A Wasted Heritage

The wealth of Anglican belief and spirituality is immense and appealing. It stems from Holy Scripture and is defined in the Book of Common Prayer, The Articles of Religion, and The Ordinal (as Aquinas says of the creed, and we may say of our standards, they “are not added to Scripture but extracted from it”).

And then there is the vast amount of literature consonant with the classic Anglican Way – Biblical, doctrinal, devotional, pastoral, and homiletic. Anglicanism has been earnest and industrious in the propagation of the gospel and Christian knowledge the world over. Its endeavors have been appreciated by believers of different traditions, Protestant and Catholic.

The Church of England and its off-shoots have been instrumental in spreading the Word of God and the message of his grace to countless “people of every kind and type”. There is a profound richness in the Anglican blend of Scripture, liturgy, sacramental administration, and pastoral provision, all deeply imbued with an acute awareness of the magnificence of God and the mightiness of his grace.

Anglicanism has ministered effectively to those within the fold and those in the fields of world mission. Home and abroad the churches of the Anglican Communion have labored with sympathetic friends in the faith to make Christ accessible and join souls to God. There has been no Golden Age (better times, yes) and much evidence of checkered history in the Anglican corner of the Lord’s vineyard, but it has been, under God, initially the shaper, and latterly the heir, of an invaluable heritage that, restored by God, has the potential to address mankind very powerfully with the message of the Lord recorded in Scripture and relayed by the Spirit.   The great need in our time is for Anglicanism to embrace and activate the bequest that has been entrusted to us as “a witness and a keeper of holy Writ” (Article xx). We are to adhere to, proclaim, and protect the content and integrity of Holy Scripture. We may not deny, deviate from, or doctor, one whit of revealed doctrine. Rather, we are to grow into and firmly grasp every utterance of the Spirit preserved for us in God’s Book.

There is no end in our prayerful research into the mind of God and we can always request the widening of our minds in the comprehension of heaven-sent wisdom. But man, preferring not to yield to the instruction of God, is always tempted to meddle with the divine word, tamper with it, trim it, ignore it, or contradict where it corrects our thoughts and condemns our sinful behavior. Left to ourselves we are not submissive to our Teacher and seek to invent the notions that are preferable to us. We will either tweak the word or cast it aside…

Read on in VirtueOnline here.

 

After Centuries, Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity to Get New Roof

Associated Press is reporting on the renovation:

Bethlehem, West Bank (AP) — Preparations for a long-needed renovation of the 1,500-year-old Church of the Nativity are moving ahead in Bethlehem, the town of Jesus’ birth, in the face of political and religious conflicts that have kept one of Christendom’s holiest sites in a state of decay for centuries.

The first and most urgent part of the renovation, initiated by the Palestinian government in the West Bank, is meant to replace the building’s roof. Ancient wooden beams pose a danger to visitors, officials say, and leaks have already ruined many of the church’s priceless mosaics and paintings.

If the repairs go ahead as planned next year, it will be the first time the crumbling basilica has seen major renovation work in more than a century and a half.

Altering a building like the Church of the Nativity, built 1,500 years ago on the site of a church 200 years older than that, is never a simple affair. The building is shared by three Christian sects — Catholics, Greek Orthodox and Armenians — who have traditionally viewed each other with suspicion and are wary of upsetting the brittle status quo that governs the site.

To repair a part of the church is to own it, according to accepted practice, meaning that letting other sects undertake renovations or pay for them could allow one to gain ground at another’s expense.

The resulting paralysis and disrepair has been a recurring theme at the church.

“In the roof the timbers which were constructed in ancient times are rotting, and this structure is falling daily into ruin,” wrote one visitor. That was in 1461.

