An ethnoreligious group indigenous to North Africa
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6 episodes with Copts
4 episodes with Copts
2 episodes with Copts
4 episodes with Copts
2 episodes with Copts
2 episodes with Copts
2 episodes with Copts
2 episodes with Copts
2 episodes with Copts
In this episode we host Dr. Candace Lukasik, an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion. In March 2025, she published her book titled “Martyrs and Migrants: Coptic Christians and the Persecution Politics of US Empire.” We discuss her book as well as her research as a whole.
The method by which the Orthodox Church receives converts is a very controversial topic, and one which has provoked much online discussion. Should a convert be received by baptism, by chrismation alone, or perhaps simply after a recantation of previously-held errors? All three methods have been used in the past. And which groups should be received in which ways? Should the Oriental Orthodox (such as Copts and Armenians) be received in the same way as Pentecostals? What about Roman Catholics? The issue is far from clear, and has usually generated much more heat than light.
The method by which the Orthodox Church receives converts is a very controversial topic, and one which has provoked much online discussion. Should a convert be received by baptism, by chrismation alone, or perhaps simply after a recantation of previously-held errors? All three methods have been used in the past. And which groups should be received in which ways? Should the Oriental Orthodox (such as Copts and Armenians) be received in the same way as Pentecostals? What about Roman Catholics? The issue is far from clear, and has usually generated much more heat than light.
Amr ibn Al-Aas (ra), Session 59 The Fox of The Arabs Tears in Palestine. Umar's (ra) mention of Khalid ibn Al Waleed (ra), 'If Khalid (ra) was alive, I would have made him the Caliph... ' (Siyar). 21 AH, Khalid (ra) departs the world, Amr (ra) is 75 years old. The nephew of our Mother Maymoona (raa), cousin of Umar (ra).... The scribe of The Messenger The Land of Egypt 'When you conquer Egypt be kind to the Copts for they owe us an obligation and they have blood ties with us. Ismaeel (as) mother was from them (Haakim). Amr (ra) enters Egypt via Raffa.
Amr ibn Al-Aas (ra), Session 60 The Fox of The Arabs Sayyidaa Hajar (raa), The Kings Daughter Alyoon, the ancient name of Egypt The Battle of Al Faramaa A fierce battle that lasted for 1 month. The Battle of Bilbees and The End of Arthaboon Amr (ra) enters peace talks with the Primates of The Egyptian Church... The Priests state, 'No other than the known Prophets (as) have regard for such relations.... Sayyidaa Hajar (raa) was the daughter of our king and belonged to Ahlul Manf who were the ruling family. However, The Ahlul Aynush Shams Kingdom attacked them, killed many of them, seized the kingdom and the rest of them were forced into exile. Manf was the name of the City of the Egyptian Pharaoh, originally the Copts called it Manaafah, Surah 28 v15. Then Sayyidaa Hajar (raa) became the wife of Ibraheem (as) indeed his coming was most welcome...(Taareekh).
Amr ibn Al-Aas (ra), Session 62 The Fox of The Arabs The End of Emperor Heraclius. Amr (ra) shows the Copts a spectacle, he orders his men to eat & drink as they normally would, like nomads. The second day, the same men dress and eat just like the Egyptians Amr (ra) reminds the Copts that his men defeated them whilst in the first state. Umar (ra), 'Amr (ra) is cunning and his war is subtle, not violent like that of others.'(Tabree). The Conquest of Alexandria, the foremost trading centre of the World. Heraculis, 'If the Arabs seize Alexandria then that will signal the end of Byzantine rule.' The End of Emperor Heraclius. All the efforts of The Romans are exhausted & So God Works in a Mysterious Way.
Dr. v. Oefele states of pharmacy before the time of Hippocrates, that although the practice of medicine was not separated from pharmacy among the Greeks and Romans, there was such a separation among the ancient Egyptians, from whom the distinction was handed down to the Copts, and by them to the Arabians; and, in fact,...
Sunday December 10, 2023 Jumada al-Ula 26, 1445 This episode ushers the discussion of Sira into the seventh year after the Hijra in the post-Hudaybiyya environment, and looks at the Prophet's many letters sent to various rulers outside of Arabia, focusing on his letters to the Negus of Abyssinia, the Kaisar of the Byzantines, the Kisra of the Persians, and Muqawqis of the Copts.
Part 3 of our 3 part series on the Abrahamic religions. The Eleventh Hour presents the religion that is and always has been at war with the dark forces that dominate our world. Christendom, the inheritance of Western Man, is the primary target of the (((globalists))) because it stands in opposition to their master. Listen to Phalanxman and Ricky Bobby deliver a full-spectrum special covering the story of our religion all the way to the present existential danger to our way of life as the West. CORRECTION: Phalanxman mistakenly attributed the Nestorian heresy to the Copts rather than the Monophysite heresy. We, at the Eleventh Hour, always seek to give an honest presentation of the facts and sometimes mistakes are made. Here are the translated lyrics for the break music used in this special: Intro Music: Selah by Kanye followed by The Terrifying Judgement sung by the Children's Choir of the Serbian Orthodox Church. The Terrifying Judgement: Here comes the Lord with His armies! Let our foes be ashamed! Let them be ashamed, let them repent! Look how the Heavenly Armies are glowing! How glowing are they! How loud are they! Tall mountains are falling before them! Tall mountains and earthly emperors! Look the Lord is coming to enthrone Himself! Seraphims are charging! Cherubims are following! All of Earth is burning, everything is smoking! All is smoking! We can't breathe! The Joy and Horror cannot be described! No one to describe the miracle of miracles, when sinful Earth is tightened by the Heavens! Heaven tightens us by its nearness! Then Earth is at the End! Armies after armies are coming from Heaven! Angels sound! The just acclaim! The just acclaim, "Here comes the Lord! Let soil and water disappear!" Soil and water are disappearing! Look! It is happening, what the Scriptures foretold! What the Scriptures foretold, everything is happening! New Sky and Earth are being born! Here comes the Lord! Humans are resurrecting! Here He comes to judge the world! To judge the world and save the flock! The Universe is rumbling and roaring! Rumbling and roaring are Earth and Heaven! Our gold and silver are useless now! Gold and silver are at an end! And let You shine, The God's Son! Break 1: Save, o Lord, Your People! Save, o Lord, Your People: Save, o Lord, Your People! And bless Your Inheritance! Grant victory to our Emperor over the barbarians! And preserve Your dwelling-place! By the power of Your Cross! Break 2: Blessed Are You, O Lord, Teach Me Your Statutes (English) Break 3: Christ Is Risen! (English) Break 4: Agni Parthene Agni Parthene: O Virgin pure, immaculate, O Lady Theotokos, O rejoice, Bride unwedded! O fleece bedewed with every grace, O Virgin Queen and Mother, O rejoice, Bride unwedded! More radiant than the rays of sun, and higher than the heavens, ... Break 5: Trysagion Hymn (First English Then Greek) Outro: The Last Stand by Sabaton --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/the11thhour/message
Part 3 of our 3 part series on the Abrahamic religions. The Eleventh Hour presents the religion that is and always has been at war with the dark forces that dominate our world. Christendom, the inheritance of Western Man, is the primary target of the (((globalists))) because it stands in opposition to their master. Listen to Phalanxman and Ricky Bobby deliver a full-spectrum special covering the story of our religion all the way to the present existential danger to our way of life as the West. CORRECTION: Phalanxman mistakenly attributed the Nestorian heresy to the Copts rather than the Monophysite heresy. We, at the Eleventh Hour, always seek to give an honest presentation of the facts and sometimes mistakes are made. Here are the translated lyrics for the break music used in this special: Intro Music: Selah by Kanye followed by The Terrifying Judgement sung by the Children's Choir of the Serbian Orthodox Church. The Terrifying Judgement: Here comes the Lord with His armies! Let our foes be ashamed! Let them be ashamed, let them repent! Look how the Heavenly Armies are glowing! How glowing are they! How loud are they! Tall mountains are falling before them! Tall mountains and earthly emperors! Look the Lord is coming to enthrone Himself! Seraphims are charging! Cherubims are following! All of Earth is burning, everything is smoking! All is smoking! We can't breathe! The Joy and Horror cannot be described! No one to describe the miracle of miracles, when sinful Earth is tightened by the Heavens! Heaven tightens us by its nearness! Then Earth is at the End! Armies after armies are coming from Heaven! Angels sound! The just acclaim! The just acclaim, "Here comes the Lord! Let soil and water disappear!" Soil and water are disappearing! Look! It is happening, what the Scriptures foretold! What the Scriptures foretold, everything is happening! New Sky and Earth are being born! Here comes the Lord! Humans are resurrecting! Here He comes to judge the world! To judge the world and save the flock! The Universe is rumbling and roaring! Rumbling and roaring are Earth and Heaven! Our gold and silver are useless now! Gold and silver are at an end! And let You shine, The God's Son! Break 1: Save, o Lord, Your People! Save, o Lord, Your People: Save, o Lord, Your People! And bless Your Inheritance! Grant victory to our Emperor over the barbarians! And preserve Your dwelling-place! By the power of Your Cross! Break 2: Blessed Are You, O Lord, Teach Me Your Statutes (English) Break 3: Christ Is Risen! (English) Break 4: Agni Parthene Agni Parthene: O Virgin pure, immaculate, O Lady Theotokos, O rejoice, Bride unwedded! O fleece bedewed with every grace, O Virgin Queen and Mother, O rejoice, Bride unwedded! More radiant than the rays of sun, and higher than the heavens, ... Break 5: Trysagion Hymn (First English Then Greek) Outro: The Last Stand by Sabaton --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/the11thhour/message
Show notes and Transcript James Delingpole is a well known podcaster and social commentator who never minces his words, but he is also a man of deep faith and he returns to Hearts of Oak to tell us the story of how he rediscovered his Christian beliefs. In the UK, faith is a private matter that seems taboo and must never be discussed with others yet James is determined to go against this protocol as he knows the importance of faith and belief. He had a very traditional English childhood where the Church of England was a constant through his education, but once free from those schooling constraints he went his own way. But he has now gone full circle and re-embraced Christianity and found a whole new purpose in life. He shares with us how he now feels called to encourage others to find a meaning for their lives, James' boldness, clarity and certainty is an inspiration in an age of confusion and chaos. James Delingpole is a writer, journalist, broadcaster, podcaster and columnist who has written for a number of publications, including the Daily Mail, Daily Express, The Times, The Daily Telegraph, and The Spectator. He writes regularly for Breitbart London and has also published several novels and political books. James has published articles rejecting the scientific consensus on climate change and he has not been silent in these current crazy times, a fountain of knowledge and common sense when it comes to COVID, The Great Reset, conspiracies and tyrannical political control. And not forgetting, he is the host of the brilliant, popular and ever entertaining podcast, The Delingpod..... which can be found on all good podcast apps. Connect with James at the links below... Website http://delingpoleworld.com/ Podcast https://delingpole.podbean.com/ X http://twitter.com/jamesdelingpole Instagram http://instagram.com/delingpodclips Substack https://delingpole.substack.com/ Interview recorded 20.9.23 *Special thanks to Bosch Fawstin for recording our intro/outro on this podcast. Check out his art https://theboschfawstinstore.blogspot.com/ and follow him on GETTR https://gettr.com/user/BoschFawstin and Twitter https://twitter.com/TheBoschFawstin?s=20 To sign up for our weekly email, find our social media, podcasts, video, livestreaming platforms and more... https://heartsofoak.org/connect/ Support Hearts of Oak by purchasing one of our fancy T-Shirts.... https://heartsofoak.org/shop/ Please subscribe, like and share! Transcript (Hearts of Oak) It is wonderful to have Mr Delingpod back with us again, James Delingpole. James, thank you so much for your time today. (James Delingpole) It's a pleasure, Peter. Great to have you, and obviously you can follow James there is his Twitter handle, and Delingpod will bring up, everywhere and anywhere where the Delingpod is, whether it's audio you listen on the go, or whether you watch. I certainly enjoy it on Rumble, but I'll let the viewers and listeners choose their preferred platform to watch your many interviews. Now, James, I wanted to have you on. Actually, as I mentioned to you before we went on, it was chatting to Dick at the Comcast event at the beginning of the year. And the issue of faith came up in one after one of the sessions over a few drinks. So I was curious and wanted you to come on. I know there's something you've talked about, but maybe if I can step back a little bit and ask you what was your background kind of growing up in terms of faith and church? I have probably the classic background for a certain kind of Englishman, let's say. So I went to a prep school where we had chapel seven days a week, twice on Sundays, and then I went to a public school where there was a fairly similar arrangement. And I went to church at Christmas and possibly Easter. I think at the time I didn't really know it, but I was what I would probably call now a cultural Christian. I believed in the Church of England as a kind of institution, as part of the fabric of our heritage, you know, you had all the beautiful churches run about the country. You had the vicar judging the marrows in the village fete and more tea vicar. And the church was there for when you got married and when you got buried, when you got christened. And this was part of the sort of the ritual formality that binds our country. I still respect that element, although I think it's greatly diminished in our culture. But in what you might call my normie days, I would have made a very good case, for the cultural importance of Christianity and of the Church of England, and just sort of giving a degree of shape and meaning to our lives. But what I didn't really, I didn't, I wouldn't say I was an atheist. I know I wasn't an atheist, because when I was at my prep school, I remember arriving at my prep school, I would have been about eight. And you get dropped off by your parents. And then the headmaster and headmistress pretend to be all friendly, like they do in front of your parents. And then your parents go. And then suddenly, you are. It's like being in prison. It really is like being in prison. You are shown to your dormitory. And your bed is not the comfy bed you had at home, where mommy kind of tucked you in and read you a story. It's this grim prison bed with this lumpy mattress and these scratchy blankets. And you're in a dormitory with these boys who, some of them, are crying in their pillows and stuff. And I remember that first night. And what do you do? I remember saying my prayers. Because I'd seen my dad, when I was very, very young, one of my earliest memories is going into my parents' bedroom and seeing my father kneeling down by his bed every night. He said his prayers. And so for me, it was something that you did. So I said my prayers. And I wonder now, looking back, whether a bit like, I think that I did myself a lot of good later on in life by being a cross-country runner at school. When you develop your lung capacity and your stamina at that age, it stands you in good stead for later life. And in a way, I wonder whether my prayers put me on the right footing, with God. And I suppose, did I say my prayers when I was at my public school at Morven? Probably I did. But as you know, there is a massive, there is a sort of cultural cringe towards Christianity, which I now understand is the work of the devil. You know, if you are the devil and the devil does exist. If you are the devil and you've got this institution, Christianity. How are you going to undermine it? Well, I think if you attack it head-on, what you're probably going to find is that people are going to resist and they're going to defend it. It's a bit like when big government pushes too hard. I just done a podcast with somebody who's, sorry, excuse my digressions here, but I quite like a digression. I just done a podcast with Monica Smit and Monica Smit, got, did 23 days in solitary confinement in an Australian prison cell because this punishment for resisting all the kind of vaccine mandates. And she was describing what it was like in the the state of Victoria, which, of all the places in the West, had about the most draconian COVID regulations anywhere in the world. And she said that there was a protest outside the state parliament in Victoria, in Melbourne. Which attracted 600,000 people, 600,000 people. The population, I think, of Victoria is 6 million. So when you discount all the people who were too young to attend or too old to attend, she reckoned it was probably about half of the state was up in arms against it. Because Dan Andrews, their wicked premier, pushed too hard. And I think it's the same where the devil knows this. The devil's a clever fellow. So he knows that if you want to undermine Christianity, you don't attack it head on. What you do is you make it this slightly embarrassing, uncool thing. And you infiltrate the church by making sure that you get priests, clerics, who don't really, they think that Christianity needs updating. You know, that Bible stuff, it's so old-fashioned. It's just like, they're not really. They're not very progressive on issues like homosexuality. And really, you need kind of gay marriage to, because the Bible was, happened a long time ago, and we've moved on since then. And also, you need, instead of psalms and robust hymns written by Charles Wesley with Jolly Tunes, what you need is people strumming guitars. And you need to rewrite the service book. So instead of having the old liturgy with its robust, sonorous, and beautiful language. You replace it with this touchy-feely, limp, toe rag, limp dishcloth stuff that's designed to make you feel awkward and embarrassed and to take you away from the numinous, from the spiritual side of things, which is the only side that really eats. In fact, what you do is you keep the religion, but you remove God. You remove the key element. And one of the things that's really excited me about my sort of discovery or rediscovery of Christianity is to realize that the supernatural element, the element which has largely been written out of Christianity in our secular culture, is the stuff that really matters. Because God is real. God created the Earth. I mean, despite what we're taught at schools, we're taught evolutionary theory is evolutionary fact. And it just doesn't stand up when you look into it. So my journey of faith has been rediscovering that God is real, that angels are real. Two of my followers, whatever we want to call them, have seen angels. I know demons are real. There's a friend of mine who can actually see the demons feeding off people. They harvest our emotional energy. Once you understand that this earthly world, the materium, is merely a kind of Earth-bound reflection of what is happening above in the spiritual realm, Only then do you really understand the nature of reality. Can I, I agree on that? When I talk to atheists, I say, I wish I had your faith to believe in nothing. When you see the complexity of the world. Yeah, that's a good one. But can you, I'm assuming that when you left school, you kind of left that behind. I'm hearing kind of your faith as in prayer, that ritual was part of the education, but when you finish education, you left that behind, or did you keep some of that? More or less, more or less. I had an interesting period where, when I had children. And every parent goes through this, how do you get your child into a school that is not totally shit, that is not going to break the bank. So in the early days, most of us, can't afford private education for our children. I mean, I did go private later on, but by various means, you know, sort of bursaries and helpful relatives and things like that. But you think, okay, well, got to get them into it, ideally a church. I can't do a Catholic school, because I'm not a Catholic, but Church of England Primary. And quite a lot of Church of England Primary schools know they've got you by the balls. They know that this is a way of enforcing church attendance among parents. So then it came down to what? Most churches are really grim places. And I mean, talking back then, the modern equivalent of talking about Zelensky and climate change, that they've got all these values which have nothing to do with Christianity. So you think, well, and some of them have really long services as well, really, really boring services. Luckily, we had family connections, traditions with a fantastic church called Chelsea Old Church on the embankment. It was Thomas Moore's church, I think. So lots of people have worshipped there. And it had a really good vicar called Peter Elvey. And Peter Elvey and his marvellous assistant, Susan Gaskell, who was this, she liked to sort of have a glass of champagne at 11 in the morning and with a few cigarettes. She was proper old school. And the congregation was really quite pucker. And this appealed to my snobbery apart from anything else. And I like the fact this is an old church. And I think it used the Book of Common Prayer, I think. But they had this great children's service. And in the middle of the service, they had a really good dressing up box. And if you were lucky, your children would be selected to act out whatever the day's scripture, what the day's reading was. And I started taking part in organizing this. And sometimes I would do some of the quizzes where you'd quiz the children on what been said in the story, and testing them, and throwing mini Mars bars to the child who got it. So I quite liked this. I didn't become a God-botherer. So this was your first, what, this may be 15 years ago, whatever. This is your first step back into the church, is it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly, exactly. But it reminded me of some of the things that are good about the church. But more, Do you know what, at the time I justified this to myself more on, I remember going back to my school, back to Malvern, and talking to one of the few staff that remained from my period there. He was a history teacher, and he was describing to me how children would come up, would start at, 13 year olds would arrive at the school, and none of them would know basic things like the biblical stories, which I think are one of the bedrocks of our culture. And this really matters to me. I mean, regardless of what you think about the spiritual element, we are a Christian country. Our literature, for example, which is possibly our greatest artistic speciality, if you like. Our literature is steeped in religious learning. I mean, I studied The Dream of the Rude. Anglo-Saxon poetry is all about Christ and the cross and stuff. And then you go through