Category: Culture

“The truth is that, for all their talk about social “roots,” conservative intellectuals in the postwar era were often rootless men themselves, and the philosophical mystifications in which they enveloped themselves were frequently the only garments that fit them.”

Samuel Francis

I started reading Sam Francis just about when he started writing in public venues. I suspect that I have read a good percentage of what he put down on paper. I also listened to many of his lectures and interviews. Francis was a pillar in establishing what I had been building as part of my understanding of politics. There were others before Sam. Growing up in Michiana I was exposed very early to M. Stanton Evans; Editor of the Indianapolis Star. At age 18 I received a subscription to “Human Events” as I began college. Evans was also the Editor of Human Events and I was gifted with the subscription by a conservative Uncle who was concerned that I would go liberal attending college. Also on the early conservative arc, as a youngster I  would devour all of Mike Royko of the Chicago Tribune I could get my hands on. Royko was a hard-bitten cynical conservative and his sarcasm, as in the mouth of Slats Grobnik, gave me a good laugh before I folded up the newspapers in the preparatory process that would end with me delivering those newspapers on my bicycle all over Sturgis, Michigan.

All this to say that I was exposed to the conservative mindset from the tenderst of ages. This was then given epistemological foundations when studying under Dr. Glenn Martin — a man who somehow slipped through the cultural Marxist net that worked to exclude doctrinaire conservatives gaining status in higher education. This was already well established by  1977 when I matriculated to Marion College. Glen Martin solidified all that I already was by instinct because of my family, my Christian religion, and my reading habits. Later in my 30s I subscribed to “Conservative Chronicle” and in my 40s it was on to “Chronicles Magazine.” Serving as a foundation underneath that reading of Conservative Essayists and Journalists I was reading the books that those Journalists themselves had read. Authors like Burke, Dabney, Burnham, Lindbergh, Garet Garrett, Meyer, Whittaker Chambers, Christopher Dawson,  Maistre, T. S. Eliot etc. have been eagerly consumed over the years.

Today, I have given up the “Conservative” sobriquet as conservatives are typically about as useful as tits on a bore given how they have been compromised by the liberal zeitgeist of the last 85 years. Today, I refer to myself as “Dissident” or “Paleoconservative,” or “Biblical Christian.” I have come to the conviction, as learned from Rushdoony, that it is not possible to be “Conservative” and not be Christian since any conservatism that is not built on the foundation of Biblical Christianity is just another form of humanism. Should anyone doubt that they should listen to Rushdoony slice and dice the conservative foundations of Russell Kirk from one of Rush’s lectures on Pocket College.

Much today in the “Evangelical Church” that is considered conservative is just warmed over cultural Marxism. This explains why Samuel Francis once wrote;

“The institutional Christianity that flourishes today is no longer the same religion as that practiced by Charlemagne and his successors, and it can no longer support the civilization they formed. Indeed, organized Christianity today is the enemy of the West and the race that created it.”

Samuel T. Francis

In the initial quote Francis explained how useless modern Conservatism had become. In this immediate quote above Francis underscores how useless Christianity has become as it is now a different religion than the Christianity embraced by our Fathers.

Every generation is prone to reinterpret Christianity through the lens of the prevailing zeitgeist and worldview. Our generation is no different. Today the Christianity that is found even in our putative “conservative” churches is a
Christianity that our Fathers as recent as Machen, Morton H. Smith, and John Edwards Richards would neither recognize nor would they confess.

And with the change of Christianity so Western Civilization as changed into a civilization that our Fathers would likewise not recognize. Civilizations are what they are according to two realities;

1.) The people that populate those civilizations
2.) The theology (belief system/Worldview) those same people embrace

Those two realities are not isolated from one another. When a people’s theology changes so will the people themselves and as the people change so one can look for the theology to change. We see this in the West right now. As we have abandoned the Christianity of our fathers we have simultaneously embraced the theology of alien and strangers so that we ourselves are losing our ethno-national identity. Having given up on our previous ethno-confessionalism we have embraced a differing ethno-confessionalism so that both our confession and our ethnicity are different than even what our Grandfathers confessed and were. In brief, if we could bring back our Grandfathers-Great Grandfathers they would not recognize us as their descendents — either in what they believed nor in their genetic makeup.

