A Western Way To Save The West

In a desperate attempt to try to save the West from global imperialism, some on the far right, and in the New Right, have jumped too quickly to affirm the way of Islam—some have even converted. (see "The Reds, The Browns and the Greens or The Convergence of Totalitarianisms” by Alexandre del Valle.) One can understand how the Right could become impatient with the slow ways of Christianity and Conservatism, which have barely even recognized dynamic evolution.

The Theoevolutionary Church seeks to save the West by applying both Western religion and Western science. How much better it is not to abandon ones history and ones people when the going gets very rough. The Theoevolutionary Church holds that we must evolve to the God we know from our Traditional religion, and we do so by means of such things as selection, divergence, and local variety. And this is guided by light federalism, protected by nationalism, and counseled in all things by the Traditional Church.

In any case all the revealed religions, including Islam, connect in the same Involutionary Inward Path to the God Within. This is a strong basis for ecumenism. Then, all can join the Evolutionary Outward Path to Godhood in the Theoevolutionary Church.

Economic Nationalism

In our reflections on the European New Right, Localism, etc., it should again be mentioned that Nationalism defends our internal freedom to be localists, and does not contradict the light Federalism and States Rights of our Founding Fathers. Under Economic Nationalism we can even be Libertarian. Our defense and security should be second to none. Only Nationalism can protect us against large states and powerful alliances.

Ideologists in the European New Right have been virtually forced to think of joining with Russia to protect themselves, even though they share our Western heritage. American imperialism, which economic nationalism opposes, has made enemies of our friends in Europe and in Russia, and we should be friends, since the Western world is under-breeding and the South and East are expanding.

The Theoevolutionary Church and Archeo-Futurism

Guillaume Faye has reached deep into the world, and we can affirm much of what he has seen.

In his long essay, “L’archeofuturisme,” Faye, a leader in the old French New Right, now advocates a return to archaic values while upholding future technology. Faye expects global catastrophe and he wants to meet the great catastrophe with a combination of new science and ancient traditional solutions. The past and the future can harmonize in a new European Order of the North (Eurosiberia), with many sovereignties. Without such a foundation we will be overrun by the South and East.

The Theoevolutionary Church has seen the same global catastrophe and our solution contains a similar harmony of the past and future. We prefer the term Evolution to “Futurism,” and Catholicism to the “Archaic.”

The Theoevolutionary Church seeks to synthesize Traditionalism---which contains essential insights of the Traditional religion, with Evolution---which contains essential insights of the sciences. Traditional Catholicism teaches us how we may see and know God, and how to live in the world---including the slowly channeled additions of the Theoevolutionary Church. Evolution, understood bio-spiritually, teaches us how we may evolve to God. This is how we would reconcile the opposites of the material and spiritual, the immanent and transcendent, traditional and modern, archaic and future.

Conservatives believe that there exists a legitimate presumption in favor of things long established. Centuries of accumulated wisdom make the Traditional Church like a Golden Age that still exists.

David Livingston reminded us (Chronicles) that the thousands of little localities, which the New Right prefers, were seen from around 1100 to 1500 in the Christian Commonwealth. There was no central authority, although the Christian civilization was vast. There were thousands of divided sovereignties, secular authorities were independent of one another. There was no such thing as the State in Christendom. And in the center of Europe was the light federalism of the Holy Roman Empire.

We need not embrace historical determinism, the West is dying, yet even individual action can profoundly alter the drift of the times. Think of one brave little French girl, Joan of Arc, who changed the world.

Psychological Wholeness Requires Transcendence

Hypothesis on Jung

I don’t think I have a problem seeing Carl Jung’s “Self” as both immanent and transcendent (we would say Spirit here). Psychologically it is immanent, religiously it is the Soul and transcendent. Jung strongly implied that only immanence exists.

If Jung cannot reconcile the immanent and transcendent, then he cannot claim wholeness. Wholeness is not whole within an immanent Self, it is not enough to reconcile opposites within the immanent domain, the transcendent must also be reconciled to achieve the true wholeness.

Religion does this, psychology does not seem to do this. Yet I see no reason not to use both in achieving psychic and religious health.

I think Jung was at least disingenuous–perhaps understandably–in not stating clearly that he thought the immanent Self was alone God, although he may have had personal difficulties in completely believing this himself; if the God Self is transcendent, one would in fact feel doubt.

The Theoevolutionary Church (TC) achieves wholeness in reconciling material evolution with spiritual Godhood, in the evolution of the material to the spiritual, thus defining the Soul and Spirit within as both immanent and transcendent.

