American exceptionalism, an Orthodox perspective

Almost since its inception, the USA (or, at least, its governing elites) has laboured under the misconception of ‘American exceptionalism’. The Puritan founding fathers regarded the 13 original colonies/states as the ‘New Israel’. Its people were a covenant community bearing a divine commission to model and export righteousness to the world. Its more recent, secular incarnation restated this in the language of ‘the indispensable nation’ and ‘the last best hope of earth’. But the theological freight was only displaced, not removed. The nation was still regarded as the ‘divine’ agent in the drama of history.

On 3 July at Mount Rushmore, Trump once again restated this view in his own uniquely crude way. adds its own inflections. He proclaimed America ‘the most successful, most accomplished, most exceptional nation ever to exist in human history’, giving it a status rooted not merely in constitutional ideals but in a specific cultural and civilizational heritage. For him, it is the fruit of a particular people (a ‘new breed of citizen’) and their tradition. His vision is simultaneously triumphalist, culturally ascriptive, and shot through with the grammar of chosenness.

Looked at from the perspective of Orthodox Christianity, this is no harmless patriotism, but rather a structure of thought that is profoundly dangerous.

In 1872, the Council of Constantinople formally condemned what it called phyletism or ethnophyletism, by which it meant ‘racial discrimination, ethnic feuds, hatreds and dissensions within the Church of Christ’, as ‘contrary to the teaching of the Gospel and the holy canons of our blessed fathers’. The specific occasion was the Bulgarian Exarchate’s attempt to organize the Church along ethnic rather than territorial and universal lines. But the theological principle at stake was far broader.

At root, phyletism is the confusion of the universal Body of Christ with a particular nation, ethnicity, or race (as the founding fathers did when they conflated America with the new Israel). It is the ‘tribalization’ of the faith, the subordination of the Church’s eschatological, transnational identity to goals of a people. What makes it a heresy, and not merely an administrative error, is that it places the nation in the position that belongs properly to the Church: as the bearer of chosenness, commission, and covenantal significance before God.

American exceptionalism – particularly in its closed, culturally specific form – is structurally identical to this error, transposed into a civil-religious register. When a nation claims that God has elected it, entrusted it with a unique mission, and is guiding its history towards a redemptive end, it is doing theologically what the 1872 Council condemned ecclesiologically: mistaking the particular for the universal, the contingent for the sacred, the ethnic for the eschatological.

Orthodoxy has recently had to confront this same temptation in an agonizingly direct way. The Russian Orthodox Church’s ideology of Russkii Mir (the ‘Russian World’ or ‘Russian peace’) claims that Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus form a sacred civilizational unity under God’s special protection and that the Russian state’s geopolitical expansion can therefore be theologically justified. In 2022, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, more than 1,300 Orthodox scholars and theologians around the world signed a declaration condemning this ideology as a heresy because it ‘confuses the Church with a political-civilizational project’, because it provides religious sanction for state violence, and because it violates the universal catholicity of Orthodoxy.

The declaration explicitly extended its condemnation to ‘all Orthodox ethno-phyletist ideologies akin to the false teaching of the “Russian World” in every age, nation and culture’. ‘[I]n every age, nation and culture’ is the critical phrase. The principle does not apply only to Russia. Sacred national exceptionalism is an equal-opportunity heresy: it is no more acceptable when it is American than when it is Russian, no less idolatrous when it is dressed in the Stars and Stripes than when it wears the double-headed eagle.

The deeper problem with American exceptionalism appropriates theological categories (chosenness, covenant, divine commission, redemptive mission) that have a specific and exclusive referent in the New Testament and the Patristic tradition: the Church, the Body of Christ.

St Paul writes in Galatians: ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.’ This is not merely an ethical aspiration. It is an ontological claim about the new community constituted by baptism and Eucharist, a community in which the ethnic, national, and civilizational distinctions of the old age are relativized – not abolished, but subordinated to a new, deeper identity. When an earthly nation annexes this language of election and mission, it commits a form of ecclesial usurpation: it claims for itself what belongs to the Body of Christ.

