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Economist, UK
March 23 2005
Christian Jerusalem
Ridiculous and sublime
IN EVERY place where Palestinian Christians live, church choirs are
getting ready to celebrate what they regard as the defining event in
local history. Some will mark Easter along with the western Christian
world on Sunday; the majority, followers of the eastern calendar,
have another five weeks to wait before their rich Arabic voices take
up the Hebrew poetry of the Paschal hymn: ~SShine, shine, Oh new
Jerusalem, for the glory of the Lord has dawned upon you!~T
Christ himself counselled people not to be too concerned with the
specifics of holy places; it was more important to offer prayers ~Sin
spirit and in truth~T than to pray on the right mountainside or in the
right city. But Palestinian worshippers would hardly be human if they
did not give a rather literal interpretation to the words they were
singing. As a tiny minority within a minority whose lives have been
turned upside down since the intifada began, they yearn to travel
more easily to and from the earthly Jerusalem of family, friends and
cherished places of worship.
Israel
Religion
Macmillan, Ms Clark~Rs publisher, has information about her book.
But not all of Jerusalem's Christians sympathise with them. While the
Christian communities of the Old City (Armenians and Ethiopians, as
well as Palestinians) dwindle in numbers and morale, there is a
powerful new force on the religious scene: a dynamic body of
evangelical Christians, many of them American, who side with the far
right of Israeli politics. They believe that the Jews are the only
people with a right to the land of Israel as defined by scripture,
and that all others should leave. Many of the older Christian
communities find it hard to regard these newcomers as their
co-religionists.
This tension is one of the many themes investigated by Victoria
Clark, who spent a year and a half as a part-time resident of the Old
City, staying in a damp ex-monastery as lodger and friend of two
Palestinian Christian sisters with an endearing attachment to gossip
and cigarettes. Against a background of violence, fear and economic
depression, Ms Clark has written a rich and insightful essay on
Christian Jerusalem, harking back as far as 325AD, when the Emperor
Constantine and his mother, Helena, are said to have announced the
discovery of Christ's tomb.
Ever since, this tiny shrine has drawn hundreds of thousands of
people, some as conquerors using the Holy Sepulchre as an excuse for
military adventures, others believing that they could be redeemed
both by the journey and the destination. The conquerors insisted that
only by possessing the shrine, and killing everybody who stood in
their way, could Christian powers be guaranteed access to the holiest
place of their faith. The reality experienced by ordinary believers
was different. For at least two centuries after Muslims took control
of Jerusalem in 638AD, Christians enjoyed uninterrupted visits to the
Sepulchre and the sacred sites around it. Another period of peaceful
access was the 400 years of Ottoman rule; the Sultans were cheerfully
venal about who administered the holy premises, and gave the lion's
share to the Greeks who were the best payers.
In the 19th century, Anglo-Saxon Protestants were horrified by the
annual Easter ritual of the Holy Fire. This is a ceremony in which a
flame~Wkindled in some mysterious way in the heart of the tomb~Wis used
to light the candles of thousands of excited believers from every
corner of eastern Christendom.
As Ms Clark points out, there is indeed something close to farce
about many aspects of the Sepulchre, including the regime under which
six Christian communities co-exist in an atmosphere of intense mutual
suspicion, which can degenerate into fisticuffs.
In any description of elaborate ritual conducted by fallible human
beings, the ridiculous is never far away and no description of
Christian Jerusalem would be complete without a dose of slapstick. Ms
Clark provides plenty: Cypriot monks with halitosis, Franciscans who
~Shitch up their skirts~T as they sit down, and Armenian tour guides
with wandering eyes.
But what about the sublime? Striking by its absence from her book is
any word from pilgrims who are transformed by the visit. She focuses
instead on Victorian travellers, full of contempt for the Greek and
Russian peasants who thronged the Sepulchre. One traveller, Robert
Curzon, watched in horror in 1834 as the ceremony of the Holy Fire
led to a stampede in which many people were killed. Small wonder, as
Ms Clark points out, that most Victorian visitors preferred to spend
their time outdoors, mapping biblical sites.
But not every modern pilgrim treats the Sepulchre with such disdain.
One very recent visitor, a well-educated American nun whom Ms Clark
did not meet, said she was utterly overwhelmed by the place:
~SPressing your forehead against the cool marble slab, you know beyond
reason and sentiment that this tiny shrine is the precise spiritual
centre of the universe, and that all beauty, all religious truth and
every created being spins on an inner axis around this sun.~T
What such descriptions evoke is the mystery at the heart of all holy
places. They may be located in specific points on the map, but they
are also thresholds which take the pilgrim into a reality beyond time
and space. The holiness of such places~Wtheir role as gateway to an
entirely different reality~Wis organically connected to the worldly
battles they trigger, but is also entirely separate. While earthly
movements, of which the ultra-Zionists are only the most recent, view
the Holy Land as a place to possess and transform, pilgrims down the
centuries have experienced it as a place where they undergo
transformation. The Palestinian Christians have a healthy instinctive
sense of this paradox. They adore the Holy Sepulchre, while
maintaining a lively disrespect for most of the Greek bishops who
lord and squabble over it.
