Protecting the Sacral Grounds of our Nation:
The Religious and Military Bonds of a Culture of Life
by Dr. David Pence - May 30, 2009
The Religious and Military Bonds of a Culture of Life
by Dr. David Pence - May 30, 2009
{A minyan of men gathered on the evening of May 30, 2009, to remember and pay tribute to our war dead with prayers, song and speeches. The original Memorial Day order of General Logan from 1868 was read. Vietnam Veteran Larry Putnam (First Calvary Division US Army 1968-1969) gave the main address--Remembering our Brothers. His address was the emotional and spiritual center of the evening. Colonel Buzz Kriesel (36 years active service, West Point graduate and two combat tours Vietnam) spoke briefly on the military and the media. Vince Fahnlander, a college roommate of Tom Burnett one of the citizen soldiers who stopped the hijackers of flight 93 on September 11, 2001, related a short haunting spiritual biography of his hero friend. The evening concluded with these remarks by Dr. David Pence and the men singing America the Beautiful}
We are gathered here on the 30th of May obeying an order issued 151 years ago. We have been ordered to preserve and strengthen “those kind and fraternal feelings which bound together soldiers, sailors, and marines.” We have been ordered “to raise the flag which they saved from dishonor”. We have been ordered “to cherish the memory of our heroic dead who have made their breasts the barricade between our country and our foes.” General John Logan in issuing the Memorial Day order said the lives of soldiers were the “reveille of freedom for a race in chains”. He called the soldiers’ deaths a “tattoo of our foes in arms.”
The death of a fallen soldier is a tattoo—an unremovable mark made by our enemy upon our body politic. It is a reminder that our foes are armed and will draw blood to battle our flag and defeat our country. We have been reminded of specific men and specific deaths tonight—their deaths must be tattooed in our memories and serve as the mortar which binds us together as brother Americans. We must love one another as our fallen brothers have loved us.
We set aside this day to examine again the tattoos left by our enemies. We must not hide the markers dedicated to our fallen. We are called to decorate their graves and treat them as sacred ground. Their graves remind us there is an Evil One and we are engaged in a terrible war with him and all the lying ideologies and tyrants who do his work.
Too soon we cover the tattoos left by our enemies. We ignore them or let weeds overgrow them or worst of all we say there was no enemy who needed to be fought. We hear that the soldier’s death is a sad one for him, for his family and his buddies but his death is void of national meaning. The Memorial Day when we were supposed to stop working and shopping to recollect as a nation then becomes tucked away as a long weekend for a family vacation. To examine the tattoo of death left by the enemy would spoil a family picnic-a man naturally shields his wife and children from horror. That is why Memorial Day cannot be properly observed as a family picnic. As families we enjoy the long weekend comforts provided by our national union, but like a certain brand of Christian worship, we then set aside no time fitting to contemplate the crucifixion.
Tonight we gather quite deliberately in a form and manner which allows us to look squarely at the death inflicted by our enemies. We set aside our usual time schedules of the workweek and the weekend. We step outside our roles in domestic life and the marketplace. We set aside this day whenever it may fall, to remember our dead, to thank them for shielding our lives with their bodies and we promise to deepen “those kind and fraternal bonds of affection which sustained soldier, sailor and marine.” We must not allow that masculine bond of shared duty and protective love be forgotten. We must not allow the masculine group to be scoffed at, ridiculed or driven out of public life. De Tocqueville said the tyrant never requires that men love him only that men do not love each other as fellow citizens. We must love one another as our fallen brothers have loved us.
So we renew our brotherhood—our “kind and fraternal feelings” on this sacred day in the memorial presence of those who went before us and proved their love of country by obedience at the call to arms and courage in the face of fire. We remember as fellow countrymen that we have enemies who will threaten what we hold sacred and kill those brave enough to defend our sacred centers. Let every soldier’s grave evoke the face of a hero fallen as well as the countenance of an enemy armed. And let us not be naïve, it is precisely because we have formed an effective armed brotherhood disciplined as a nation under God that we have such a wide cast of foes and disparate characters who wish us harm. Every tyrant, every ideology of deception, every city criminal and every rural outlaw knows armed men bound in law are his most dangerous enemies.
The atheistic tyrannies of communism always targeted free labor and free nations as their implacable foes. The Islamic jihadists define the nation as a Christian Judaic construct which must be replaced by caliphates and sharia. The secular West judges national brotherhoods of military duty as so much fascist residue and a danger to international institutions and peace. The atheistic Westerners like the atheistic Communists before them are enemies of church, marriage and nation. All of these bonds impose obligations on the individual whom the West desires to crown as an autonomous sovereign.
