“We identify with the New Moravians”

A trip to Old Salem highlights spiritual malaise in America (and a warning for us all)

As a semi-professional photographer I tend to notice details around me that other people might miss. I also make an effort to see the subtext of what I am looking at, and its significance when located in a lager context. Back in early October I had an afternoon walking around Old Salem in North Carolina, which is now a tourist enclave, but was once the heart of the local societal order. As we are fighting to re-establish a society led by morally upstanding men and women, these echoes of America as its constitutional republic formed have particular resonance with me.

The problem with “truth in history” is that there is rarely finality on offer. The record is frequently filtered, blurred, or perverted. We are constantly re-interpreting the past through a longer arc of where it has led us. I could go to museums I attended in childhood, and now get a wholly different understanding through the lens of propaganda and cultural engineering. I had few expectations in going to Old Salem, it being relief from legal work in my “day job”, and my highest aspiration was a nice cafe to sit in. I didn’t anticipate having to apply my inner revisionist historian!

What made Old Salem particularly interesting to me was the juxtaposition of the original inhabitants’ faith-based governing structure, seeking to follow divine principles, and the modern occupants’ unconscious alignment to the exact opposite, being adherents to political correctness, self-importance, and deceitful doctrines. You could feel the tug between God and Mammon, which revealed itself in subtle ways that might have escaped the casual observer.

Not only did we have the ritualised hand sanitising station at the entrance, but also a muzzled cashier behind spiritually distancing plexiglass. The word “Salem” comes from “shalom”, meaning peace. Yet here we are, with fifth-generation psychological warfare claiming fresh victims in the foyer. Who failed to counsel us of the deceiver’s power?

It’s all a long way from the origins of the place, and the heretics who were willing to sacrifice their lives to oppose tyranny. The information boards talk about social order — i.e. sociology — and largely ignore their theology, which is the reason the place exists. “Government by men of spiritual advancement” through the lowkey local church, not centralised religion, is a noteworthy phenomenon, yet you could easily pass through and miss this.

My companion had been before several years previously. The museum used to have faith exhibit, and why they lived how they did: the single brothers’ house, another for single sisters, and the church teaching that brought them to be this way. Now, the doctrines and ways of life are not even discussed. Instead, the entrance focuses on slaves in an adjacent settlement. While not downplaying their existence and lives, it is to elevate the peripheral over the figural. Women, children, and minorities are not why Old Salem is so important in American iconography.

After having unlocked a coffee and cake achievement merit badge at the cafe, we went to see the main church, which is only open to the public for a limited part of the day. There is an entry fee to the site as a whole, so remember we are paying visitors.

Ambling around the pews, we admired the stained glass windows of Jesus and his apostles. The themes on offer were the Crucifixion, Garden of Gethsemane, and the Resurrection. We didn’t see a rope at the back, as we didn’t happen to go that way.

Meanwhile, this woman was speaking to a group. For all I knew, she could have been a guide for some tour unrelated to the venue. My companion went to look at the final window subtitled “suffer the little children”, taken from Luke 18:16 — “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the Kingdom of God.”

Suddenly the woman stopped her presentation, and snapped angrily: “Ma’am they really don’t want us up there, that’s why the ropes are there.” She rolled her eyes, exasperated, and and went back to her group, declaring she had “lost her place” — as if it was our fault. She went on about the ropes, as if we were not honouring their barriers… in an open church… during visitor hours.

My companion was very offended at being spoken to in such a manner by a stranger. She is a teacher, a godly woman, a victim of abuse, and homeless at present, so it was a particularly unwelcome attack. A man staffing the church vestibule asked her to sign the visitor register, and she refused, stating “not if I am spoken to in that way here — this is God’s house, not yours or hers”.

What was most noteworthy in this contretemps was how we overheard the woman say they “considered themselves the New Moravians”. This sounds a bit like New Labour here in the UK under Tony Blair, that was the exact opposite of the Labour Party founded a century earlier, now serving only the interests of the powerful. “Moravian” has become more like a corporate brand that is detached from the godly, and is under new temporal ownership.

The spirit of the place has changed, and not for the better. Can you imagine Old Moravians putting up with this fear-based ritualising in church, and wearing slave muzzles? The conflict was a small incident, but often these vignettes are microcosms of the far greater struggles we face. Our culture isn’t just whatever is writ large on billboards and cinema screens; it is made up from the everyday “trivial” encounters we have, for better or worse.

I am not sure the Old Moravians would be too keen on legalistic prosecution of visitors to attend the graves of the dead.

Would the Old Moravians see keeping photographic records of their community as an infringement of their values?

Now, times do move on, and change accordingly. Commerce is a thing. The feeding of visitors is nothing to be ashamed of; hospitality to travellers is a virtue, even if very sugary. Yet the next building we entered had yet another scene of our times. A masked woman greeter mumbled at us, inviting us to pretend that nothing was amiss.

Behind me was a child, and the girl naturally recoiled at someone approaching hiding their face in this offensive and artificial way. The innocence of children, and how they react to these different spirits, is a good guide to what is aligned to the divine (or not).

I don’t want to portray the site in too negative a light — it is a thoroughly engaging and precious preservation of American heritage. Just the spirit of our modern culture manifests in the objects around us. For instance, a sign is covered with munge…

Meanwhile, the retail displays are pristine…

At the museum, the first thing you see is this donation “display”. Would the Old Moravians have uncouth money on show in a glass box? Or at least allow some discretion to encase it in wood? What does this unconsciously say about the present management?

Do you ever get the feeling that some of our history isn’t being taught right, such as the common appearance of white slaves?

The venue is now under the control of people who consider themselves the New Moravians, and are quietly erasing the Old Moravians. There is a clash of spirits and cultures here, which you have to observe closely to notice.

America’s spiritual light is under repair right now. The point of this virtual visit to its heritage is to point out that our goal is not to identify with either Old Moravians or New Moravians. Many people who consider themselves patriots and truthers, and who fight the Old Romans and their slave laws, are only positioning themselves to become New Romans, not the godly people of covenant who can sustain freedom.

The single vignette from Old Salem that really mattered, and the thought I want to leave you with, is that the single men and women drew lots to become man and wife. The Old Moravians literally “left it to God” to find them a spouse, in contrast to the self-will of our modern hookup apps. We might look down at this as an anachronism, but I suspect they were in happier and healthier conjugal relationships than we are.

We are at war (and many have died) because we have lost sight of how only submission to divine will leads to genuine and lasting freedom. The unclean spirits and unholy signs on show at Old Salem are because this relationship has been obscured and denied. I hope this perspective on one historical location aids you to re-evaluate other places caught in the tussle between righteousness and wrongfulness.

It is very wet and windy in England today; nice to have some indoor brightness!