The war on Christianity: The religion's followers are dwindling in the land of its birth
It's not a crisis of faith, but one of violence
By Peter Popham
http://www.independent.co.uk/
January 29, 2014
Almost fifteen hundred years ago, a wandering monk called John Moschos described the Eastern Mediterranean as a "flowering meadow" of Christianity. The religion had been born here nearly 600 years before but while, in the early years, it had been a persecuted, militant cult, under the patronage of the Byzantine emperors it had matured and mellowed. "The meadows in spring present a particularly delightful prospect," Moschos wrote in his book The Spiritual Meadow, which became a 7th-century best-seller. "One part of this meadow blushes with roses; in other places lilies predominate; in another violets blaze out..."
Christianity, in other words, was now flourishing right across the region. No intolerant tyranny menaced it, no other religion contested its right to grow and prosper and develop in different ways. "The Eastern Mediterranean world was almost entirely Christian" in Moschos's day, William Dalrymple wrote in his 1997 book From the Holy Mountain. "At a time when Christianity had barely taken root in Britain... the Levant was the heartland of Christianity and the centre of Christian civilisation... The monasteries of Byzantium were fortresses whose libraries and scriptoria preserved classical learning, philosophy and medicine against the encroaching hordes of raiders and nomads [and] the Levant was still the richest, most populous and highly educated part of the Mediterranean world."
Read the full story at www.VirtueOnline.org
It's not a crisis of faith, but one of violence
By Peter Popham
http://www.independent.co.uk/
January 29, 2014
Almost fifteen hundred years ago, a wandering monk called John Moschos described the Eastern Mediterranean as a "flowering meadow" of Christianity. The religion had been born here nearly 600 years before but while, in the early years, it had been a persecuted, militant cult, under the patronage of the Byzantine emperors it had matured and mellowed. "The meadows in spring present a particularly delightful prospect," Moschos wrote in his book The Spiritual Meadow, which became a 7th-century best-seller. "One part of this meadow blushes with roses; in other places lilies predominate; in another violets blaze out..."Christianity, in other words, was now flourishing right across the region. No intolerant tyranny menaced it, no other religion contested its right to grow and prosper and develop in different ways. "The Eastern Mediterranean world was almost entirely Christian" in Moschos's day, William Dalrymple wrote in his 1997 book From the Holy Mountain. "At a time when Christianity had barely taken root in Britain... the Levant was the heartland of Christianity and the centre of Christian civilisation... The monasteries of Byzantium were fortresses whose libraries and scriptoria preserved classical learning, philosophy and medicine against the encroaching hordes of raiders and nomads [and] the Levant was still the richest, most populous and highly educated part of the Mediterranean world."
Read the full story at www.VirtueOnline.org
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