ANCIENT FAITH
First Peoples
O GOD, enlarge within us the sense of fellowship with all living things, our little brothers to whom Thou hast given this earth as their home in common with us.
May we realize that they live not for us alone, but for themselves and for Thee, and that they love the sweetness of life even as we, and serve Thee better in their place than we in ours.
St. Basil the Great
The martyrdom of the young Native American known as “Peter” is indicative of criminal victimization of indigenous peoples and Creation through Western European expansionism, victimization often perpetrated in the name of Western “christianity”. In Peter's case, the crime was against someone who was ironically a Christian of Ancient Faith, albeit unacknowledged by his “christian” oppressors. Ancient Faith in Greece, the Balkans, Russia, Eastern Europe, and the Mid-East was never perverted by conquering barbarian overlords who presumed to become “christian”. There, neither a “reformation” nor “counter-reformation” ever occurred, and Ancient Faith withstood the test of time virtually unchanged, in contradiction to conventional, contemporary Western expression of “christianity”, “culture” and “globalism”, which are rooted in Western European so called “holy Roman empire”, “renaissance”, “enlightenment”, spiritual innovation of Roman “catholicism” and protestantism, colonialism, imperialism, industrialism, capitalism and consumerism.
Unchristian Western Arrogance
Western deviations in theological type of Ancient Faith are especially visible in praxis relating to treatment of indigenous American peoples. Protestant immigrants of the NE saw America as the Promised Land granted them by God, and its inhabitants as savages whom they were destined to displace. In their type is rooted American Exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny. Likewise, Roman Catholic conquistadores of the SW engaged in slaughter and subjugation of natives. The Requerimiento of 1510 states that all men were descended from Adam and Eve, that the Roman Catholic Church had been granted the right by God to rule all people, and that denial of Papal authority came with risk of being slaughtered or enslaved. And so many were slaughtered, incuding Tchounagnak, an Aleut Christian of Ancient Faith who refused to confess Romanism, repeatedly telling his torturers he already was a Christian.
In the NW, Russian monks evangelized without proselytization or any justification for bloodshed or subjugation, and Native Americans there, including Tchounagnak, freely chose to embrace Ancient Faith, as evidenced by their descendents today. Rather than participate in abuse of native populations, followers of Ancient Faith often defended Native Americans against their fellow European countrymen, seeing in native peoples the same iconographic Divine Image in which they believed all humanity to be Created. Such evidence suggests that restoration of Ancient Faith with theosis (deification) as fundamental foundation, definitive of Real Christianity, is key to unity, and antidote to militant reaction against abuses perpetrated by the West in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, whereby a false image of Him is proliferated, which is understandably rejected by those it victimizes. In such restoration of Divine Image could be antidote and ground for true Thanksgiving.
As a Native American among All Saints of North America, St. Peter the Aleut is a notable patron On Living Simply in the Way of the Gospel of Christ. Through the example of Ancient Faith extant in him, in contrast to mere modern “tinkling cymbal”, Catholicism of the Spanish Conquistadors of the SW, and Protestantism of the Puritans and Anglicans of the NE, it can be hoped that North America may finally be led to Truth of Christ, repentance and avoidance of historical errors : separation (“sin”) from unity between Creator, humanity and all Creation, for establishment of Real Faith in Real Life by way of university in diversity of Real Culture, Real Multi-culturalism.
Our culture divides people into two classes: civilized men, a title bestowed on the persons who do the classifying; and others, who have only the human form, who may perish or go to the dogs for all the "civilized men" care.
Oh, this "noble" culture of ours! It speaks so piously of human dignity and human rights and then disregards this dignity and these rights of countless millions and treads them underfoot, only because they live overseas or because their skins are of different color or because they cannot help themselves. This culture does not know how hollow and miserable and full of glib talk it is, how common it looks to those who follow it across the seas and see what it has done there, and this culture has no right to speak of personal dignity and human rights…
I will not enumerate all the crimes that have been committed under the pretext of justice. People robbed native inhabitants of their land, made slaves of them, let loose the scum of mankind upon them. Think of the atrocities that were perpetrated upon people made subservient to us, how systematically we have ruined them with our alcoholic "gifts", and everything else we have done…We decimate them, and then, by the stroke of a pen, we take their land so they have nothing left at all…
If all this oppression and all this sin and shame are perpetrated under the eye of the German God, or the American God, or the British God, and if our states do not feel obliged first to lay aside their claim to be "Christian" — then the name of Jesus is blasphemed and made a mockery. And the Christianity of our states is blasphemed and made a mockery before those poor people. The name of Jesus has become a curse, and our Christianity — yours and mine — has become a falsehood and a disgrace, if the crimes are not atoned for in the very place where they were instigated. For every person who committed an atrocity in Jesus' name, someone must step in to help in Jesus' name; for every person who robbed, someone must bring a replacement; for everyone who cursed, someone must bless.
And now, when you speak about missions, let this be your message: We must make atonement for all the terrible crimes we read of in the newspapers. We must make atonement for the still worse ones, which we do not read about in the papers, crimes that are shrouded in the silence of the jungle night…
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