to Chaucer and Shakespeare and so on. Milton, obviously. They all have an understanding, they all write on the assumption that their audience knows things like the water into wine and all the stories. And I found it shocking that I was living in a world where this stuff had been written out of our history. Probably the generation after mine is the first generation in a thousand or more years that doesn't understand the basics of the Bible. And that was shocking. So I saw it as a cultural thing. I thought it was part of my children's education, number one. And probably also at the time, I believed something which I do not believe now. I thought that the great clash of, the great war, if you like, was between Christianity and fundamentalist Islam. I didn't realize that almost all alleged Muslim attacks are actually false flag operations masterminded by the dark side. So I thought, it's Lord of the Rings time. There is evil out there, and we can see what the evil looks like. And we've got to know what side we're on. We're on the side of Judeo-Christian culture, as I would have called it at the time. So I saw it as a cultural thing rather than as a spiritual thing. So there came a point, I want to pick up on that, cultural Christianity near the end, because it's something I've been pondering about a lot, listening to a lot of commentators. But for you, you talked about going back to church. Then was there a wake-up point, or is it gradually, when you begun to realize, actually the Bible is true, God is real, and that then requires a response from me. That came later. So, about just before the fake pandemic craziness, I got very invested in Donald Trump. I thought that Donald Trump was was going to save us. I don't think that anymore. I don't believe there are any white hats. I think they're all compromised. But at the time, I sensed that something was very, very, very wrong with the world. And I think a lot of people who go down the rabbit hole have this traumatic experience in some way, whether it's somebody who's had all their money taken away by the banks, that they thought banks were respectable, or whatever. My own trauma was seeing the leadership of the free world, as I believed it was then, stolen in real time by skulduggery of such breath-taking overtness. It was so blatant. And I saw the entirety of the media, which I'd thought of as a journalist of 30 years, I thought, well, the media's job is to speak truth to power and all the things that Toby Young still believes in. I thought, well, the media will never allow this to happen. They're going to point out all this blatant stuff, ballot papers being discovered by the lorry load, filled in and stuff, and footage from the various counting stations and so on. Anyway, it didn't happen. I saw that the mainstream media, which I trusted to tell the truth, was gaslighting everyone, into believing that actually this was normal and that this senile, incontinent crook in the pay of communist China and stuff, who'd never even gone on the road because his handlers couldn't bear to let such a liability anywhere near the electorate, that somehow this guy Joe Biden had won and worst of all was all the people I'd thought of as my comrades in arms, the people who I thought of as the band of brothers who were going to fight with me in the foxholes alongside me, and I could trust them to guard my flanks because we were all in this one together, that great battle for freedom, for truth, they were participating in this lie. And it was a real, real, OK. I mean, I was desperately naïve. I think most of us are, though. I think because we're subject to this brainwashing process from the earliest stage. Our parents, who know no better, tell us. And then our schools brainwash us. And then the media brainwashes. And the entertainment industry brainwashes us. So it was really, and I went through this period of about three months where, I mean, I almost had a breakdown, actually. And then you start looking into various other things, trying to make sense of the world. And you realize that the whole world is a lie and an illusion, and that there are really, really bad people in charge. And that is the stage where you go from red-pilled to black-pilled. You think, we are totally stuffed. But then, parallel to this, there were various awakening moments. So I started noticing in my podcast that I was starting to talk about that I was, I started mentioning God more, and I was starting to talk about being on a mission from God. And I said it half flippantly. But I began to realize that actually, no, I wasn't saying this flippantly at all. I remember doing a podcast with Jamie Franklin from a Irreverend Pod. Yeah. And Jamie said to me, you know, I've noticed that some of the language you've started using is really quite, you know, religious, Christian in its overtones. And I thought, yeah, you're right, Jamie. What's going on here? There were a few other things, because it didn't... there wasn't a... A saw line moment of sort of blinding realization. It wasn't as simple as that. I remember I did a podcast with Jerry Marzynski, the psychiatrist from Arizona who'd worked a lot with paranoid schizophrenic in high security hospitals and prisons. And it's worth listening to the two podcasts I did with him, but Jerry, unlike most psychiatrists or prison shrinks, who'd prefer to dose their patients with chemical cosh's and just like, you know, turn them into zombies. He actually took the trouble to listen to what they were saying about the voices in their heads. And he discovered there was remarkable consistency in what the voices in the heads were saying was the sort of thing that demons would say, because these things are demons. And he found that the most effective treatment of these demons was the 23rd Psalm. So I thought that's interesting. I get kind of voices in my head, not demonic voices. Well, I mean, I think they are demonic voices. But I think when you say to yourself things like, God, you're such an idiot. I bloody hate you, you bastard, you stupid. I hate you. You really you'd be better off dead. You should die. I hate you. I used to get that all the time, especially after nights drinking, whatever, and stuff. So I started learning the 23rd Psalm, and then I learned Psalm 91. And then I thought, I quite like these Psalms. And what I found was that the Psalms made me based, for want of a better word, the Psalms are a great solace. And it's not without reason, I think, that novice monks, the first job when they joined the monastery was to learn the Psalter. They learned the whole lot, all 150 of the Psalms. The enemy, the forces of darkness, the Russell Brands of this world, they use words. They use words like spells, and the dark side uses spells. Christians too have spells, but we don't call them spells, because that's what they are. They are a form of magic, but they're holy magic. And when you say the Psalms, it gives you... you put on the whole armour of God. They protect you. They protect you from the dark forces. And I mean, There were other moments too. I found that I would have moments where... I didn't have a voice saying, I am God, and thou art my chosen one to go. But I do very much feel, really, really feel, that I've been given a mission, a purpose. And my purpose is twofold. It's one to red pill people, and one to white pill people. And I feel really, really comfortable about that. I don't feel at all embarrassed about talking about Christianity. When I go out into the world, when I'm hunting, for example, and the fact that I go hunting pisses some people off. And I say to them, OK, I wrote a piece about this on Substack once. I say, the world is controlled by Satanists who sacrifice children to the devil, and you're worried about fox hunting. Get real. I think anyone who's against fox hunting is not actually fit to be properly awake, so they don't get it. They don't get that the war on hunting is part of the forces of darkness's war on humanity generally, on us ordinary people. If you saw how communities are bound by rural communities, economically they're bound, socially they're bound, the qualities that they instil in the people who do it, you know, courage, camaraderie, a love of the countryside, you know, we even love the fox for goodness sake, I mean, because the fox is a key part of the deal and we respect the fox, we like the fox, the fox is our quarry, okay, he's our enemy in the sense that he trashes chickens and stuff, and if you've seen the hen house after a fox has been in there, it's carnage. Everything that's going on in the world right now is a war on humanity, and we are created in God's image. And that is why they do it. That is why they divide us in all sorts of ways, whether it's through religious schisms, whether it's through things like animal rights, a division between artificial entirely, I think, created by propaganda, between meat-eaters and non-meat-eaters. Almost every division in society is created by the forces of darkness to divide. I think, left to our own devices, we'd all get on really quite well. We wouldn't have wars. We definitely would not have wars. Wars are all engineered by a tiny, tiny, tiny satanic, class. Where am I going with this? I can't remember what the question was. Actually, on the Psalms, you talk about the Psalms, reading the 23rd Plasms, 91st and others. You've just started a series on the Psalms. Gavin Ashenden, I think, was the second one I watched that. That's intriguing because the only other person, I think I've seen Alistair Williams do, kind of looking at different parts of the Bible. It's something that's frowned upon, as you said, frowned upon in the UK. It's not the American right that where people are fairly open about faith, whether it's real or not. So what led you to actually going through the Psalms and talking about it? Because that's quite a step change. It puts you out there, makes you vulnerable. It's outside your lane, all of that stuff. Yeah. They came about me like bees, which are extinct, even as the fire among the thorns. How could you not respond to language like that? I mean, the language of the liturgy is up there with Shakespeare. It was written about the same period. I mean, I just quoted, I hope accurately, the psalm I'm just learning, which is Psalm 118. The one I've been using is, I started out using the King James versions of the version of Psalm 23, and then just KJV. But then a lot of the psalm translations in KJV borrow quite heavily from Myles Coverdale, who was translating them about 50 or 60 years earlier. And I think there's a greater charm in his translations. And so those are the ones used in the Book of Common Prayer, which were were the psalms I learned at prep school, or the psalms we sang at prep school. And I remember at school. And I was thinking, why? Why are we singing these dirgy, I mean, OK, some of the hymns are bad enough. But the psalms, you didn't really know what the point of them was. They were just, but looking back, I'm glad that I've got these phrases lodged in my head, which I was, it was like having a kind of Proust-Madeleine moment where I came back to learning these psalms and recognizing these familiar phrases which I'd resented singing at school or sort of croaking at school, you know, the fowls of the air and the fishes of the sea, and whatsoever walketh through the paths of the sea, so Lord our governor, Herakles, which is my name, in all the world. There was a point, and I doubt even the head of music, who was also one of the school's benders, who used to molest us, I'm sure was the case in most prep schools. Everyone had a kind of molesty master. I doubt he was much of a Christian, not least because he introduced with relish the alternative service book of the 1970s, that horrible yellow band thing with the horrible modern liturgy. So he was probably part of Satan's mission. But anyway, unwittingly, he inculcated us with the language of Miles Coverdale, which has stayed with me since. The Psalms are as, I mean, I'd love to be able to speak Hebrew and read them in the original Hebrew. But certainly in their translation by Coverdale and the team that put together the King James version. They work as literature. They also work as a form of solace, because what they do is tell you that however bad things may get, God is there for you. They're kind of like an instruction manual. It is better to trust in the Lord than put any confidence in man. It is better to trust in the Lord than put any confidence in princes. I mean, if you learn those two lines, in fact, one of them would do, it'd be a very good manual for living out your life, because you wouldn't be putting your trust in Russell Brand. You wouldn't be putting your trust in Donald Trump. you wouldn't be trusting, you just remind yourself that the most important thing is God. And the better your relationship with God, the better life you have. Because God works his holy magic. I mean, all Christians can testify this. All real Christians know that this stuff is not imaginary, that there are ways that God helps you, that the supernatural, the crazy stuff works. And the Psalms were a daily reminder of this. And so if you can ideally learn them, because you inhabit them more thoroughly than you do when you're reading them. I mean, I have a treasury of poetry in my head as well. I learned a representative poem by pretty much all our great poets. I mean, I don't practice them as much now because I'm too busy reciting the psalms in my head. But when you learn poetry, with your stumbling process by which you memorize these poems and you get it wrong, you actually go through the process the poet went through when he was writing this poem. And in the same way, I think when you learn the psalms, you, well, you inhabit them, and they inhabit you, and that is a lovely thing to have running through you every day. Yeah, because there are numerous times in the Psalms where it says, tell my soul, speak to my soul, and it is a framework. It changes your focus, not only the Psalms, but Proverbs, a guide for living, and whatever you're going through personally, that is what gives you hope, and you're right. If you soak in that, you're infused with that, then that affects what you do. They have direct practical uses as well. For example, Psalm 91, which is a warrior's psalm. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the arrow that flyeth by day, nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness, nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side and ten thousand at thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh thee.". This, I understand, is the prayer recited by the US Marine Corps when they go into action, and probably many other soldiers as well. And it protects you. It protects you. So that's a good psalm to have up your sleeve. You talk about confidence in what the Bible teaches about taking that on and that becomes who you are. I'm curious because when I look at the Church of England and doubt and how that fits, I mean I grew up a pastor's kid, Baptist church, it was certainty, it was absolute, you knew what you believed. Then you look at the Church of England and kind of there's a lot of fear of offending, and I guess doubt becomes a virtue. I'm intrigued with that, where I like the absolute uncertainty that parts of the church bring to the Bible, it is the Word of God, it is true, where The Church of England seems to struggle with that sense of truth. Well, I don't think it's just the Church of England. I think that all the, well certainly, the Roman Catholic Church, certainly the Church of England, probably most churches, have been infiltrated by the forces of darkness. Obviously, as you would. I mean, if you were devil, it would be your key target. The Pope is the anti-Pope. The Pope is definitely batting for the wrong team. So is Welby. And yet, I quite like, I'm quite enjoying the fact at the moment that I am a sort of floating voter in that notionally I'm C of E. But I find much that is good in the Calvinists I speak to and in the Catholics, particularly the Latin mass. And it enables me, I think, to speak to all Christians rather than... I mean, I love the Orthodox Church. You're like, wow, I'd quite like to be an Orthodox monk on Mount Athos. But- We could do that together. That'd be good fun. It'd be fun. It saddens me that there are these- you see it on my telegram channels, that the Baptists and so on, and the Calvinists and whatever, they think that Catholicism isn't really Christianity because they accuse them of worshipping Mary and saying prayers to saints and stuff. And it's a throwback to the emperor Constantine. He never really converted to Christianity. That was just fake. And what he did was he borrowed all the kind of pagan goddesses and you know all this and I'm thinking... God. I don't want to speak for God. But I have a feeling that God is looking at these schisms and going, guys, lighten up, will you? You're all doing pretty much the right thing. I don't believe that he is so picky, that he is saying, well, the Catholics, they are pagans. Look at at the Asherah pole they've got standing in the middle of St. Peter's Square. How can they not? The other thing I've noticed about becoming a Christian, is that the upside is the church, the broad church, the joy you get talking to Christians about Christianity. So the other day I went riding and you're going to be on a horse talking to people for the next couple of hours if you're out on the hack. And some of them are boring, some of them are not. So met these people and two women up from London and I said to one of them. And what's your name and she said I'm called Mariam I said Mariam oh that's an interesting name. It sounds a bit... Ethiopian. She said, I'm not Ethiopian. I'm originally from a Muslim background. I said, all right. Yeah, well, Mariam, yeah, I've heard it a lot. It's sort of the Copts. I kind of like the Coptic church. It's really old. And I didn't mention that they've got the Ark of the Covenant somewhere hidden in Ethiopia. But I said, yeah, I'm really interested in Christianity. It's just, I think, endlessly fascinating. She said, are you? I said, yeah, yeah, yeah. Can't get enough of it. And she said, I was baptized three months ago. And I said, oh, wow. So the whole of the rest of the ride, we had this great talk about God. So that's what I love about Christianity, the fellowship. [The downside is that you get lots of really annoying Christians who do things like telling you, hinting that you're not really Christian enough, or correcting you on sort of doctrinal inaccuracies. I've got views that I know are heretical. I'm not going to talk about them here, because I don't want to get stick from... But look, I think that you listen to the the words of Jesus. You follow the Psalms. You've got the creed to keep you on the straight and narrow. Go to church if you can. Take communion if you can. We're all on the same team, I think. Can I pick up, just to finish on that cultural Christianity, which has been in my head for a couple of years watching different commentators, politicians, probably more stateside, they kind of, they yearn for those days whenever Christianity gave a moral framework, I guess, and they seem to want the idea that Christianity brings without having the person of Christ. And I enjoy watching conservative commentators struggle with that, that they want this but they don't. And it's like something is so attractive, it looks good, but yet that relationship with Jesus, that actually calls them back. Yeah, I mean, didn't Tony Blair claim to be a Catholic once? I have my suspicions about other conservative MPs who go big on their Catholicism. In fact, I have my severe doubts about any of the MPs who play the Christian card, because I think they're all basically working for the other side. I think what we saw during... I hate to use the word COVID like it was real. But what we saw was the puppets of Satan just doing the devil's work to the people, trusting people who thought these were their elected representatives. I don't think that I, it's not for me to judge, but I don't think there are many MPs, any politicians anywhere in the world who are not going to burn in hell. But what does that, because I know, I think Thierry Baudet was with you a while ago, and he talked about the Natcon conference. And he was fairly dismissive of that actually being conservative and not only the big issues, but actually what I took away looking at some of those was that Christianity no longer plays a part in those circles, apart from lip service. Is that a fair enough assessment or disagree with that? Totally. Yeah, I mean, Natcon is definitely another example of the devil at work. Yeah, yeah. I mean, name me an MP, a politician of any hue, who talks about real Christianity, as opposed to Erzat's Christianity. Yeah, they might like the values. None of those values involve actually believing in God. I mean, can you imagine if you asked any of them about how the world was made? All they'd be doing is thinking of the headline that X believes that, lol, the world was made by God. Come on, everyone knows that evolution is how. was Big Bang and then there was this apparently Charles Darwin tells us, you know, one of the greatest Britons as named by the BBC, so it must be true, They wouldn't go there, they just couldn't cope with it. Oh a hundred percent. I had Eric Metaxas on once talking about the death of atheism and it's a phenomenal book going into the none of this can be luck and chance, none of it, the complexity of, the world. Just a quick question, what about push back on you because you're not supposed to have a series on the Psalms on your channel, that's just not done here. Kind of what pushback, have people say, James, get back to discussing COVID the last three years. Oh, it's no, no, do you know what? I don't get much of that. I get more, I get the occasional commentator, who has clearly been following me for a very long time in my, in my normie phase where I believed in things like the war on terror stuff. And they're looking at me now and thinking this guy has lost the plot. He thinks it's a conspiracy and what's more, he thinks the devil's kind of running the show. He needs to, you know, hasn't he read any history books? Surely he knows that it was the North Vietnamese that started the Vietnam War, you know, with their... Torpedo boat attack on the U.S. fleet. So their reference points are reference points of those trapped in the beast system. All the history books are written for the devil's party. All the politicians work for the devil's party. It's everywhere. Look, it says in 2 Corinthians, doesn't it? That Satan is the god of this world. And unless and until you understand that. You are missing the biggest piece in the jigsaw. You're never going to get it. You can be right about vaccines, that they're bad for you, and you can be right about the importance of bodily autonomy and stuff. You stand up all these principal things, but until you understand that this is a war between good and evil, which has taken place since the beginning of our time on this earth, you really don't get it at all, frankly. 100 percent. That is the piece of the jigsaw people have to get to understand everything else. James, I appreciate you coming on. As I said at the beginning, I've been wanting to have this conversation with you and unpacking, so thanks so much for coming along and sharing your story with us. Well thank you very much, I really enjoyed talking about it, part of my holy mission from God. Thank you, I think the last guest you had on the Delingpod, just for the viewers and listeners that haven't seen, I think was Abi Roberts. And we had her on after she got arrested for swearing, and Abi is a force of nature, so if people want to catch the latest one, it is Abi Roberts on the Delingpod, everywhere and anywhere. So, James, thanks so much for your time today. Thanks, Peter.
