

If the conservative republicans/democrats of the US were to be logically consistent (which is not a great strength of theirs), if their family beliefs were to match their political ideology, then sons would have more authority over fathers in the little families (which we are in fact seeing in a growing number of places in the States, as rebellious turmoil is tearing many families apart), just as the people have more authority over the government within the big family of the country.

But they are not consistent. Yet the Fathers of the Orthodox Church, just like the Holy Scriptures, are quite consistent on this theme of fatherhood in all facets of a country’s life. The wonderful St John of Kronstadt, also in an homily on the Accession of St-Tsar Nicholas II, teaches:

‘In everything – small and great – in the flow of the stars and the actions of the elements, in all plants and animals, one all-creating, all-life-giving, all-decorating, all-ruling Hand of the Invisible Creator and Provider is noticeable. This same all-ruling Hand rules over all nations, the entire human race; appointing kings and deposing, and in the place of some raises others. This also elevated the New Tsar to the throne of the Russian Kingdom, the branch of the recently deceased Tsar-Parent. “By me,” says God, “kings reign and rulers decree justice” (Prov. 8:15). The king is the image of God on earth, the Ruler of the universe. “Listen, kings, and understand; learn, judges of the ends of the earth; take heed, you who have multitudes and are proud before the nations: Dominion has been given to you from the Lord, and strength from the Most High, who will examine your deeds and test your intentions” (Prov. 7:1–3), cries the wise one, a king to those like him.’

Fr Grigory, speaking about the miraculous preservation of Tsar Alexander III and the royal family through a terrible accident, cites more Scriptures that justify monarchy:

‘The word of God teaches: “Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves” (Rom. 13:1–2). But the word of God speaks not only of the divine origin of royal power and the consequent submission to it, but also of the fact that through the king, appointed by God, the righteousness of God, the necessary foundation of true human life, is realized on earth. “By me kings reign, and rulers decree justice,” says divine wisdom itself (Prov. 8:15). The heart of the king is the organ through which the king receives inspirations from God. “The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, like the rivers of water; He turns it wherever He wishes” (Prov. 21:1). Having received the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the sacred anointing, upon ascending the throne, the king appears as the chosen one of God in all the splendor and power of his authority, overshadowed and imbued with sanctification from above, ready to serve as an instrument of truth, mercy and God’s justice on earth among his people. “I have exalted one chosen from among my people,” says the Lord through the royal prophet David, “I have anointed him with holy oil; My truth and My mercy are with him” (Ps. 89:20-21, 25).’

He further shows the consequences of ideologies like Americanism (or the French Revolution, which continues to devastate the poor people of France), which deny kings their proper place in the political and spiritual life of the people:

‘Turning then to the evidence of human science on obedience to royal authority, we find that it confirms in everything the teaching of the word of God on the same subject. And first of all, the history of both our fatherland and the world, not in words and vague assumptions, but in events that are menacingly convincing for every thinking person, says that in every country where there was for a time a strong autocratic power absent or where it was weakened, apart from turmoil, lawlessness, oppression of the weak by the strong, wild tyranny, incessant and disastrous for the country change of government officials elected and overthrown by the passion of self-interest and personal favor, stagnation of the intellectual, industrial and decline of the fundamental all-creating religious and moral life and its state significance among other peoples, nothing ever happened and could not happen. And this is understandable. The state is a great family. Just as a family perishes and disintegrates where its natural head, the father, does not display his legitimate authority over the other members of the family, or because of hostile resistance to him from some members, or because of weakness, or for other reasons, or where the family is deprived of him early: so the life of a state disintegrates and tends to decline without its natural head, the sovereign, or even under him, in the case when his power is weakened by the incomplete or inadequate obedience of his subjects, who have lost under their feet the firm ground for obedience to any authority established by God – the fear of God and obedience to the holy mother the Church, this wonderful and great educator of Christian souls for both temporal and eternal life.’

Fr Grigory makes the tie between Christian faith and monarchy more emphatic still in a separate homily on the Martyr-Tsar Nicholas II’s Accession:

‘When faith grows, the kingdom grows, and enlightenment flourishes among the people, not the falsely so-called enlightenment of the wise men who close their eyes to the Sun of righteousness (Mal. 4:2) – Jesus Christ, and who seek light in the darkness of contradictory inventions, but the true enlightenment, which comes from above from the Father of lights (James 1:17) and is based on the wisdom (1 Cor. 2:7) revealed to us in the Gospel. Faith is firm, the kingdom is firm; faith wavers, the kingdom wavers; faith weakens, the kingdom weakens; faith dwindles, the prosperity of the people dwindles; faith disappears, the kingdom disappears. This law is immutable, as is the truth of God unchangeable. Only that prosperity of the people is firm, unchangeable, which is based on piety, on humble faith in God.

‘From the pure source of true faith in God, naturally flows unwavering loyalty, love and reverence for the Tsar, the Anointed of the Lord. One is connected with the other by an inseparable union, one cannot exist without the other. Unfaithfulness to the Tsar is the offspring of unbelief in God. Thus, true faith in God and holy loyalty to the Tsar, the Anointed of the Lord, constitute the cornerstone, the only firm foundation on which the well-being of the people is built.’

Jose Miguel, who has been writing some excellent essays on Christianity and politics lately, elaborates on the consistency of monarchy with authentic, apostolic Christianity:

‘ . . . all authority comes from the Father, given to the Son, who vested it in His Apostles, who vested it in their successor bishops. Hence the first of the triad, Orthodoxy. The second, Autocracy, is the natural outflow of the faith, where God chooses His Anointed and grants him sovereignty in a mystical sacramental manner, the anointing of a king being colloquially known as the “second chrismation.” The bishops of the Church anoint the monarch, meaning the now-Tsar directly participates in Jesus’ Uncreated Kingship in a mystical manner, mystical meaning participation in a real revealed thing with inexhaustible depth. Narodnost, the third leg of the triad, is the popular felt cultural confirmation that binds the people to the Autocrat. In my own framework of race, this would be pathos, the mutual feeling of belonging between people of the same race, especially so of the same ethnos, but in this case more specific in that Narodnost is the culturally connective tissue uniting the Divinely-instituted Throne with the local Church that permeates the people who make up the latter and are lead by the former. This concept of Nationality is more about cohesion, not the origin of authority, the polar opposite of Western Nationalism.’

This sort of thing is anathema to the ideology of the autonomous individual that permeates so much of Protestantism, Papism, and later Western ideologies that arose from those two. Conservatives in the US like to promote fatherhood, and their own triad of ‘God-Family-Country’, and there is much that is praiseworthy in those things, but they refuse to follow them to their own logical conclusions, which would be a king chosen and anointed by God to rule over his people as a father. And because of this refusal, the 50 States and many other countries in the post-Schism West are falling into decay.

As for the pre-Schism West, she was full of wonderful, saintly Orthodox kings and queens, princes and princesses, who guided their peoples well, as Fr James Thornton has made manifest in his thick volume Pious Kings and Right-Believing Queens (see links below for more information).

Synaxis (gathering) of All Saints of the British Isles and Ireland, including the following monarchs: St. Edwin, King of Northumbria, St. Oswald, King of Northumbria, St. Oswin, King of Deira, St. Edmund the Martyr, King of East Anglia, St. Ethelbert, King of East Anglia, St. Edward the Martyr, King of England, St. Richard, King of Wessex (traditional attribution), St. Constantine, King of Cornwall, St. Cormac, King of Munster, St. Gwynllw (Gundleus), King of Gwynllwg, St. Bertram, Prince of Mercia (traditional attribution), St. Alkmund, Prince of Northumbria