Reflection: Subject or Citizen?
Subject or Citizen
Recently while reading the Icelandic Saga of Viga Glum I was struck by the long litanies of genealogies. These are common enough in Norse sagas and in the sagas of other peoples such as the Maya, Aztec, Japanese, Jews, Ashanti, Ojibwa, Russians and others. Typically in each case the genealogy is used as a proof of inheritance such as the long genealogy of Christ at the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew. Besides inheritance or legitimacy these genealogies typically occur in cultures at the time of monarchy. (Monarchy exists in nation states or tribal societies, formal and informal.)
The genealogy serves to legitimize a person’s status with in a society. It creates a relationship of place and deference. In many ways a person’s life is subject to who their parents, grand parents, great grand parents and their begetters were. The merit or ability of the individual is of little importance with due deference given to genealogy, as if there exists some form of entitlement in the blood or genetic code. This subjective state can entitle you or oppress you depending on where your family fits in the system and by extension where you fit in to your own family. Typically in these societies women are devalued and serve as property.
The United States fought a revolution against England in large part to get out from underneath the system of being subject to your birth. This revolution was seeking liberation on the individual level and on the larger societal level. People wanted the freedom to succeed and to fail on their own merits, to change their station or position by education, work, and guile. People wanted the ability to trade with whom they like, to develop their businesses as they saw fit, making what they wanted, selling to whom they wanted. The goal was to create citizens not subjects. To create a society in which we are not limited by who our family is but rather by our own ambition, desire, and ability.
For the most part we as a society have stayed true to those aspirations. Yes some families have an easier time but it is more to the acquisition of wealth rather than noble blood. These families can still fall into the working class as easily as some one from the working class can make it into the upper class. Societal mobility is easy and fluid. Blood and nobility are no longer an influence or requirement. We are each free to try, free to choose.
At seminary there were many fellow classmates who self-identified themselves as monarchists. For some reason they would rather be subjects then citizens. They would rather live at the whim of birth and monarchy. Even though they were at seminary the example of Henry the Eight of England seems lost on them. Your faith determined by the whim of a monarch. You being not a citizen with God given free will/choice but rather a subject; … subject to a monarch whose whims are ordained by God. To go against that monarch is to go against God.
What troubles me is that many of these classmates are now parish priests who are very open about their desire to turn back the clock and reduce us all to servitude as subjects of a monarch. This creates an undercurrent in Orthodoxy which is unsavory. Often because of the position and influence of a parish priest these ideas take on a sanctity or verve beyond individual thought. It creates an un-American tone to the church which troubles me greatly. Not that it spits in the face of all who died to defend the Constitution … I respect the rights of free thought and free speech. But that to advocate a monarchy, to advocate the abandonment of that very document which grants you the freedom, to advocate the overthrow of the US … is technically treason.
It is time for the Orthodox in this country to throw the bullshit flag and stand up. Enough with the notions that Democratic Republicanism is somehow incompatible with Orthodoxy. God is about free will … when we are born as subjects we lose that free will, we lose our voice. To be a citizen on earth and in heaven is a choice.
Better a Citizen then a Subject!
Recently while reading the Icelandic Saga of Viga Glum I was struck by the long litanies of genealogies. These are common enough in Norse sagas and in the sagas of other peoples such as the Maya, Aztec, Japanese, Jews, Ashanti, Ojibwa, Russians and others. Typically in each case the genealogy is used as a proof of inheritance such as the long genealogy of Christ at the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew. Besides inheritance or legitimacy these genealogies typically occur in cultures at the time of monarchy. (Monarchy exists in nation states or tribal societies, formal and informal.)
The genealogy serves to legitimize a person’s status with in a society. It creates a relationship of place and deference. In many ways a person’s life is subject to who their parents, grand parents, great grand parents and their begetters were. The merit or ability of the individual is of little importance with due deference given to genealogy, as if there exists some form of entitlement in the blood or genetic code. This subjective state can entitle you or oppress you depending on where your family fits in the system and by extension where you fit in to your own family. Typically in these societies women are devalued and serve as property.
The United States fought a revolution against England in large part to get out from underneath the system of being subject to your birth. This revolution was seeking liberation on the individual level and on the larger societal level. People wanted the freedom to succeed and to fail on their own merits, to change their station or position by education, work, and guile. People wanted the ability to trade with whom they like, to develop their businesses as they saw fit, making what they wanted, selling to whom they wanted. The goal was to create citizens not subjects. To create a society in which we are not limited by who our family is but rather by our own ambition, desire, and ability.
For the most part we as a society have stayed true to those aspirations. Yes some families have an easier time but it is more to the acquisition of wealth rather than noble blood. These families can still fall into the working class as easily as some one from the working class can make it into the upper class. Societal mobility is easy and fluid. Blood and nobility are no longer an influence or requirement. We are each free to try, free to choose.
At seminary there were many fellow classmates who self-identified themselves as monarchists. For some reason they would rather be subjects then citizens. They would rather live at the whim of birth and monarchy. Even though they were at seminary the example of Henry the Eight of England seems lost on them. Your faith determined by the whim of a monarch. You being not a citizen with God given free will/choice but rather a subject; … subject to a monarch whose whims are ordained by God. To go against that monarch is to go against God.
What troubles me is that many of these classmates are now parish priests who are very open about their desire to turn back the clock and reduce us all to servitude as subjects of a monarch. This creates an undercurrent in Orthodoxy which is unsavory. Often because of the position and influence of a parish priest these ideas take on a sanctity or verve beyond individual thought. It creates an un-American tone to the church which troubles me greatly. Not that it spits in the face of all who died to defend the Constitution … I respect the rights of free thought and free speech. But that to advocate a monarchy, to advocate the abandonment of that very document which grants you the freedom, to advocate the overthrow of the US … is technically treason.
It is time for the Orthodox in this country to throw the bullshit flag and stand up. Enough with the notions that Democratic Republicanism is somehow incompatible with Orthodoxy. God is about free will … when we are born as subjects we lose that free will, we lose our voice. To be a citizen on earth and in heaven is a choice.
Better a Citizen then a Subject!