The first episode of our summer mini series focused on understanding persecution from a Biblical and Theological perspective. In this episode, Jared shares about Jesus' promise that there will be persecution in John 15-16. Egypt's Country Profile describes what persecution looks like for Egyptian Christians. Read it at https://www.opendoorscanada.org/worldwatchlist/country-profiles/egypt/ Download a copy of the 2023 World Watch List at https://www.opendoorscanada.org/worldwatchlist/ Find more resources to pray for the persecuted church at https://www.opendoorscanada.org/get-involved/pray/ Get in touch with us at podcast@odcan.org Subscribe to the #WorldWatchWeekly podcast via iTunes, PodBean, Spotify, or YouTube. In Jared discussion of the history of Christianity in Egypt, here are the resources that he found helpful: Sedra, Paul. “Class cleavages and ethnic conflict: Coptic Christian communities in modern Egyptian politics” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 10 no.2. (April 2007). 219-235. Meinardus, Otto F.A. “A Brief Introduction to the History and Theology of the Coptic Church” St. Vladimir's Seminary Quarterly 6, no. 3 (1962) p. 139-155 Chaillot, Christine. “The Life and Situation of the Coptic Orthodox Church Today.” Studies in World Christianity 15 pt.3. (2009). 199-216. Zeidan, David. “The Copts - equal, protected, or persecuted? The impact of Islamization on Muslim-Christian relations in modern Egypt.” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, 10, no.1. (April 2007). 53-67
The Catholic role in the coronation and among the Copts Syrian President Bashar Assad, Iran and the Arab bloc Victory Day in Russia Millions of dollars for the Bidens, from China And a panel discussion on illegal immigration Links [00:45] Catholics and Copts (10 minutes) Jerusalem in Prophecy [10:27] Syria and the Arab League (11 minutes) The King of the South [21:54] VE Day in Russia (10 minutes) The Prophesied ‘Prince of Russia' “Putin Orders Reservists to Training Camps, Triggering Fears of New Mobilization” [31:37] Bidens and China (8 minutes) America Under Attack [39:26] PANEL: Illegal Immigration (17 minutes) “Where America's Race Riots Are Leading”
We are taking a break from the Middle Ages to look to the beaches of North Africa.
Month Dedicated to the Holy Family | Word and Songs Podcast with Sr. Lines Salazar, fsp The month of February is dedicated to the Holy Family. This special devotion, which proposes the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph as the model of the virtue of all Christian households began in the 17th century. It started almost simultaneously in Canada and France: the Association of the Holy Family was founded in Montreal in 1663, and by the Daughters of the Holy Family in Paris in 1674. This devotion soon spread and in 1893, Leo XIII expressed his approval of a feast under this title and himself composed part of the Office. On account of the flight into Egypt, this feast has been observed by the Copts from early times. The feast was welcomed by succeeding Pontiffs/ as an efficacious means for bringing home to the Christian people the example of the Holy Family at Nazareth, and by the restoration of the true spirit of family life, stemming, in some measure, the evils of present-day society. Honoring the Holy Family beginning during its traditional month, February, is a major way to restore the family to its truly God-given place. We easily remember that October is the month dedicated to the Holy Rosary; May is the month dedicated to our Blessed Mother; and June is to the Sacred Heart. Monthly dedications don't stop there. But for a number of recent years, we have let slip such months as February. But how much do we remember or hear that February is a month dedicated to the Holy Family? Friends, this February we should restore that devotion. It would both honor the Holy Family and at the same time becomes a reminder to strengthen our own family life. After all, the Church has taught how the Holy Family is the model, the example, for all families. As St. John Paul II said, “the family of Nazareth is a model for every home.” Honoring the Holy Family throughout February — and continuing beyond the month — and beginning to imitate them in our own families, we will, as John Paul II told us in his Letter to Families, “come to appreciate the grandeur of the goods of marriage, family and life; so that [we] will come to appreciate the great danger which follows when these realities are not respected, or when the supreme values which lie at the foundation of the family and of human dignity are disregarded.”
In response to this Caity Weaver New York Times Magazine article, beloved Patreon backer Scott Wachter makes the Gaming Hut a very quiet place indeed by asking us for the scenario possibilities of anechoic chambers. Estimable backer Ray Slakinski beckons us to the Northern Ontario location of the Horror Hut to discuss the Wilno vampire. […]
Herod the Great may have pushed Joseph, Mary, and Jesus into exile in Egypt, but tradition says it was Mark the Evangelist who brought Christianity to the nation. Learn how Egypt moved from worshipping gods to worshipping God during the final centuries of the Roman Empire. Episode links: To order signed copies of Amanda's books, visit https://amandahopehaley.square.site/ For help making your podcast sound as good as this one, contact Nicholas Allaire at nicholasjallaire@gmail.com
This week, Nermien talks to fellow podcaster Tasoni Laura. Tasoni is the founder of the blog Coptic Dad & Mom and the podcast Raising Up Copts and the author of the children's book, The Story of the Copts. Tasoni shares her experience growing up in one of the only Coptic Christian families for miles in central Virginia and how this experience motivated her to help other Coptic Christians grow in their faith and thrive in Western society.
In this episode, Nermien interviews Nader Anise, the Director of the American Lawyers Public Image Association, and the founder of the Coptic Chamber of Commerce and Global Coptic Day. The two talk about Coptic identity, the early presence of Copts in the U.S., and how they imagine future generations of Copts can uphold the Coptic heritage and faith!
Nermien Riad interviews Dallas-based painter and visual artist Marian Mekhail, where they discuss Marian's solo exhibition "Maktub," how Marian's Coptic heritage influences her art, and encourage Copts everywhere to follow their God-given talents.
What on earth is the Coptic Church? Most of us only know about the 21 Coptic martyrs of 2015, or about the Coptic Church rejecting the Council of Chalcedon in 451. But who are the Copts? Why did they part ways with the rest of the Church? And has persecution prompted us to reconsider if we're closer to them than we think? This week, Onsi (our resident Copt!) gets quizzed by Rhys and Colin.NOTE: most books below are linked via Bookshop.org. Any purchases you make via these links give The Davenant Institute a 10% commission, and support local bookshops against chainstores/Amazon.Currently ReadingOnsi: Three Arabaic Treatises on Aristotle's Rhetoric: The Commentaries of Al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes Colin: his own tweets Rhys: The Warden by Anthony TrollopeTexts Discussed"Unity Across the Chalcedonian Divide" by Lukas StockThe 21: A Journey Into the Land of Coptic Martyrs by Martin Mosebach"Cyril of Alexandria, letter to John of Antioch (Formula of Reunion)" by Cyril of AlexandriaSpotlightSubscribe to read the Winter 2022 edition of Ad Fontes
Happy new year! Or is it? It depends on which calendar you're using. Like what you hear? Become a patron of the arts for as little as $2 a month! Or buy the book or some merch. Hang out with your fellow Brainiacs. Reach out and touch Moxie on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Music: Kevin MacLeod, David Fesliyan. Reach out and touch Moxie on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Links to all the research resources are on the website. On Monday this December 30th past, I clocked in at my retail jobs, put on my headset, and played the morning messages. There was one from my manager telling us what to expect in terms of sales volume that day and one from corporate welcoming us to the first day of 2020. The didn't get their dates mixed up. December 30th 2019 was the first day of 2020 in a way that once crashed Twitter for hours. My name… When we think of the calendar, we think of it as singular and exclusive. “The” calendar. Sure, there were other calendars, but those were for old-timey people in old-timey times. If you've ever listened to the show before, you'll know I'm about to disabuse you of that notion; it's kinda my schtick. The calendar we think of as the end all and be all of organizing time into little squares is the Gregorian calendar, but it's just one of many that have been used and still are used today. For example, at the time of this recording, it's currently the 27th day of the month of Tevet in the year 5782 for those who follow the Hebrew calendar. The Hebrew calendar, also known as the Jewish calendar, was originally created before the year 10 CE. It first used lunar months, which will surprise no one who has had to google when Passover or Easter are each year. A standard Jewish year has twelve months; six twenty-nine-day months, and six thirty-day months, for a total of 354 days. This is because the months follow the lunar orbit, which is on average 29.5 days. Due to variations in the Jewish calendar, the year could also be 353 or 355 days. It also used standard calendar years, but these two methods don't line up perfectly, and this posed a problem. As time went on, the shorter lunar calendar would result in holy days shifting forward in time from year to year. That simply wouldn't do as certain holidays have to be celebrated in a certain season, like Passover in the spring, Tu B'Shevat, the Jewish 'New Year for Trees,' which needs to fall around the time that trees in the Middle East come out of their winter dormancy, or Sukkot, the festival that calls adherents to build and live in huts in their yard to commemorate Isrealites taking shelter in the wilderness, which is meant to fall in autumn. So a thirteenth month had to be added every 3 to 4 years in order to make up for the difference. Such a year is called a shanah meuberet ("pregnant year") in Hebrew; in English we call it a leap year, and it makes up all the lunar calendar's lost days. The month is added to Adar, the last of the twelve months. On leap years we observe two Adars — Adar I and Adar II. Today, the Hebrew calendar is used primarily to determine the dates for Jewish religious holidays and to select appropriate religious readings for the day. Similar in usage is the Hijri calendar, or Islamic calendar. It's based on lunar phases, using a system of 12 months and either 354 or 355 days every year. The first Islamic year was 622 CE when the prophet Muhammad emigrated from Mecca to Medina, meaning today is the Jumada I 28, 1443 . The Hijri calendar is used to identify Islamic holidays and festivals. The Islamic New Year marks the journey of the prophet Muhammad from Mecca to Medina. However, the occasion and the sacred month of Muharram are observed differently by the two largest branches of Islam, Shiite and Sunni. Shiite pilgrims journey to their holiest sites to commemorate a seventh-century battle, while Sunnis fast to celebrate the victory of Moses over an Egyptian pharaoh. Also known as the Persian calendar, it's the official calendar used in Iran and Afghanistan, and it's the most accurate calendar system going, but more on that later. Further east you'll encounter the Buddhist calendar, which is used throughout Southeast Asia. This uses the sidereal year, the time it takes Earth to orbit the sun, as the solar year. Like other systems, the calendar does not try to stay in sync with this time measurement, but unlike the others, no extra days or months have been added, so the Buddhist calendar is slowly moving out of alignment at a pace of around one day every century. Today, the traditional Buddhist lunisolar calendar is used mainly for Theravada Buddhist festivals, and no longer has the official calendar status anywhere. The Thai Buddhist Era, a renumbered Gregorian calendar, is the official calendar in Thailand. The Buddhist calendar is based on an older Hindu calendar, of which there are actually three -- Vikram Samvat, Shaka Samvat, and Kali Yuga. The Vikram Samvat is used in Nepal and some Indian states, and uses lunar months and the sidereal year to track time. Sidereal means based on fixed stars and constellations, rather than celestial things on the move, like planets. The Shaka Samvat, used officially in India and by Hindus in Java and Bali, has months based around the tropical zodiac signs rather than the sidereal year. The Kali Yuga is a different sort of calendar altogether. It meters out the last of the four stages (or ages or yugas) the world goes through as part of a 'cycle of yugas' (i.e. mahayuga) described in the Sanskrit scriptures. The Kali Yuga, began at midnight (00:00) on 18 February 3102 BCE, is the final cycle within the 4-cycle Yuga era. The first cycle is the age of truth and perfection, the second cycle is the age of emperors and war, the third stage is the age of disease and discontent, and the third stage (the Kali Yuga) is the age of ignorance and darkness. If you're worried because you already missed 5,000 years of the Yuga, don't fret; you have upwards of 467,000 years left. You've probably heard of Chinese New Year, so you won't be surprised that there is a Chinese calendar. According to this system, each month begins on the day when the moon is in the "new moon" phase. The beginning of a new year is also marked by the position of the moon and occurs when the moon is midway between the winter solstice and spring equinox. China uses the Gregorian calendar for official things, but still uses the Chinese calendar is used to celebrate holidays. You might be surprised to learn about the Ethiopian calendar. The Ethiopian calendar is quite similar to the Julian calendar, the predecessor to the Gregorian calendar most countries use today. Like the other calendars we've discussed, it's intertwined with the faith of the people. The first day of the week for instance, called Ehud, translates as ‘the first day‘ in the ancient Ge'ez language, the liturgical language of the Ethiopian church. It is meant to show that Ehud is the first day on which God started creating the heavens and the earth. The calendar system starts with the idea that Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden for seven years before they were banished for 5,500 for their sins. Both the Gregorian and Ethiopian use the birthdate of Jesus Christ as a starting point, what Eddie Izzard called “the big BC/AD change-over,” though the Ethiopian Orthodox Church believes Jesus was born 7 years earlier than the Gregorian calendar says. The Ethiopian calendar has 13 months in a year, 12 of which have 30 days. The last month, called Pagume, has five days, and six days in a leap year. Not only do the months have names, so do the years. The first year after an Ethiopian leap year is named the John year, and is followed by the Matthew year, then Mark, then Luke. Sept. 11 marks the day of the new year in Ethiopia. By this time, the lengthy rainy season has come to a close, leaving behind a countryside flourishing in yellow daisies. That's fitting because Enkutatash in Amharic, the native language of Ethiopia, translates to “gift of jewels.” To celebrate New Year's, Ethiopians sing songs unique to the day and exchange bouquets of flowers. Of course, there is plenty of eating and drinking, too. So what about this Gregorian calendar I keep mentioning? The Gregorian calendar was created in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII, who made some changes to the previously used Julian calendar. Okay, so what was the Julian calendar? It should shock no one that the Julian calendar was ordered by and named after Julius Caesar. By the 40s BCE the Roman civic calendar was three months ahead of the solar calendar. The Alexandrian astronomer Sosigenes, introduced the Egyptian solar calendar, taking the length of the solar year as 365 1/4 days. The year was divided into 12 months, all of which had either 30 or 31 days except February, which contained 28 days in common (365 day) years and 29 in every fourth year (a leap year, of 366 days). That 29th day wasn't February 29th, it was February 23rd a second time. What a mess that would make, though that conflagration of confusion probably paled in comparison to to what Caesar did to align the civic and solar calendars--he added days to the year 46 BCE, so that it contained 445 days. Unsurprisingly when you try to make such a large change to the daily lives of so many people in the days before electronic communication, it took over fifty years to get everybody on board. Sosigenes had overestimated the length of the year by 11 minutes 14 seconds. 