Aggressive Secularism.The aggressive secularization of America

Aggressive Secularism

The aggressive secularization of America

 

As an American I have watched with sadness, the eroding of our Christian values and standards of living. When I was in grade school, each day began with the reading of the Bible, broadcast over the intercom system (yes, we had the technology when I was little). At my graduation from high school, there were two public gatherings in the gym, the first being the baccalaureate service, where the minister chosen by the seniors gave an inspirational address, and religious hymns and patriotic songs were sung. The second public gathering was the actual graduation ceremony. The baccalaureate service is long gone from the American scene, found, as it were, to be an unconstitutional infringement on the separation of Church and State.

 

Gone, also, are the student Christian organizations, banned as they were, from the use of public school facilities, again on the basis of the separation of Church and State. Many of these same schools have given over classroom use to Muslim students, for their required prayer services.

 

Our courts have aggressively moved to push the Christian faith further from the public forum. Attacks toward public displays of religious themes, such as the Ten Commandments, Nativity Creches, and even crosses from the graves of soldiers, have increasingly become the norm. There is even a movement to force police and fire department chaplains to remove the cross from their badges, something we've all vowed to resist.

 

This aggressive move towards secularism has increasingly become a part of American foreign policy, with the move to pressure other countries to follow our lead. Just as the Russian Revolution was supported, in the very beginning, by the anti-monarchist sentiments of the American government, so too, are we seeing an increase in the negative attitudes of the American government towards the rise in power and influence, of the Russian Orthodox Church.

 

At a time when our governmental leaders are pushing Christianity from the public forum, we criticize the Russian government because of it's close ties with the Russian Orthodox Church. We even question the sincerity of Russian leaders Orthodox faith, perhaps because we know that many of our own leaders have put on the veneer of being Christian, for political survival.

 

Russians know the dangers of aggressive secularism, having suffered seventy years of state sponsored atheism, and many Russians look with amazement at what they see as American capitulation to a secularism that has promoted a sort of state atheism of its own.

 

The Moscow Patriarchate is waging a "War on Aggressive Liberalism", and calling upon believers to fight the "anti-clerical forces" and "false values of aggressive liberalism." The Patriarchate will not sit back complacently, and watch a replay of the rise of anti-Church forces that hurled the Russian people into the dark days of the Communist aggression against the Church, and against believers.

 

The same forces that are aggressively seeking to discredit the clergy, divide Russian society, and turn Russians away from their temples, is at work in the United States. The time has come for all Christians to stand firm, and resist the forces of aggressive secularism. Whether we be Russian, Canadians, British, Greeks, or Americans, we need to stand united, and work to return Western civilization to her Christian roots.

 

An American Catholic Bishop stated recently: "I shall die in my bed, my successor shall die in prison, his successor will die as a martyr in the public square". Although God will protect his Orthodox Church from the Gates of Hell, we must remember that the blood of the Martyrs has always watered the seed of the Church.

 

With love in Christ,

Abbot Tryphon