Cheers to Sergeant Landon Groger for saying out loud what most public officials refuse to mention after another horrendous teenage shooting in Louisiana:

The opening weekend of the high school football season was marred by a fatal shooting at the Brusly-Port Allen game on Friday night. Sergeant Landon Groger with the West Baton Rouge Sheriff’s during halftime, 18-year-old Jarrettin Jackson the Second shot 16-year-old Ja’Kobe Queen only a few feet away from a concession stand.

“It is my understanding that there was an altercation that occurred between these two, but as far as details to what led up to that horrifying event, it’s unclear at this time,” said Groger.

Queen was a student at Brusly High School. A 26-year-old woman was also shot in the arm.

Groger says it was a senseless act of violence at one of the biggest events of the year in West Baton Rouge Parish, the Sugar Cane Classic.

“After a hot summer, everybody was looking forward to coming out on these Friday night lights, not only were there students and teachers there, but we had families, children, staff and just our communities coming together as a whole,” said Groger.

Groger says they’ll work to make sure future football games and other public events in West Baton Rouge are safe. But he says its a bad situation when an 18-year-old feels a need to bring a gun to a high school football game.

“It starts in the home with the parents, and discipline, and being involved with your faith based groups,” said Groger.

It is very refreshing to see Sgt. Groger’s words about parents, discipline, and religion.  But what about the rest of Louisiana’s government officials?  Why aren’t they speaking out each and every day with this same message?  Often what we hear are the same stale slogans about job training to give people discipline and purpose/direction in life, as well as harsher punishment for criminals.  Those are fine, and necessary, and they will help some people.  But they aren’t going to hold back the floodtide of crime that is continuing to rise.  Only religion has the power to do that.

Interestingly, it is the ‘poor, backward’ countries of eastern Europe that seem to understand this, rather than ‘rich, advanced’ countries of the West.  For instance, the Patriarch of the Orthodox Christians in Serbia sent this message to the schoolchildren there as their new academic year for 2023 began:

Dear children, dear schoolchildren, may the Lord bless you, your fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, relatives, teachers, your friends whom you play with, all people and all children.

May God also bless the schools where you study and learn different things. However, we should all know, both teachers and parents, but also you, students, that more important than knowledge is to acquire virtue, that is, to become good people, and a good person is one who feels love first for his family and friends, but also towards all people, towards all nature, towards the whole world. This means love is the most important thing.

Love is the most precious gift that God gave to man. The only condition for someone to be happy, whether he is a child like you, whether he is a grown man or maybe an old man, like your grandparents, is to have love in his heart. Everything else, if he has a nice house, the fastest car, the best phone, a lot of money, the best grades and prizes in competitions, if he sings or draws the best in the art school, if he is the strongest and scores the most goals—all this is nothing if he has no love for his friends, for people, for children, for nature. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t compete to see who will do better in school, who will get a better grade, but it means that we shouldn’t envy someone who’s better, but rather rejoice in his success, and try harder ourselves.

We also help each other learn better, because we all need each other, we all depend on each other. That’s why we should cultivate friendship and togetherness. We should pray to God for each other. We should pray that our God, Jesus Christ, will give us love, that we will be closer to Him, our God, and that we will be closer to each other, to our parents, brothers and sisters, friends…

I pray for you, children, that God will protect you, that He might give everyone health and joy, and since I know that children’s prayers are most beloved to God, I ask you to pray for me, to pray for the whole world, for all people, so that there might be harmony, peace, and love. Cheers, dear children! May God bless you!

The bishops of the Orthodox Church in Bulgaria issued an even more striking statement recently:

Our society is in urgent need of a spiritual revival, which can happen if we all together offer universal repentance for our sins and weaknesses and join ourselves to the ennobling spirit of the Orthodox faith and its divine social and moral values. This is a well-tried path, successfully applied through the centuries to resolve personal and interpersonal conflicts, to reduce widespread aggression, to overcome national and institutional divisions. Christian morality is the most powerful barrier against the destructive influence of multiplying addictions, materialism, consumerism, debauchery, greed, violence, and crime.

That is why for three decades the Bulgarian Orthodox Church-Bulgarian Patriarchate has been calling on our public leaders to show patriotic determination, statesmanlike wisdom, and political will for the return of compulsory religious education in schools. Thus, students will be able to successfully build a sustainable worldview of faith in God, love for people, peacemaking, charity, hard work, and also a sense of national belonging on the basis of the Gospel teaching of Christ.

In the period of transition, the Holy Synod actively assists the state with its concept of religious education, which provides for both compulsory and electability within the subject Religion in order to take into account the rights and interests of all parents and their children. From 2020 until 2023, the Holy Synod also created new, modern textbooks on Religion-Christianity-Orthodoxy for all students from 1st to 12th grades that received the approval of the Ministry of Education. Guided by its millennial experience in the exceptional educational power of Orthodox Christianity, our Church does not cease emphasizing the great importance of spiritual and moral education of children from an early age—in the family, in the church, in kindergarten, in school. This our Holy Church does out of love for its people, out of concern for the growing generations and out of compassion for the pains and problems of modern man.

In connection with the widespread public discontent about the increasing cases of violence and impunity in Bulgaria, we call on the responsible institutions to implement timely and decisive reforms. However, these reforms should not only focus on the criminal code or the Domestic Violence Act but should cover the entire Bulgarian legislation, with an emphasis on the protection and support of Bulgarian families, the upbringing and growth of Bulgarian children in a healthy family environment, and a supportive educational environment. The legislative changes should not only have punitive effects but should primarily have educational and preventive effects. A society where punishment is the guiding principle in the fight against crime and aggression has no future and is doomed to disintegration. Conversely, a society that prioritizes spiritual and moral upbringing, education, and culture, and implements them as tools to protect national identity and security and the well-being of the entire nation has a future.