11 minutes doesn't mean much in a given year, but after, say, 1500 years, the seasons on your calendar no longer line up with the seasons of reality. That matters when your most important holy day needs to happen at a certain time of year. Enter Pope Gregory XIII, who wanted to stop Easter, which had been celebrated on March 21, from drifting any farther away from the spring Equinox. Aloysus Lilius, the Italian scientist who developed the system Pope Gregory would unveil in 1582, realized that the addition of so many February 23rds made the calendar slightly too long. He devised a variation that adds leap days in years divisible by four, unless the year is also divisible by 100. If the year is also divisible by 400, a leap day is added regardless. [OS crash noise] Sorry about that. While this formula may sound confusing, it did resolve the lag created by Caesar's earlier scheme—almost; Lilius' system was still off by 26 seconds. As a result, in the years since Gregory introduced his calendar in 1582, a discrepancy of several hours has arisen. We have some time before that really becomes an issue for the average person. It will take until the year 4909 before the Gregorian calendar will be a full day ahead of the solar year. Maths aside, not everyone was keen on Pope Gregory's plan. His proclamation was what's known as a papal bull, an order that applies to the church by has no authority over non-Catholics. That being said, the new calendar was quickly adopted by predominantly Catholic countries like Spain, Portugal and Italy, major world players at the time. European Protestants, however, feared it was an attempt to silence their movement, a conspiracy to keep them down. Maybe by making it hard to remember when meetings and protests were supposed to be, I'm not sure. It wasn't until 1700 that Protestant Germany switched over, and England held out until 1752. Those transitions didn't go smooth. English citizens didn't take kindly to the act of Parliament that advanced their calendars from September 2 to September 14, overnight. There are apocryphal tales of rioters in the streets, demanding that the government “give us our 11 days.” However, most historians now believe that these protests never occurred or were greatly exaggerated. Some countries took even longer than Britain--the USSR didn't convert to the Gregorian calendar until 1918, even later than countries like Egypt and Japan. On the other side of the Atlantic from the British non-protests, meanwhile, Benjamin Franklin welcomed the change, writing, “It is pleasant for an old man to be able to go to bed on September 2, and not have to get up until September 14.” When Julius Caesar's reformed the calendar in 46 B.C., he established January 1 as the first of the year. During the Middle Ages, however, European countries replaced it with days that carried greater religious significance, such as December 25 and March 25 (the Feast of the Annunciation). I didn't google that one. After my mom listens to this episode, she'll send me a gloriously incorrect speech-to-text message explaining it. Different calendars mean different New Years days even now, and the ways in which people celebrate as as splendidly diverse as the people themselves. The Coptic Egyptian Church celebrates the Coptic New Year (Anno Martyrus), or year of the martyrs on 11th of September. The Coptic calendar is the ancient Egyptian one of twelve 30-day months plus a "small" five-day month—six-day in a leap year. The months retain their ancient Egyptian names which denote the gods and godesses of the Egyptians, and the year's three seasons, the inundation, cultivation, and harvest, are related to the Nile and the annual agricultural cycle. But the Copts chose the year 284AD to mark the beginning of the calendar, since this year saw the seating of Diocletian as Rome's emperor and the consequent martyrdom of thousands upon thousands of Egypt's Christians. Apart from the Church's celebration, Copts celebrate the New Year by eating red dates, which are in season, believing the red symbolises the martyrs' blood and the white date heart the martyrs' pure hearts. Also, dates are delicious. Bonus fact: You know that guy, Pope Francis? He's not actually the pope. The pope's proper title, according to the Vatican's website, is Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Primate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province, Sovereign of the State of Vatican City, Servant of the Servants of God. 'Pope' comes from the Italian 'papa.' Francis is the Sancta Papa, the Holy Father. The title of pope belongs to the head of the Coptic church. So if anyone uses the rhetorical question “Is the pope Catholic?” to imply a ‘yes' answer, you have my authorization to bring the conversation to a screeching halt by saying “No. No, he's not.” Double points if you simply walk away without explaining yourself.
How are ancient Egypt and Ireland connected? Legends of the Seven Desert Monks and the Copts, ancient DNA, Atlantis, and more!
Tonight we concluded Hypothesis 12, again considering the importance of parents raising their children not only to love virtue but also to be willing to sacrifice all for it and for Christ. We considered three stories where mothers had to set aside their natural sensibilities and desire to protect their children from harm. In each case, the mothers act out of their faith to encourage their sons to remain steadfast. We see in and through the stories that they are not only bound by blood but, in a deeper way, by faith. The mothers seek to protect the eternal life of their sons and are willing to sacrifice themselves and their own needs for that end. In doing so they become inheritors of the glory that belongs to the martyrs. Their sons will intercede on their behalf because of the virtue and support that they showed. These are not easy stories to consider and one is compelled to set aside one's judgment and to listen to them with faith. We are to see these martyrs and those who support them as living icons of the gospel. In this they will be the most compelling witnesses - those who counted all in this world as refuse compared to the surpassing worth of knowing and gaining Christ. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:30:55 Eric Williams: “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.” - GK Chesterton 00:39:05 Anthony: I am friends with several Copts in Hampton VA. Beautiful people, understand suffering. Same with my Iraqi Syriac Catholic friends. 00:42:30 Anthony: Sometimes I wonder what is the dividing line between rigorous ascetic practice ans insanity. Is love the difference? 00:54:33 Ambrose Little: Discernment of the will of God. Union of the will with God, so that the actions flow out of that union. So yes, love in that sense, in that God is love and union with His will is union with Love. There is some danger, it seems, in that persons may seek out the actions for themselves, as a kind of emulation of holiness, when what makes such acts holy is the heart in tune with God's. 00:55:22 Anthony: Thank you, Ambrose 01:12:45 Carol Nypaver: What is that song called? 01:12:54 Fr. Miron Kerul-Kmec Jr.: billy joel lullabye 01:13:06 Carol Nypaver: Thank you! 01:13:12 renwitter: Its the one that begins “Goodnight my Angel" 01:15:23 Fr. Miron Kerul-Kmec Jr.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjSix58CXQQ 01:16:54 renwitter: The book is actually remarkably well adapted in the film. Very accurate. 01:26:32 Ann Grimak: Thank you so much Father 01:27:14 Rachel: Thank you
A special guest comes to Raising Up Copts! Sherry Ibrahim has been homeschooling her three boys for four years now. She joins us to tell us what made helped her and her husband make that decision for their family and tips for families considering homeschooling their own kids.You can find more at raisingupcopts.com and reach us at raisingupcopts@gmail.com
A special guest comes to Raising Up Copts! Sherry Ibrahim has been homeschooling her three boys for four years now. She joins us to tell us what made helped her and her husband make that decision for their family and tips for families considering homeschooling their own kids.You can find more at raisingupcopts.com and reach us at raisingupcopts@gmail.com
For Free Zoom Lessons RSVP and click the following website: www.walkingtheholyland.com Episode 48 Israel's Diverse Population Total 9.1 Million 79 % Jewish 17% Muslim 2% Christians 2% Mosaic of religions – Bahai – Druze – Samartins etc Secular Jew They hold on to their identity as a Jewish culture mixed in with modern society, without the faith of their ancestors. Jews who partake in modern secular society and are not religious Makeup over 40% of the Jewish population. Ultra-Orthodox Jew Jews that are pro-religious and emphasize studying the Torah and Talmud. Called in Hebrew Haredi Jews, they regard themselves as the most religiously authentic group of Jews. (13% of Israel's population) They have a high birth rate, the Haredi population is growing rapidly Some of them do not recognize the State of Israel as legitimate and do not join the IDF. They mostly are located in the following Four religious cities in Israel. Safed, Jerusalem, Hebron and Tibereas. National Religious Jew Recognize the modern state as a legitimate entity yet still desire for Israel to become a religious state. is an ideology that combines Zionism and Orthodox Judaism. the two main ultra-Orthodox parties in the parliament are the Sephardic Shas Party and United Torah Judaism. Immigrant Jews Jews from all over the world who made Aliyah to Israel, 37% of the population. Aliyah is the immigration of Jews from all over the world to the modern State of Israel. Also defined as "the act of going up"—that is, towards Jerusalem—"making aliyah" by moving to the Land of Israel. Palestinian Jew Jews that lived in the land before the foundation of the State of Israel and speak Arabic fluently. After the establishment of Israel in 1948, the Jews of Mandatory Palestine became Israeli citizens, and the term "Palestinian Jews" has largely fallen into disuse and is somewhat defunct, in favor of the term Israeli Jews. Muslims Population Arab Muslim 17% of the population in Israel. Sunni Muslim is by far the largest branch of Islam, followed by almost 90% of the world's Muslims. Its name comes from the word Sunnah, referring to the behaviour of Muhammad or in others words following the directions of the profit, and According to Sunni traditions, Muhammad designated Abu Bakr as his successor (the first caliph). But in contrasts the Shiaa view is different , which holds that Muhammad announced his son-in-law and cousin Ali ibn Abi Talib as his successor and according to shiaa view that the successor should be from the family and blood line of Mouhamad and not through his successors like the chaliph Arab Israelis Arabs who own an Israeli ID. Most self-designate themselves as Palestinians by nationality and Israeli by citizenship, while others prefer “Israeli Arab.” This name refers to the fact that after the Nakba, these are the Palestinians that remained within Israel's 1948 borders. Many have family ties to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as well as to Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. The Arabs living in East Jerusalem and the Druze in the Golan Heights, occupied by Israel in the Six-Day War of 1967 and later annexed, were offered Israeli citizenship, but most have refused, not wanting to recognize Israel's claim to sovereignty. They became permanent residents instead. They have the right to apply for citizenship, are entitled to municipal services and have municipal voting rights. Minorities in Israel Arab Christian less than 2% Around 175,000 Arab Christians live in Israel. They are from a variety of denominational back- grounds such as Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Melchite, Anglican, and others. Some 42% of all Christians are affiliated with the Melkite Greek Church, and 30% with the Orthodox Church; smaller numbers are split between Latin Rite Catholics with 13% of Christians, we have Less than 10,000 Maronites lives in Israel belongs to the Maronite Catholic Church, who reside in Israel and some of whom self-identify as Arameans. 1,000 Assyrians belongs to the Assyrian Churches, also known as Arameans or Chaldeans are an ethnic group indigenous to the Middle East. They are speakers of the Aramaic branch of Semitic languages. Coptic community of around 1,000 Copts, Coptic Christians trace their founding to the apostle St. Mark. Tradition holds that Mark brought Christianity to Egypt and founded the Coptic church during the first century. It is one of the oldest Christian churches in the Middle East and was the first founded in Africa. We have small branches of Protestants, evangelical Christian churches mostly Baptist denomination. Armenians Part of the Armenian Diaspora, around 400 Armenian families live in the Armenian quarter of the Old City and 10,000 in Israel. Other minorities Such as: Bedouin are nomadic Arab Tribes who have historically inhabited the desert regions in the Middle East. followers of Islam. Traditionally they live in tents, or Shakes or even houses the modern ones they used to move with their herds across vast areas of arid land in search of grazing areas. Bedouin society is patrilineal. They are renowned for their hospitality, honesty and fierce independence. 200,000 is the population of the Bedouins. Samaritans Israel's smallest religious minority and own an Israeli ID. 731 Samartains Samaritans claim descent from the tribe of Ephraim and tribe of Manasseh (two sons of Joseph). Assimilated descendant of the Assyrians and residents of the district of Samaria who consider themselves the original Jews and recognize their own version of the Pentateuch plus the book of Joshua. The present-day population has been consistently divided between the West Bank and Israel. Samaritans in the West Bank live in Mount Gerizim area, while those in Israel are concentrated in the city of Holon, just outside Tel Aviv. Druze is a monotheistic and Abrahamic religion based on the teachings of the Fatimid caliph, al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, and Ancient Greek philosophers. An offshoot of Islam whose people have a secret religion and are loyal to the State of Israel. Jethro of Midian is considered an ancestor of the Druze, who revere him as their spiritual founder and chief prophet. 105,000 in population, most in northern Israel.
Welcome to the Instant Trivia podcast episode 29, where we ask the best trivia on the Internet. Round 1. Category: It's "Tea" Time 1: In the 1920s this scandal poured out of Wyoming Teapot Dome. 2: One of the 2 plays with "tea" in their title that earned Tony Awards for their actors in 1954 (1 of) Teahouse of the August Moon and Tea and Sympathy. 3: It's the spicy red fruit of the American wintergreen; a brand of chewing gum is named for it teaberry. 4: Officially, the Disneyland ride often called "The Teacups" is named for this loony fictional festivity the Mad Hatter's tea party. 5: It's a small chest made to hold tea leaves, not golf clubs a tea caddy. Round 2. Category: The History Of The World: Part 1 1: This event on October 8-9, 1871 forced thousands of Illinois residents to flee their homes Chicago Fire. 2: In his last battle, this man defeated Pompey's sons and supporters in 45 B.C. at Munda in Spain Julius Caesar. 3: In 325 A.D. this "Great" leader presided over the Religious Council of Nicaea Constantine. 4: Code-named "Operation Valkyrie", the "July Plot" of 1944 was an attempt to kill this leader Adolf Hitler. 5: The public farewell seen here took place in this year:(Nixon leaving Washington) 1974. Round 3. Category: Panthers And Bobcats 1: Y acts as the only vowel in the name of this wildcat, a bobcat relative lynx. 2: E.T. Seton referred to the "lithe and splended beasthood" of the New World panther with this 2-word name a mountain lion. 3: For the first 9 to 10 days of its life, a bobcat suffers from this ocular disability blindness. 4: When it's black instead of spotted, this cat is often called a panther; there are albino ones, too a leopard. 5: Taxonomists group cats into ones that roar and ones, including bobcats, that do this instead purr. Round 4. Category: Animals In Paradise 1: Solomon talked to this industrious insect that was later allowed into paradise ant. 2: The largest animal in paradise is this biblical one that swallowed a person whole (Jonah's) whale. 3: A bird called the Hoopoe of Bilquis is on the list, Bilqis being a name for the biblical queen of this place Sheba. 4: The ram he sacrificed instead of his son is in the fold Abraham. 5: His mount Al-Buraq was allowed into heaven Muhammad. Round 5. Category: Special Days 1: International Boss' Day Off was proclaimed for this day on which Julius Caesar was offed March 15 (Ides of March). 2: Officially approved by Congress in 2009, National Pi Day is celebrated on this date March 14. 3: I can smell it in the oven--be it white, wheat or sourdough, November 17 is homemade this bread. 4: The Copts celebrate this holiday on January 7, 13 days after we've roasted all our chestnuts Christmas. 5: In Tennessee, Confederate Memorial Day is observed on June 3, the birthday of this confederate president Jefferson Davis. Thanks for listening! Come back tomorrow for more exciting trivia! was here
Servants Ministry at St. Mary, MD Rreflect on our identity as Copts By: Mr. Sam Tadros
Listen as Madona and Laura share some listener responses about how Coptic families celebrate.You can find the Nativity Advent Calendar mentioned on We the Copts: https://www.wethecopts.com/product-page/nativity-advent-calendar
Listen as Madona and Laura share some listener responses about how Coptic families celebrate.You can find the Nativity Advent Calendar mentioned on We the Copts: https://www.wethecopts.com/product-page/nativity-advent-calendar
Welcome to our new podcast Raising Up Copts featuring Madona Lawindy (and me—Laura Michael)!We can't wait to get to know all of you through this and to air out all our concerns about parenting “in the lands of immigration”Our scripture for this week comes from Deuteronomy 6:4-10.Visit our site raisingupcopts.com to see more episodes!