Francis’s last sentence in the quote above is worthy of consideration. Organized Christianity is, more often than not, the enemy of the West and the White Anglo Saxon Christian who created it. This fact is easily demonstrated by positing that even the reading of this sentence in most “conservative” churches would be met with screams, howls, and clothing rent in anguish.

The chief problem in the West is not political, sociological, nor educational. The chief problem in the West today is the “conservative” “Christian” church with its soyboy “clergy.” Just look at the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod with its “attack without due process” of the Stone Choir podcast chaps. Just look at the OPC and its embrace of the gynocracy. Just look at the PCA with its inability to discipline the proto-sodomite crowd in their midst. Just look at the CREC with its constant anti-whiteism agenda reaching its zenith in the fatuous Antioch Declaration. The current conservative denominational scene bears testimony that what Sam Francis wrote 30 years ago was prescient.

Christianity is such an enemy of the West and the race that created it today that were I myself not clergy it is doubtful that I would darken the door of a church. Today’s Christianity has been reinterpreted through the grid of Cultural Marxism and Jesus Christ has no more interest in the conservative Christianity today than He had interest in the synagogue before His resurrection and ascension.

We need to psychologically resolve to understand that the visible church today, exceptions notwithstanding, is ICHABOD and act accordingly. There is no shame in not attending a Church that holds to a Christianity that is at war with what the Church taught when it was not yet compromised by the spirit of the age.

Until the days of Magnus Hirschfield men who copulated with one another were tagged with the biblical word “sodomite.” Eventually, the word “sodomite” was changed out for the preferred word “homosexual,” with the intent to sanitize somewhat the bestial nature of the predilection. Eventually though, even that word was found to be too base and disgusting and so the word “gay,” was lighted upon in order to neutralize the detestable behavior so as to be found acceptable.

However, even that was not sufficient for the social engineers in our midst. Even co-opting a word that once meant “merry” and “happy” didn’t go far enough in mainstreaming a behavior that once found God destroying cities because of the prevalence of said behavior. No, another bridge had to be crossed in order that a mentally unbalanced group could be seen to be “normal” and that bridge to normativity was used language as a weapon to marginalize and diminish those who insisted that sodomy as hiding under any word was insane, sinful, abnormality.  And so the word “Homophobic” was birthed.

The advantage of coining the word “homophobic” to describe those who point out the twistedness of sodomite behavior was a genius linguistic move. In the ability now to label and complain about “homophobes” the table was now successfully turned and it was those who thought normally who were now the ones who were seen as social deviants and derelicts. Now the problem in society was not the sodomites, homosexuals, and gays. No, the problem in society are the homophobic who must be either re-educated or become social outcasts themselves. It is the homophobic who are the haters and who constitute a social disease that must be eliminated.

Then there is the reality that the word “homophobic” doesn’t even describe the reality of the situation. People who are opposed to faggotry are not fearful of sodomites. If they were fearful of sodomites they would keep their mouths shut and not say anything. Rather people who are opposed to the ghey lifestyle understand that it is the destroyer of civilization when it is allowed to be given sanction and celebrated. Really, if the truth was known those who oppose sodomy should be known as “homo-philes” since opposition to sodomy is the most loving disposition one can take in relation to the practice of sodomy. It is nothing but pure hatred for sodomites and those judicially innocent who will be lured into their lifestyle to accept sodomites as being normative. Just as one does not love a disobedient and errant child by not disciplining them so a society or culture does not love the sodomite by communicating that their aberrant behavior is not aberrant. It is love for the sodomite that causes the Biblical Christian to raise their voice against the perversion that is sodomy.

This linguistic deception that we are speaking of here, of course, does not end with the movement from sodomite, to homosexual, to ghey, to homophobe. No, this social engineering tool has been used repeatedly to move the Overton window leftward on what is counted and not counted as socially acceptable.

A recent linguistic weapon that has been unleashed against Western Civilization in the hopes of destroying it is the term “White supremacy.” This sobriquet is hurled at white folks for preferring their own people, culture, customs and history. It is thrown like a javelin in the face of people who want to maintain the ways of their Christian fathers. Now, the ironic thing here is that those who are doing the hurling are those who we might rightly label as “Multi-Cultural supremacists.” Their complaint of “white supremacy” is born of their hatred of white people due to the mixed multitude pursuit of multi-cultural supremacy.