The status of the subject Religion in our educational system and the state of contemporary Bulgarian society are directly and inevitably connected. The family is the first educational environment for a child. But the educational process continues and should continue in schools, in the Church, and in society. The formation of a human personality is influenced not only by its physical and intellectual development but primarily by its spiritual and moral improvement. This aspect should be given special attention without delay through the restoration of religious and moral education for all children and students, if we want the cases of inhuman cruelty and brutal crime to decrease and disappear in our homeland. There is no other subject in school that can achieve this.

Until 1947, the Law of God, or Religious Education had a particularly positive influence on the value formation of our grandmothers, grandfathers, and parents. It was mandatory and placed at the forefront of their study programs and notebooks. After 1997, the subject Religion also proved to have a beneficial influence on the students and classes that studied it. Paradoxically, it is not yet part of the mandatory curriculum, which means that many parents who want their children to study it do not have this opportunity. Moreover, in most European countries, religious education is mandatory and denominational.

It saddens us that conflicts in our society are escalating and the suffering of victims of violence is increasing. But this is a logical consequence of the lack of targeted spiritual and moral upbringing and education in our native schools. A significant portion of our youth is confused, lacks purpose and meaning in life, and experiences increasing moral degradation. These tragic results were already predicted by the notable Bishop Boris of Nevrokop in 1928 when he wrote his remarkable work The Crisis In Our School. In it, he prophetically emphasized that if the denial of religion dominates Bulgarian education, our society and state will suffer catastrophic consequences in the coming decades. This is exactly what happened during the atheist regime, and it continues to this day, and we are all witnesses to it. Bishop Boris alarmingly warns that some self-righteous “people in our country wished to go beyond good and evil and attempted to redefine values.”

In connection with everything said above, we, the members of the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, responsibly declare that when “the difference between good and evil, truth and falsehood, love and hate, justice and injustice, virtue and vice, honor and dishonor” is erased, a personal and universal social crisis occurs, which can only be overcome through the rediscovery and application of Christian virtues. We call on our leaders and our entire society to unite in the fight against aggression and moral degradation, and for the subject of Religion-Orthodoxy to be introduced into the mandatory curriculum for those students whose parents want them to study it, so that we may have our own rebirth and ensure the survival of Bulgaria and the Bulgarian people!

Where is such a statement from Cade Brumley?  From other BESE members?  From the candidates for Louisiana governor?  And so on?

But government should stay out of religion, someone might say.  Hogwash!  There has never been a religiously neutral government, and never will be.  If it is not promoting traditional Christianity, it will be encouraging belief in some other religion (just look at all the false teachings, heresies, and idolatries spewing out of the office of Louisiana’s current governor – climate change hysteria, LGBT propaganda, and the like).

All government officials, to a degree, share in the priestly, pastoral ministry of their people, along with ordained clergy of the Church.  St. Paul the Apostle in a famous passage makes this clear enough:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of him who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain; he is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be subject, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience (Letter to the Romans 13:1-5).

One of the prayers said by the priest during the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, compiled in the latter part of the 4^th century, bears this out, too, this connection between government officials and the spiritual life of the people:  ‘ . . . for all civil authorities; grant them, O Lord, peaceful times, that we, in their tranquility, may lead a calm and peaceful life in all godliness and sanctity.’

Other parts of the Christian history of the West testify to this as well.  Here is one example from among many, from the life of the much beloved St. Aidan of Lindisfarne (+651 A. D.):  ‘From Lindisfarne, Saint Aidan traveled all over Northumbria, visiting his flock and establishing missions. Saint Oswald, who knew Gaelic from the time he and his family were exiled to Iona, acted as an interpreter for Bishop Aidan, who did not speak English. Thus, the king played an active role in the conversion of his people.’

Secular solutions to crime, by themselves, won’t work (thanks again, Sgt. Groger), and government officials have a role to play in making sure Christianity is taught to children in Louisiana.  However, if they, and the voters, parents, towns, teachers, etc., stubbornly insist on secular education for children, the results will continue to shock and dismay us.  Another saint, Dimitry of Rostov (+1709), in closing, warns us:

Whoever does not take care to personally walk the narrow path of the Gospel and is negligent in the purification of the mind, such a person is blind in soul, even if he has studied all external wisdom: he clings only to the letter that kills and does not accept the life-giving spirit. He cannot completely correct himself, let alone others. For the worldly intellect is one thing and another thing entirely is the spiritual intellect. . . .

He who studies external wisdom but neglects spiritual wisdom, is like unto a person having one eye or one foot. Without intelligent action, the external wisdom of this world together with its bodily labor are like dry breasts or a barren tree, as someone once said. . . .

If a person acquires all the wisdom of this world but does not purify his mind, and does not enlighten his soul, he cannot enter into union with God. And he who is not united with the Lord in a spirit of knowledge, walks along obscure paths. The mind, as we said, is purified and enlightened by a particular podvig: the keeping the Lord’s commandments and constant intelligent action, and especially by constant warm tears. Otherwise, no one can reach wise enlightenment.

Every mind, if not cultivated, enlightened, and seasoned with the salt of grace from the Most Holy Spirit, will go mad and stink with a multitude of passionate thoughts and deeds. God has naturally given reason to everyone, but, if it is not exercised, it grows dim and becomes dark, but, if exercised, it becomes clear and comes to perfect enlightenment.