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Factoids: Christians in the Holy Land, etc.
Excerpted from the writer's reflections on a recent visit to Jerusalem.It was the run-up to Easter week when I reached Jerusalem. There, on the Via Dolorosa, numbers of priests, monks, and nuns and accompanying pilgrims were doing the Stations of the Cross, a penitential walk up a twisty and uneven alley. You see Catholics, Evangelicals, Greek Orthodox, Ethiopians, Armenians, in what looks like a representation of Christianity and its history of splits and dissent. And passing them, jostling, shouting, evidently proving their indifference to this religion and trying to distract, are porters, youths pushing hand-carts, merchants, salesmen, tourist guides, in a vast hubbub that militates against prayer. Someone likely to know told me that there are in fact only 14,000 Christians in Jerusalem, including native Arabs and the international religious community. Not so long ago, there were many more. Muslims are taking over the Christian quarters of East Jerusalem as well as outlying Christian suburbs like Beit Jala and Beit Sahur. Bethlehem is a town once eighty percent Christian, but where Christians are now a disappearing minority. One of the most frightening moments of my life was in Cherchell on the Algerian coast when I went to look at what I thought was a French colonial church, but in fact had been converted to a mosque. Out poured the worshippers to fling stones, and my daughter and I had to run for it. Meanwhile the newspapers publish photographs of Mikhail Gorbachev flanked by Franciscan friars on their way to the church of Saint Francis of Assisi. The former general secretary of the Soviet Communist party, a party dedicated to stamping out religion as the opium of the people in the famous sneer of Karl Marx! Gorbachev a self-declared devout Christian! What an example of Christianitys power of regeneration, and in the end, it seems to me, that is what the imams and the mullahs and bin Ladens are really afraid of. Lots of conversions to Christianity, recently. Posted by: trailing wife 2008-03-23 |
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