Travels in the Riel World

The three great monotheistic religions that were born in the Middle East - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - have numerous overlapping strands which are often lost amidst centuries of conflict. But there are those who continue to work at promoting interfaith dialogue in the hopes that some of these faiths’ shared spirituality can be rediscovered. Some of these individuals can be found at the Dier Mar Musa monastery in Syria and they were the subject of a profile this week by NPR.

Every 33 years, the major Christian and Muslim holidays of Christmas and Eid al Adha fall close together. This is one of those years. While Christmas focuses on the birth of Jesus Christ, Eid al Adha centers on Abraham, a shared prophet from the Koran and the Bible’s Old Testament. In the Middle East, these dual holidays are reminders of the many shared traditions of Muslims and Christians.

In the predominantly Muslim country of Syria, Christmas trees twinkle in shopping malls. Muslim neighborhoods are decorated with festive lights, a new custom borrowed from Christians… Across the Middle East, however, true understanding between Muslims and Christians is harder to find.

One religious community in a mountaintop monastery is trying to lead the way to understanding. Dier Mar Musa … was built more than 1,500 years ago, when Christians were a majority in the region.

“Christians in the Middle East, the numbers are going down quickly,” says Rev. Paolo Dall’Oglio, who leads this community of Christians and Muslims. “Some of us are willing to create hope together, to build a complementary world vision in a way that we can work on our future world, hand-by-hand as minorities that have something to offer to majorities.” …

To promote this dialogue, a place has been set aside within the church for Muslims to pray facing the holy city of Mecca. And on the wall, Arabic calligraphy in the shape of a dove spells out first phrase of the Muslim call to prayer.

Pope Benedict XVI just began a visit to Brazil, which has resulted in a spate of news stories about the religious changes afoot in Latin America. Although the region is home to half of the world’s Catholics, the Church has been losing adherents at a rapid clip in recent years. Rather than losing churchgoers to a secular society, however, as has been the case in Europe, the Church has been losing ground to evangelical Protestantism, thus heralding a fairly significant change in the relationship between Latin Americans and their faith.

According to an article in the Washington Post:

Latin America is still predominantly Catholic, but not like it used to be. In Brazil, for example, as evangelical Pentecostalism has spread, the country’s population has gone from being 89 percent Catholic in 1980 to about 64 percent today…

Similar shifts are happening throughout the region, from Mexico to Chile. Young people have shown a greater reluctance to join the clergy, resulting in a priest shortage that is 10 times more severe regionwide than it is in North America or Europe. Many congregations have tried to retain members by relaxing the formality of Masses and infusing services with more emotion, fueling a “charismatic movement” that is now practiced by roughly half of Brazilian Catholics…

“There is a trend here — even among priests — that people should be more free to follow their own conscience, and there’s a growing distance between most Catholics and the church’s hierarchy,” said the Rev. Luiz Roberto Benedetti, a Catholic priest who is a professor of social science at the Catholic University of Campinas, near Sao Paulo. “It’s a trend that goes in the complete opposite direction of the message that the pope wants to send.”

The Los Angeles Times also reported on the story and discussed the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, a Latin effort to retain Catholic churchgoers:

Rossi’s Mass employs traditional prayers and rituals, but otherwise the scene is reminiscent of a Southern revival meeting. At the service’s boisterous conclusion, Rossi uses a bucket to douse worshipers with holy water…

“It’s not a new church, it’s not a new religion, it’s the same Catholic Church — with more passion,” said Father Vandro Pisaneschi, who advises a group of charismatic students on campus. “The church realized that we had to use a different language to reach some of the faithful.”

According to some, this type of service is more in line with Latin American culture.

“It’s very much Latino,” said Father Edward Dougherty, a Jesuit who pioneered the movement in Brazil and helps run a Catholic television station. “Brazilians love Carnival, so we have Carnival retreats. We dance, have a lot of fun…. In the beginning we said we’d be the leaven, we’d be the salt of the food.”

The three major monotheistic religions that sprang from the Middle East - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - have been at the source of much division and conflict in the world.  What is sometimes forgotten, unfortunately, are the common roots of these three religions, such as their shared ancestry dating back to Abraham.

The author Bruce Feiler wrote about this topic recently in his book, Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths.  But now an organization called the Abraham Path Initiative is going further by developing a pilgrimage route that will trace the path of Abraham’s travels through the Middle East.  The project is discussed in this article.

Heeding God’s call, Abraham embarked on a journey to a new land, where a covenant with God, believers say, made him the patriarch of Jews, Muslims and Christians, celebrated for his faithfulness today by nearly half the world.  That same path through the Middle East is drawing new attention as a way to ultimately inspire and promote reconciliation for his children.