Remember, there is no such thing as neutrality. As such the end of white supremacy (which is simply the age old habit of all peoples to prefer that which is familiar and known) is the rise of multi-culture mixed multitude supremacy. The complaint against “white supremacy,” is in fact a linguistic tool to untether white people from the normal and godly instinct to want to protect Christian civilization as it has been built by Christian white people over the centuries.

Think about it this way. Nobody in China or Japan complains about Yellow Supremacy. Nobody in Nigeria complains about Black Supremacy. However, in countries settled by the White man there is a hue and cry to end White supremacy and, as hinted at above, this is only because there is a desire to turn the Christian white man into a slave who becomes a hewer of wood and a drawer of water.

Ultimately, as has been said before many times on Iron Ink, this attack on the White man and “white supremacy” is a proxy war against Christianity. In God’s sovereign providence and completely by grace alone it is the white man who has been perfumed with Christ and having the smell of Christ about us we have built great civilizations that were anchored in the tenets of Biblical Christianity. Naturally enough, Christ hating civilizations and men hating Christ and Christianity are now insisting on the need to end “White supremacy, but what they are really after is rolling Jesus Christ off of his throne so that ugly cultures can be built in honor to the gods of the mixed-multitudes. These are gods who delight in seeing wombs scraped of life, gods who delight in surgeons cutting off breasts and penises, gods who delight in statutory raised to honor those who excelled in casting off the “chains” of Biblical Christianity.

Of course the potency of this movement to overthrow “white supremacy” comes not primarily from the mixed multitude, though there are plenty of haters here. No, the primary potency of this movement comes from white people who have been turned into Orcs, Goblins, and Necromancers by consuming (usually quite unknowingly) the premises, assumptions, and presuppositions of the Marxists. These useful idiots and Shabbos Goy have been employed to pour dross into Biblical Christianity so that our churches spew the ugliest and most vile lies from pulpits thus turning Christianity into a repellent and poisonous sludge stew. These useful idiots and Shabbos Goy have been employed to normalize the abnormal so that nearly of all our Institutions are tripping over themselves to see who can first hoist the rainbow flag while putting kitty litter in all our public places so that the Furries among us can feel welcome. These Shabbos Goy and useful idiots have spent generations crafting legislation that weakens the central Christian Institution of family so that normal family life is now seen as a key expression of white supremacy that needs to be eliminated.

But it all begins with linguistic deception. The subtle changing of our language to push us, societally, in a certain aberrant direction. Statist education becomes known as “public-schooling.” Equality (which itself is poison) morphs into the pursuit of equity. The glorious and dignified work of keeping hearth and home is dismissed as “oh, you’re just a housewife,” as if such a role is worse than being imprisoned. Formerly, when one was convicted of a crime they went to prison or jail. Now they go to a “correctional facility.” The Department of War (a properly labeled office if there ever was one) was changed out to the more benign “Department of Defense.” “Father,” and “Mother” on official documents has now become “Parent 1” and “Parent 2.” I am sure that soon enough the word “parent” will be eliminated for something thought to be less offensive. And let’s not even begin to mention the laundry list of acceptable labels for the sexual deviants. My favorite among these is how “pedophile” is now known as a “minority attracted person.”

When the language changes it is a precursor to a cultural change that is coming in its wake. Keep your eyes peeled for these subtle and sometimes not so subtle changes because they are going to only accelerate in their arrival upon the cultural scene.

“Therefore let the one who thinks he stands firm [immune to temptation, being overconfident and self-righteous], take care that he does not fall [into sin and condemnation].”   

I Corinthians 10:12
(Amplified Bible)

I was 16, way back in 1976, when for the first time I witnessed, up close and personal, the crash and burning of a minister (youth) due to sexual infidelity. It was a royal mess and looking back on it over the years my sympathy and compassion for all parties has only grown together with my sorrow for the injured parties and anger at the ones inflicting injury. The Senior minister of the Church was left with the impossible task of trying to hold the work together since people in the congregation had a dozen views of what did and did not happen and who was really at fault. A young marriage with young children was scuttled. The popular youth minister in question, who had a huge influence on a rather large youth group,  was out of work leaving behind him a large group of High Schoolers who were more than a little disillusioned with Christianity. I was disappointed, to be sure, but frankly in 1976 I was so trying to survive my own sitz-im-lieben that I didn’t have enough time or energy to get overly distraught by other people’s naughty behavior.  Still, I was not so self-involved to not be able to see that this behavior had sent shock waves through the Church.

