A Persecuted Community of Faith

There was a time I was hoping to turn my peculiar approach to religion into something that could compete with the mainstream, become in its own right a part of the mainstream. Over the years, that vision has died. It’s not because I don’t think it can be done, but that my sense of calling has had to move a long way to finally land on what God really had in mind in the first place.

Radix Fidem stands on the assumption of tribulation. It is not a church organization, but an approach to the question of how genuine faith can be expressed in our day and age. Genuine faith will provoke persecution because it must of necessity reject the mainstream. And that persecution will grow as the social and economic system collapse. It will be a slow and painful death of the West as we know it. The leadership of the West will turn against us, blaming us for being part of the problem. The Networked Civilization rising to take its place will also hate us, but in a different way, for different reasons.

So for me, the identity of Radix Fidem includes being a persecuted minority. With that comes the expectation that we will do our best and strongest work as an underground presence. Against the background of all that could be, and what ought to be in terms of Biblical Law, our churches will tend to be house churches. This is not some proud goal; it’s just the reality of taking what’s left to us. This is what our Father provides.

The mainstream church system may or may not come after us, but they will most certainly not accommodate us. And given what I see happening in the world around us, I cannot imagine any way for us to form a presence that could resemble what those churches are doing. We will never gain a tax-free license to operate, to buy and hold assets, to advertise and have a voice in shaping the public perception of Christian religion.

And the US government will never regard me as anything but a dissident cult leader. That’s the official label for me the last time I heard from a federal bureaucrat. To the degree anyone bothers to notice me, this is what I have come to expect. Only local and state governments recognize me as any kind of clergy. That’s about as good as it gets. The situation could change for the worse, but here in Oklahoma such change is unlikely.

So within our community, I’m happy to appoint elders, and it would be nice if we could someday have a pastor or two. However, ritual leadership is pretty hard to exercise online, so any pastor would almost have to be local to a house church somewhere. That’s why I play that role online, because there’s just not that much to it, even though my actually calling is to eldership. I suppose you could imagine I bear some apostolic role, but I’m not claiming any kind of title for that. Doing so would imply an organizational structure and goals that are flatly inconsistent with my sense of calling.

The whole point here is to offer a vision of giving faith free rein in your life, and that means recognizing barriers to that faith. Right now, I’ve not seen any other form of organization that permits such faith, so aside from the sense of community in our hearts and the organizing possible through our Internet connections, there isn’t much for us but persecution as an underground presence. And I can assure you that persecution will get worse in one way or another. Get ready for it.