MATHETΩN

I have seen a certain bulletin plastered on churches by Mathetai so often that I think I must quote at least part of it:

… His [Jesus's] most commonly-repeated command was:

Follow me.

Follow him to where? To his Kingdom of life, through death. Here is a list of questions that ask, Am I following Jesus?

“Have you left your home, your family, and your income?”

“Are you proclaiming, or teaching about, the Kingdom? Are you healing? Are you everywhere doing good?”

“Have you been, or are you soon to be, houseless or arrested?”

“Are you soon to be killed?”

(Once, attached to some Youth Camp caravan, I saw the list limited to the last two questions — but added to them, I think, toothlessness and jailtime — concluded with something flippant such as: “If not, you aren’t doing it right.”)

The most-familiar sighting of a Mathetes is one of the lonely pair on foot or bike forging through the darkest thickets of cities or through rural barrens administering polemic or medicine. Or perhaps one has seen the strange-looking little tan trucks of the Slaves, having driven all night in haste, installing caches of supplies or literature.

But fewer have seen the Mathetai’s permanent communities. These are communist, agrarian, and usually isolated (I am ignoring the large exception in Harlem). They are — one might say — the hive to the Mathetes’ bee, or the mortar to his shell.

These comprise families with children, novices, and Mathetai recuperating from the road. Besides being farms, the communities are small manufacturies, are laboratories and academies.

I mean soon to report from my years visiting them. …

Early in his History of the World, J.M. Roberts remarks that Modernism has made it impossible for the intelligent man to be a Christian. It is a rather silly remark in a very silly book — however, truly that was Modernism’s main goal and largely they won it. I mentioned it to my friend the Slave. Said he:

“A goal of our school of thought, so far as we can yet be said to have one, is finally to make it impossible for the good man to be a Christian.”

Today as I ate at Taco Bell I observed, passing in front of the window to my right, various persons with crippled limbs making their way slowly to the public housing beyond and, at the table to my left, a father boasting pompously of his son’s sexual exploits at college. These things saddened and angered me, and they put me in mind of the Tripart Survey of the Mathetai.

At regular intervals the Mathetai issue this report for themselves in their work, whether for the world, for a country, or for a small region. Just as their Teacher sent his first followers throughout the Levant to teach, to preach, and to heal, so the work of the Mathetai takes those three general courses; and just as the Works tells us that the work of his first followers turned the world upside-down, so the end of the Matheton’s courses is to fix the world — to rid it of the sufferings I observed as I ate lunch. And before a thing can be fixed, its breakages must be surveyed.

Thus the Tripart Survey seeks to answer: ( 1 ) Against what lies ought we most teach? ( 2 ) Against what abuses of power ought we most preach? ( 3 ) Against what illnesses ought we most turn our skills of healing?

Some would remark — especially after reading a Survey — that this seems a very scientific approach for men of God. And indeed the Mathetai are practical as flint in their war to fix the world: they feel themselves badly outnumbered and out of time; they are not a bit daunted; they will use any How, Who, or What most effectually to approach the goal.

The Mathetai do have officers, of sorts, in each Assembling, although they would object strenuously to my calling them that. Among themselves they use Greek terms for these, but to the outside world they offer English equivalents.

The Olders or Seniors are a senate comprising simply any man above a certain age who has been a Mathetes above a certain number of years. They make decisions for the Assembling and chart the course for the Mathetai. They are basically the government as you and I would think of it.

The Slaves are the executives, putting into action the Olders’ decisions and thus supporting the whole mighty work of the Mathetai. They are accountants or tailors, logisticians or carpenters, and all unusually intelligent and active men and women.

The Assembling Proper is simply all the Assembling except children and novices; every Mathetes must be present for them to act. They serve as a kind of supreme court, judging complaints between Mathetes, even excluding a Mathetes from the Mathetai if they deem it necessary, and, in certain cases, overruling the Olders.

The Visitor (they insist on this archaic usage, although I would offer something like Overwatcher instead) is a sort of ombudsman or auditor. He is a mature, usually married, man with an unusual gift for fairness, integrity, and counsel. He keeps records on the acts of the Slaves, on the decisions of the Olders, and on the hearings of the Assembling Proper and makes them available to all. He gives State of the Assembling speeches at intervals and otherwise reflects back to the Mathetai what their course has been and may be. He also observes the individual Mathetes and offers him or her counsel. In certain cases, he can overrule the Olders’ decisions.

An archived news-report I’ve found offers the conversation that follows (in part) between its newsman and an early Mathetes.

Mathetes: It’s very simple. The first thing our pair does upon entering a neighborhood is tell the truth. They do this in part by penetrating wherever the most people meet: in a religious neighborhood, the churches, in an irreligious one, the community centers or even movie-theaters.

Reporter: And this has gotten you arrested time-and-again. At first, for a few hours; then, when new trespassing laws were passed — largely to make of your people an example, you allege — for months or years.

M: Indeed — and we are very glad. Almost half the population lives in prisons, now, and there is no meaningful way to reach them otherwise.

R: And so your jailed Mathetes will “tell the truth” there too?

M: She will.

R: – and be beaten or killed for his activities, if reports can be believed.

M: Yes. I call the shiv the Mathetai’s great hope in this world nowadays.

R: And that is my next question. The Mathetai have been — you must be aware that the Mathetai have been called by certain experts a “suicide cult”.

M: That would be true, friend, only if a Mathetes could die.

The Mathetai, as I have implied before, mostly wear traditional work-clothes. Yet modesty is not their rule so much as expediency. If the Duke of Windsor had bequeathed a Mathetes a wardrobe, he likely would wear most of it.

Clothing is one of two material things the Mathetai allow concern them; as the Envoy has written: “Having food and raiment, let us be therewith content.” Yet that the Envoy has recognized clothing does not mean the Mathetai think much of them. They would wear free rags if these covered and warmed them. But this is not acseticism: again, it is expediency.

The hermits, from the anchorites to the Mennonites, have got small things right with a very great thing wrong. It is because the Mathetai war a great war and work a great work that they have not a second nor a cent for finery. If a Mathetes had leisure and spare wealth, he would spend it as the Epicurean with a Cynic’s mind, prescribed in the Ecclesiastes, would spend it.

I have written to a Slave with whom I enjoy a mutually-respectful relationship for some extenuation of the Mathetai’s hacking and defacing religious websites — these days it is in all the news and, needless to say, discussed all over the Web.

He replied:

Yes, we have made efforts for some time that are only now bearing this much fruit; but we always knew the action to be an important way to spread Truth. We have good precedent in targeting religious organs foremostly; namely:

Jesus in synagog in Capernaum, for which he was nearly thrown from a cliff, and in the Temple, for which (among other charges) he was crucified.

Paul Envoy in the synagogs of Asia and Rome, for which he was imprisoned and at last (or so the Latin Fathers tell us) beheaded (I would assume they are lying).

The Brothers in the cathedrals of Switzerland (Bluecoat carried a large stick to demonstrate his seriousness to the priests), for which they were tortured or drowned (Bluecoat was burnt).

The Friends in the steeple-houses of north England; they were committed to stocks and prison by the hundreds, yet in a few years there were thousands among their Meetings, tens-of-thousands having heard the Truth.

“Would a Mathetes submit to a dress-code at his job, especially if it required wasteful expense?”

“A Mathetes would not be relying on a job from the Man in the first place.”