EASTERN CHRISTIAN writes:

This is in response to something you stated in the thread “Does Race Have Meaning?” Your line is,

The absolute truths of Christianity need to be guarded by the white European-descended people because only they possess a strong penchant for absolute truths, as Robert B. argues. In order to flourish in other parts of the world, Christianity must be defended at home.

I would like to know how you came to this preposterous notion that only Western people have a penchant for absolute truth. Do you realise what a dangerous belief that is to hold? That is tantamount to saying God built the Caucasians to be more genetically capable of realizing the truth.

It completely invalidates the gospel dictum of ‘Go forth and spread my message to all nations.” Without the tiny Eastern community that spread the gospel, the West would never have heard of it. The West became powerful precisely because they accepted Christianity while most of the Eastern world didn’t. At least not as a foundational pillar of their country. While I completely agree that the current worldview of justice, equality and excellence in science is a remnant of Judeo-Christian morality and heritage, to suggest that race will have anything to do with truth in perpetuity is wrong.

Let us suppose nevertheless Westerners do have a penchant for absolute truth genetically or somehow otherwise.Why is it then today they leave the true religion in large numbers? This is the case in Europe and North America. Isn’t Christianity the absolute truth for them anymore? The truth is, it isn’t. In fact, the irony is this decline in Christian numbers has been negated only by a large number of Hispanic and immigrant communities accepting Christianity and not Caucasians, many of whom are cantering towards the perils of atheism.

I visit your site thinking Christianity is the pulpit from which you espouse your conservatism. Rather increasingly these days I find it centered on race. I hope you post this and give a response.

John McNeill writes:

I am in absolute agreement with the defense of ethnic nationalism found in Robert B’s and Laura’s excellent comments. I really have nothing to add in defense of European-American ethnonationalism (Since Robert,  Laura, and John handled it so well) other than that I find what people think of “race” being irrelevant to my sense of identity. While I believe science shows these existence of biological races, in the end, I do not need the studies of geneticists to validate who I am. I identify myself as a European-American. It’s who I am. It’s what resonates with me. My relatives are all European-descended and I feel a connection between my culture and the cultures of Europe. To all of you Christians who see yourself as something transcending race or ethnicity, more power to you. I choose to maintain the heritage of my ancestors, and preserve both their cultural and genetic legacy. I see nothing unbiblical about that, and I don’t see why we nationalist Christians and internationalist Christians can’t simply agree to let bygones be bygones.

However, I am uncertain about that belief that white Europeans are the guardians of absolute truth. While I confess that I did light up upon reading that line, being eagerly in search of positive European pride that can help justify our right to exist, I wonder if there’s truly legitimacy to that claim. After all, is it not Europeans that are the primary pushers of decadence and corruption within this world? Is it not Europeans who are the harbingers of the concept of relativism? How can we claim to be the guardians of absolute truth when we are the ones largely waging war against it?

I realize that things were different in the past, but still, even if we were guardians of the concept of absolute truth, can we still claim that title after about (let’s say for the sake of argument) a century of our people and culture falling into relativism and its accompanying symptoms?

Laura writes:

Let me clarify what I said. I believe it is essentially correct but I worded it poorly and, for the sake of brevity, simplistically.

When I said that only whites possess a “strong penchant for absolute truths,” I meant that the white race – including the people of the ancient Mediterranean and Asia Minor in the first centuries after Christ, as mentioned by Eastern Christian – is characterized by a strong tendency toward abstraction and generalization, a tendency that in itself is morally neutral. That is not to say that only whites engage in abstract thought or grasp absolute truths. But that as a whole, they possess this trait to such a strong degree that any civilization they create is likely to be characterized by a strong belief in an objective order or absolute principles. The strong philosophical tradition of the West, Western science, mathematics and rule of law exhibit this belief in what Samuel Francis called a “Cosmic Order.”  Referring to whites as “Indo-Europeans” or “Aryans,” Francis writes in his essay “The Roots of the White Man”:

