The Mission of Icolmkill House: Christian Family Abbeys – Faith, Family, Culture and Our Future

Generations come, and generations go

but the earth remains forever.

What has been will be again,

and what has been done will be done again;

and there is nothing new under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 1:4 & 9

The Mission of Icolmkill House: Christian Family Abbeys -Faith, Family, Culture and Our Future

Lamps Lighting the Way for Our World

Our position and purpose are simple.  We embrace a Christian worldview, and we serve to sustain our faith, families, culture and future.  We are dedicated to the Truth, knowing that only in the Truth can one find Trust, and that without Trust there remains only Risk.  Faith is the first Truth.  God created the universe, our Earth, all of the life on it and Man in His image.  He sent his Son Jesus Christ on an earthly mission to free people from the bondage of sin, deliver temporal blessings and eternal salvation.  Man uses his God-given heart, head and strength in concert with God’s providential grace and protection to create improving conditions on Earth.  In the long history of humanity, it was only with Jesus and the rise of Christian values that His followers created the political, economic and religious freedoms that uniquely define our culture.  The creation of the United States of America was the towering achievement of human history.  The singular coalescence of Christianity, Constitutional Democratic Republic and Free Market Capitalism launched an advance in the human condition around the world never before imagined.  Freedom, literacy, learning, progress, health, wealth and charity exploded from what we call this Earthly Trinity, the Light and Envy of the World.

Families are the second Truth, the most important organization of people in God’s creation.  The Bible is filled with teaching and reverence for the formation, maintenance, support and success of the Family.    The core belief of Christianity is the Trinity, God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in loving harmony as one.  The Bible extends this family and calls humans God’s children, welcomes them as sons and daughters and brothers and sisters to each other.  We are commanded to marry, man and woman, faithfully and permanently; to have children as a heritage and blessing to God; to instruct our children to respect their parents, and love and respect God, living Godly lives; that work is dignified and honors God, and that Peter was a fisherman, Paul and tentmaker and Jesus a carpenter.  We are to provide for relatives and especially household members; care for the poor and needy, widows orphans, the sick and infirm.  The Bible teaches that God will protect, provide for and bless the family of God, that there is responsibility for family members to work and that good men leave an inheritance for future generations.  It is God’s plan and his desire for His human children to experience Godly blessings on earth through the life-long experience of marriage and raising children within a family.  The Gospel naturally joined with ancient Gaelic traditions of family, of honoring ancestors and inspiring descendants and the Gaelic Clans are our historical model for applied Christian living, with its lessons, longevity and achievements for families.

With Faith the first Truth of our culture and Family the second, it is here the vital faith is first introduced to the children of Godly parents. History shows us plainly the benefits of applied Christian living through the family, and equally the tragedies of Godless moral relativism practiced otherwise throughout the world.  It is in the family that the sanctity of life and the value of children are celebrated and personal and social responsibilities are habituated. Within the family, children receive parenting that loves them, teaches them, disciplines them and sets examples for them, especially with respect to a person’s rights and responsibilities.  It is in the family that many of the issues of the wider society are first encountered, and the lessons vital to successful personal, family and community life are learned.  God teaches that His children are free and equal, and given free-will to exercise their rational minds.  These God-given rights come with God-given responsibilities; to love, honor and respect; to think rationally, speak truthfully, work diligently, serve faithfully and give joyfully.  These pillars of Godly personhood, are delivered in God’s families by Godly parents to their children.  The teaching by the parents of Godly truths to the children also sets the important example of evangelism, the spread of the Gospel from one to another, even to everyone in every corner of the earth. 

The family is the incubator of morality, and morality is the foundation of freedom.  In the family we learn about individual rights in tension with individual responsibilities, and the freedom of one in tension with the rights of another.  In the family we learn that there are individuals that are independent and those that are dependent, in youth, age or infirmity. The success of the family, and the individuals within, depends upon the independence of nature of the many, so that the dependent few may be cared for and survive.  In both Biblical and Gaelic formulations of the family, the strong protected and provided for the weak – the young, old, widows, orphans and weak.   The successful balance between independent and dependent is a state-of-nature and an historical lesson for families, communities and nations:  when the strength of the independents is no longer able to protect the weakness of the dependents, failure results.  This is the natural order of things, whether family, community, church, government or nation.  For this reason independence of nature is a Godly prerogative for success on Earth at every stage of human association; does it go without saying that in a given population, the more independents, the fewer dependents and thus the greater health and vitality of the population?

This required independence must be guided by morality, by the religion that is taught by parents to children in the family that breeds private virtue.  Private virtue is a necessity for the person, and for each person in relationship with others.  This is first learned in the family, by instruction and by example.  The Godly family is made up of model members and is a model community.  The Bible teaches the benefits of earthly blessings and heavenly salvation and combines in our culture with the Gaelic Clan traditions of honoring ancestors and inspiring descendants.

