BBC's "History of Christianity"

Here is a fascinating and well-made* documentary on Orthodox Christianity produced by the BBC. Enjoy.

*but not perfect. At around the 18:08 mark, the narrator refers to something he calls "Iconoclast Orthodoxy," which, of course, is a contradiction in terms. Then the map shown at 30:40 identifies Carthage as one of the ancient patriarchates. They apparently confused it with Alexandria.

Եղեռնի զոհերի հիշատակի օր (Genocide Remembrance Day)

Today Armenians around the world remember the slaughter of 1.5 million of their ancestors by the Ottoman Turks during the first World War.

The Genocide (Հայոց Ցեղասպանություն in Armenian) included forced marches, starvation, serial rape and other atrocities and was an effort by Muslim Turks to remove the Christian Armenian people from existence.

President Obama had made a campaign promise to identify the massacre as a "genocide" but later reneged on this pledge. He had criticized President Bush for failing to recognize the genocide as such, but, on last year's Armenian Remembrance Day 2009, he softened his language, calling it a "calamity" ("Meds Yeghern" in Armenian). The President has received criticism and condemnation for his backtracking, and some have even called for him to give up his Nobel Peace Prize until he makes good on his campaign promise to recognize the "calamity" as a genocide.

Turkey is an ally of the U.S. and recognizing the genocide as such might put that relationship in jeopardy. Armenian-Turkish relations have also improved in recent years, and the fear is that calling the mass killings a "genocide" might strain that relationship as well.

However, 43 states have officially recognized the Armenian Genocide, and in March 2009, a bill was introduced to the House of Representatives by Congressman Adam Schiff, whose congressional district, California 29th, happens to include the city of Glendale, which has the highest concentration of Armenians in the United States. Congressman Schiff's bill, H.R. 252, states that "The Armenian Genocide was conceived and carried out by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923, resulting in the deportation of nearly 2,000,000 Armenians, of whom 1,500,000 men, women, and children were killed, 500,000 survivors were expelled from their homes, and which succeeded in the elimination of the over 2,500-year presence of Armenians in their historic homeland." It compares the Armenian genocide to the Holocaust, calls for a reduction of aid to Turkey by $3 million "until the Turkish Government acknowledged the Armenian Genocide," and demands that the President "accurately characterize the systematic and deliberate annihilation of 1,500,000 Armenians as genocide."

Learn more:
t h e f o r g o t t e n
Armenian National Institute
Fact Sheet: Armenian Genocide
Armenian Genocide 1915 Recognition Struggle
Armenian Genocide (Armeniapedia)

Take action:
Armenian National Committee of America
Follow H.R. 252 here

Kosovo

One more slaughter of Christians about which the western world, including our own "Christian nation," does not seem to be bothered in the least.

This is a very interesting and well-made documentary. I recommend watching the entire thing.



Learn more:
Kosovo: The Land of the Living Past
Kosovo (CIA World Factbook)

Forty Christians killed in Nigeria

From Independent Catholic News:

More than 40 people have been killed in the Nigerian city of Jos, Plateau State, after around 200 Muslim youths attacked Christians near a Catholic church in Nasarawa Jos, yesterday, sparking retaliatory violence.

According to local sources, the Muslim youths claimed to have gathered to renovate a house next to St Michael’s Catholic Church, owned by a Muslim man, who had allegedly murdered three Christians during violence in Jos North in November 2008. However, instead of renovating the house, the youths are reported to have launched an unprovoked assault on a female passer-by before attacking St Michael’s Church, killing and injuring several members. They also set fire to a score of local houses and businesses and churches...

Read the rest here.

(CNN) -- Two more churches in Malaysia were firebombed Sunday, bringing the total to six since a court ruled that non-Muslims can use the word "Allah" as a term for God. [so, the government is determining which words may be included in the Church's liturgy??]

No one has been hurt in the attacks, which began Friday. They follow a high court's ruling that Christians can use the word "Allah" in literature printed in the country's official language, Malay.

In Malay, the word for God is "Allah," as it is in Arabic.

But many in the predominantly Muslim country, including the government, believe the word should be exclusive to Islam.

Read the rest here.

"Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy" redux

If this series is anywhere near as good as the original (and I have no reason to think it's not), then I stongly suggest, as I did before, that everyone reading this drops what they're doing and links immediately to Ancient Faith Radio because it is a fascinating and worthwhile and enlightening series of lectures that is being re-recorded and broadcast in several weekly installments.