But on this day of national remembrance we admit that the men who have died stake a claim on the men who are now here gathered. They died for us as countrymen so we might live. We are now bound to fulfill that same protective obligation so they shall not have died in vain. They have bound us together one with another and each of us with them. Their shed blood which covered the uniforms of men here who carried them from the field of battle now courses in each of us as we promise allegiance to the flag of our one nation under God.
After the forty years wandering in the desert (and for Americans have we not had a kind of similar 40 years of wandering?) the Israelites crossed the Jordan River preparing to settle the Promised Land. Moses was dead and the new generational leader Joshua prepared for the taking of Jericho. But first he had all the Israeli men circumcised. There had been no circumcisions in the days of wandering and so the collective male covenant—signifying the obligation of each man to shed his blood so the people might live—established the protective bond which would safeguard the sacred ark which had been carried over the river first by the priests. American men need a recircumcision—we must be rebound together in a protective brotherhood of duty which excludes no man because of his skin color and excuses no man because of his college degrees. That military bond shaped by a sharing of duties can become a demonic power if not ordered to a sacral good. As the newly circumcised Israelis first paid reverence to the ark, our national brotherhood must be disciplined under the Fatherhood of God.
In the presence of our fallen brethren let us resolve to bind together to defend the sacral goods of our nation—the Holy Name of God, the flag of our fathers, the graves of our fallen brothers, the safety and unity of our people, and the domestic bonds of marriage and homestead. Let us heed the first governor of the Massachusetts Colony, John Winthrop, “Let us choose life that we and our Seed might live by obeying his voice.”
Christ gave His apostles a new commandment. His language, the biblical language, was never spoken as a plea for rights—not even “the right to life”. Christ swims in deeper water—He speaks in a deeper voice. On the night before He died, in His final charge to his men, He did not repeat the old commandment “Love your neighbor as your self.” His new commandment ordered, “Love one another as I have loved you.” The love of Christ is the love of one who dies for his friends. The apostles are ordered to serve as a new template for the sacrificial love of brotherhood. The Apostles drank from the cup of the New Covenant. They followed Jesus in shedding their blood to preach the Good News throughout the world.
Nations are not the same as the Church. But there is a deep analogical correspondence of the civic friendship which animates the nation and the brotherly love which inspired the apostles. Nations are the natural and historical forms of matured masculine love—men bound together by a willingness to die for a common law, land, and people. The men we remember today have obeyed the biblical mandate to “baptize the nations” They baptized America by repeating the sacrificial action of our Savior Jesus Christ. We now must insure that they have not died in vain nor for a nation unworthy of their sacrifice. Our evening song reminds us that our liberty is disciplined by law; our success is aimed at ends which are noble; and our gains directed to ends which are divine. Rededicating our nation under God as men bound together by mutual protective obligations secures our bond with the men we remember tonight-- those men who “more than life, their country loved”.
In gratitude to them let us make Lincoln’s resolve our own. “It is for us the living now to be rededicated to their unfinished task”.
We are gathered here on the 30th of May obeying an order issued 151 years ago. We have been ordered to preserve and strengthen “those kind and fraternal feelings which bound together soldiers, sailors, and marines.” We have been ordered “to raise the flag which they saved from dishonor”. We have been ordered “to cherish the memory of our heroic dead who have made their breasts the barricade between our country and our foes.” General John Logan in issuing the Memorial Day order said the lives of soldiers were the “reveille of freedom for a race in chains”. He called the soldiers’ deaths a “tattoo of our foes in arms.”
The death of a fallen soldier is a tattoo—an unremovable mark made by our enemy upon our body politic. It is a reminder that our foes are armed and will draw blood to battle our flag and defeat our country. We have been reminded of specific men and specific deaths tonight—their deaths must be tattooed in our memories and serve as the mortar which binds us together as brother Americans. We must love one another as our fallen brothers have loved us.
We set aside this day to examine again the tattoos left by our enemies. We must not hide the markers dedicated to our fallen. We are called to decorate their graves and treat them as sacred ground. Their graves remind us there is an Evil One and we are engaged in a terrible war with him and all the lying ideologies and tyrants who do his work.
Too soon we cover the tattoos left by our enemies. We ignore them or let weeds overgrow them or worst of all we say there was no enemy who needed to be fought. We hear that the soldier’s death is a sad one for him, for his family and his buddies but his death is void of national meaning. The Memorial Day when we were supposed to stop working and shopping to recollect as a nation then becomes tucked away as a long weekend for a family vacation. To examine the tattoo of death left by the enemy would spoil a family picnic-a man naturally shields his wife and children from horror. That is why Memorial Day cannot be properly observed as a family picnic. As families we enjoy the long weekend comforts provided by our national union, but like a certain brand of Christian worship, we then set aside no time fitting to contemplate the crucifixion.