So we see the Biblical and Gaelic example that the Family is morality.  The Family is protection and safety.  The Family is role models.  The God honoring family prays and enjoys God’s protection, provision and prosperity into posterity.   The God honoring family delivers the role models for the individual and the group.  Man must advance his personal morality toward more-perfect God honoring virtue through his thoughts, words and deeds; and he must effect advance of his cultural morality, his relations with family and the world, through his thoughts, word and deeds.  The Gaelic Christian men and women improved themselves and their families, the Gaelic Christian family improved itself and its community – personally and culturally.

A principal example of this Gaelic Christian personal and cultural paradigm at work relates to what became known as the seminal political theory the consent of the governed.  In the 603 AD first meeting of Roman with Gaelic churchmen, responding to Roman demands of ecclesiastical conformity, Abbott Dinoot of the Gaels informed Augustine of Rome that the Scots could not “depart from their native customs without the consent and sanction of their people.” Scotsman John Duns Scotus first formally articulated the concept in 1290.  In his Ordinato he explained individual rights existing for children in a family subject to the sovereignty of the head of the family,  but if an issue exceeded in scope or importance the family jurisdiction, then matters were settled by a representative elected and ruling by the consent of the governed.  This family governance and management tradition from ancient times found furtherance within Gaelic Christianity.  Indeed whether bottom up or top down, the Scottish Church was led by an elder elected from among equals.  Within the Abbeys, the Abbott was typically a lay member of a prominent local family serving faith, family and culture for the future.  Professor Robert Munro calls this contribution of ancient Scottish faith and family traditions nothing less than the “foundation of individual liberty and dignity in Western Civilization.” 

The Earthly Trinity, our Culture, what we call the Light and Envy of the World, is the third Truth.  After Faith and Family, the successful practice of Democracy and Capitalism are dependent upon men and women of private virtue acting in the spirit of public virtue.  Religious faith is the necessary ingredient in forming the private virtue that sustains the public virtue that harnesses men’s passions so that Christianity, Capitalism and our Constitutional Republic may fully flourish as our Culture into a sustainable Future. 

Founding Father Benjamin Rush wrote, “The only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.”

It is our unique Culture that created the greatest rise in freedom, progress, health, wealth and charity in human history.  That Culture, the Trinity of Christianity, Republican Government and Free Market Capitalism is responsible for the blessings of our way of life.  Everything Families have we owe to this Trinity, and everything we do must strengthen this Trinity.  

Christian Faith gives us God’s Grace, temporal blessings and eternal salvation.  And it also delivers us the God given freedom and equality that demands governance by consent of the people, enshrined in our Constitutional Republic.  And the same freedom and equality extended to the commercial sphere defines Free Market capitalism.  Critically each of Christianity, Republican Government and Capitalism require freedom and equality to operate, and personal virtue informing public virtue to succeed.  Each God given, each unique in the world, each necessary and each essential in combination with the others to create the Trinity and the Light and Envy of the World.  

The Christian Family Abbey is the Fourth Truth, the unique, Biblically sound and historically proven approach to nourishing our Faith, Families, Culture and Future, each individually, and in harmony together.   With Iona the model, Abbeys founded, endowed and directed by Families and patrons were the original communities of faith that in expanding association, spread the Gospel, love, literacy, learning, progress, prosperity and charity that converted an illiterate, pagan. barbarian sub-Roman world into our Western Christian Civilization.  For 1,000 years Abbeys served generation after generation of Christian Families building for our Future.  This is the Truth of Iona, the Christian Family Abbeys and the entire history of our Christian Culture.  Importantly, these islands of civilization in a sea of savagery ensured that our Faith, Families and Culture had a Future.  

And here is the vital truthful realization for families seeking to honor God by leaving an inheritance to future generations:  there must first be next generations of family to receive it, and also a future supportive of our Faith, Families and Culture.  And as of this writing, each of our Faith, Families and Culture are under assault calling our Future into question.  It is fact that we are but one generation away from losing our way of life.  Uniquely, Abbeys are the sole proven method that ensures our durability.  Establish a legacy with unity around identity and purpose, and community and culture supportive of our traditional freedoms and the accumulation and direction of private wealth. Family leaders and their relations need comfort about what, where and how to invest and confidence that their united purpose will also provide the necessary outlets for personal expression and growth of individual members.   Abbeys must steward our Faith, Families and Culture now and into the future for generations to come.  As in days of old, our Christian Family Abbeys will sustain us.  

Icolmkill House is 501(c)(3) charitable organization whose mission is to empower Families to realign goals, activities and assets to a Christian worldview of stewardship for durable meaning, purpose, joy and contentment.  We partner to revive and revitalize a New Great Awakening.  To be a catalyst for people to care for their souls, to bind and strengthen families, rebuild communities and everlasting centers of Christian life in furtherance of our American Culture and Western Christian Civilization.  We are dedicated to establishing Christian Family Abbeys as discreet, durable local nodes-of-a-network solution to challenges facing the Future of our Faith, Families and our Culture.  

Scotus

Scottish Invention of America, Democracy and Human Rights, Alexander Klieforth &  Robert John Munro, 2004

photo credit: Gustave Dore’, Jesus Preaching on the Mount, 1865, The National Galleries of Scotland