It is a widespread feature of early Aryan thought that there exists an objective order that is independent of what we believe or want to believe – in other words, truth. The Rig Veda calls this order rta,  a term that may be linked with the word Arya itself… The word “Aryan” comes from “Arya” and a number of other Indo-European words seem to be connected — the Greek arete (virtue, the quality of acting like a man, from which we derive “aristocracy”); the Latin ara (altar) and the name “Arthur.” But regardless of the linguistic linkages, the Aryan concept of Cosmic Order contrasts with ideas of the universe found among ancient non-Aryans. For the latter, Cosmic Order is merely the product of will, a creature of magic, and it can change if those who know how to change it wish to do so. If the priests or the divine king did not perform the proper magic rituals, the sun literally would not rise, the Nile would not flood, and food would not grow. In this non-Aryan, magical view of nature, order does not exist as an externally independent and objective arrangement of nature and its functioning.

He goes on:

It is from the Aryan concept of a Cosmic Order that modern white men derive their mental inclinations both to universalism, a tendency to think in terms of generalizations and abstractions that apply universally rather than in terms of specific, local, and temporary, and to objectivity, the tendency to evaluate events and phenomena with reference to the general and the abstract rather than to judge them subjectively, as they relate to themselves.

This racial characteristics, combined with other characteristics, including what Francis described as “Faustian dynamism” and individuality, shaped Christian European civilization. I don’t see how this understanding contradicts the gospel dictum of  “Go forth and spread my message to all nations” as the point I am making is not that only whites can accept or understand Christianity. These accidental conditions of race and heredity do not alter the essence of humanity.

As to how this tendency fits in with modern degeneracy, absolute truths can be exaggerated, denied or distorted. Falsehood can become an absolute truth. The belief in absolute equality is a principle underlying what we think of as modern relativism. The degeneracy Eastern Christian and Mr. McNeill mention both stem from a belief in the absolute primacy of the individual and equality. The command “to love one’s neighbor as one’s self” is exaggerated by modern liberals to mean that whites should participate in the destruction of their own nations. Loyalties that should be applied to individuals or small groups are broadened to encompass all of humanity. Finally, this racial tendency toward abstraction can lead to societies of such complexity that traditional understandings are lost or distorted.

Eastern Christian writes:

I visit your site thinking Christianity is the pulpit from which you espouse your conservatism. Rather increasingly these days I find it centered on race.I hope you post this and give a response.

It is wrong to deny this important aspect of reality.

John writes:

To all of you Christians who see yourself as something transcending race or ethnicity, more power to you. I choose to maintain the heritage of my ancestors, and preserve both their cultural and genetic legacy. I see nothing unbiblical about that, and I don’t see why we nationalist Christians and internationalist Christians can’t simply agree to let bygones be bygones.

The views of universalist and nationalist Christians are fundamentally opposed. The universalist denies that race and nation have any legitimacy and thinks of the Christian as an abstraction, with no  earthly nation or people. We can’t just “let bygones be bygones” without resolving the conflict.

                                                           — Comments —

Georgia writes:

I think it’s sad that increasingly African Christians are the ones remaining stalwart in the face of Western efforts to turn Christianity into a homosexuality-accepting feminist non-religion. In the Anglican community, the African bishops have been consistently against allowing homosexual and female clergy.

Meanwhile, pure Northern European society continues to crumble, with Sweden and it’s gender-neutral preschools and heinous out-of-wedlock childbirth rate. In the end our society is worth defending, but it often seems we are our own worst enemies. Some African clergy have taken some dissident Western Anglican communities under their wings, though increasingly African Anglicans are converting to Catholicism or Orthodoxy.

This parish in Maryland, which mostly consists of African members, recently converted to Catholicism.

You won’t see many mostly-European parishes doing the same.

Laura writes:

It is good that some Africans are so clear-eyed and committed to the faith. I don’t think it is sad that they exist but sad that they must confront white Westerners who are fools and heretics.

A. writes:

I have found the thread about the “white race” to be off point completely.

The issue is not Caucasians and their penchant for abstraction and generalization.

Rather it is the Judeo Christian, Roman and Greek roots of thought and religion which have formed the mind of most Westerners regardless of whether they were Caucasian or black skinned Africans or mulatto Italians or so on and on. It is that thought that built the greatest civilization in the world and which began the American Experiment. It recognized the natural law, it recognized cause and effect, it eventually built science under the certainty of a God who was not capricious as in Islamic theology.

I am one eighth American Indian and seven-eighths Swiss, Irish, Italian, English, some through Mexico and who knows what. I find the Indian heritage interesting and as conferring hybrid vigor in my family, but when it comes to principles and basic beliefs and what I make my own, I go back to the Cathedrals, universities the art, the music, the philosophy and the science of my Judeo etc. roots.

It is that heritage about what we should be proud. It is that heritage which we should defend. And it is that heritage into which we should try to recruit others regardless of their skin color, ethnic heritage or whatever all the while accepting what in their culture is compatible with the JCGR. We cannot forget or allow others to hold that something can be both true and untrue.

Before the spears start getting thrown however, I admit that the JCGR members need to rid themselves of the curse of libertarianism and Jansenism and secularism and other errors, but the bedrock basics of truth, beauty and goodness are found in those roots and they contain more truth than do any other roots.

Laura writes:

The notion that this intellectual history is partly determined by the racial character of a people does not negate the substance of the ideas, which has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with race. A thought is not physical. Whether it is true or not has nothing to do with the race of the thinker.

But the development and nurturing of these ideas, and their translation into political and social reality, does have a racial dimension, and depends on a culture endowed with certain inherited aptitudes and temperament. We can promote these values without bowing to race. They can influence all races. But we can’t expect these values to flourish if the white race is viewed as morally inferior, if its natural inclinations are entirely suspect and if it mimics or exalts the inclinations and achievements of other races. Then the ideas too are suspect and increasingly worthless. We see this in academia and what students now study. They study Dickens and Shakespeare much less than in the past because Dickens and Shakespeare, who both conveyed certain Western values, were white. They don’t read Toni Morrison instead of Dickens because she is better than Dickens.

It is not possible to preserve respect for Western ideas without preserving – or restoring – respect for the white race as a whole.

A. writes:

You said:

It is not possible to preserve respect for Western ideas without preserving – or I should say, restoring – respect for the white race as a whole.

I do indeed agree. What I do disagree with is the Western Canon is perceptible or learned by “whites” or Caucasians more easily than by other “races” or ethnic groups for reasons inherent in their genes. If that is true in general, and I cannot go there, it would be because those ideas are foreign to their parents and others in their environment and it is more difficult therefore.

Remember God had to prepare the Jews to accept His message and it was St. Paul who had to convert the Gentiles and he was probably more able to do that because he was one of them and thought like they.

Laura writes:

What I do disagree with is the Western Canon is perceptible or learned by “whites” or Caucasians more easily than by other “races” or ethnic groups for reasons inherent in their genes.

If we look at the cultures formed by the three major races, we cannot help but reach this inescapable conclusion that biology is part of it. For instance, in Asian countries, there is not the individualistic literary culture we find in the West and that is such a striking contrast, it is hard to attribute it to anything less than innate characteristics.

But I used to think as you do, so I understand what you are saying. My change of mind occurred one day in one of the world’s great art museums, a museum located in what is now a majority black city. The museum was open free to the public on Sundays for many years. This fact was widely publicized. Even though it does not take a great deal of education to admire and enjoy artistic masterpieces, very few blacks came to the museum. Very few. I saw this again and again, Sunday after Sunday, when my husband and I took our young children to the museum for the greatest free outing anywhere.

One Sunday afternoon, I realized in an instant that whites must preserve this heritage and they must do it as whites. Despite all the years of “outreach,” no one else loved it as much. Race mattered in ways I had denied before. This experience does not represent all of my development on this issue, but it was important. Many other observations and personal experiences crystallized on that day. It was an intellectual revolution. In the world made by modern liberalism, we have to learn these things – and unlearn a hundred other things – entirely on our own. We have to teach ourselves how to walk.

Mr McNeill responds:

I totally admire your courage and fighting spirit in trying to  resolve the conflict between universalist and nationalist Christians.  However, I fear that it will be a futile fight. I used to lock horns
with civic nationalists on a daily basis, but eventually I gave up.  Perhaps I am not as gifted with words as you are, but I found that civic nationalists/Western universalists (Christian or secular) will
not convert to ethnonationalism out of persuasion. They are firm in their beliefs, and I think it takes some inner calling that awakens those who embrace the ethnonationalist cause.

Truth be told, I was a civic nationalist for a long time, but I eventually found a stirring in my blood. It wasn’t entirely based on reason, and no one persuaded me to become an ethnonationalist. Just
one day I felt my heart telling me that the white race doesn’t deserve to die and that white America has a right to exist.

I think the conflict between universalist and nationalist Christians will become another issue that will remain a permanent division within Christendom, just like the disagreements between Calvinists and Semi-Pelagians, as well as Dispensationalists and Preterists. I think that’s just the nature of the Church until Christ returns. I also think that there’s a genetic component to irrational European behavior, and we’ll have to accept the fact that most of our people will not return to the fold. But I think this is what must be; and I think in the end we’ll be strengthened by having some many wayward sheep stray from the herd, so-to-speak. That will leave behind the foundations for a renewed European-America.

In the meantime, I’m delighted to see that you’re not backing down from all of these universalists that seem dismayed with your increasingly strengthened racialist outlook. When one’s racialist/ethnic beliefs are in their infancy, it’s easy to be intimidated by those who are shocked or outraged at you for embracing such political heresy. In many ways, I still haven’t moved past that stage. Your rapid growth is very inspiring, and I’m grateful that your fire seems strong enough that it won’t extinguish. We need more thinkers like you; people who can balance racial issues with other truths and needs.

Also I appreciate your explanation of your earlier statement on absolute truths and the white race; I found it very illuminating and something for me to meditate on, even if I was a little turned off by Sam Francis’s equating white Europeans with Aryans (a minor pet peeve of mine, but irrelevant in this thread).

Laura writes:

Thank you.

I agree it does take more than reason to be persuaded. You have to feel something vital, something beyond reason, is at stake. For me, the paintings in the museum were one symbol of that. These paintings are still cherished and inspire affection among whites. But that affection is skin-deep. The ideas these paintings convey are indeed despised by many who ostensibly enjoy the paintings. The modern world is ugly for a reason.

I also grew up at a time when the Catholic Church became enthralled with nonwhites. This occurred as the Church threw off  the reverence, piety and awe of its sacred liturgy. It’s hard not to see these developments as related.

Francis, by the way, preferred to speak of “Indo-Europeans.”

Scott writes:

While following this discussion of race and Christianity, I have been reminded of something I saw at midnight mass last Christmas Eve. The choir was excellent, and the music consisted of many of the standard Christmas compositions that never fail to move me: “O, Holy Night,” “Joy to the World,” “Angels We Have Heard on High,” “Silent Night,” “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” etc. A group of blacks were in attendance, and I wanted to believe that they were sharing in a common elevation of the human spirit, but, a third of the way through, they got up and left as a group. Judging from their demeanors, I suspected that the distinctive qualities of that music which were inspiring to me were unintelligible, alien, or even frightening to them. They may have been non-Catholics attending the mass out of curiosity, or perhaps they were shopping for a church to join. I suspect that the church music they were familiar with was the kind that involved a lot more dancing, clapping and other primitive histrionics. I am glad that their needs were not accommodated. We diminish ourselves when we make such accommodations.

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