On the Patron Saint of Lost Western People
Back in May of this year, Paul Kingsnorth published this article to his Substack, noting that, "It’s about the life of a pioneering American Orthodox figure whose journey has both intrigued and inspired me."
It's a fresh approach and appraisal of Father Seraphim Rose, by one of the most important thinkers and writers, Orthodox or otherwise, of our time, which makes it doubly unique and important, as Fr Seraphim is, in my estimation, one of it not the most important Orthodox thinker and writer of the last sixty years.
California Son
On the Patron Saint of Lost Western People
by Paul Kingsnorth, The Abbey of Misrule, April 27, 2025
Last year I was invited to give a talk about Christianity and nature at Canisius University in Buffalo, New York. After the talk, I took some questions from the audience. One of the questions, asked in sweet innocence, was a deadly honeytrap for a visiting Englishman:
“What do you think of America?”
I had just been talking about the dangers to the soul of the technological culture of Silicon Valley, and the impact of its machine-like ways of thinking on the world, so I said the first thing that came into my head. This is rarely a good idea, especially in public.
“America is Babylon,” I said. Then, remembering I was speaking to an audience of Americans, I quickly added a qualification.
“It’s Babylon,” I said, “but it might also be the place that counters Babylon. It’s as if one force somehow begets the other. After all, California is home to Silicon Valley, but it’s also home to the monastery of Seraphim Rose.”
Somebody else in the audience put their hand up.
“Who’s Seraphim Rose?” they asked.
It was a fair question. The strange name I had conjured is hardly widely known. It is the name of a man who in many ways embodied the twentieth-century West’s aching search for meaning. A man who pushed himself out of the desert of modern materialism, through a banquet of “alternative spiritualities,” and into an ascetic, monastic life in the oldest and most traditional stream of Christianity: the Eastern Orthodox Church. Seraphim Rose is the unofficial patron saint of lost Western people, and only America could have made him.
Today, with the Orthodox Church in the U.S. growing faster than it ever has, and with young people flooding many of its parishes, interest in his life and work has reached new heights. Sales of his books continue to grow, his grave has become a place of pilgrimage, and there are more and more persistent calls for him to be recognized as a saint of the Church. Slowly and quietly, he may be helping to remake America...
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