The Abraham Path Initiative calls for a renewed focus on the journey itself as a way to emphasize the shared ancestry of three often divided faiths. The group hopes to draw people to the region to retrace Abraham’s footsteps…

The Abraham Path project started … with a plan to chart Abraham’s path as closely as possible, from where he heard God’s call to his burial site. The route starts at the ruins of Harran in what is now southeastern Turkey and proceeds through Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel and Palestine. It ends in Jerusalem at the tomb of Abraham in Hebron.

For additional information, you can visit the website of the Abraham Path Initiative.

Pope Benedict XVI has embarked a trip to Turkey, where he began by supporting Turkey’s membership in the European Union and calling for more dialogue between Christians and Muslims.  The Pope’s travels have spurred a flurry of media coverage, focusing not only on religion but also on Turkey and it’s role as a bridge between Europe and the Middle East.  Here is a sampling of the coverage:

The Christian Science Monitor discusses the need for the Pope to mend spiritual fences.

… the original purpose of the trip - an opportunity to heal the 1,000-year-old schism between the Vatican and the Orthodox Church, whose spiritual leader resides in Istanbul - has changed.

Since offending Muslims in a September speech that linked Islam with violence, Pope Benedict’s visit - his first to a Muslim country - is now being billed as a chance for him to heal another East-West divide, that between Christianity and Islam.

The BBC News talks about how the world has changed since Pope John Paul II visited Istanbul in 1979.

The legacy of the defunct Ottoman Empire has receded even further into history; Turkey is knocking at the door of the European Union; Europe is becoming ever more secular; the Christian presence is haemorrhaging away in the war-torn Middle East; and the Roman Catholic Church is now competing vigorously with Islam for converts in sub-Saharan Africa.

And the New York Times writes about the modern balancing act in Turkey between a secular democracy and the pull of the Islamic faith.

Turkey — a democratic Muslim country with a rigidly secular state — is at a pivot point. It is trying to navigate between the forces that want to pull it closer to Islam and the institutions that safeguard its secularism. …

The extremes jostle on Istanbul’s streets, where miniskirts mix with tightly tied head scarves and lingerie boutiques stand unapologetically next to mosques.

“There are two Turkeys within Turkey right now,” said Binnaz Toprak, a professor of political science at Bogazici University.

Turkey is certainly a unique country, with its feet dipped in multiple worlds and cultures, and this week’s visit by the Pope is a great opportunity to take advantage of the increased media coverage and to learn about this ancient and interesting land.

Need a break from the relentless drumbeat of war stories filling the news these days?  There aren’t many places where one can totally disconnect from the world, but Mt. Athos is one of them.  This isolated Eastern Orthodox monastic community in Greece has no television, radio or newspapers.  It is also in an autonomous region of Greece that acts as if the Byzantine Empire still exists.

Neil Averitt wrote about Mt. Athos for the travel section of the Washington Post.  You can read his story here.

Psychologically and geographically speaking, it’s a world apart. … No road connects the peninsula with the mainland — access is solely by boat. Scattered over this rugged landscape are 20 large monasteries, a dozen smaller communities, innumerable hermitages and about 2,500 monks.

This exotic little state, sometimes described as a Christian Tibet, has many features making for a truly great travel destination: grand architecture, hiking trails along cliff tops or through virgin forests, guest rooms in monasteries, meals of fresh natural foods, and a chance to talk with wise and thoughtful men about the nature of the good life and the state of your soul.

There are, of course, challenges.  Before visiting, one must apply for permission.  Everyone is expected to arise for 4 a.m. services.  Hot showers are rare.  And, in addition to shutting out the modern world, Mt. Athos also bars visits from women.  But regardless of whether you’d ever visit, this article provides an intriguing glimpse into a centuries-old monastic tradition and into a place where the 21st century barely exists.

An Italian Jesuit has rebuilt a sixth century Christian monastery in Syria and now uses it as a place from which to build bridges between Muslims and Christians.

The monastery also combines medieval monasticism with Arab traditions of hospitality by extending free accommodation to all travelers - provided they help with cleaning, washing the dishes, and collecting litter from the surrounding hills.

Father Dall’Oglio, the founder, tells the Christian Science Monitor:

“Our hospitality is really a political program,” he says. “I would say to the [American] people ‘come to Syria and discover the human values of these people - Muslims and Christians.’ ”

“Yes, we have problems [in the region] but let us consider the problems of the Middle East as a problem within one family and not as the problems of an enemy.”