Welcome to our new podcast Raising Up Copts featuring Madona Lawindy (and me—Laura Michael)!We can't wait to get to know all of you through this and to air out all our concerns about parenting “in the lands of immigration”Our scripture for this week comes from Deuteronomy 6:4-10.Visit our site raisingupcopts.com to see more episodes!
This episode rotates around the topic of Coptic immigration to North America. Copts began immigrating to the US as early as the late 1940’s. After 1952, the rate of Coptic immigration from Egypt to Canada and the United States increased. Immigration to Canada outpaced the US until the inauguration of more lenient procedures in 1965. In general, Coptic immigration rose steadily throughout North America, Europe, and Australia in the coming decades. We see a further influx of Copts to the US and Canada after the 2011 revolution in Egypt, fleeing instability and violence there. With hundreds of Coptic Orthodox churches in the United States alone (along with over 90 congregations in Canada), it is estimated that there are over one million Coptic Orthodox Christians in North America. Coptic immigration has so many facets to it and we obviously cannot cover everything in one episode, but we will discuss some important aspects in this episode.Resources: Dr Candace Lukasik: https://thecchp.com/2017/06/25/land-migration-and-memory/ https://publicorthodoxy.org/2018/08/27/modernity-murder-and-coptic-identity/ https://publicorthodoxy.org/2020/02/20/copts-debating-christmas/https://salamamoussa.com/2018/03/17/immigration-and-the-reinvention-of-identity-part-i/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/coptic-church/555515/Dr Michael Akladios Peer-Reviewed“Heteroglossia, Interpretation and the Experiences of Coptic Immigrants from Egypt in North America, 1955-1975,” Histoire Sociale / Social History 53.109 (Fall 2020): [pre-print online].“Navigating Sacred Spaces: Coptic Immigrants in 1960s Toronto,” Left History 21.1 (Fall/Winter 2018): 109-122. Editorials Co-authored with Candace Lukasik,“Debating Christmas Day: Copts, Calendars and the Immigrants’ Church,” Public Orthodoxy, February 20, 2020.“Interview with Michael Akladios: Mundane Transnationalism,” CCHP, November 24, 2019.“Stop Victim-Blaming Egypt’s Copts,” Mada Masr English, November 5, 2018 / “توقفوا عن لوم الضحايا من أقباط مصر,” Mada Masr, November 13, 2018.“Celebrating ‘Ordinary’: The CCHP and the Coptic Immigrant Experience,” Coptic Voice US, October 23, 2018.“Conversations with Egyptian Uber Drivers: Why Emigrate? Why Canada?” Active History, October 2, 2017.“Arab-Canadian Foodscapes and Authenticity,” Active History, May 12, 2016.LinksThe CCHP has facilitated the collection and preservation of letters, photographs, books, magazines, and academic journals documenting the Coptic experience in Canada. The records are available for consultation at the Clara Thomas Archives, York University. https://thecchp.com/archives/The CCHP welcomes submissions of scholarly articles and immigrants’ stories for publication. Please follow the link to find the guidelines and information on how to submit. https://thecchp.com/about/digital-cafe-2/To learn about the transition to Egypt Migrations, visit: https://thecchp.com/2020/09/06/from-cchp-to-egypt-migrations/
Welcome one and all to the Copt Cast, a New Podcast focusing on the struggles that Copts face living in the western world. The Podcast is intended for all Christian Denominations as well as those new to Christianity. However at times there are Episodes that may be more centred around the Coptic People. Today's episode focuses on the Topic of Fasting & Prayer. Hope you enjoy the episode as much as I enjoyed making it ! Feel Free to suggest a topic using our Contact Form : https://forms.gle/iw8VY9sCWXjUDkTN7 As promised here is your kawaii clip of the week featuring a Baby Goat! : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vll33KEoCcc
Welcome one and all to the Copt Cast, a New Podcast focusing on the struggles that Copts face living in the western world. The Podcast is intended for all Christian Denominations as well as those new to Christianity. However at times there are Episodes that may be more centred around the Coptic People. Today's episode focuses on the Topic of Group Prayer. Hope you enjoy the episode as much as I enjoyed making it ! Feel Free to suggest a topic using our Contact Form : https://forms.gle/iw8VY9sCWXjUDkTN7 As promised here is your kawaii clip of the week featuring a Shiba Inu Dog! : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHrcg16PbJ8
Welcome one and all to the Copt Cast, a New Podcast focusing on the struggles that Copts face living in the western world. The Podcast is intended for all Christian Denominations as well as those new to Christianity. However at times there are Episodes that may be more centred around the Coptic People. Today's episode focuses on the Topic of Spiritual Wars. Hope you enjoy the episode as much as I enjoyed making it ! Feel Free to suggest a topic using our Contact Form : https://forms.gle/iw8VY9sCWXjUDkTN7
Welcome one and all to the Copt Cast, a New Podcast focusing on the struggles that Copts face living in the western world. The Podcast is intended for all Christian Denominations as well as those new to Christianity. However at times there are Episodes that may be more centred around the Coptic People. Today's episode focuses on the Topic of Marriage. Hope you enjoy the episode as much as I enjoyed making it ! Feel Free to suggest a topic using our Contact Form : https://forms.gle/iw8VY9sCWXjUDkTN7
Welcome one and all to the Copt Cast, a New Podcast focusing on the struggles that Copts face living in the western world. The Podcast is intended for all Christian Denominations as well as those new to Christianity. However at times there are Episodes that may be more centred around the Coptic People. Today's episode focuses on the Topic of Conversational Prayer. Hope you enjoy the episode as much as I enjoyed making it ! Feel Free to suggest a topic using our Contact Form : https://forms.gle/iw8VY9sCWXjUDkTN7
After disappearing in April 2020, a Coptic Christian high school teacher of English, wife, and mother of three reappeared in a video, now dressed in all-black Islamic attire with her face nearly covered, announcing that she had willingly converted to Islam and rejecting any contact with her family. This incident symbolizes the plight of Copts, Egyptian Christians, which includes forced conversion, attacks on churches, and murder. What does the future hold for this embattled population?
Copts can cause great positive influence to west cultures through sharing their values and traditions. One of the reasons we as copts cannot do this, is retreating in the past and keep complaining about our new lives. In this episode we will have a general introduction to "Copts Connect" podcast and provide our listeners with 5 tips on how to stop complaining about their life and unleash the power of their positive influence in the community.
Mice talked about...miracles! More or less successfully, because making fun of Catholics and Copts was just too tempting... Anyways...miracles! Which ones do you prefer? Recurring miracles, one-time miracles, fake miracles? Our mice are partial to those simple miracles, the real life ones. Hey, did you know M was a 1st hand witness of a real miracle? Whoa...
Kim Kardashian was recently baptized into the Armenian Oriental Church. So, she's a Copt. Actually, no. But she's in full communion with the Copts. I flush it out--Copts, Chalcedon, Kardashians, Kanye.Extended Lightning Segments. Boston, Evander Holyfield's mama, Cure de Ars, more.
Kim Kardashian was recently baptized into the Armenian Oriental Church. So, she's a Copt. Actually, no. But she's in full communion with the Copts. I flush it out--Copts, Chalcedon, Kardashians, Kanye. Extended Lightning Segments. Boston, Evander Holyfield's mama, Cure de Ars, more.
Title: History Hates Hollywood: Agora (2009)Description: For the next few weeks and months, I will have a series I did in collaboration with Scott Rank of the History Unplugged Podcast. We are calling this series History Hates Hollywood. In this series, we take some of the history based movies we love and we hate the most and put them on trial. We talk about a wide range of movies from different historical periods. Our first History Hates Hollywood is where we left of on our last Beyond the Big Screen: 2009 movie Agora. Agora from 2009 is about the situation with Hypatia of Alexandria and the Christians. If you want to hear a very detailed background and discussion of the movie, you can relisten to the episode I did with Jonathan of the history of the Copts podcast. I held back my opinions of the movie as best as I could. In this episode with Scott Rank, I’ll let you know what I really think about the movie! You can learn more about Beyond the Big Screen and subscribe at all these great places:http://atozhistorypage.com/email: steve@atozhistorypage.comhttp://rss.acast.com/beyondthebigscreenAgora: www.agorapodcastnetwork.comhttps://www.patreon.com/papacyOn Social Media: The New A to Z History Page Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/atozhistorypagehttps://www.facebook.com/Beyondthebigscreen/https://twitter.com/BigScreenBeyondLearn More About our Guest:Scott Rank of The History Unplugged Podcasthttps://www.historyonthenet.comAgora (2009) With The History of the Coptshttps://aca.st/d43266Music Provided by:"Crossing the Chasm" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
When Jesus sent out the Twelve on their first mission to preach the kingdom of God, he told them that they would face opposition, saying to them, “I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16). The whole passage makes it clear that Jesus wasn’t just talking about their ministry but also that of generations to come, especially in the last days. When the gospel is truly preached, Christians will face persecution for preaching it. Last Sunday, Jordan Coros, our interim youth director, and I began a two-message series on persecution titled, Remember my Chains. In message one, we looked at what persecution is and isn’t and defined and illustrated it from the Bible and history by looking at specific examples of believers who were oppressed and even martyred for their faith in Jesus Christ. This Sunday in message two, Jordan and I will ask and answer four questions that will help us understand what’s happening in the world today by looking at some places and people facing intense persecution. That should move us to both prepare ourselves for the coming persecution here as well as to support the churches and believers worldwide who are experiencing persecution now. If ever there was a time for us to heed the words of Jesus and, “be wise as serpents and innocent as doves,” it is now. Sermon Notes REMEMBER MY CHAINS Blessed Are You Pastor Todd Dugard & Jordan Coros Various Scriptures July 28, 2019 Q1. How are Christians “blessed” by persecution? Matthew 5:11-12 1 Peter 4:12-14 ________ Q2. Where is persecution happening in the world today? Hebrews 11:36-40 The persecution takes various forms. The bloodshed of Sri Lanka was of a particular kind; it was well-organized with four churches bombed as well as Western-style hotels, and well-planned. A religious holiday was the date underlined in the bombers’ calendar. Elsewhere, in such countries as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Christians are tolerated but suffer discrimination in such areas as employment, and in many countries there is state oppression by political regimes. The future of Christianity is particularly grim in the North Africa and the Middle East, the very cradle of Christianity. In Egypt the Copts, who belong to one of the most ancient Christian traditions, have been targeted over and over again, after centuries of living peacefully with their Muslim neighbours…In China, the Communist political regime is responsible for oppression akin to that within the U.S.S.R. The government attempts to monitor and control the practice of religion through the state-sanctioned Patriotic Catholic and Patriotic Protestant Churches, but most of the country’s 100 million Christians belong to unregistered churches, which are regularly closed down and members detained in camps. Catherine Pepinster, National Post “In America,” he said, “the church has experienced prosperity and is growing weaker. In China, the church has experienced persecution and growing stronger. Persecution is much better than prosperity.” Pastor Samuel Lamb _______ Q3. How can we best prepare for the coming persecution? Stand for the right things As evangelical morality increasingly comes into conflict with dominant cultural mores, evangelicals need to be even more careful about the debates we chose to engage in, the rights we chose to assert, and the hills we choose to die on. Too much is at stake for evangelicals to waste our resources and credibility on frivolous and occasionally self-provoked “injustices.” Imagined offenses drummed up by sensationalists and fear-mongers should be exposed and denied. At times, even legitimate offenses should be overlooked, when they are petty. By focusing attention on real and substantial incidences of persecution, evangelicals will be much more effective at educating their neighbors and fighting for truly important matters of religious liberty. Alan Noble, The Atlantic Maintain an eternal perspective Jeremiah 20:11 Persevere in your faith Luke 16:110a 2 Thessalonians 1:4 Keep crying out to God Revelation 6:10 Remember who the enemy is (and isn't) Acts 7:59-60 Revelation 6:9-11 _______ Q4. How can we help those being persecuted around the world today? Educate yourself opendoors.org vomcanada.com persecution.org Pray Write letters Financial support
When Jesus sent out the Twelve on their first mission to preach the kingdom of God, he told them that they would face opposition, saying to them, “I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16). The whole passage makes it clear that Jesus wasn't just talking about their ministry but also that of generations to come, especially in the last days. When the gospel is truly preached, Christians will face persecution for preaching it. Last Sunday, Jordan Coros, our interim youth director, and I began a two-message series on persecution titled, Remember my Chains. In message one, we looked at what persecution is and isn't and defined and illustrated it from the Bible and history by looking at specific examples of believers who were oppressed and even martyred for their faith in Jesus Christ. This Sunday in message two, Jordan and I will ask and answer four questions that will help us understand what's happening in the world today by looking at some places and people facing intense persecution. That should move us to both prepare ourselves for the coming persecution here as well as to support the churches and believers worldwide who are experiencing persecution now. If ever there was a time for us to heed the words of Jesus and, “be wise as serpents and innocent as doves,” it is now. Sermon Notes REMEMBER MY CHAINS Blessed Are You Pastor Todd Dugard & Jordan Coros Various Scriptures July 28, 2019 Q1. How are Christians “blessed” by persecution? Matthew 5:11-12 1 Peter 4:12-14 ________ Q2. Where is persecution happening in the world today? Hebrews 11:36-40 The persecution takes various forms. The bloodshed of Sri Lanka was of a particular kind; it was well-organized with four churches bombed as well as Western-style hotels, and well-planned. A religious holiday was the date underlined in the bombers' calendar. Elsewhere, in such countries as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Christians are tolerated but suffer discrimination in such areas as employment, and in many countries there is state oppression by political regimes. The future of Christianity is particularly grim in the North Africa and the Middle East, the very cradle of Christianity. In Egypt the Copts, who belong to one of the most ancient Christian traditions, have been targeted over and over again, after centuries of living peacefully with their Muslim neighbours…In China, the Communist political regime is responsible for oppression akin to that within the U.S.S.R. The government attempts to monitor and control the practice of religion through the state-sanctioned Patriotic Catholic and Patriotic Protestant Churches, but most of the country's 100 million Christians belong to unregistered churches, which are regularly closed down and members detained in camps. Catherine Pepinster, National Post “In America,” he said, “the church has experienced prosperity and is growing weaker. In China, the church has experienced persecution and growing stronger. Persecution is much better than prosperity.” Pastor Samuel Lamb _______ Q3. How can we best prepare for the coming persecution? Stand for the right things As evangelical morality increasingly comes into conflict with dominant cultural mores, evangelicals need to be even more careful about the debates we chose to engage in, the rights we chose to assert, and the hills we choose to die on. Too much is at stake for evangelicals to waste our resources and credibility on frivolous and occasionally self-provoked “injustices.” Imagined offenses drummed up by sensationalists and fear-mongers should be exposed and denied. At times, even legitimate offenses should be overlooked, when they are petty. By focusing attention on real and substantial incidences of persecution, evangelicals will be much more effective at educating their neighbors and fighting for truly important matters of religious liberty. Alan Noble, The Atlantic Maintain an eternal perspective Jeremiah 20:11 Persevere in your faith Luke 16:110a 2 Thessalonians 1:4 Keep crying out to God Revelation 6:10 Remember who the enemy is (and isn't) Acts 7:59-60 Revelation 6:9-11 _______ Q4. How can we help those being persecuted around the world today? Educate yourself opendoors.org vomcanada.com persecution.org Pray Write letters Financial support
Mina Bendary is a good footballer, once thought to be one of the better players in Egypt. As his country hosts the African Cup of Nations, Mina won’t be involved because, he believes, he is a Coptic Christian. Egypt are attempting to win AFCON with a team that is made up of Muslims. Perhaps, because Copts only make up only 10% of Egypt’s population, the lack of Copts in this year’s squad might be pure coincidence. But Mina says that discrimination against Copts in the country’s national sport is no secret. Shaimaa Khalil travels back to her home city of Alexandria to meet Mina, as well as other Christians who tell her of the discrimination they have suffered trying to make it in football. In some cases she hears they have even been told to change their names to something more Muslim sounding. But the authorities disagree, saying that no one is discriminated against and that if Copts are not making it, that is because they do not have the right attitude. Presenter: Shaimaa Khalil Production: Helen Roberts, Moussa Zarif Image: Shaimaa Khalil/BBC
Brian Sims: Yup, he’s a hateful nut. Yup, the Right has hateful nuts too. The thing is, the Right doesn’t have them in positions of influence or power. Moreover, the postmodernist Left is, from its core beliefs, extremist and hateful. Fleeing California: Dot com millionaires are fleeing California right before they realize their taxable income from their start-ups. Pretty funny . . . and a snapshot why beautiful California will wreck itself. Lightning Segments: Toilet wine, transgender sports leagues, two Spotify recommendations, how to drink like an adult, Michigan in May, and Copts. E.F. Schumacher: A Guide for the Perplexed is a great book, but it’s wrapped in the self-focused northern school of Zen instead of the southern school that rejects subject-object. The western spiritual tradition is wrapped in the northern school, but its two greatest spiritual writers, St. John of the Cross and St. Therese Lisieux, weren’t. Music attribution Theme song: Skinnin’ Lynyrd by Greg Scheske, a bespoke expert. Email him here: eidolonaudio@gmail.com Background music for Lightning Segments is courtesy of Audionautix.