Since that summer of 1976 I have seen repeatedly, both up close in Churches I was connected to and from far away as more of a spectator the damage that marital unfaithfulness does in the Church when that unfaithfulness is contracted within the church. Now again, with the case of the former Rev. Stephen Lawson the Church is party to having to bear the shame, along with Lawson.

Naturally, when clergy are involved in sexual infidelity the blowback is even more intense. All of us who are clergy have to hear the refrain of “typical clergy, they think they are better than us and just look.”

Perhaps, the first thing that should be said then is, “we are not better than the laity.” The best of us are only unprofitable servants seeking to do what we ought. As you have known for sometime now, as clergy we are marvelous at disappointing you, of not living up to your expectations, and of being in need of grace as much as any of you who are not clergy. St. Paul was not kidding when he wrote, “Here is a trustworthy saying, worthy of full acceptance; Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.”

That admission does not excuse Lawson. Neither is it an attempt to do so. The sin of sexual infidelity combined and then dwarfed by the sin of climbing into the pulpit to preach as God’s spokesman while involved in said infidelity is beyond words. Beyond words, but not beyond forgiveness.

The challenge here is how to be, at one and the same time, squarely against sin, while realizing “there but for the grace of God, go I.” After all, Elders are required to be “gentle” and being gentle is a must when a man is repenting. (And it is my assumption here that Lawson has repented and is repenting.) If we only rail about the sin we come across as the self-righteous prigs we so easily can be and too often are. If we elide too quickly past the sin we may treat the sin too lightly and so not communicate the necessary warning to others.

Then there is the factor that leadership is ideally supposed to be held to a higher standard. Paul writes Timothy that the Overseer is supposed to be “above reproach,” and the “husband of one wife,” and Lawson has read himself out of both those qualifications.

Look, I bleed for the man. I know what I am capable of. I bleed for his wife. At this age she is supposed to be enjoying the sunset of children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and some kind of slowing down. Instead, she has to deal with this five alarm fire. Then there is “the other woman” who though responsible as well may well have swooned into the illicit relationship based upon some misguided admiration for “the man of God.” Alternately, it is possible that she was and is a real Jezebel. Have we mentioned all the hurt now that his children and grandchildren are dealing with given the devastation this has wrecked? Have we mentioned the congregation he served and the countless others across the nation that may well have looked up to Rev. Lawson? Really, the impact I witnessed first in 1976 remains the impact when this kind of sin bomb goes off. The hurt and shattered lives makes my soul ache. The greatest ache is that the name of the ever glorious God is brought into disrepute.

So, it is with mixed emotions I write about this. Fear, because the ability to write about this kind of event is so fraught with getting it wrong, thus doing even more damage. Sorrow, because of the trail of tears this thing leaves in its wake. Shame, because Christ’s name is dishonored and because I realize that I am perfectly capable of the same thing. Anger, for the obvious reasons. Funny, these are some of the same emotions I had in 1976.  All of it makes me fleetingly toy with getting out of the ministry before I do something this wicked.

Some have written on this subject, probing the question, “How could this happen.” On that score, let’s be honest — this kind of thing is getting fairly common. While writing I can think of a half-dozen plus other similar high profile clergy that have been caught in this particular snare over the last 10 years or so.

The answer to the “why” questions are both simple and complex. At the simple end of things man has a sin nature that is only eradicated with his death. Simple explanations also include the truth that “stolen watermelon is more sweet.” The more complex range from living in a culture that drips with perverse sexuality, to the fact that high platformed clergy begin to believe the adulation that they are covered with (they begin to believe their own press clippings) and believing that no longer take heed, to the fact of the ego sizes that are often characteristic of too many clergy (can you say “narcissism?”) I am tempted to also offer as a possibility the lack of accountability but, frankly, it seems accountability anymore only works to keep orthodox men from being orthodox as heterodox men love holding the orthodox “accountable.”

Be sure of this though. Nobody who gets in this situation gets in it apart from a mega dollop of self-deception. The clergy who gets into a strange bed, while simultaneously maintaining the ability to climb into the pulpit week after week, really is a man to be pitied. He has seared his conscience while grieving the Holy Spirit. He has crossed some kind of Rubicon that one wonders how many return from.

But there is grace with God. Our Baptism reminds us that there is no sin we cannot return from if we will only do the grace given hard work of repentance.

Petition God, as I have been, that He will be honored in all this, and keep in mind that there is no reason why this couldn’t be you or I.