Fr Georges Florovsky, the great Russian émigré theologian, insisted throughout his work that no earthly culture or civilization, however distinguished, can bear ultimate meaning. Christianity does not endorse any particular civilization’s claim to finality or divine privilege. The Church is in every culture, but it is captive to none. To confuse the Christian mission with a specific civilizational expansion – whether Byzantine, Russian, or American – is to confuse the vessel with the wine it contains.

Orthodox eschatology adds a further dimension. The Kingdom of God, in Orthodox teaching, is not the political triumph of any earthly power. It is the transfiguration of all creation in union with the Holy Trinity, of which the Eucharist is the foretaste and the Church the provisional anticipation. History is not the progressive realization of any nation’s values. It is the synaxis of the world being drawn, through suffering and glory alike, towards its eternal end in God. This means that the eschatological pretensions embedded in American exceptionalism – the nation as history’s ‘decisive actor’, as the force bending the arc of history towards freedom – are, from an Orthodox perspective, a form of self-idolatry. Fr Alexander Schmemann called the Eucharist ‘the sacrament of the Kingdom’. No earthly empire, however powerful, however genuinely committed to genuine goods, can be more than a faint and passing sign of the Kingdom that is coming. To claim more is not patriotism: it is, in the precise theological sense of the word, presumption.

None of this means that love of country is sinful. The Orthodox tradition consistently distinguishes genuine love for one’s homeland, its people, its culture, and its history from the idolatrous inflation of national particularity into cosmic significance. An American Christian can properly grieve for America’s failures, celebrate its genuine goods, work for its justice, and pray for its people. What the tradition forbids is the theological move that transforms this legitimate love into a claim that God has uniquely elected this nation, that its enemies are therefore God’s enemies, and that its power and prosperity are signs of God’s favour.

As the USA celebrates 250 years of independence, an American Christian can certainly celebrate its greatness. The problem is that American exceptionalism, and particularly Trump’s take on it, implies not that ‘America is great’ but that ‘America is god’. The difference between those two statements is the difference between patriotism and idolatry; the Church, at its most faithful, has always known which side of that line is which.

Every age has its own fascism

Every age has its own Fascism, and we see the warning signs wherever the concentration of power denies citizens the possibility and the means of expressing and acting on their free will. There are many ways of reaching this point, not just through the terror of police intimidation, but by denying and distorting information, by undermining systems of justice, by paralysing the education system, and by spreading in a myriad subtle ways nostalgia for a world where order reigned, and where the security of the privileged few depends on the forced labour and the forced silence of the many.

Police intimidation, information control, judicial corruption, educational paralysis, and the cultivation of nostalgic order: One could be forgiven for thinking that the author of these words was thinking of Trump’s USA, or Putin’s Russia, or Netanyahu’s Israel, or Modi’s India. In fact, they were written by Primo Levi more than fifty years ago (in an article entitled ‘Un passato che credevamo non dovesse tornare più’ [A past we thought would never return] in Corriere della Serra, 8 May 1974).

On the growth of concentration camps

By the end of his first year, Hitler had around 50,000 people held in his roughly 70 concentration camps, facilities that were often improvised in factories, prisons, castles, and other buildings. 

By comparison, today ICE is holding over 70,000 people in 225 concentration camps across America, and Trump, Homan, Miller, and Noem hope to more than double both numbers in the coming months. (Thom Hartmann, Common Dreams, 5 Feb 2026)

Charlie Kirk: Christian martyr?

According to Wittgenstein, ‘Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we should remain silent’. This has always seemed wise to me (and it could function quite well as a slogan for Orthodox apophaticism). But recently it has struck me that it could usefully be adapted to ‘Whereof we do not know, thereof we should not speak’.