Brian Sims: Yup, he's a hateful nut. Yup, the Right has hateful nuts too. The thing is, the Right doesn't have them in positions of influence or power. Moreover, the postmodernist Left is, from its core beliefs, extremist and hateful.Fleeing California: Dot com millionaires are fleeing California right before they realize their taxable income from their start-ups. Pretty funny . . . and a snapshot why beautiful California will wreck itself.Lightning Segments: Toilet wine, transgender sports leagues, two Spotify recommendations, how to drink like an adult, Michigan in May, and Copts.E.F. Schumacher: A Guide for the Perplexed is a great book, but it's wrapped in the self-focused northern school of Zen instead of the southern school that rejects subject-object. The western spiritual tradition is wrapped in the northern school, but its two greatest spiritual writers, St. John of the Cross and St. Therese Lisieux, weren't.
In our greatest Athanasius Interlude yet, we are joined by Johnathan Adly from the History of the Copts Podcast, to fully dig into the much exiled Patriarch of Alexandria, Athanasius! In this episode, we discuss all things Athanasius, as well as the character of the Eastern early church, the state of the empire, the power of the papacy, and how all of this ties into Coptic Christianity!
Samuel Tadros is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, where he researches the rise of Islamist movements in the Middle East and its implications for religious freedom and regional politics. Prior to joining Hudson in 2011, Tadros was a Senior Partner at the Egyptian Union of Liberal Youth, an organization that aims to spread the ideas of classical liberalism in Egypt. He has received his MA in Democracy and Governance from Georgetown University and his BA in Political Science from the American University in Cairo. Tadros previously interned at the American Enterprise Institute, where he worked on the Muslim Brotherhood and worked as a consultant for the Hudson Institute on Moderate Islamic Thinkers, and most recently the Heritage Foundation on Religious Freedom in Egypt. In 2007, he was chosen by the State Department in its first Leaders for Democracy Fellowship Program in collaboration with Syracuse University’s Maxwell School. His articles have previously been published by the Wall Street Journal, Current Trends in Islamist Ideology, National Review, World Affairs, and the Weekly Standard. Tadros is a Professorial Lecturer at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. In 2013, Tadros published Motherland Lost: The Egyptian and Coptic Quest for Modernity (Hoover), a book on the Copts and the modern politics of Egypt.
Joel C. Rosenberg is the best-selling author of 13 novels and five nonfiction books and an expert on the politics of the Middle East. Listen as he shares how and why Middle Eastern leaders are reaching out specifically to American Evangelicals, and the opportunities that’s opened for those leaders to hear Biblical truth. What are important things American Christians should understand about the Middle East, including persecution our brothers and sisters there face? Why is the gospel finding fertile soil, even in the face of radical Islamist groups? Which countries are seeing more people come to Christ…and why? And how can we pray for the nation of Israel, and for other nations in the region? Visit Joel’s web site, and order his new novel, The Persian Gamble, here (affiliate link).
St. Paul American Coptic Orthodox Church Podcast - Adult Class
Prof. Fatin Morris Guirguis- Although the uniqueness of the Theotokos and her influence on humanity has been undeniable even by modernists and atheists, the Copts, the Catholics and the Protestants differ in their dogmatic approach to her role. This talk is a brief exposition of these differences and their historic origins.
Episode 76: Leo the Great RevisitedDescription: Today, we have another great collaboration with Jonathan from the History of the Copts podcast. We revisit the times of Leo the Great and look at his papacy from the perspective of the Copts. You can learn more about the History of Papacy and subscribe at all these great places:http://atozhistorypage.com/email: steve@atozhistorypage.comhttp://rss.acast.com/historyofthepapacyOn Social Media:Facebookhttps://www.facebook.com/groups/atozhistorypage/https://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfThePapacyPodcast/Twitterhttps://twitter.com/atozhistoryFeatured Podcasts:https://hxofcoptspodcast.wordpress.com/https://egyptianhistorypodcast.com/The Beyond the Big Screen Podcast is now available!https://www.facebook.com/Beyondthebigscreen/Help out the show by ordering these books from Amazon!https://amzn.com/w/1MUPNYEU65NTFMusic Provided by:"Greta Sting" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)“Procession of the King” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Danse Macabre" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Virtutes Instrumenti" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Virtutes Vocis" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Funeral March for Brass" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"String Impromptu Number 1" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Big changes for Mormon women, two women visit temple in India causing riots, Coptic Christians consider changing when they celebrate Christmas, legal change in New South Wales lets sex abuse victims sue churches, Jerry Falwell Jr. opens his big fat mouth, Mississippi changes its license plates adding "In God We Trust," and a look back at some of the biggest religion stories of 2018.Email us at podcast@thankgodimatheist.com. Leave voicemails for the show at 424-666-8442.Support us at www.patreon.com/TGIAtheist.
In this episode we go through the period between 565 AD and 578 AD, a chaotic period in the history of the Copts, where the Egyptian church was disintegrating into various factions Announcing Joyful.gifts. The best way to do gifts! Visit Joyful gifts to start today! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/historyofthecopts/support
Title: Agora and the History of the CoptsDescription: Today we are joined by Jonathan of the History of the Copts podcast to talk about the real story of the death of Hypatia and the story of Christianity in 4th and 5th century Egypt. We will also take a critical lens to the 2009 movie Agora, which recounts these events. You can learn more about Beyond the Big Screen and subscribe at all these great places:http://atozhistorypage.com/email: steve@atozhistorypage.comhttp://rss.acast.com/beyondthebigscreenAgora: www.agorapodcastnetwork.comhttps://www.patreon.com/papacyOn Social Media: The New A to Z History Page Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/atozhistorypagehttps://www.facebook.com/Beyondthebigscreen/https://twitter.com/BigScreenBeyondLearn More About our Guest: History of the Copts Podcasthttps://hxofcoptspodcast.wordpress.com/Agora Podcaster of the Month:Wittenberg to Westphalia Podcasthttp://wittenbergtowestphaliapodcast.weebly.com/Music Provided by:"Crossing the Chasm" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
ST 67 5th Century Revisited Copts and HypatiaDescription: We are joined by Jonathan of the History of the Copts podcast to talk about the real story of the death of Hypatia and the story of Christianity in 4th and 5th century Egypt. We will also take a critical lens to the 2009 movie Agora, which recounts these events. You can learn more about the History of Papacy and subscribe at all these great places:http://atozhistorypage.com/email: steve@atozhistorypage.comhttp://rss.acast.com/historyofthepapacyhttps://www.patreon.com/papacyOn Social Media:Facebookhttps://www.facebook.com/groups/atozhistorypage/https://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfThePapacyPodcast/Twitterhttps://twitter.com/atozhistoryFeaturing today:History of the Copts Podcasthttps://hxofcoptspodcast.wordpress.com/Wittenberg to Westphalia Podcasthttp://wittenbergtowestphaliapodcast.weebly.com/The Beyond the Big Screen Podcast is now available!https://www.facebook.com/Beyondthebigscreen/ Help out the show by ordering these books from Amazon!https://amzn.com/w/1MUPNYEU65NTFMusic Provided by:"Greta Sting" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)“Procession of the King” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Danse Macabre" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Virtutes Instrumenti" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Virtutes Vocis" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Funeral March for Brass" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"String Impromptu Number 1" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Success After Fifty.In 1470 BCE, King Amunhotep III's closest advisor was already eighty years old. The scribe, overseer and wise man Amunhotep Son of Hapu achieved prominence quite late in life, but he did not waste the opportunity. From a small town in the Delta, to the vast construction sites of Thebes, a royal scribe went to work for his pharaoh, and gained immortality...Chapter Times:00:00 History of the Copts intro,01:08 Episode Intro,02:25 The Statues of Amunhotep son of Hapu,05:40 Early Life,11:25 Rise to Prominence and Sacred Mysteries,15:13 The Colossi of Memnon,19:55 The King's Advisor,24:08 The Sed Festival,30:45 Conclusion and Epilogue.Episode images at egyptianhistorypodcast.comThe History of Egypt Podcast is on Patreon! Enjoy perks and exclusives at www.patreon.com/egyptpodcastMusic by Keith Zizza www.keithzizza.comMusic by Michael Levy www.ancientlyre.comSistrum by Hathor Systrum www.hathorsystrum.com/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
This episode examines the reaction to Chalcedon in Alexandria, the reactions of the Copts to the Pro-Chalcedon bishop Proterius, and the elevation of Timothy the Cat as Patriarch. Announcing Joyful.gifts. The best way to do gifts! Visit Joyful gifts to start today! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/historyofthecopts/support
Please enjoy again: T is for Tattoo. Welcome to the A to Z of Sex. I'm Dr Lori Beth and I am your host. We are working our way through the erotic alphabet one letter at a time. Just a reminder this podcast deals with adult content, so if you don't have total privacy, you might want to put on your headphones. Today the letter is T and T is for Tattoo and Scarification Trigger warning: I am going to talk about branding later in the show. The word tattoo comes from the Tahitian ‘tatu' which means ‘to mark something'. Tattooing has existed since Neolithic times. We know this because of the ancient art that has been discovered, mummified – yes mummified skin, and the archeological record. In fact even older tattoo tools and art has been found which suggests tattooing started in the upper paleolithic time in Europe but we don't have the evidence on skin until the 4th millennium (4000) BC. Ötzi the Iceman (dated between 3370 and 3100 BC) is the oldest example of tattooing on mummified skin. Tattooed mummies have been recovered from at least another 49 sites throughout the world. Locations include: Alaska, Greenland, Siberia, China, Mongolia, Philippines, Egypt, Sudan, the Andes. Tattooing has been used to identify criminals and describe their crimes in a number of cultures including Chinese, Greek and Roman. Tattooing by the Nazis was done as a means of humiliating, dehumanising and identifying the Jews, homosexuals and Gypsies sent to the death camps. Tattooing has been used for religious and spiritual reasons in tribal cultures, Hindu, Egypt, Syria, Japan (including the native Aïnu people), Copts, Thailand, Celts. Many people from modern spiritual subcultures (pagan, western magicians for example) tattoo for spiritual purposes as well. All tattooing is painful. Some more painful than others. For many cultures, tattooing was, and still is, a rite of passage rather than just marking a rite of passage. In a variety of cultures, large tattoos marked the move from adolescence to adulthood. In modern culture, many people now observe this tradition and tattoo to mark rites of passage and honour ancestors. So what does tattooing have to do with sex you ask? Lots! Ask any person who has been tattooed for more than 15 or 20 minutes, and you will be told that at some point in the painful process, they began to feel high. Endorphins and adrenalin are released when a person is being tattooed. For people who are masochistic (gain pleasure from some types of pain), this high can also include sexual arousal. Tattoos are used in some parts of the BDSM subculture as marks of ownership. Submissives or slaves may be tattooed with the mark of their dominants or masters. Research done by at a university in Poland in 2017 surveyed 2369 women and 215 men. They showed them images of tattooed and non-tattooed men to figure out whether people found tattoos more attractive. They discovered that tattoos didn't increase attractiveness for the women but women did see the tattooed men as more dominant, and masculine. For the men, tattoos did increase attractiveness. Tattoos have become more mainstream since the 1990s and now many people see them as sexy. There is lots of variation as to how many tattoos and where they are placed. Women are still more negatively judged than men with tattoos, but mainstream culture has grown to embrace tattoos. There is still a stereotype that suggests tattooed women are more promiscuous so men are more likely to approach them for sex. In sexual subcultures, tattoos are more appreciated. Beauty is defined differently than in the mainstream culture and this is where tattoos really shine when it comes to attracting positive sexual attention. Women who have tattoos are seen to be more creative which suggests the possibility of creativity with sex. You have to be able to withstand pain in order to be tattooed. And...
Part Two sees us take a closer look at the 'majority minorities' - the large Christian communities in countries like Lebanon and Egypt. It's not just the Maronites in the former and the Copts in the latter. Dr Harry Hagopian, an international lawyer and analyst on the Middle East North Africa region and the Gulf States, provides the commentary.
This episode will explore the situation of the Copts during the anarchy of third century and the beginning of the reign of Diocletian and the Era of Martyrs. Announcing Joyful.gifts. The best way to do gifts! Visit Joyful gifts to start today! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/historyofthecopts/support
You may have heard of Al Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram, Abu Sayaf Group, Al Nusra, The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), The Muslim Association of Britain, The League of Muslims in Belgium, The Islamic Society in Denmark. Islamic Society of Germany, Hizb ut Tahir, The Muslim Assoc of Canada. What is the common link between all these groups? They all were founded or run by individuals who were originally from the Muslim Brotherhood. The Massacre of 21 Copts on a beach in Libya. The 1993 World Trade Center Attack. The terrorist attack on Nice in France which killed 86 people. The bombings in Bali. What is the common link between these attacks? All the attacks trace their roots back to the Muslim Brotherhood or groups which were formed by Muslim Brotherhood former members.
Hello and welcome to the history of the Copts Podcast. Episode 0 - Introduction. In this Episode, we explore who are the Copts and the overall layout of the Podcast. Music credit to Doctor Turtle. Lullaby to Democracy Announcing Joyful.gifts. The best way to do gifts! Visit Joyful gifts to start today! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/historyofthecopts/support
T is for Tattoo. Welcome to the A to Z of Sex. I'm Dr Lori Beth and I am your host. We are working our way through the erotic alphabet one letter at a time. Just a reminder this podcast deals with adult content, so if you don't have total privacy, you might want to put on your headphones. Today the letter is T and T is for Tattoo and Scarification Trigger warning: I am going to talk about branding later in the show. The word tattoo comes from the Tahitian ‘tatu' which means ‘to mark something'. Tattooing has existed since Neolithic times. We know this because of the ancient art that has been discovered, mummified – yes mummified skin, and the archeological record. In fact even older tattoo tools and art has been found which suggests tattooing started in the upper paleolithic time in Europe but we don't have the evidence on skin until the 4th millennium (4000) BC. Ötzi the Iceman (dated between 3370 and 3100 BC) is the oldest example of tattooing on mummified skin. Tattooed mummies have been recovered from at least another 49 sites throughout the world. Locations include: Alaska, Greenland, Siberia, China, Mongolia, Philippines, Egypt, Sudan, the Andes. Tattooing has been used to identify criminals and describe their crimes in a number of cultures including Chinese, Greek and Roman. Tattooing by the Nazis was done as a means of humiliating, dehumanising and identifying the Jews, homosexuals and Gypsies sent to the death camps. Tattooing has been used for religious and spiritual reasons in tribal cultures, Hindu, Egypt, Syria, Japan (including the native Aïnu people), Copts, Thailand, Celts. Many people from modern spiritual subcultures (pagan, western magicians for example) tattoo for spiritual purposes as well. All tattooing is painful. Some more painful than others. For many cultures, tattooing was, and still is, a rite of passage rather than just marking a rite of passage. In a variety of cultures, large tattoos marked the move from adolescence to adulthood. In modern culture, many people now observe this tradition and tattoo to mark rites of passage and honour ancestors. So what does tattooing have to do with sex you ask? Lots! Ask any person who has been tattooed for more than 15 or 20 minutes, and you will be told that at some point in the painful process, they began to feel high. Endorphins and adrenalin are released when a person is being tattooed. For people who are masochistic (gain pleasure from some types of pain), this high can also include sexual arousal. Tattoos are used in some parts of the BDSM subculture as marks of ownership. Submissives or slaves may be tattooed with the mark of their dominants or masters. Research done by at a university in Poland in 2017 surveyed 2369 women and 215 men. They showed them images of tattooed and non-tattooed men to figure out whether people found tattoos more attractive. They discovered that tattoos didn't increase attractiveness for the women but women did see the tattooed men as more dominant, and masculine. For the men, tattoos did increase attractiveness. Tattoos have become more mainstream since the 1990s and now many people see them as sexy. There is lots of variation as to how many tattoos and where they are placed. Women are still more negatively judged than men with tattoos, but mainstream culture has grown to embrace tattoos. There is still a stereotype that suggests tattooed women are more promiscuous so men are more likely to approach them for sex. In sexual subcultures, tattoos are more appreciated. Beauty is defined differently than in the mainstream culture and this is where tattoos really shine when it comes to attracting positive sexual attention. Women who have tattoos are seen to be more creative which suggests the possibility of creativity with sex. You have to be able to withstand pain in order to be tattooed. And those who have multiple...