Wholeness in TC can also reconcile Pagan with Christian symbols, e.g. as biospiritual evolution involves diversity and variety in competition. The problem of abusing collective archetypical symbols, which Jung feared, is lessened when evolution is understood in all its diversity as the way to attain the transcendent Godhood, which one can immanently discern, religiously and psychically within, as the Self, or Soul. When evolution is considered, the “Other” can be defined at least as competitor, if not as “evil,” without being considered psychologically unhealthy.

Defining Jesus as historically the “Christ” sent to teach us the Doctrines of the Church, allows us to see God within, and, with the Social Doctrines (including the channeled additions of TC) allows us to evolve successfully to God (Ordered Evolution). This is sociobiologically and psychologically healthy, allowing the collective (Church, State, People) the social bonding necessary for both psychological and spiritual success.

The Sacred Continuum

Religious thinkers believe that God exists outside of the psyche, outside the unconscious mind, whereas most psychologists say God is in the unconscious only, or they say we can, in any case, only experience God in our psyches, wherever God might come from. I see a continuum here, with the psychologist examining how we might experience God psychologically, leading up to the religionists, who examine God beyond the senses, beyond the unconscious mind. Biology and Sociobiology lie further back on the continuum, before psychology. And the artist exists almost like a brother to the religionists and the psychologists, exploring the same areas, or in the best art, in affirming the sacred. This continuum suggests something like the “total art work” hypothesized by Richard Wagner. The Evolutionary Christian Church contains the sacred continuum, from the simple to the complex to Godhood.

Energy for renewal

History moves and new facts arise. After the Reformation the Church seemed to lack the energy to define traditional social ethics in a new way, and this helped secular capitalism take over. Calvin’s spiritual individualism had softened society for economic individualism. Now the Church is dragging behind the secular world in relating to evolution, which allows the secular world to define evolution.

Evolution is a central dynamic of nature, and therefore of Godhood, and it needs to be channeled into traditional Christian ethics. With energy for renewal, evolution is attached to evolution in the Theoevolutionary Church. We can see God in the traditional way, and we can evolve to Godhhood, guided by the Church, in the natural evolutionary way.

Jung And The Traditionalists

Carl Jung did not deny an Absolute God, he said he knew that God exists but he denied our ability to fathom this God outside of our individual psyches, which is more the position of Western science.

This position put him on the outs with Traditionalists like Ananda Coomaraswamy, Frithjof Schuon and others who know that we can see the Absolute with the mystic Intellect.

The Evolutionary Christian Church (ECC) affirms both perspectives, more or less: 1. We can know the Absolute by way of knowing the Soul within, given religious discipline. 2. We affirm evolution, the jewel of science, in the conception of bio-spiritual evolution to Godhood .

ECC harmonizes science and religion, the spiritual and the material, the micro-soul and spirit within and the macro-evolution to God.

Future and Past Utopias

While examining various “utopias” in the latest issue of “What Is Enlightenment,” it seemed to me that evolution better fits the linear future, with its “world to come,” future heaven, the arrival of the Messiah, the golden world arrived at last, etc. Conservatism, which allows for slow change channeled into Tradition, also fits well from this perspective.

Traditionalism, on the other hand, fits better with past Golden Ages, Paradise, and utopias of the Hindus and Greeks, which look less positively upon evolution and change, often with outright rejection of evolution.

Nihilists and many anarchists in modern times often think in terms of dystopias, the future as living hell. Without grounding in religion, dystopias tend to develop in the mind.

Teilhard de Chardin’s “Noosphere” seems to depend too much on inherent goodness evolving to bring us all together with involution, whereas evolution, in its creativity, works through divergence and competition, as well as with Chardin’s integration.

The Theoevolutionary Church affirms the world to come, the arrival of heaven, and the Messiah, or Godhood, with bio-spiritual evolution toward Godhood working in concert with the Traditional Church and its sacred inward methods of seeing and knowing God.

Resolving Dualities

The problem of dualities, i.e. religion/science, sacred/profane, archaic/modern, mythological/historical, poetic/scientific, biological/spiritual, as examined heroically by, among others, Guenon and Jung, usually ends with one side wanting to recuperate only the former, Tradition, and the other the latter, Science. Can the two ever meet?

The two meet in bringing biological evolution into the spiritual. Traditional religion is devoted to where it applies best, seeing and knowing God, morality, social philosophy, etc., and science is applied to evolution, biology, even string theory, etc. The two are combined in the Evolutionary Christian Church, adding to Tradition the evolutionary element concerned with higher intelligence and higher consciousness. Thus, you have the evolution of the biological all the way to the spiritual, ultimately to God, guided by traditional religion. The dualities are this way reconciled.