C. William Knott Yielding — A Tribute

I referred to him as C. William Knott Yielding when I would cut and paste the quotes from his blogs which I read routinely. I have no idea what his real name is. I have no idea what his career had been though I suspected he was teaching literature somewhere. I have no idea where he lived. I often imagine it was somewhere in the Shenandoah Valley in a Mountain Cabin surrounded by pine trees and overlooking an always swollen and fast running stream. I have no idea about most of who he was or what his life was like but I was always imagined him to be some kind of guru sitting there in his Mountain chalet disgusted with what had become to what he still retained fond memories of.

He was a romantic in the best sense of that word and his world was filled with the very best literature of Europe and America. I remember often thinking what a gift it would be to know Europe and America’s literature as seen through a Christian world and life view the way C. William Knott Yielding understood it. The man had the ability to make the literature breathe with the breath both of the one who was the writer and of the Christ who inspired the writer. He would have been a wonder to sit under as a tutor in a European literature class. He aligned the Literature of Christendom in the service of calling Europe back to Christ.

He was a Warrior-Monk for the cause of Jesus Christ. He didn’t care for the institutional Church (who can blame him) but he was convinced that the blood of Christ reached out to cover the European peoples and because he was convinced of God’s faithfulness he remained convinced that the European peoples would survive the attempt of the modern satanic liberal to divorce old Europe from Christ. Where others like myself to often viewed old Europe as hopeless, C. William Knott Yielding would remind us that with God all things are possible.

He was an apologist for Christ of a very different sort. He didn’t argue for the ontological or teleological, or cosmological or historical argument. He wasn’t concerned for arguments from design or religious experience. He didn’t labor over the Transcendental argument or insist on presuppositionalism or evidentialism. His apologetics were, as said in a way he would approve of, from the heart. He made you love Christ by his writing because he revealed what kind of people and peoples who Christ loved and who loved Christ were. He pulled back and revealed the beauty of those smitten with Christ. He spoke of their honor and integrity. He spoke of their virtues and their honesty. He spoke of courage, respect, hope, and love. He gave the example of the virtuous hate that is the proper response of love when what one loves is attacked. And he repeatedly insisted that it was belief in Christ that made people and peoples that way — that made Old Europe that way — that made Old Europe beautiful. She was perfumed with Christ.

He was a throwback / “old school” example if there ever was one. He reminded me a great deal of C. S. Lewis who also was a man reaching back to the pre-modern world to speak to the post-modern world. He was a man who saw enchantment in everything. The world was alive to him because this world was his Father’s world.

I could never get used to the hard divide he would make between heart and mind. He was not a fan of the “intellectual.” He saw the intellectual as cold and removed. I always had the sense that he resented the “intellectual” because intellectuals kill things in order to dissect them in order to understand them. C. William Knott Yielding didn’t believe that was the best way to understand peoples or cultures. He believed that they were to be understood by seeing their heart. He constantly appealed to the heart. Though I did not agree with him completely on this score (I believe heart and mind are largely synonymous) I could not help but admire the way he pulled one into an agreement by the way he argued from the heart.

The man was just flat out a masterful writer. C. William Knott Yielding is my pseudonym for him. He just went by his blog name, “Cambria Will Not Yield.” He was a controversialist and a polemicist and a contrarian. All character traits I instinctually admire. Much of what he wrote will be despised and hated by modern and postmodern man. Much of what he wrote will also be hated by modern churchmen who have no capacity to enter into his vision and who despise the idea — even though it was held by their forebearers of the past 2000 years — that races, ethnicities, and nations were distinct peoples that by way of principle should be attached primarily to their respectful people groups. It’s an amazing thing that 2000 years of Church history can be so casually disregarded by modern churchmen.

He viewed the remnant European peoples much like Lewis viewed the Old Narnians. He saw Old Europe covered in the filth, grime, and spell of the witchcraft of satanic Marxism and its attendant multiculturalism / multi-racialism / multi-faithism, and yet he saw a day when Old Europe would be resurrected.

Cambria Will Not Yield was the name of his blog and his blog was the place to go if one needed to be inspired or lifted out of the slough of despond. One seldom left his writing without thinking that there was yet hope for Old Europe if only because God is faithful.

Like all of us (well, at least like me) he could be over the top at times but in the current battle the West is in, if any man is not over the top from time to time then he is not really engaged in the battle at hand. He made all the right enemies and had all the right friends. He was creative in protecting his anonymity and to this day I have no idea who the man was. So, metaphorically, he is buried in an unmarked grave. His writings continue to be accessible but the great light he was belongs now to the ages.

He belongs to the ages … and just when it could be easily said that this is just the time when we needed him most. However, God does all things well and I can’t help but pray that God would raise many many more like him to take his place.

I’ll end this piece by providing some quotes from him I collected over the years. I trust they will inspire you as much as they inspired me to weary not in holding forth the King’s banner.