Everyone loves the taste of authentic falafel - but where does this delicious dish come from exactly? That sweet popping sound of boiling oil just before a falafel pops out: balls of bean goodness that have an international following. Once the fried fritters, made of chickpeas or broad beans come out, they're thrown into fresh pitta bread and dressed with vegetables, and tahina…crushed sesame seed sauce. Easy to eat, cheap to buy and everyone agrees they are the typical street food of the Middle East. But ask about the origins and a conflict may as well break out. “Well, falafel … there’s a little fight over that. There are those who will say it’s Egyptian, others will say its Lebanese and others will say it is Israeli. Whatever it’s from the Middle East,” says Yumi, the manager of a popular falafel stand in Paris. Perhaps that’s the safest answer. But with Paris having an ample Middle Eastern population, I decided the best way to answer this question was to eat my way through the different falafel stands in the city. It's a tough job but somebody's got to do it. For simplicity's sake, I've narrowed it down to Israeli, Lebanese and Egyptian falafel. Before properly answering the question, one has to know that falafel is either chickpea or broad-bean based. Sometimes the two are combined. Regardless of the preparation, the falafel itself is almost always eaten in a sandwich, generally in a flat type of bread. Israeli-style in the Marais In search of the origins of our favourite fritter, I began in one of Paris’s tourist attractions, the Marais neighbourhood. What used to be a thriving Jewish neighbourhood before World War II, is now a rather gentrified and artsy part of town, complete with small museums and art galleries. But the rue des Rosiers still upholds the Jewish past of the neighbourhood, with its bakeries, restaurants and falafel stands of the Israeli variety. As the tourists flock to Paris during the summer months, the pedestrian street is packed with people waiting in line to grab a falafel sandwich from one of the four main restaurants. I found a few people devouring their falafel and asked them why they came to rue des Rosiers: Julie, from Paris “For me, it’s the best place for falafel.” Zanthy, an Australian tourist: “I have had falafels all over the place; this is definitely on the higher scale of falafels.” Everyone knows how to eat a falafel, but does anyone here know its origins? Georgia, from the UK admits “I don’t know exactly, you find it in a few different cuisines from different countries.” One American tourist gives a safe answer stating “It’s Israeli and Arabic; a mix between the two.” So no one really knows. But then, while scarfing down a falafel, that’s likely the farthest thing from your mind. Despite the lunchtime rush, the managers from two popular stands find time to discuss the origin of the fritters. “I’d say it’s Israeli, but maybe Lebanese. Let’s just say Israeli-Lebanese,” says Elon, the manager of King Falafel. When asked about the different preparations: “I don’t know another type. Falafel with beans? I didn’t know. See, now you’ve told me that so I’ve learned something!” he exclaims. “I know Egyptians mix it with beans. It’s called ful mudammas, but Israelis do it with 100 percent chickpeas” explains Yumi, the manager of L’As du Falafel. Lebanese-style in Bastille Over in the Bastille area, far from the tourist crowds of the Marais, the streets are lined with French bistros and pockets of Lebanese restaurants. One in particular serves only falafel. The modern interior of Bar Falafel Bro doesn’t reveal its Lebanese origin. David, originally from Beirut, is one of the owners of the place. When I put the question to him, he smiles and explains diplomatically “Well, if you put the question to a Lebanese, he will say it comes from us. If you ask an Egyptian or a Tunisian or an Israeli they will call claim falafel as their own. But, for me, it remains international; a Mediterranean dish. The meal is very popular - it’s not even a meal, it’s a sandwich. A falafel sandwich is very popular.” But when it comes to the origin of the word "falafel" David responds honestly, stating “I don’t know exactly where the name falafel comes from. I was born in Beirut and in Beirut it’s really the chance to go to the small businesses and grab a falafel sandwich which is very popular in the working-class neighbourood of Bourj Hammoud.” As David and Yumi both mentioned, regardless of the origin, the falafel itself becomes appropriated by its country. What's a typically Lebanese falafel? David explains beginning with the essential sauce, tarator. “That’s the well-known tahina sauce which accompanies the sandwich and the ingredients inside it, like fresh mint, turnip and in addition to that, in Lebabon, we always have a hot pepper on the side. That’s to say a hot pepper accompanies a falafel sandwich; that’s part of the tradition. There’s no sandwich without one.” Egyptian-style near the Champs Elysées Over on the other side of town, just a few steps away from the Arc de Triomphe, you’ll find the only Egyptian falafel stand in the city. Nestled on a side street, it’s easily missed if you’re caught up wandering the broad avenues of this neighbourhood. Mickael, who was born in France and is of Egyptian Coptic background, is the owner of Micka Falafel. When asked about the origins of the bean fritter, he quickly launches into an explanation, beginning with the word "falafel" itself: “Falafel is a word used in the Coptic language that was the national language of Egypt back in the day," he says. "When one talks about falafel, it is about rolling the batter, which is made from broad beans, into balls which are then thrown into oil, creating a crust. It is this crust that is called falafel.” In certain Middle Eastern countries, such as Egypt, falafel is also eaten for breakfast. “If you eat falafel in the morning for breakfast, you need to know a little about where it comes from,” Mickael says when asked how he came by his explanation of the word's origins. That interest took him to his grandfather who can speak Coptic, and transmitted his story about the origins of falafel. Food for the hundreds Tamiya is another term for falafel, which is only used in Egypt. “In Egypt 2,000 years you would find falafel and years after they changed it to tamiya,” explains Mickael. He says it was changed following the Islamic conquest of Egypt, when Arabic became the new language, so efforts were made to Arabise the country. The food falafel remained but, because it is considered a food of the people, it took on the name of ta’miya from tam, meaning taste, and mi'a, meaning 100. So food for the hundreds. But another school of thought says tamiya is in fact a word rooted in the Coptic language, a successor to the pharaonic language. The term falafel in fact is the plural form of filfil, meaning peppers in Arabic. So the name itself is highly disputed. Whatever the origins of the dish and its name, it remains popular. “A falafel sandwich will always just be a ball of chickpeas and beans,” says David. “The price will never be as high as meat and that’s why it’s always available in the working-class neighbourhoods.” But chickpeas or beans? Could that be the determining factor in narrowing down the origin? “When there was a large Jewish community in the country [Egypt], that’s when the difference in the preparation happened," he explains. "We began to see a mix between broad beans and chickpeas, so in Alexandria, in Cairo, in the cosmopolitan cities. "But in the more conservative cities of the south, so in Minya or Asyut for example, which never really had a significant Jewish population and has remained relatively Coptic, falafel has always been made from broad beans.” Pharoahs and beans This idea of falafel coming from Egypt could be correct, given that the Coptic people, thought to be descendants of the ancient Egyptians, still maintain practices from those days. There is evidence of dried broad beans found in pharaonic tombs and at least one book cites pharaonic cooks as making bean fritters using mashed beans, garlic onions and spices; all ingredients native to the country and region. Given that the Copts engage in many fasts, which forbid any animal products, during the course of a year, eating falafel during these times has always been popular. And as Islam spread across the country and region during the 600s, falafel also became a favourite of Muslims, especially during Ramadan when it is eaten as an appetiser to break the daily fast. Regardless of the country, the fact remains that the idea of a falafel spread from one country to another and stayed in the region. And, as David stresses, “Each country has its own recipe. Maybe some with more chickpeas than chives, or with more spices. Those who add garlic or those who don’t. Each one makes the falafel recipe his own. Even if I were to say I’m 100 percent convinced its Lebanese, it wouldn’t make a difference, but I don’t believe that because, well it’s just very Mediterranean.” In the end, no one really knows the true origin, though you might be able to come up with your own conclusion. Whether you love your falafel with chickpeas, or with broad beans, or both, it’s still delicious. And it’s so good it even inspired a song, as sung by comedian Go Remy.
Could Jesus have fasted for 40 days if he did it the way Copts do today; eating after sundown? Might Markâ??s pericope â??Leaven of the Phariseesâ?? (Mark 8:13-21) be rebuking Jewish Christian readers for not accepting Pauline doctrine? How tenable is the Christian worldview with the Arts, since so much of it is predicated on the world being sinful? Someone contended that theology has not advanced at all in the last 100 years. But is that true? Please comment on the Orthodox Church. Why was Noah needed to save the human race when at least one other man, the righteous Enoch) had the credentials to stay God's wrath? And why did Enoch not die but Noah does? Was Terah was alive or dead when Abram left Haran? If it does imply he died than the math doesn't add up. Why does Abram pray only at groves of trees? Though Lot tells his family to flee the city, he himself lingers. Why? In Genesis 24:24 Rebecca answers the servant, â??I am the daughter of Bethuel the son of Micah, whom she bore to Nahor.â?? Did people really introduce themselves in such a grotesquely long manner? In Gen. 31:13 how can the God of Bethel be the God of Abraham & Isaac when this same God of Bethel was with Jacob this whole time? In Gen. 35:1 God tells Jacob to go to Bethel to the God who appeared to him and make an alter. Doesn't this imply polytheism? In Gen. 39:9 how could a slave actually be greatest in the house? In Gen. 39:22-23 how does a prisoner end up being in charge of the prison essentially? In Gen. 40:8, why would they seek an interpreter of dreams in a dungeon to begin with? Is the point of the Joseph story to urge Jews to live as â??a light unto the Gentilesâ??? How come in Mark 13 Jesus does not know the time of the End but in Revelation he does?
With massive displacements of Christians in Iraq and Syria, and recent violence against the Copts in Egypt, will Christianity survive in the Middle East? Kent Hill will provide a brief survey of Christianity in the Middle East. Then, with a special focus on what it will take to undermine violent Islamic extremism, he will address how Christians in the west can help. A particular area he will consider is whether the core problem is extremism or Islam itself. Without addressing this issue, Dr. Hill believes a way forward will not be found. Kent Hill joined the Religious Freedom Insitute after six years as Senior Vice President at World Vision, one of the largest faith-based relief and development organizations in the world. He also served for eight years as Assistant Administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), responsible for U.S. foreign assistance to Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and, subsequently, all USAID health programs worldwide. Earlier in his career, Dr. Hill was President of Eastern Nazarene College, and President of D.C.'s Institute on Religion and Democracy. In 2010, as a Vice President at the John Templeton Foundation, Hill, along with Tom Farr, conceived Georgetown's Religious Freedom Project and secured funding to launch the project. Dr. Hill has published a book on Christianity and the Soviet Union. His Ph.D. is from the University of Washington.Support the show (http://www.faithandlaw.org/donate)
When and Why Revealed? The subject matter of this Surah indicates that it was revealed during the last stage of the Holy Prophet's residence at Makkah, when the Quraish were considering the question of killing or exiling or imprisoning him. At that time some of the unbelievers put this question (probably at the instigation of the Jews) to test him :"Why did the Israelites go to Egypt?" This question was asked because they knew that their story was not known to the Arabs for there was no mention of it whatever in their traditions and the Holy Prophet had never even referred to it before. Therefore they expected that he would not be able to give any satisfactory answer to this question or would first evade it, and afterwards try to inquire about it from some Jew, and thus he would be totally exposed. But, contrary to their expectations, the tables were turned on them, for Allah revealed the whole story of Prophet Joseph then and there, and the Holy Prophet recited it on the spot. This put the Quraish in a very awkward position because it not only foiled their scheme but also administered a warning to them by aptly applying it to their case, as if to say, "As you are behaving towards this Prophet, exactly in the same way the brothers of Prophet Joseph behaved towards him; so you shall meet with the same end." Objects of Revelation From the above it is clear that this Surah was sent down for two objects: The first object was to give the proof of the Prophethood of Muhammad (Allah's peace be upon him), and that too, the one demanded by the opponents themselves so as to prove conclusively that his knowledge was not based on mere hearsay, but was gained through Revelation. This aspect has been stated explicitly in its introductory verses and explained plainly in its concluding portion. The second object was to apply it to the Quraish and warn them that ultimately the conflict between them and the Holy Prophet would end in his victory over them. As they were then persecuting their brother, the Holy Prophet, in the same way the brothers of Prophet Joseph had treated him. The Quraish were told indirectly that they would also fail in their evil designs just as the brothers of Prophet Joseph had failed in his case, even after casting him into the well. This is because none has the power to defeat the Divine will. And just as the brothers of Prophet Joseph had to humble themselves before him, so one day the Quraish shall have to beg forgiveness from their brother whom they were then trying to crush down. This, too, has been made quite plain in v. 7: "Indeed there are signs in this story of Joseph and his brothers for these inquirers from among the Quraish." The fact is that by applying this story to the conflict, the Quran had made a bold and clear prophecy, which was fulfilled literally by the events that happened in the succeeding ten years. Hardly two years had passed after its revelation, when the Quraish conspired to kill the Holy Prophet like the brothers of Prophet Joseph, and he had to emigrate from Makkah to Al-Madinah, where he gained the same kind of power as Prophet Joseph had gained in Egypt. Again, in the end the Quraish had to humble themselves before him just like the brothers of Prophet Joseph, when they humbly requested, "Show mercy to us for Allah rewards richly those who show mercy" (V. 88), and Prophet Joseph generously forgave them, (though he had complete power to wreak vengeance on them,) saying, " today no penalty shall be inflicted on you. May Allah forgive you:He is the greatest of all those who forgive" (V. 92). The same story of mercy was repeated, when after the conquest of Makkah, the crest fallen Quraish stood meekly before the Holy Prophet, who had full power to wreak his vengeance on them for each and every cruelty committed by them. But instead, he merely asked them, "What treatment do you expect from me now?" They replied, "You are a generous brother and the son of a generous brother." At this, he very generously forgave them, saying, "I will give the same answer to your request that Joseph gave to his brothers: “...today, no penalty shall be inflicted on you: you are forgiven." Topics of Discussion Moreover, the Quran does not relate this story as a mere narrative but uses it, as usual, for the propagation of the Message in the following ways:- Throughout the narrative the Quran has made it clear that the Faith of Prophets Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph (Allah's peace be upon them all) was the same as that of Prophet Muhammad (Allah's peace be upon him) and they invited the people to the same Message to which Muhammad (Allah's peace be upon him) was inviting them. Then it places the characters of Prophet Jacob and Prophet Joseph side by side with the characters of the brothers of Joseph, the members of the trade caravan, the court dignitary; Al Aziz of Egypt and his wife, the "ladies" of Egypt and the rulers of Egypt and poses a silent question to the reader, as if to say, "Contrast the former characters molded by Islam on the bedrock of the worship of Allah and accountability in the Hereafter with the latter molded by kufr and "ignorance" on the worship of the world and disregard of Allah and the Hereafter, and decide for yourselves which of these two patterns you would choose." The Quran has used this story to bring forth another truth: whatever Allah wills, He fulfills it anyhow, and man can never defeat His plan with his counterplans nor prevent it from happening nor change it in any way whatever. Nay, it often so happens that man adopts some measure to fulfill his own design and believes that he has done that very thing which would fulfill his design, but in the end he finds to his dismay that he had done something which was against his own and conducive to the Divine purpose. When the brothers of Prophet Joseph cast him into the well, they believed that they had once for all got rid of the obstacle in their way but in fact, they had paved the way for the Divine purpose of making him the ruler of Egypt, before whom they would have to humble themselves in the end. Likewise, the wife of Aziz had sent Prophet Joseph to the prison, floating over the thought that she had wreaked her vengeance on him, but, in fact, she had provided for him the opportunity for becoming the ruler of Egypt and for putting herself to the shame of confessing her own sin publicly. And these are not the solitary instances which prove the truth that even if the whole world united to bring about the down fall of the one whom Allah willed to raise high, it could not succeed. Nay, the very "sure and effective" measures that were adopted by the brothers to degrade Joseph were used by Allah for the success of Joseph and for the humiliation and disgrace of his brothers. On the other hand, if Allah willed the fall of one, no measure, howsoever effective, could raise him high : nay, it helped to bring about his fall and the disgrace of those who adopted them. Moreover, the story contains other lessons for those who intend to follow the way of Allah. The first lesson it teaches is that one should remain within the limits, prescribed by the Divine Law, in one's aims and objects and measures, for success and failure are entirely in the hands of Allah. Therefore if one adopts pure aims and lawful measures but fails, at least one will escape ignominy and disgrace. On the other hand, the one who adopts an impure aim and unlawful measures to achieve it, shall not only inevitably meet with ignominy and disgrace in the Hereafter, but also runs the risk of ignominy and disgrace in this world. The second lesson it teaches is that those who exert for the cause of truth and righteousness and put their trust in Allah and entrust all their affairs to Him, get consolation and comfort from Him, for this helps them face their opponents with confidence and courage and they do not lose heart, when they encounter the apparently terrifying measures of the powerful enemies. They will persevere in their task without fear and leave the results to Allah. But the greatest lesson this story teaches is that if the Believer possesses true Islamic character and is endowed with wisdom, he can conquer a whole country with the strength of his character alone. The marvelous example of Prophet Joseph teaches us that a man of high and pure character comes out successful even under the most adverse circumstances. When Prophet Joseph went to Egypt, he was only a lad of seventeen years, a foreigner, all alone and without any provisions; nay, he had been sold there as a slave. And the horrible condition of the slaves during that period is known to every student of history. Then he was charged with a heinous moral Crime and sent to prison for an indefinite term. But throughout this period of affliction, he evinced the highest moral qualities which raised him to the highest rank in the country. Historical and Geographical Background The following historical and geographical details will help understand the story: Prophet Joseph was a son of Prophet Jacob and a grandson of Prophet Isaac and a great grandson of Prophet Abraham (Allah's peace be upon them all). The Bible says (and the allusions in the Quran also confirm this) that Prophet Jacob had twelve sons from four wives. Prophet Joseph and his younger brother Benjamin were from one wife and the other ten from the other wives. Prophet Jacob had settled at Hebron (Palestine) where his father Prophet Isaac and before him Prophet Abraham lived and owned a piece of land at Shechem as well. According to the research scholars of the Bible, Prophet Joseph was born in or about 906 B. C. and the incident with which this story begins happened in or about 890 B. C. He was seventeen when he saw the dream and was thrown into the well. This well was near Dothan to the north of Shechem according to Biblical and Talmudic traditions, and the caravan, which took him out of the well, was coming from Gilead (Trans-Jordan), and was on its way to Egypt. At that time Fifteenth Dynasty ruled over Egypt, whose rulers are known in history as the Hyksos kings. They belonged to the Arab race, but had migrated from Palestine and Syria to Egypt in or about 2000 B. C. and taken possession of the country. The Arab historians and the commentators of the Quran have given them the name of Amaliq (the Amalekites), and this has been corroborated by the recent researches made by the Egyptologists. They were foreign invaders who had got the opportunity of establishing their kingdom because of the internal feuds in the country. That is why there was no prejudice in the way of Prophet Joseph's ascendancy to power and in the subsequent settlement of the Children of Israel in the most fertile region of Egypt. They could gain that power and influence which they did, because they belonged to the same race as the foreign rulers of Egypt. The Hyksos ruled over Egypt up to the end of the fifteenth century B. C., and practically all the powers remained in the hands of the Israelites. The Quran has made a reference to this in v. 20 of Al-Ma'idah: “...He raised Prophets among you and made you rulers.” Then there arose a great nationalist movement which overthrew the power of this dynasty and exiled 250,000 or so of the Amalekites. As a result of this, a very bigoted dynasty of Copts came into power and uprooted everything connected with the Amalekites. Then started that persecution of the Israelites which has been mentioned in connection with the story of Prophet Moses. We also learn from the history of Egypt that the "Hyksos kings" did not acknowledge the gods of Egypt and, therefore, had imported their own gods from Syria, with a view to spreading their own religion in Egypt. This is the reason why the Quran has not called the king who was the contemporary of Prophet Joseph by the title of "Pharaoh," because this title was associated with the religion of the original people of Egypt and the Hyksos did not believe in it, but the Bible erroneously calls him "Pharaoh." It appears that the editors of the Bible had the misunderstanding that all the kings of Egypt were "Pharaohs." The modern research scholars who have made a comparative study of the Bible and the Egyptian history are generally of the opinion that Apophis was the Hyksos king, who was the contemporary of Prophet Joseph. At that time Memphis was the capital of Egypt, whose ruins are still found on the Nile at a distance of 4 miles south of Cairo. When Prophet Joseph was taken there, he was 17 or 18 years old. He remained in the house of Aziz for three years and spent nine years in prison, and then became the ruler of the land at the age of thirty and ruled over Egypt independently for eighty years. In the ninth or tenth year of his rule he sent for his father, Prophet Jacob, to come from Palestine to Egypt with all the members of his family and, according to the Bible, settled them in the land of Goshen, where they lived up to the time of Prophet Moses. The Bible says that before his death, Prophet Joseph bound his kindred by an oath: "when you return from this country to the house of your forefathers you must take my bones out of this country with you. So he died a hundred and ten years old, and they embalmed him..." Though the story of Prophet Joseph as given in the Quran differs very much in its details from that given in the Bible and the Talmud, the Three generally agree in regard to its component parts. We shall explain the differences, when and where necessary, in our Explanatory Notes. Source: Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi - Tafhim al-Qur'an - The Meaning of the Quran
Egypt’s Coptic Christians are in a state of mourning after a suicide bomber killed at least 25 people at a Cairo church on Sunday. “Egypt always tends to rally around Christians at moments like this,” said Jayson Casper, CT’s Middle East correspondent. “But over time, [ISIS is] trying to hammer and hammer and hammer the Christians in Egypt and put so much pressure on the internal government that it itself may collapse.” Even if the government does collapse, the Coptic Church “is equipped to deal with it,” said Casper. “They can say, ‘This has always happened to us in our history. It is how God has treated us and he perseveres with us through it.’” While the attack was the worst to target Copts since the 2011 New Year’s bombing of a church in Alexandria that killed 23 people, the population has been the victim of sectarian violence for years. In 2015, ISIS, who also claimed responsibility for the latest attack, beheaded 21 Coptic Christians in Libya. Casper joined assistant editor Morgan Lee and editor-in-chief Mark Galli this week to discuss the fascinating and important history of Coptic Christians, how the Egyptian church relates to a changing government, and why this most recent attack is unique.
