This may just be one for the Anglophiles like me, or maybe all of us can identify with the sentiments. In any case, I was following links of links and came across this article entitled “The Reawakening of England” on a Web-site devoted to Orthodoxy in England. I just thought it was wonderfully written. The author mentions Orthodoxy’s beginnings with St. Augustine in the sixth century, and then goes on to wonder what England would be like today if it had lived up to that early promise. (I’m abbreviating because I know our American attention span, but it really is worth reading in full.)

Firstly, with all our hearts we would love God through the saints. They would be familiar to us, literally familiar, part of a family to which we would belong.

And not only the universal saints, such as Sts. Peter and Paul, the patrons of London, but also the local saints. … How could we forget Sts Mellitus and Justus, Laurence and Paulinus, the patron of York and all the North? … St Benedict Biscop, that lover of icons and holy books, would be a patron of Church Art; the great Theodore, the first Greek Archbishop of Canterbury (may God send us a second), and his faithful companion Adrian, would have their icons hung in our schools and seats of learning. …

Secondly, with all our souls we would love God through places. We would know a spiritual geography of England, a geography where the English Earth would meet an English Heaven and an English Heaven meet the English Earth. … And we would honour Canterbury as our spiritual capital, the Mother-City and cradle of the English Faith, the spiritual birthplace of England and its 22 sainted Archbishops. London would remember the Holy Apostles, Paul, in the East, and Peter, in the West. Westminster would once again be the monastery in the West. The Holy Mountain of the English Church, the Athos of England, would not be a mountain, but an island, Holy Island, Lindisfarne. … And all along the roads there would be crosses and wayside shrines, where lamps would shine in the darkness to show the way. And thus there would be isles and havens of peace in this land. …

Thirdly we would love God with all our minds. We would not think of some Economic Community, but of a Spiritual Commonwealth. Our industry would build churches. All the tools of the modern world would be turned Godwards. Our culture would be dominated by the quest for the Spirit. In Art we would paint icons and great frescoes of the spiritual history of England. Our literature would be about the lives of the virtuous. Our cinema would show ascetic feats, our schools would train young people either for married life or else for monasticism. In a word, our minds would be occupied with the one thing needful, the salvation of our souls, the love of God.