It seems that today in Western society we rush to judgement. We criticize. We condemn. All before we can possibly have taken the trouble to have grasped all the facts of a situation. The recent murder of Charlie Kirk is a case in point. Because society (and not just American society) has become so polarized, it is tempting to blurt out/rush into print with some definitive statement to reinforce the prejudices of our tribe. Tantalizing snippets of evidence or even mere rumours are seized upon and claimed as clear proof that his killer is a radical left-winger, was motivated by Kirk’s views on the LGBTQ community, and was covertly funded by George Soros. On the other side of the divide, it is seen as a false flag operation or at least a Trumpian Reichstag moment that is being exploited to further Trump’s authoritarian agenda and usher in a new McCarthy era.

I will resist the temptation to speculate on the motive(s) of Kirk’s assassin (establishing those motives is a job for those charged with investigating the killing). But, perhaps because I lean left myself, I can’t resist noting the alacrity with which centre and left-leaning commentators have rushed to whitewash his reputation. Do not speak ill of the dead, perhaps? Or, perhaps more likely, fear of a backlash from Trump and MAGA?

What I want to focus on is the increasing number of Christian commentators who have started referring to him as a ‘Christian martyr’!

Christian martyr? A true Christian martyr is one who dies bearing witness to the gospel of Christ and does so in a Christlike manner. They do not die advocating MAGA talking points (or any other political perspective for that matter). They certainly do not suggest that the appalling number of gun deaths in the USA is a fair price to pay for the maintenance of the American Constitution! And they do not use their rhetorical skills and a bully pulpit to browbeat people.

Christian? Kirk was certainly a Christian nationalist (specifically an advocate of the Seven Mountains Mandate). But ‘Christian nationalist’ is an oxymoron: It denotes one who is a nationalist first and who secondarily wishes to impose (selected) Christian values on their society. In reality, genuine Christian faith is subversive of nationalism (cf. the persecution of the early Christians because they threatened the state of Rome). Those who follow Christ regard themselves as citizens of a kingdom that transcends the national and ethnic divides of fallen humanity. In the words of Stanley Hauerwas, we are ‘resident aliens’.

The Church will not abandon Gaza City

The latest joint statement from the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem and the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem says in part:

Since the outbreak of the war, the Greek Orthodox compound of Saint Porphyrius and the Holy Family compound have been a refuge for hundreds of civilians. Among them are elderly people, women, and children. . . . Among those who have sought shelter within the walls of the compounds, many are weakened and malnourished due to the hardships of the last months. Leaving Gaza City and trying to flee to the south would be nothing less than a death sentence. For this reason, the clergy and nuns have decided to remain and continue to care for all those who will be in the compounds.

Support Plasticine Action

Plasticine Action is a group of like-minded artists and concerned citizens, who want to be vocal against the rise in AI generated animation and art, and raise awareness of how AI is being used in an increasingly authoritarian manner.

All profits from the sale of the Plasticine Action T-shirt (available from their website) are being donated to Medical Aid for Palestine.

NB Miles Pickering (pictured above) was arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 for wearing this T-shirt at a demonstration in support of Palestine Action last weekend. It was only when they got him to Scotland Yard that police officers realized their mistake! Perhaps the Metropolitan Police should introduce sense of humour tests and eye tests for prospective officers.

When is a joke a terrorism offence?

This joke can be found in the current edition of Private Eye:

According to police officers in Leeds, this joke is an offence under the Terrorism Act:

Thanks to the arrest of the man holding this placard, the above image is now circulating much more widely in the media. The Guardian alleges that an officer at the protest said, ‘If it’s in print, it’s fine. But if you carry it on the demo [it’s illegal]’.

For the benefit of anyone who is comedically challenged, this is a joke. The inverted commas around ‘PALESTINE ACTION’ make clear that it is not referring to a certain recently proscribed direct action organization. The point of the joke is to highlight the hypocrisy of a government that criminalizes opposition to war crimes in Gaza while turning a blind eye to those who are perpetrating those war crimes.

