Ah, so capital-o Orthodox, as in Greek/Russian, not 'orthodox' in the sense of 'fundamentalist' (maintaining orthodoxy).
(My confusion comes about because very many Evangelicals DO self-describe themselves as 'orthodox'. Case in point: 'A Generous Orthodoxy' by Brian McLaren, who's very much on the left wing of Evangelicalism - hence the 'generous', to the right-wing's 'orthodoxy'
http://www.zondervan.com/a-generous-orthodoxy ).
I should look up more about Jay Dyer; I would say, though, that (as I mentioned earlier), there has been a deep, if perhaps one-way, connection established in the last decade between US Evangelicals and the Russian Orthodox Church. US Evangelicals of a particular cultural-warrior tribe look to Russian Orthodoxy as 'the last defenders of Europe'. Russian Orthodoxy politically skews right-wing to the point of literally embracing actual fascism:
http://religiondispatches.org/how-o...came-the-spiritual-home-of-white-nationalism/
The same article that declared Matthew Heimbach a rising star of the far-right also mentioned in passing that his racial views had “led to his excommunication from his Orthodox Christian church.” It was mercifully excluded that Heimbach’s excommunication came only weeks after his formal reception into the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America and then only after immense pressure following the online circulation of photographs in which Heimbach
appears to be beating a University of Indiana at Bloomington SlutWalk participant with an Orthodox cross.
While Heimbach’s excommunication by the Antiochian bishop means that he is technically unable to receive the sacraments in any canonical Orthodox church, he claims to have found a sympathetic priest in Romania who allows him to communion with full knowledge of the priest’s bishop. It might be easy to dismiss this claim as a half-hearted attempt to save face by a self-aggrandizing racist. Heimbach’s story, however, is not just plausible. It is, in light of so much of the modern Orthodox church’s relationship with the far-right, highly likely.
It is this relationship that has, at least in part, propelled Orthodoxy into the position of “go-to religion” for the white supremacist movement that would prefer to be known as the “
alt-right“—not just in the United States, but around the world. When priests in Corinth sprinkle holy water around the new campaign office of the Greek Neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn and the Patriarch of Moscow embraces Vladimir Putin with a gusto that might have embarrassed his tsarist predecessors, there is little doubt as to why Orthodoxy seems appealing to a white nationalist movement. This is especially true since Orthodox opposition to neo-fascism of this kind has been far less frequent and considerably less public.
And so I wouldn't be surprised if Dyer comes from that cultural-warrior faction. He is certainly talking in the very same terms that the Evangelicals I read in the 1980s and 1990s used, who were deeply connected to the US political right wing
I find Orthodoxy's recent embrace of neo-fascism very sad because theologically, I think they have a warmer and more interesting take on Christianity: as others have mentioned, Orthodox theology has a lot less emphasis on 'original sin' than Roman and Protestant theology, and a lot more emphasis on direct personal experience of the Divine within. (Eg the meditative tradition of Hesychasm -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesychasm )
In 2010 Dyer wrote this critique of the Perennial Tradition, which (like that term itself) I find both interesting and deeply problematic at the same time:
https://jaysanalysis.com/2010/07/11/justin-martyr-huxley-and-the-perennial-philosophy/
Thus, the perennial philosophy as it is so-called is hard to decipher and hard to pin down, but the point I have been making above cancels out the blasphemies and attacks on God that are common in liberal circles, as well as modern new world order proponents like Aldous Huxley, who in his The Perennial Philosophy seeks to destroy the notion of a single Personal God, and thereby destroy the notion of personhood. Once the notion of personhood is gone as a metaphysical doctrine, it can be granted (and removed) at will via the apotheosized world-state. Yes, literally, by the pantheistic future world government. Huxley is quite candid about this, too. But all such attempts at deification of the state and destroying the biblical tradition are doomed to fail.
..
We must begin with the Personal God who guides history by His providence. Only in this metaphysic do we have a grounded notion of person and protect the rights of the individual from the superstate-play-acting-as-God. We must then toss out the ‘traditionalists’ school of Coomaraswamy, Huxley and others, which really comes from Hinduism and is the sludge of the occult tradition passed down through the ages.
A couple of notes that express my ambivalence:
1. That passage attacking Huxley (author also of Brave New World, which reads as conservative critique of materialism AND of a world-state) is quite odd in its logic, and yet very familiar to me from the 1980s 'Anti-New Age' works I read.
The argument that 'perennial philosophy leads to destroying the notion of personhood, which leads to a world-state' is... yeah. It needs a lot of unpacking. I believe it to be mostly wrong. Yet it underpins a lot of Christian Right thinking - a movement that currently has almost unlimited amounts of money and political power.
2. What Dyer says about the links between Huxley's 'Perennial Tradition' and the 'Traditionalists' is quite true. But what he doesn't make clear is that this very specific school of Traditionalism
descends from historical Italian Fascism and is strongly linked to neo-fascism. In fact, the Traditionalists were actually critical, in the 1930s, of the German Nazis
for not being far right enough.
The 1980s Anti-New-Age books that I read made this same reference to Traditionalism, too. I found it odd then but less odd now, knowing the political entanglements between these groups. I believe Traditionalism, specifically, has provided a lot of the religious and political underpinnings of the modern Christian Right in America since Reagan.
Why do (groups apparently descended from) Traditionalists attack Huxley so virulently, when he seems to have been influential in the founding of their movement?
I now think it must be because Huxley himself was as critical of Traditionalist views (and their sympathy for Fascism) as he was of materialism.
Also of note. The Traditionalists seem to have an incredibly deep rooted fear of India (and 'Hindu' influences) specifically. This was in the 1980s Christian Evangelical material too. If it's anything like their fear of Huxley, I assume something must have happened between groups that were very similarly oriented and deeply connected, until they split.
Wikipedia on Traditionalism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditionalist_School
Steve Bannon's links to Traditionalism:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/10/world/europe/bannon-vatican-julius-evola-fascism.html?_r=0
Vladimir Putin's links to Traditionalism:
https://stanfordpolitics.com/eurasi...rstanding-and-confronting-russia-7e0c2eef6288
"The Spiritual Fascism of Rene Guenon and his Followers"
http://textosdeinteresse.blogspot.co.nz/2008/05/spiritual-fascism-of-rene-guenon-and.html
I don't 100% agree with this last author; obviously I hold different theological views to him, and I also think, like many recovering cult-exiters, he's a bit too hostile generally; but his writing is extensively footnoted and he makes some excellently well argued points about the political linkages he personally observed. And I think this material is important to understand our current political moment in 2017, in US and UK politics particularly.
Regards, Nate