Some measure of the complications involved in a renovation of this type can be found in the Nativity’s similarly ancient and fractious sister church, the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem…

… Today, the increasingly dire state of the Nativity’s roof and the intervention of an external player in the form of the Palestinian Authority — which has circumvented the old rivalries and allowed all to save face — has led the three churches to agree to a renovation to be arranged and funded by the Palestinian government and international donors…

… The roof is in such poor condition that there is a “risk of collapsing beams within the wooden structure which could hurt people inside the church,” said Issam Juha of the Centre for Cultural Heritage Preservation…

… The roof was first built, along with the rest of the basilica, by the Byzantine emperor Justinian in the 6th century A.D. following the destruction of the original church built on the site of the grotto where Jesus was believed to have been born. Some of Justinian’s massive wooden beams are still in use.

In 1480, with Bethlehem under Muslim rule and the roof disintegrating, permission was granted to replace it. Philip, Duke of Burgundy, sent craftsmen, wood and iron. King Edward IV of England sent lead, and the Doge of Venice provided ships. Major work was carried out again two centuries later.

When the British controlled the Holy Land between 1917 and 1948, they recognized the urgency of replacing the roof but simply could not navigate the explosive rivalries between the sects in the church, traditionally backed by powers like France and Russia.

In the mid-1800s the tensions had become so fierce that Russian Czar Nicholas I actually deployed troops along the Danube to threaten a Turkish sultan who had been favoring the Catholics over the Orthodox.

The British managed only small repairs. The same went for the Jordanians, who ruled Bethlehem from 1948 to 1967, and for the Israelis, who captured the West Bank from the Jordanians and turned the city over to the Palestinian Authority in the 1990s.

A UNESCO report in 1997 found that because of water leaking from the roof, most of the mosaics and paintings, some dating from Byzantine times, had been “damaged beyond repair.”…

Give the article a full read here.

Jordan’s Wadi Rum Named World Heritage Site

I spent a night there sleeping with Bedouins once. A stunning place it is indeed.

Wadi Rum, the majestic, mountainous desert located in the far south of Jordan, was named this summer to UNESCO’s World Heritage List. The Wadi Rum protected area, which includes more than 275 square miles of sweeping dunes and dramatic, sheer-sided mountains, has become one of Jordan’s top tourist attractions. It is also home to many of Jordan’s traditional Bedouin tribes, as well as a number of archaeological sites dating from the prehistoric periods to the Islamic era. Particularly prominent are inscriptions and carvings dating to the time of the Nabataean kingdom of Petra,^* which controlled the trade routes that passed through the region more than 2,000 years ago. Rum is referred to, both in the Bible and classical sources, as Aram or Iram, while it may also be the land of Uz mentioned in the book of Job (1:1).

Wadi Rum, the majestic, mountainous desert located in the far south of Jordan, was named this summer to UNESCO’s World Heritage List.

HT

MEGA-Iraq

Middle Eastern geodatabase for heritage:

(CNN) – Known to many as the “cradle of civilization,” Iraq is a treasure trove of important archaeological sites including Babylon, Ur and Nimrud.

Yet hostile circumstances on the ground have left the country’s antique heritage vulnerable to looting and damage.

International calls for the safeguarding of Iraq’s ancient sites have resulted in the development of a sophisticated geodatabase record of ancient sites and monuments, which it is hoped will allow them to be better monitored and protected.

MEGA-Iraq (Middle Eastern geodatabase for heritage) is being developed by the Getty Conservation Institute and the World Monuments Fund alongside Iraq’s State Board of Antiquities and Heritage.

Susan Macdonald is Head of Field Projects at the Getty Conservation Institute.

She said: “While many in the international archaeological community focused on the looting of museums, no-one was really paying much attention to this issue of archaeological sites, and that really there was no good inventory or database of records of these.”

To find out how it works, and more, click here.

As a New Dark Age Descends Upon the West

The Judeo-Christian worldview was perhaps the most important element in the rise of Western civilisation. Other factors can be mentioned, but without the biblical worldview and its impact, the West as we know it would never have arisen. Many scholars and experts have spoken to this.