Church of the Holy Family, Gaza

The Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem has issued the following statement in response to yesterday’s attack on the Church of the Holy Family:

The Patriarchate of Jerusalem expresses its deepest condemnation and denunciation of the strike that targeted the Catholic Church of the Holy Family in Gaza City. This strike caused extensive damage and casualties to the parish complex, endangering the lives of innocent people, especially those with special needs and displaced persons seeking safe shelter within the church.

Targeting a holy site currently sheltering approximately 600 displaced persons, the majority of whom are children and 54 people with special needs, is a flagrant violation of human dignity and a blatant violation of the sanctity of life and the sanctity of religious sites, which are supposed to provide a safe haven in times of war.

The bombing destroyed large parts of the complex, and those with special needs were forced to evacuate the area, some of whom were unable to receive the respirators they rely on for survival, posing a direct threat to their lives.

At this critical moment, the Patriarchate affirms that churches are spiritual and humanitarian beacons, serving everyone without discrimination. It also calls on the international community and United Nations agencies to provide urgent protection for religious institutions and humanitarian centers in the Gaza Strip and to ensure respect for international humanitarian law, which criminalizes the targeting of civilians and places of worship.

Our prayers accompany those affected, and we hope that wisdom will triumph over the machine of war, and that the voice of mercy will prevail over the din of fire.

Palestine Action

The government has designated Palestine Action as a terrorist organization. Anyone who is a member or even expresses support for it can face up to fourteen years in prison.

According to the home secretary who introduced the Act used to justify this proscription, ‘Terrorism involves the threat or use of serious violence for political, religious or ideological ends. It … aims to create a climate of extreme fear’. But since its formation in 2020 Palestine Action has restricted itself to protests, occupations, and criminal damage at various sites, particularly several associated with the Israel arms company Elbit Systems. What triggered the decision to proscribe the organization was the spray painting of two military aircraft at RAF Brize Norton. Nothing Palestine Action has done warrants the label ‘terrorism’.

Responding to the government’s action, a group of UN experts have stated:

While there is no binding definition of terrorism in international law, best practice international standards limit terrorism to criminal acts intended to cause death, serious personal injury or hostage taking, in order to intimidate a population or compel a government or an international organisation to do or to abstain from doing any act … The UK supported this approach in voting for Security Council resolution 1566 in 2004 … Mere property damage, without endangering life, is not sufficiently serious to qualify as terrorism. [My emphasis]

In my view, this action says more about the current British government than it does about Palestine Action. They have adopted a Humpty Dumpty (or, if you prefer, Big Brother) approach to language:

‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.’ (Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass)

Playing fast and loose with language in this way is symptomatic of a gradual slide towards authoritarianism.

Eugenics 2.0?

Yesterday, the assisted dying bill was passed by the House of Commons. The Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, chose the same day to announce a major investment in genomics. He hopes that within a decade every newborn in England Wales will undergo comprehensive DNA screening with a view to predicting and preventing illness rather than diagnosing and treating it. It would also reduce pressure on the National Health Service and reduce costs.

My immediate reaction was that our Labour government seems to be clueless when it comes to the optics of its announcements. Whatever their intentions (and I have no doubt about the good intentions being shown here), if this bill and this proposal were both to become reality, they will have put in place the main building blocks for a new eugenics policy.

The advocates of assisted dying assure us that there is no possibility of a slide towards euthanasia. But the example of other democracies that have gone down this route suggests that once public opinion becomes accustomed to assisted dying for the terminally ill, it becomes easier to propose the same for those who have little or no quality of life. A less well-intentioned future government might well then take the additional step of extending it to the euthanasia of those who are deemed to be a burden on society because of their low quality of life.

Celebrating autism

Today is Autistic Pride Day – an annual opportunity for autistic people to celebrate their neurodivergence. It is a reminder to all of us that autism is not a disorder but a natural part of human diversity.

Resisting tyranny: lessons from Timothy Snyder

In view of current events in Los Angeles and the creeping authoritarianism in many countries around the world, I thought it would be worthwhile to post the following from Timothy Snyder’s little book On Tyranny:

1. Do not obey in advance

Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.  

