Weep not just over Jerusalem, but the world
The Armenian Church's decline in the holy city is a threat to world peace, writes George Pitcher
An esoteric news item from the Holy Lands this week is a parable for our times. Blink and you may have missed it. But for those who are directly affected by it, it presents an existential threat to the Christian presence in Jerusalem.
A 99-year lease of some 25 per cent of the Old City’s Armenian Quarter sold to a mysterious Israeli investor, with the alleged aim of building a luxury hotel on a parking lot, has seen the patriarch of the Armenian Orthodox Church lock himself in a convent and a priest who is said to be behind the deal exile himself to Los Angeles.
So far, so parochial. But it’s the kind of humanly religious conspiracy that could make a Hollywood movie – and a comic one at that. Not since the author Michael Lewis uncovered the story of how reclusive Greek monks on Mount Athos had raised billions of dollars in bogus real estate deals and nearly bankrupted their nation has there been such a story of bishops’ fingers being burnt in the property markets.
Historical balance of power
But it’s what the tale represents that’s important, rather than the richness of the story itself. And it’s about the tipping of the scales in the historical balance of power in Jerusalem. The religious powers there have been finely balanced since the 19th-century, but it may not hold now as the Armenian presence dwindles. And that could be a microcosm for religious tolerance worldwide.
The escalating violence in the perennial Israel-Palestine conflict is once again ominous, of which the Israeli reprisal bombardment of a Palestinian refugee camp in the city of Jenin, in the occupied West Bank, is only the latest iteration. Palestinian terrorism has seen one tourist killed and seven injured in Tel Aviv. Two British-Israeli sisters were killed in the West Bank. The Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem has been barricaded.
Something has to give. And it may well be that what gives is how Jerusalem has historically – and by and large peacefully – been divided. Such violence as there has been was largely accounted for by the expulsion of Jews in the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict and their re-instatement by the 1967 Six-Day War. But the stable historical position has been predominantly four uneven quarters: Christian, Armenian, Muslim and Jewish.
Religious tautology
The Christian and Armenian quarters are a religious tautology. Armenia was the first nation to adopt Christianity as its state religion in the fourth century. Its quarter in Jerusalem, I recall, is distinguished by its churches illuminated by hundreds of hanging lanterns and by far the best bars and food available in the city. But, in broad terms, two quarters and therefore one western half of old Jerusalem is Christian.
This is significant in so far as the Christian presence keeps an uneasy axis of peace between the Jewish and Muslim quarters. It is a composition that Jerusalem tampers with at its peril. And it’s also a model for how tolerance can tip into insurrection.
The Christian gospel tells how the Nazarene wept over Jerusalem, stating how war and conflict would tear it apart, leaving “not one stone upon another.” On the way to the cross, he tells the women of Jerusalem not to weep for him but for themselves, because the time would come when they would wish their wombs were barren.
Predictive and prophetic
These visions of the future were predictive. Imperial Rome sacked Jerusalem in 70 AD. But prediction is all too often conflated with prophecy. The prophetic voice speaks to the state of Jerusalem when it is left Christless.
It’s here that the religious mix grows volatile. The Christian presence in the Holy Lands is disappearing and, with it, its hopes of an enduring peace. The “living stones” of Peter’s first letter are no longer there on the ground, or only sparsely so. That’s the warning from history of the Armenian Church there.
Ironically enough, Armenian churches demolished in the diaspora from Turkish persecution are known by their former worshippers as “kneeling churches”. Now, in a different way, Armenians are brought to their knees.
Pax Romana
We shouldn’t be carried away with the Christian contribution to lasting peace in Jerusalem any more than we would affirm the Pax Romana, in the midst of which the city was reduced to rubble. Likewise, the siege of Jerusalem in the late 11th-century’s First Crusade was one of the bloodiest acts of early colonialism and an eternal shame on the history of Christendom.
But modern Christianity has been a peaceable arbiter in the middle-east. Without it, Arab-Israeli warfare could have been a constant fight to the last Muslim and Jew standing. And, with a shrinking presence, the violence can escalate, sure enough.
So the plight of the Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem isn’t just a regrettable evolution towards extinction, the selfish gene of religion ensuring the survival of the faithful fittest. It’s a fundamental imbalance in religion’s natural order.
And that offers, from Jerusalem, a lesson in survival for the rest of the world. Take the Christian brick of hope out of the wall and not one living stone may be left on another.
George Pitcher is a visiting fellow at the LSE and an Anglican priest