January | 2000 | Subject Middle East & North Africa (MENA)
... Hardly had the Christians of this biblical land assessed the true significance of the pan-Christian inauguration of the new millennium in Bethlehem last December, that a constant stream of visitors and conferences has kept the churches quite busy! The Greek Orthodox hierarchs arrived here in January to celebrate Christmas at the Basilica of the Nativity, and then again in June to participate in a pan-Orthodox Scientific Symposium. The spiritual leader of the Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Church world-wide, Catholicos Karekin II, also travelled to the Holy Land and celebrated Christmas in Bethlehem. Later in March, Pope John-Paul II fulfilled his life-long yearning to come on a personal pilgrimage to Jordan, Palestine and Israel. And finally, the Greek Catholic Church held last week its own international theological symposium. All this, and we are only halfway through the year 2000!
But what do such movements show? Do they point toward a deepening of the unity amongst the diverse churches? Do they mean that the ecumenical movement has been growing stronger year in year out? Or do they subscribe to an observation made some two years ago by HB Patriarch Michel Sabbah, Honorary President of MECC? In an interview for the MECC Kairos newsletter, he thanked God that the Heads of Churches are meeting regularly, and that their hearts are being drawn together. However, despite the handshakes and smiles, he added that each church is looking for its own survival at the expense of the communion between the churches. Is the truth being compromised today between optimism and pessimism? What do Christians themselves think?
Although I have been involved with the ecumenical movement in an institutional sense for well over a decade now, I cannot purport to possess any firm answers! Rather, like the famous Galilean carpenter who built a door for his house but omitted to add a lock to it, I can only say that my article will also model a door but not provide the reader with a key! I can merely offer thoughts, but you have to look for the solutions in your own hearts and minds.
Let me first highlight a few encouraging or discouraging signs that constitute the tapestry of the churches here.
Overall, I must admit I am fretful about the fate of the Christian faith in this biblical land. The haemorrhage we are witnessing today - in terms of qualitative witness as much as of quantitative numbers - is alarming if we truly believe that this is a land of two peoples and three religions. But what is an important indicator to me of the dire need for self-appraisal and self-examination has less to do with statistics that could easily be doctored than with the relationship of the Christian faithful with their institutional churches and church-related organisations.
As with many other places across the world, it is evident that church affiliation, attendance or loyalty here is declining in all the Christian denominations. Moreover, it is safe to say that there is an uneasy feeling that the Church is either out of touch or else peddling its own narrow and solipsistic interests. But what is equally evident to me is that Christianity as a ‘religion’ is being gradually replaced by expressions of ‘spirituality’ that are a long way away from institutional religion. Such a spirituality often has little doctrinal content, and few people have more than the vaguest remnants of religious language to express their experience of God. Rather, their spirituality seems based upon a Nietzsche-inspired longing for meaning and a quest for belonging. The vivid reaction to the best-selling book ‘The Celestine Vision’ by James Redfield world-wide is a manifestation of this quest for alternative definitions and sources. This longing might be suppressed, or even repressed, but it cannot be destroyed. It reminds me of St Augustine’s famous phrase, “Our hearts are restless till they find their rest in Thee.”
What is the Church to make of this unsettling contrast between institutional decline, ecumenical obscurantism and re-emerging spiritual awareness? I believe that the major focus of the Church should not lie simply on filling empty pews. Perhaps more serious is the realisation that we are not in touch with the ways in which God the Holy Spirit is communicating with us. In the final analysis, ought we to perhaps recall Thomas a Kempis whose statement might also hold an answer to the present predicament, “An humble knowledge of thyself is a surer way to God than a deep search after learning”? I truly wonder sometimes ..?
© Dr Harry Hagopian | 2000 | January