http://www.economist.com/books/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3786275
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
March 23 2005
Christian Jerusalem
Ridiculous and sublime
IN EVERY place where Palestinian Christians live, church choirs are
getting ready to celebrate what they regard as the defining event in
local history. Some will mark Easter along with the western Christian
world on Sunday; the majority, followers of the eastern calendar,
have another five weeks to wait before their rich Arabic voices take
up the Hebrew poetry of the Paschal hymn: ~SShine, shine, Oh new
Jerusalem, for the glory of the Lord has dawned upon you!~T
Christ himself counselled people not to be too concerned with the
specifics of holy places; it was more important to offer prayers ~Sin
spirit and in truth~T than to pray on the right mountainside or in the
right city. But Palestinian worshippers would hardly be human if they
did not give a rather literal interpretation to the words they were
singing. As a tiny minority within a minority whose lives have been
turned upside down since the intifada began, they yearn to travel
more easily to and from the earthly Jerusalem of family, friends and
cherished places of worship.
Israel
Religion
Macmillan, Ms Clark~Rs publisher, has information about her book.
But not all of Jerusalem's Christians sympathise with them. While the
Christian communities of the Old City (Armenians and Ethiopians, as
well as Palestinians) dwindle in numbers and morale, there is a
powerful new force on the religious scene: a dynamic body of
evangelical Christians, many of them American, who side with the far
right of Israeli politics. They believe that the Jews are the only
people with a right to the land of Israel as defined by scripture,
and that all others should leave. Many of the older Christian
communities find it hard to regard these newcomers as their
co-religionists.
This tension is one of the many themes investigated by Victoria
Clark, who spent a year and a half as a part-time resident of the Old
City, staying in a damp ex-monastery as lodger and friend of two
Palestinian Christian sisters with an endearing attachment to gossip
and cigarettes. Against a background of violence, fear and economic
depression, Ms Clark has written a rich and insightful essay on
Christian Jerusalem, harking back as far as 325AD, when the Emperor
Constantine and his mother, Helena, are said to have announced the
discovery of Christ's tomb.
Ever since, this tiny shrine has drawn hundreds of thousands of
people, some as conquerors using the Holy Sepulchre as an excuse for
military adventures, others believing that they could be redeemed
both by the journey and the destination. The conquerors insisted that
only by possessing the shrine, and killing everybody who stood in
their way, could Christian powers be guaranteed access to the holiest
place of their faith. The reality experienced by ordinary believers
was different. For at least two centuries after Muslims took control
of Jerusalem in 638AD, Christians enjoyed uninterrupted visits to the
Sepulchre and the sacred sites around it. Another period of peaceful
access was the 400 years of Ottoman rule; the Sultans were cheerfully
venal about who administered the holy premises, and gave the lion's
share to the Greeks who were the best payers.
In the 19th century, Anglo-Saxon Protestants were horrified by the
annual Easter ritual of the Holy Fire. This is a ceremony in which a
flame~Wkindled in some mysterious way in the heart of the tomb~Wis used
to light the candles of thousands of excited believers from every
corner of eastern Christendom.
As Ms Clark points out, there is indeed something close to farce
about many aspects of the Sepulchre, including the regime under which
six Christian communities co-exist in an atmosphere of intense mutual
suspicion, which can degenerate into fisticuffs.
In any description of elaborate ritual conducted by fallible human
beings, the ridiculous is never far away and no description of
Christian Jerusalem would be complete without a dose of slapstick. Ms
Clark provides plenty: Cypriot monks with halitosis, Franciscans who
~Shitch up their skirts~T as they sit down, and Armenian tour guides
with wandering eyes.
But what about the sublime? Striking by its absence from her book is
any word from pilgrims who are transformed by the visit. She focuses
instead on Victorian travellers, full of contempt for the Greek and
Russian peasants who thronged the Sepulchre. One traveller, Robert
Curzon, watched in horror in 1834 as the ceremony of the Holy Fire
led to a stampede in which many people were killed. Small wonder, as
Ms Clark points out, that most Victorian visitors preferred to spend
their time outdoors, mapping biblical sites.
But not every modern pilgrim treats the Sepulchre with such disdain.
One very recent visitor, a well-educated American nun whom Ms Clark
did not meet, said she was utterly overwhelmed by the place:
~SPressing your forehead against the cool marble slab, you know beyond
reason and sentiment that this tiny shrine is the precise spiritual
centre of the universe, and that all beauty, all religious truth and
every created being spins on an inner axis around this sun.~T
What such descriptions evoke is the mystery at the heart of all holy
places. They may be located in specific points on the map, but they
are also thresholds which take the pilgrim into a reality beyond time
and space. The holiness of such places~Wtheir role as gateway to an
entirely different reality~Wis organically connected to the worldly
battles they trigger, but is also entirely separate. While earthly
movements, of which the ultra-Zionists are only the most recent, view
the Holy Land as a place to possess and transform, pilgrims down the
centuries have experienced it as a place where they undergo
transformation. The Palestinian Christians have a healthy instinctive
sense of this paradox. They adore the Holy Sepulchre, while
maintaining a lively disrespect for most of the Greek bishops who
lord and squabble over it.
http://www.economist.com/books/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3786275
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress