Localism and the Tirocinium Militiae

Sometimes, for the sake of the people and places closest to you, you have to go far away for a time. I do not see that as a contradiction of biblical localism. As I have said many times, biblical localism means giving first priority to the people and place God has put directly in front of you. And over the course of a life, those people and places can shift in different ways.

Still, I think homeland matters. Hometown matters. There is something good and natural about being from somewhere, about sharing a past with a particular people in a particular place. For most of us, the ideal is to settle down and, over time, become rooted.

That is the ordinary shape of things. It is so ordinary that people have often been identified by their place to the extent it becomes part of their name. Just as a man’s work helps define him, so does the place he comes from. A place shapes your memories, your instincts, your speech, your loyalties, and your sense of belonging. It gets into you.

One of my goals is to build a family estate out here on the east side of Cincinnati. I’ve put down roots here. I helped plant a church here. I helped start a major branch of the company I work for here. We own one house now, but, Lord willing, I intend to own more for the sake of our family if God continues to bless those efforts.

I want the Fosters to be from here. I want the east side to be home. I want my children, and perhaps someday my grandchildren, to share more than a last name. I want them to share a place. I want them to know certain roads by heart. I want stories tied to certain buildings, creeks, fields, and churches. I want them to have a place where generations of our family worshiped, worked, suffered, rejoiced, and belonged.

But that does not mean every Foster must stay within a fifteen-mile radius forever.

Roots are not chains.

Sometimes a son leaves for a season to build, learn, provide, fight, or prepare. Sometimes he goes away because he loves home and hopes to strengthen it someday. Localism is not immobility. It is ordered loyalty. It is knowing who and what has first claim on your energy, sacrifice, and affection.

A healthy homeland should produce men who can go out into the world without forgetting where they came from, and who can return, if God wills, with greater wisdom and provision for the people they love.

Much of the success I am having now on the east side of town would not have happened apart from the five years we spent in South Carolina. Those years were essential to the development of It’s Good to Be a Man, the church experience that prepared me for the lockdown years, and my current role at Maddox Transformer.

I had to go on what I call a “tour of duty.”

When we left Cincinnati in 2009, we fully intended to return to the greater Cincinnati area someday. We always had our eye on the east side. Even when we moved to South Carolina, we knew it was temporary. South Carolina was never home. We are not southerners. We made many dear friends there, and we are deeply thankful for our time there, but it was never the place we intended to remain long-term.

God used that season. I’m grateful for it.

Sometimes, to gain the resources, experience, discipline, and relationships needed to strengthen your family estate, or in my case, to establish one, you have to go on a kind of tour of duty. You leave home, or you delay putting down final roots, not because you despise home, but because you are preparing yourself to build one more faithfully when the time comes.

Men have long left home for a season to apprentice, trade, fight wars, learn a craft, accumulate capital, or prove themselves. The goal was not endless wandering. The goal was usually to return with something: wisdom, strength, provision, status, land, or opportunity. The wandering was meant to serve the settling.

There is a difference between being rootless and being temporarily mobile so that you can eventually become deeply rooted.

One is drift. The other is mission.

Men being away from the household for long stretches was not unusual in the ancient world. It was built into the structure of life itself.

The reasons were many, and they often overlapped:

* Trade and commerce. Mediterranean merchants, Phoenician traders, and later Roman negotiatores could spend months or even years away from home. Paul’s world of traveling craftsmen and tentmakers was ordinary life. A voyage from Rome to Alexandria and back could consume most of a year.

* Military service. Roman legionaries commonly served 20 to 25 years far from home. Greek citizen-soldiers could be gone for entire campaign seasons. Even the ten-year absence in the Trojan War reflects a real cultural anxiety. The absent husband and father was a familiar problem.

* Agricultural and pastoral labor. Herdsmen followed grazing routes. Laborers traveled with harvests. Tenant farmers often worked distant lands.

* Political service. Ambassadors, governors, tax collectors, and officials were often stationed far from home for years.

Because of this, the household had to function when the father was gone. That is one reason the capable wife was so highly honored in the ancient world, whether in Proverbs 31 or Penelope in the Odyssey. The household needed to be able to govern itself.

Sons leaving home for a season, with the intention of returning, was also normal.

One of my favorite examples is the tirocinium militiae. This Latin phrase means something like “the apprenticeship of military service.” In ancient Rome, it referred to the formative period in which a young man was introduced to the discipline, hardship, responsibility, and order required of a soldier before he became seasoned and trustworthy.

But the idea was not limited to warfare. The ancient world generally assumed that men were shaped through some kind of proving ground. A boy became dependable through duty, endurance, submission to authority, and tested responsibility. Roman writers used the phrase more broadly to describe the way hardship and disciplined service formed character. Scripture gives us the same kind of pattern in many places. David before he became king, Timothy being told to endure hardship as a good soldier, and older men training younger men in faithful living.

One of the great differences between the modern world and the ancient world is that older societies expected young men to pass through some sort of tirocinium militiae before being trusted with authority.

Today, many people want the privileges of manhood without any real initiation into it.

In the past, that formative stage might come through military service, apprenticeship, hard labor, long journeys away from home, etc. The common thread was obligation. A man was formed by responsibility, not by self-expression alone.

In many ways, what I call a “tour of duty” works the same way. A young man leaves home, endures hardship, gains experience, builds competence, and returns more capable than when he left.

The important thing is that ancient households were oriented around return, not permanent departure. The assumption was that the merchant came home, the soldier returned, and the son eventually rejoined his hometown. Permanent emigration was comparatively rare and often carried shame.

This is one reason exile was such a terrible punishment. To be cut off permanently from your household, land, ancestors, and people was a kind of social death. Ancient people did not treat those things as optional accessories. They were bound together.

That has obvious relevance to localism. The ancient world treated rootedness as the norm and departure as the exception that needed a reason. Modern society mostly assumes the reverse.