As just one example, American sociologist Rodney Stark has written a number of important volumes on these themes. Consider his seminal 2005 volume, The Victory of Reason. In it he says, “The success of the West, including the rise of science, rested entirely on religious foundations, and the people who brought it about were devout Christians.” He continues:

“To sum up: the rise of the West was based on four primary victories of reason. The first was the development of faith in progress within Christian theology. The second victory was the way that faith in progress translated into technical and organizational innovations, many of them fostered by monastic estates. The third was that, thanks to Christian theology, reason informed both political philosophy and practice to the extent that responsive states, sustaining a substantial degree of personal freedom, appeared in medieval Europe. The final victory involved the application of reason to commerce, resulting in the development of capitalism within the safe havens provided by responsive states. These were the victories by which the West was won.”

But the obverse of all this is also true. As Christianity goes, so too does Western culture. As we declare war on the very foundations of the West, we should not be surprised to see the West teetering on the brink. We have renounced our Christian heritage and are now surprised to see the whole thing falling to bits.

It is as C.S. Lewis once remarked, “We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.” We cannot expect the West to prosper and succeed when we are so busy kicking out from underneath it its very support system.

But the reversal of this whole process does differ in one fundamental respect. While it takes centuries, if not millennia, to develop a great civilisation, it takes but a moment to destroy it. As Sir Winston Churchill put it, “To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.”…

You simply must read on here.

And think!

Israel and Palestine: Who Owns What – Archaeologically

While officials squabble over heritage sites, non-government experts are working behind the scenes to propose solutions.

The Art Newspaper:

In anticipation of a Palestinian bid for statehood recognition at the UN in September, Israelis and Palestinians are racing to claim cultural heritage sites in the West Bank. Both are channeling money into excavating, developing and branding sites as their own, underscoring connections bound to history and identity. Yet as each side puts facts on the ground, the rules for the contested playing field have not been agreed upon: who owns cultural property? Who can make changes to or profit from heritage sites? What legal questions are relevant? If a Palestinian state is recognised, negotiators will have to be ready to address these questions. But as the issues have never been negotiated, non-governmental experts have filled in behind the scenes, to have cultural property policy recommendations and documentation ready, in the event of a peace deal…

Framing such ongoing and explosive disputes are long unresolved questions of borders and who owns cultural heritage. In principle, archaeology and cultural heritage, like other issues, were to be worked out in Israeli-Palestinian final status negotiations. Every round of peace talks failed though, before archaeology was ever seriously discussed. The heritage committee mandated by the Oslo Accords is non-existent; the void has helped maintain intractable Israeli and Palestinian positions and discouraged co-operation.

Israeli officials have argued that heritage sites with Jewish historical connection must remain under Israeli sovereignty. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated that position last year, after Unesco ruled that, despite being venerated by Jews, Christians and Muslims, heritage sites in Bethlehem and Hebron are Palestinian (The Art Newspaper, December 2010, p25). He denounced the decision as “absurd”, calling it “an attempt to disconnect the nation of Israel from its heritage.”

Palestinians counter that location, not religious identification, determines sovereignty of a site…

There’s a lot more here.

Libya's Roman Sites Unscathed by Unrest… So Far…

Reuters:

Libyans appear determined to safeguard their rich cultural heritage during the popular unrest against leader Muammar Gaddafi, protecting it from the looting seen in neighboring Egypt’s revolution just weeks ago.

Conquered by most of the civilizations that held sway over the Mediterranean, Libya’s rich cultural heritage includes Leptis Magna, a prominent coastal city of the Roman empire, whose ruins are some 130 km (80 miles) east of Tripoli.

The birthplace of emperor Septimius Severus, its amphitheatre, marbled baths, colonnaded streets and a basilica are considered the jewel in the crown of its Roman legacy.

While communication with Libya difficult sketchy amid the uprising against Gaddafi’s four decade rule, two archaeologists who frequently work in the country said cultural artifacts appeared to have been spared the ravages suffered during Egypt’s recent revolt.

“So far there are no records whatsoever of any areas from the cultural heritage of Libya being affected by the troubles,”…

“All seems to be ok. I don’t have particular concerns that museums will in any way be affected by all this,”…

“I’m confident local people will protect (them) and the department of antiquity staff will ensure everything is in order and kept safe.”…

Read the whole piece here.