And, while you're at it, there's a ton of other good listening on AFR as well.

الله

For those of my readers who don't know, "Allah" is the Arabic word for God. It is--and has been since long before Islam even existed--used by Arab Christians all over the world to refer, not to the Mohammedan perversion of "god," but to the God of the Bible. It also happens to be the Malay word for God. What Malaysia therefore is doing is forbidding Christians, both those of Arabic and of Malaysian heritage, to pray to God in their own language. Wait a minute...that sounds like Islamoppression! Nah...Couldn't be.

From Christianity Today:

Agnes Monica is the Miley Cyrus of Southeast Asia. The Indonesian teen singer's face is ubiquitous. Her performances are packed out. But in Selangor, Malaysia, no one is allowed to play her song "Allah Peduli" ("God Cares"). Monica is a Christian, and Malaysian law bans non-Muslims from referring to God as Allah.

The ban on "God Cares" is one application of state laws widely opposed by the island nation's Christians and other non-Muslims. Few question whether Allah is the God of the Bible—to Malaysian Christians, Allah is simply the word for God.

Read the rest here.

Ναός τῆς Ἁγίας τοῦ Θεοῦ Σοφίας

For nearly one thousand years, the Hagia Sophia (Ἁγία Σοφία, which means "Holy Wisdom") was the largest Christian cathedral in the world. Construction began in 532 by order of Emperor Justinian and completed five years later. The church included a silver iconostasis fifty feet tall, and was filled with jeweled mosaics and columns of granite and marble, beneath a dome more than one hundred feet wide, and 182 feet high. It was an architectural wonder, filled with arcades, frescoes, marble tiled floors, rich colors and treasures beyond price. When the cathedral was complete, the emperor declared "Νενίκηκά σε Σολομών!" ("Solomon, I have outdone thee!")

For more than a millennium, spanning the reigns of over one hundred Byzantine emperors, Constantinople was the center of the Christian world. That all ended on this date (May 29 by the Church calendar) 556 years ago.

On that Tuesday morning in 1453, the siege of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks ended and the city was sacked, ravaged, looted, desecrated, pillaged, burnt, violated, and brought under control of the Muslims where she remains to this day.

According to the diary of Nicolo Barbaro, who was present during the invasion,

The Turks made eagerly for the piazza, five miles from the point where they made their entrance at San Romano, and when they reached it, at once some of them climbed up a tower where the flags of Saint Mark and the Most Serene Emperor were flying, and they cut down the flag of Saint Mark and took away the flag of the Most Serene Emperor, and then on the same tower they raised the flag of the Sultan. When they had taken away these two flags, those of Saint Mark and of the Emperor, and raised the flag of the Turkish dog, then all we Christians who were in the city were full of sorrow because it had been captured by the Turks. When their flag was raised and ours cut down, we saw that the whole city was taken, and that there was no further hope of recovering from this.

For the rest of the day these flags were kept flying on the houses, and all through the day the Turks made a great slaugh­ter of Christians through the city. The blood flowed in the city like rainwater in the gutters after a sudden storm, and the corpses of Turks and Christians were thrown into the Dardanelles, where they floated out to sea like melons along a canal.

The cross which topped the dome of the Hagia Sophia was torn down and replaced by a crescent. Minarets were erected, and what was for centuries the largest, most imported and most beloved Christian church in the world became a mosque. The mosaics and frescoes were plastered over or chiseled away. The iconostasis was looted and the relics of saints and other treasures disappeared. The Hagia Sophia served as a mosque until 1932 when the Turkish president, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, had it made into a museum. At that time, work began to uncover the mosaics that had long been hidden behind plaster.

Two worthwhile blog posts concerning this tragic event can be found here and here. And there is, I was surprised to learn, a movement underway to restore the Hagia Sophia to use as a Christian church. The organization behind this effort is called the Free Agia Sophia Council of America.

See also: Paintings and photos of Hagia Sophia

Why Muslims are attracted to Christianity

This is a post from an interesting blog I found called "Islam and Christianity"

I don't know if this can be verified, but I heard that more Muslims have converted to the Way of Jesus Christ in the last ten years than in all the other years since the advent of Islam in the 7th Century. I'm not sure it's an accurate figure, but I will say that something is certainly happening among Muslims and that there is an openness in their society that was not there before. I also want to point out that large numbers of nominal Christians, especially in Europe, are converting to Islam--a main reason being so they can marry Muslim women. Who has more converts? I have no idea. I will say that Muslims converting to Christianity often pay a heavy price in terms of persecution, and that Westerners converting to Islam are afforded generous protection by their governments.