2. Defend institutions

It is institutions that help us to preserve decency. They need our help as well. Do not speak of ‘our institutions’ unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions do not protect themselves. They fall one after the other unless each is defended from the beginning. So choose an institution you care about – a court, a newspaper, a law, a labor union – and take its side.

3. Beware the one-party state

The parties that remade states and suppressed rivals were not omnipotent from the start. They exploited a historic moment to make political life impossible for their opponents. So support the multi-party system and defend the rules of democratic elections. Vote in local and state elections while you can. Consider running for office.

4. Take responsibility for the face of the world

The symbols of today enable the reality of tomorrow. Notice the swastikas and the other signs of hate. Do not look away, and do not get used to them. Remove them yourself and set an example for others to do so.

5. Remember professional ethics

When political leaders set a negative example, professional commitments to just practice become more important. It is hard to subvert a rule-of-law state without lawyers, or to hold show trials without judges. Authoritarians need obedient civil servants, and concentration camp directors seek businessmen interested in cheap labor.

6. Be wary of paramilitaries

When the men with guns who have always claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching with torches and pictures of a leader, the end is nigh. When the pro-leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the end has come.

7. Be reflective if you must be armed

If you carry a weapon in public service, may God bless you and keep you. But know that evils of the past involved policemen and soldiers finding themselves, one day, doing irregular things. Be ready to say no.

8. Stand out

Someone has to. It is easy to follow along. It can feel strange to do or say something different. But without that unease, there is no freedom. Remember Rosa Parks. The moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow.

9. Be kind to our language

Avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone else does. Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing you think everyone is saying. Make an effort to separate yourself from the internet. Read books.

10. Believe in truth

To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.

11. Investigate

Figure things out for yourself. Spend more time with long articles. Subsidize investigative journalism by subscribing to print media. Realize that some of what is on the internet is there to harm you. Learn about sites that investigate propaganda campaigns (some of which come from abroad). Take responsibility for what you communicate with others.

12. Make eye contact and small talk

This is not just polite. It is part of being a citizen and a responsible member of society. It is also a way to stay in touch with your surroundings, break down social barriers, and understand whom you should and should not trust. If we enter a culture of denunciation, you will want to know the psychological landscape of your daily life.

13. Practice corporeal politics

Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends and march with them.

14. Establish a private life

Nastier rulers will use what they know about you to push you around. Scrub your computer of malware on a regular basis. Remember that email is skywriting. Consider using alternative forms of the internet, or simply using it less. Have personal exchanges in person. For the same reason, resolve any legal trouble. Tyrants seek the hook on which to hang you. Try not to have hooks.

15. Contribute to good causes

Be active in organizations, political or not, that express your own view of life. Pick a charity or two and set up autopay. Then you will have made a free choice that supports civil society and helps others to do good.

16. Learn from peers in other countries

Keep up your friendships abroad, or make new friends in other countries. The present difficulties in the United States are an element of a larger trend. And no country is going to find a solution by itself. Make sure you and your family have passports.

17. Listen for dangerous words

Be alert to the use of the words extremism and terrorism. Be alive to the fatal notions of emergency and exception. Be angry about the treacherous use of patriotic vocabulary.

18. Be calm when the unthinkable arrives

Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of opposition parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Do not fall for it.

19. Be a patriot

Set a good example of what America means for the generations to come. They will need it.

20. Be as courageous as you can

If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die under tyranny.

Finally,

I strongly suggest you buy the book and take its lessons to heart.

Heads you win, tails I lose

If we start from the assumption that neurotypicals are ‘normal,’ and autistics are ‘disordered,’ then poor connections between neurotypicals and autistics inevitably get blamed on some ‘defect’ or ‘deficit’ in autistics. If an autistic person can’t understand a neurotypical, it’s because autistics have empathy deficits and impaired communication skills; if a neurotypical can’t understand an autistic person, it’s because autistics have empathy deficits and impaired communication skills. (Nick Walker, Neuroqueer Heresies)

To put it another way, a good deal of the disability experienced by autistic people is actually created by the failure of neurotypical society to accommodate their neurodivergence.