Tonight we gather quite deliberately in a form and manner which allows us to look squarely at the death inflicted by our enemies. We set aside our usual time schedules of the workweek and the weekend. We step outside our roles in domestic life and the marketplace. We set aside this day whenever it may fall, to remember our dead, to thank them for shielding our lives with their bodies and we promise to deepen “those kind and fraternal bonds of affection which sustained soldier, sailor and marine.” We must not allow that masculine bond of shared duty and protective love be forgotten. We must not allow the masculine group to be scoffed at, ridiculed or driven out of public life. De Tocqueville said the tyrant never requires that men love him only that men do not love each other as fellow citizens. We must love one another as our fallen brothers have loved us.
So we renew our brotherhood—our “kind and fraternal feelings” on this sacred day in the memorial presence of those who went before us and proved their love of country by obedience at the call to arms and courage in the face of fire. We remember as fellow countrymen that we have enemies who will threaten what we hold sacred and kill those brave enough to defend our sacred centers. Let every soldier’s grave evoke the face of a hero fallen as well as the countenance of an enemy armed. And let us not be naïve, it is precisely because we have formed an effective armed brotherhood disciplined as a nation under God that we have such a wide cast of foes and disparate characters who wish us harm. Every tyrant, every ideology of deception, every city criminal and every rural outlaw knows armed men bound in law are his most dangerous enemies.
The atheistic tyrannies of communism always targeted free labor and free nations as their implacable foes. The Islamic jihadists define the nation as a Christian Judaic construct which must be replaced by caliphates and sharia. The secular West judges national brotherhoods of military duty as so much fascist residue and a danger to international institutions and peace. The atheistic Westerners like the atheistic Communists before them are enemies of church, marriage and nation. All of these bonds impose obligations on the individual whom the West desires to crown as an autonomous sovereign.
But on this day of national remembrance we admit that the men who have died stake a claim on the men who are now here gathered. They died for us as countrymen so we might live. We are now bound to fulfill that same protective obligation so they shall not have died in vain. They have bound us together one with another and each of us with them. Their shed blood which covered the uniforms of men here who carried them from the field of battle now courses in each of us as we promise allegiance to the flag of our one nation under God.
After the forty years wandering in the desert (and for Americans have we not had a kind of similar 40 years of wandering?) the Israelites crossed the Jordan River preparing to settle the Promised Land. Moses was dead and the new generational leader Joshua prepared for the taking of Jericho. But first he had all the Israeli men circumcised. There had been no circumcisions in the days of wandering and so the collective male covenant—signifying the obligation of each man to shed his blood so the people might live—established the protective bond which would safeguard the sacred ark which had been carried over the river first by the priests. American men need a recircumcision—we must be rebound together in a protective brotherhood of duty which excludes no man because of his skin color and excuses no man because of his college degrees. That military bond shaped by a sharing of duties can become a demonic power if not ordered to a sacral good. As the newly circumcised Israelis first paid reverence to the ark, our national brotherhood must be disciplined under the Fatherhood of God.
In the presence of our fallen brethren let us resolve to bind together to defend the sacral goods of our nation—the Holy Name of God, the flag of our fathers, the graves of our fallen brothers, the safety and unity of our people, and the domestic bonds of marriage and homestead. Let us heed the first governor of the Massachusetts Colony, John Winthrop, “Let us choose life that we and our Seed might live by obeying his voice.”
Christ gave His apostles a new commandment. His language, the biblical language, was never spoken as a plea for rights—not even “the right to life”. Christ swims in deeper water—He speaks in a deeper voice. On the night before He died, in His final charge to his men, He did not repeat the old commandment “Love your neighbor as your self.” His new commandment ordered, “Love one another as I have loved you.” The love of Christ is the love of one who dies for his friends. The apostles are ordered to serve as a new template for the sacrificial love of brotherhood. The Apostles drank from the cup of the New Covenant. They followed Jesus in shedding their blood to preach the Good News throughout the world.
Nations are not the same as the Church. But there is a deep analogical correspondence of the civic friendship which animates the nation and the brotherly love which inspired the apostles. Nations are the natural and historical forms of matured masculine love—men bound together by a willingness to die for a common law, land, and people. The men we remember today have obeyed the biblical mandate to “baptize the nations” They baptized America by repeating the sacrificial action of our Savior Jesus Christ. We now must insure that they have not died in vain nor for a nation unworthy of their sacrifice. Our evening song reminds us that our liberty is disciplined by law; our success is aimed at ends which are noble; and our gains directed to ends which are divine. Rededicating our nation under God as men bound together by mutual protective obligations secures our bond with the men we remember tonight-- those men who “more than life, their country loved”.
In gratitude to them let us make Lincoln’s resolve our own. “It is for us the living now to be rededicated to their unfinished task”.