But here is the question: why are Muslims attracted to the way of Jesus Christ? Here are some of the main reasons:

1) The Bible. We forget how compelling and convincing Jesus' teachings and parables are. He was certainly, among other things, a highly talented teacher, and his parables and sayings have the ability to lodge themselves into a person's mind, even after only one hearing. His insights into human nature, society, kindness, forgiveness, and God's power--not too mention the many miracles he worked--are convincing to a good number of Muslims. Of course Islam teaches that the Christian and Jewish Scriptures are muharraf--corrupted. But after a fair reading of the Gospels, sometimes the integrity and wisdom found therein can break through this Islamic doctrine. Incidentally, Muslim background believers from my experience tend to center their thought on the Gospels much more than Paul's epistles--very different than the evangelical tradition which has, in practice at least, tended to give primacy to the Pauline epistles.

2) Dreams, Miracles: What can I say? They are happening, and folks here don't have the initial inclination that Westerners do to "disprove" or "figure out how it was done." A miracle is from God--it's that simple. Often times in dreams people see Jesus, though at times it is one of the saints. This may not result in conversion, but it opens a path of inquiry that sometimes leads to conversion.

3) Charity: "They will know that we are Christians by our love." One refugee from a neighboring country received some help from some Christians, and he said, "We come here and we receive nothing form the Muslims--the Christians are the only ones who take care of us. I know nothing of your religion, but I will become a Christian." We think of the things like the Inquisition and the Crusades, but we forget the quiet, persistent witness of kind, caring Christians from all traditions, including Catholics and Orthodox. Which brings to mind something that Saint Francis, another apostle to the Muslims, said, "Let us not seek to be loved, so much as to love others." If you need to be reminded of the quiet work of the Church around you, just look at how many schools and hospitals are run by Christians or where founded by the various churches.

4) Christian Community: Islam teaches that a man should not speak to a woman unless they are married or of the same family. It is a witness to the beauty of the Christian community, and thus its faith, when Muslims see genuine respect and friendship between men and women who are neither related or married to each other. The assumption among Muslims is that this sort of thing must lead to fornication or adultery; on the other hand, young men and women sincerely yearn for fellowship with members of the opposite sex. When they see this among Christians it reveals that we are a peculiar people, that there is something different about us: fellowship, conversation, and friendship but without all the adultery and fornication they are told must result.

There are other reasons as well, but my experience is that these are the main ones. The challenge is getting people to think. Islam teaches that it alone is the reasonable and logical religion. Since people in the Middle East have extremely weak critical skills due to various reasons, this assertion is simply accepted. These are four things which I know have been important in challenging that assumption, which have led people to ask new questions and venture down new paths.

Peace be with all of you.
Abu Daoud

Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy

I cannot recommend this highly enough.
It is a series of lectures given recently by Father Andrew Damick of St George Cathedral in Charleston, WV on the many differences (and a few similarities) between Orthodox Christianity and the many other religions--Christian and otherwise--that are out there.

It is a fascinating and thorough and fair examination of the history and core beliefs of these religions and I strongly suggest that you take the time to listen.

Clicking on each title below will link directly to the audio file. They take a little while to download (each lecture is over an hour long), but, believe me, it's worth it.


Lecture 1: Heterodoxy & Heresy (series introduction)

Lecture 2: Roman Catholicism

Lecture 3: Churches of the Classical Reformation (Lutherans, Calvinists, Reformed, Zwinglians, Anglicans, Episcopalians, Methodists, Wesleyans)

Lecture 4: Churches of the Radical Reformation (Anabaptists, Baptists, Brethren, Amish, Mennonites, Restorationists, Adventists)

Lecture 5: Modern Revivalism (Pentecostalism, Charismatics, Evangelicalism)

Lecture 6: Non-Christian Religions (Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Shinto, Sikhism, Wicca, Neo-paganism, Zoroastrianism, Modern Gnosticism, Animism)

Lecture 7: Non-Mainstream Christians (Swedenborgians, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Unitarian Universalists, Christadelphians, Christian Science, Unification Church ("Moonies"); also includes series conclusions)


From Christ in the Mountains by Fr. Andrew Damick