Israel, Gaza, and war crimes: an update

The Ehud Olmert article I referred to a couple of days ago has now been translated into English and can be found in full (here) in The Guardian.

Israel, Gaza, and war crimes

I have just come across this quote:

.…What we are doing in Gaza is a war of extermination: indiscriminate, unrestrained, brutal, and criminal killing of civilians. We are doing this not because of an accidental loss of control in a particular sector, not because of a disproportionate outburst of fighters in some unit — but as a result of a policy dictated by the government, knowingly, intentionally, maliciously, with reckless abandon. Yes, we are committing war crimes.

This did not come from the pen of an anti-Zionist or a pro-Palestinian. It is an extract from an article written by former Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and published in the Hebrew edition of Ha’aretz on 22 May.

Palm Sunday grief

Yesterday the Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem issued a statement entitled ‘Palm Sunday Grief’ about the current situation in Gaza. Here is part of the text:

In the early light of this holy day, the al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital in Gaza, a place consecrated to healing and long rooted in the Christian vocation of mercy, was struck by an Israeli air assault that rendered its emergency and other critical departments inoperative. Patients in fragile condition, including children, were forced into the open streets. Among them, a twelve-year-old who perished during the chaotic evacuation. This death, like so many others, is a silent cry, a reminder of the innocent who suffer where care should prevail.

This hospital, already strained by months of siege, stood as one of the last beacons of medical hope in Gaza, where dozens of healthcare institutions have been systematically destroyed. The stripping away of such sanctuaries of life and dignity is a tragedy that transcends all boundaries of politics and enters the realm of the sacred.

Yet even amidst devastation, the light of faith remains unextinguished. In Gaza’s Zaytun Quarter, within the heart of the Old City, the historic Church of Saint Porphyrius held Palm Sunday prayers—quiet, steadfast, and full of grace—affirming that the witness of Christ’s peace endures, even when sorrow surrounds the sanctuary.

Vance on the ordo amoris

J.D. Vance decided to stick his nose into Christian theology the other day, summarizing his understanding of the ordo amoris (‘order of love’) thus:

‘There’s this old school – and I think it’s a very Christian concept by the way – that you love your family and then you love your neighbour and then you love your community and then you love your fellow citizens and your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.’ (interview on Fox News, 29 January)

I don’t have a problem with the idea that there is an order to love (ultimately, this comes from Augustine and Aquinas, though their treatment of love in this way owes more to Plato and Aristotle than it does to Scripture). But Vance and those Christians who have spoken up in his support have gone wrong in two important ways: they have made the ordo prescriptive, and they assume that love is finite and essentially static.

Misunderstood in this way, the order of love suggests that love of family takes priority over everything else (the old lie, ‘charity begins at home’). Next in importance comes love of one’s immediate neighbours, then love of the wider community, then love of one’s nation. Only then, might one consider loving people beyond the boundaries of our own ethne. Add to this the assumption that love is essentially finite and it suggests that those beyond our borders are only worthy of the dregs of love that may or may not be left over after we finished loving everyone closer at hand (and most like ourselves).

Against this, I would argue first that the order of love should be understood as descriptive. Yes, love begins with the family. That is where we first experience love and where we learn to love. But as we grow, our horizons expand – we go to school, join clubs, attend church, leave home, perhaps go to university, perhaps emigrate – and our experience of love expands with our expanding horizons.

But, more importantly for the Christian, love is not merely a finite human faculty. It is also a gift of God. And as we exercise that gift, God increases our capacity for love. Since God is utterly unbounded, there are literally no limits to this love. We see this quite clearly in Scripture where Jesus commands us to love our enemies. And in the Orthodox tradition, we find examples of love extending even beyond the limits of this world (e.g. St Isaac the Syrian speaking of the compassionate heart praying even for demons).

Mars colony scepticism

Elon Musk wants to build a Mars colony. Apparently, he is motivated by the conviction that humanity must become a multiplanetary species in order to secure its long-term survival in case we render Earth uninhabitable. I wonder if he hopes it will be governed by an Elon (the title given to the leader of the Martians in Wernher von Braun’s book Marsprojekt.

Reactions have ranged from enthusiastic agreement to scepticism to dismissal as ‘a dangerous delusion’ (Martin Rees). Personally, I would place myself well towards the sceptical end of the spectrum.

While I am prepared to believe that Musk might well establish a permanent Mars colony within the timescale he envisages (by the early 2040s), I am very doubtful that he could achieve the kind of colony necessary to make humanity genuinely multiplanetary.

There is a vast difference between a permanent colony able to utilize in situ resources and a genuinely self-sustaining colony (i.e. able to exist without continuing support from Earth). It would certainly be feasible to establish a colony of a few thousand or even tens of thousands. But they would remain dependent upon Earth for anything they could not manufacture for themselves from local resources.

Musk envisages developing a much larger colony (perhaps as many as a million people) over a period of about 15 years. To achieve that, he would have to launch 1000 colony ships each carrying about 100 passengers during each of the launch windows in that period. But, even if he pulled this off, would a colony of this size be genuinely self-sustaining. Would it have the manufacturing base to construct everything the colonists would need?

What about computers? Even the most reliable computers have a lifetime of perhaps ten years. But replacement computers or their components cannot easily be manufactured from the raw materials even if they can be found, mined, and refined locally. You would first need to maufacture the machinery needed for their manufacture. So, before you can build even a small production facility, you would need to have in place several other industries.

Now, repeat that exercise for every other aspect of life – the machinery needed to manufacture the habitats in which the colonists live; their furniture; their clothing; their transport; the consumables used by the kind of health services that a population of that size would need.

I strongly suspect that even if the colony were ten times the size envisaged by Musk, it would still rely on Earth for some things – items that are simply too costly or complex for a society of this size to produce for itself, major technological innovations, luxury goods.

And what about a cultural life? Would a society of this sort have the surplus time or resources to allow some of its most creative members to engage in art, or music, or theatre, or dance, or literature?

Far from ensuring the long-term survival of the human race, I fear that a Mars colony would merely ensure that after the death of Earth, it would merely a ensure a long, slow decline and ultimate extinction. 

God is great

Robert Jenrick has been making headlines by arguing that anyone shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ should be immediately arrested. As you can imagine, he has been called out as Islamophobic. Ironically, he is also being anti-Christian by demonizing a phrase that Arabic-speaking Christians might well use at, for example, protests about the conflict in Gaza.

The phrase is not uniquely Islamic. ‘Allah’ is merely the generic term for God in Arabic and is used just as much by Christians as by Muslims. If you don’t believe me, here are some words on the subject from Archbishop Theodosios of Sebastia of the Jerusalem Patriarchate:

‘We Christians also say Allahu Akbar. This is an expression of our understanding that the Creator is great.’

‘Allahu Akbar is an expression of our faith.’

And, in response to a question about whether the term is used in church:

‘Of course. . . . Allah is not an Islamic term. This is a word used in Arabic to indicate the Creator who’s made the world we are living in.

‘We, say glory be to Allah in all times. We say Allah a lot during our liturgy. It’s erroneous to think that the word Allah is only used by Muslims.’

The self-betrayal of evil

Some wise words from John McGuckin:

The face of evil is urbane and habitually masks itself in the present aeon of world history. It can even seek to mimic the good, and tries to fool even the elect, if such a thing were possible. Evil always betrays itself, however, for the simulation of the good is difficult for it, and its innate characteristics of agitation, spitefulness, lies, and hostility to what constitutes the peaceful good of others cannot help showing themselves at critical junctures. (The Orthodox Church, p. 234)

Agitation, spitefulness, lies, hostility to the peaceful good of others – a good summary of the attitude of the authoritarians, populists, and (crypto-)fascists who currently afflict the body politic.