Monday November 28, 2016 - Information overload, emotionalism, the search for truth in our pseudo reality, and much more on this 13th episode of the Propaganda Report. Show Notes (roughly in order of mention on the podcast): Click Here To Subscribe To The Propaganda Report On iTunes Click Here To Subscribe To The Propaganda Report On Google Play Music Check Out Our New Website Propaganda Report Daily Click Here To Subscribe To Monica’s Blog Click Here To Subscribe To Brad’s Youtube Page Fake site delivering fake advice on what is fake news: www.propornot.com Alex Jones v Larry Pratt on Piers Morgan - who did the better job for gun rights? Charles Schumer Ready for Battle, but Sees Some Common Ground With Donald Trump Incoming Senate minority leader would fight broad tax cuts for the wealthy or reductions in entitlement programs; views may converge on infrastructure and trade This passage appeared in the print version of the article and is not in the online version linked above: Mr. Trump suggested on Twitter that he saw potential for working with Mr. Schumer who is succeeding sen. Harry Reid as Democratic leader. “I have always had a good relationship with Chuck Schumer. He is far smarter than Harry Reid and has the ability to get things done. Good News!” Anti-Trumpers Channel Their Inner Donald Many who decried Trump now exhibit the worst traits he was accused of. Since Election Day Americans have seen the trashing of cars and shops that now constitute modern expressions of tolerance. In addition, the flesh-and-blood victims of the Love Trumps Hate beatdowns include a 15-year-old high-school student wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat in Rockville, Md., a 49-year-old Chicago man dragged out of his car, and a 21-year-old Arab-American university student chased down and hit from behind at a Black Lives Matter rally in El Cajon, Calif. All the while, the president-elect continues his Twitter “rants.” Here are a few of the most recent: “I have always had a good relationship with Chuck Schumer. He is far smarter than Harry R and has the ability to get things done. Good news!” “General James ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis, who is being considered for Secretary of Defense, was very impressive yesterday. A true General’s General!” “I settled the Trump University lawsuit for a small fraction of the potential award because as President I have to focus on our country.” Guess it depends on what you mean by “lashes out.” Philosophy of Metrics: The Mystery of Truth – Information Power and Its Controlled Distribution A Comparison between the Gutenberg Printing Press and the Internet Perhaps the intent all along has been to swamp the masses with so much information that it causes a sort of cultural shutdown and avoidance of truth. Drowning out the sound of truth in the modern age would require something like the internet to work alongside the mainstream media in order to ensure the masses never stumble upon what has been hidden right in front of them. The internet is meant to distribute mass misinformation and false narratives Internet Reformation - my glossary entry Trumps New World Order A Coup and the Transformation of the Anglo-American Establishment The Take Down of George Soros Has Begun (FREEPOM) How a Rogue Alliance Betrayed the Rothschild’s and attempted to hijack the One World Government George Soros is running out of friends. With the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States and the BREXIT vote in Great Britain, a pattern is beginning to emerge. This pattern is indicating that a major take-down of George Soros and his Open Society Foundation, among other organizations, both sub and individual, is in process. George Soros on 60 Minutes ‘Pizzagate’ shows how fake news hurts real people" according to the Washington Post anyway. Clash of Civilizations dialectic set up in the 1990 article The Roots of Muslim Rage by Bernard Lewis Clash of Civilizations laid out in 1993 by Samuel Huntington What is "subsidiarity?" What if ISIS isn’t what it appears to be? FoxNews reports video of ISIS beheading Copts faked: https://themonicaperezshow.com/2015/02/21/foxnews-reports-isis-video-of-beheading-copts-faked/ Corbett Report: 9/11 Suspects Sachtleben goes to jail for whistleblowing and disseminating kiddie porn: US Govt Makes Al Qaeda Recruitment Videos AND Runs Child Porn Sites??? Times Reporter Will Not Be Called to Testify in Leak Case Legal Fight Ends for James Risen of the New York Times Around an hour into the podcast I say James Clapper had something to do with the second underwear bombing--I meant CIA Director John Brennan: Why the underwear-bomber leak infuriated the Obama administration a.k.a. Tommy Chong #WTWOF: Will people on watchlists be denied the right to create news? Freeway Ricky Ross's official website Dark Alliance - Gary Webb reveals Iran-Contra & more (then commits suicide by shooting himself in the head--twice?) French Cops Fell for “Free Ice Cream” Trick? I guess my story about Brigitte Nielsen was FAKE! Sorry!! But in my research, I found this sad update on the actress: How did Stallone's movie star wife Brigitte Nielsen end up as a drunk in the park? GMO Labeling, the Obvious Libertarian Solution Psychological Warfare & the New World Order
Kate Adie presents the first in a new series of eight programmes. In this edition, John Murphy reports from Najaf on the mounting death toll among Iraqis from the conflict with so-called Islamic State; Olivia Crellin tells the remarkable story of a transgender couple in Ecuador who are challenging some local assumptions by seeking to become parents; as South Africa's athletes return from Rio, Lindsay Johns in Cape Town reflects on the extraordinary impact that Olympic success is having there on coloured South Africans more than twenty-five years after the end of apartheid; Caroline Davies in Cairo discovers how, despite the growing intolerance Copts face in Egypt, they are enjoying great success in the country's recycling business; and Hugh Schofield in Paris ponders the world of Anglo-French mathematics as he studies for his A level in the subject and his son works on his baccalauréat.
In 451, 115 years before Prophet Muhammad, several men representing various facets of Christianity met in Chalcedon in modern Turkey. They were discussing how to define the true nature of Christ. They believed he was divine, yet he lived and died like a man. 3 weeks later, they decided Jesus Christ had two natures in one: he was both God and man. Any Christians who deviated from this belief were declared heretics which immediately led to a schism in the Church While most Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians accepted the Chalcedon decree, Armenian, Ethiopian, and Coptic Christians did not...Continue Reading
In this interview Gerard Russell talks about his vivid and timely new book Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms: Journeys Into the Disappearing Religions of the Middle East (Basic Books, 2014). Russell’s experience as a British diplomat in a rapidly changing region gives the book remarkable breadth, providing a valuable insight into the lives of minority communities from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to Egypt: Mandaeans, Yazidis, Zoroastrians, Druze, Samaritans, Copts and Kalasha. Russell’s account pays particular attention to the circulation of stories, symbols and practices between these groups and reveals a history or extraordinary diversity and interdependence. His journey through this symbolic ecosystem, struggling to survive in its lands of origin, leads him eventually to diaspora communities in America and Europe. Is this the final domain of these forgotten kingdoms? Gerard Russell’s account of these colorful pasts, precarious presents and unknown futures will be of interest to scholars of religion, culture, the Middle East, and a wider non-specialist readership. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In this interview Gerard Russell talks about his vivid and timely new book Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms: Journeys Into the Disappearing Religions of the Middle East (Basic Books, 2014). Russell’s experience as a British diplomat in a rapidly changing region gives the book remarkable breadth, providing a valuable insight into the lives of minority communities from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to Egypt: Mandaeans, Yazidis, Zoroastrians, Druze, Samaritans, Copts and Kalasha. Russell’s account pays particular attention to the circulation of stories, symbols and practices between these groups and reveals a history or extraordinary diversity and interdependence. His journey through this symbolic ecosystem, struggling to survive in its lands of origin, leads him eventually to diaspora communities in America and Europe. Is this the final domain of these forgotten kingdoms? Gerard Russell’s account of these colorful pasts, precarious presents and unknown futures will be of interest to scholars of religion, culture, the Middle East, and a wider non-specialist readership. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In this interview Gerard Russell talks about his vivid and timely new book Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms: Journeys Into the Disappearing Religions of the Middle East (Basic Books, 2014). Russell’s experience as a British diplomat in a rapidly changing region gives the book remarkable breadth, providing a valuable insight into the lives of minority communities from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to Egypt: Mandaeans, Yazidis, Zoroastrians, Druze, Samaritans, Copts and Kalasha. Russell’s account pays particular attention to the circulation of stories, symbols and practices between these groups and reveals a history or extraordinary diversity and interdependence. His journey through this symbolic ecosystem, struggling to survive in its lands of origin, leads him eventually to diaspora communities in America and Europe. Is this the final domain of these forgotten kingdoms? Gerard Russell’s account of these colorful pasts, precarious presents and unknown futures will be of interest to scholars of religion, culture, the Middle East, and a wider non-specialist readership. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In this interview Gerard Russell talks about his vivid and timely new book Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms: Journeys Into the Disappearing Religions of the Middle East (Basic Books, 2014). Russell’s experience as a British diplomat in a rapidly changing region gives the book remarkable breadth, providing a valuable insight into the lives of minority communities from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to Egypt: Mandaeans, Yazidis, Zoroastrians, Druze, Samaritans, Copts and Kalasha. Russell’s account pays particular attention to the circulation of stories, symbols and practices between these groups and reveals a history or extraordinary diversity and interdependence. His journey through this symbolic ecosystem, struggling to survive in its lands of origin, leads him eventually to diaspora communities in America and Europe. Is this the final domain of these forgotten kingdoms? Gerard Russell’s account of these colorful pasts, precarious presents and unknown futures will be of interest to scholars of religion, culture, the Middle East, and a wider non-specialist readership. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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A lecture by Mai Mogib, Dept. of Economics and Political Science, Cairo University, CNES Visiting Fulbright Scholar
The Copts in Cairo throw weight into new Constitution, team Obama's new interim nuclear deal is DOA.
Nelly van Doorn-Harder recently met with newly appointed Coptic leader, Pope Tawadros II in Cairo. Her latest book, co-authored with Magdi Guirguis, The Emergence of the Modern Coptic Papacy (The Popes of Egypt, Volume 3) is the latest volume of a three part series about the Coptic Papacy. Nelly van Doorn-Harder is professor of Islamic Studies at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. She was born and raised in the Netherlands were she earned her PhD on the topic of women in the Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt at the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam. Before moving to the USA she was director of a refugee program in Cairo, Egypt, and taught Islamic Studies at universities in the Netherlands (Leiden) and Indonesia (Yogyakarta). Her areas of study focus on Islam and Christianity in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, human rights and gender in religion, and minority cultures in Islamic countries.
The title of this episode is Coping.It's time once again to lay down our focus on the Western Church to see what's happening in the East.With the arrival of Modernity, the Church in Europe and the New World was faced with the challenge of coping in what we'll call the post-Constantine era. The social environment was no longer favorable toward Christianity. The institutional Church could no longer count on the political support it enjoyed since the 4th C. The 18th C saw Western Christianity faced with the challenge of secular states that may not be outright hostile but tended to ignore it.In the East, Christianity faced far more than benign neglect for a long time. When Constantinople fell in 1453 to the Turks, The Faith came under a repressive regime that alternately neglected and persecuted it.While during the Middle Ages in Europe, Popes were often more powerful than Kings, the Byzantine Emperor ruled the Church. Greek patriarchs were functionaries under his lead. If they failed to comply with his dictates, they were deposed and replaced by those who would. When the Emperor decided reuniting with Rome was required to save the empire, the reunion was accomplished against the counsel of Church leaders. Then, just a year later, Constantinople fell to the Ottomans. Many Eastern Christians regarded this calamity as a blessing. They viewed it as liberation from a tyrannical emperor who'd forced them into a union with a heretical church in Rome.The new Ottoman regime initially granted the Church limited freedom. Since the patriarch fled to Rome, the conqueror of Constantinople, Mohammed II, allowed the bishops to elect a new patriarch. He was given both civil and ecclesiastical authority over Christians in the East. In the capital, half the churches were converted to mosques. The other half were allowed to continue worship without much change.In 1516, the Ottomans conquered the ancient seat of Middle Eastern Christianity in Syria and Palestine. The church there was put under the oversight of the Patriarch of Constantinople. Then, when Egypt fell a year later, the Patriarch of Alexandria was given authority over all Christians in Egypt. Under the Ottomans, Eastern Church Patriarchs had vast power over Christians in their realm, but they only served at the Sultan's pleasure and were often deposed for resisting his policies.In 1629, the Patriarch of Constantinople, Cyril Lucaris, wrote what was considered by many, a Protestant treatise titled Confession of Faith. He was then deposed and executed. Fifty years later, a synod condemned him as a “Calvinist heretic.” But by the 18th C, the Reformation wasn't a concern of the Eastern Church. What was, was the arrival of Western philosophy and science. In the 19th C, when Greece gained independence from Turkey, the debate became political. Greek nationalism advocated Western methods of academics and scholarship. The Greeks also demanded that the Greek Church ought to be independent of the Patriarch of Constantinople. Conservatives wanted to subsume scholarship under tradition and retain allegiance to Constantinople.During the 19th and early 20th Cs, the Ottoman Empire broke up, allowing national Orthodox churches to form in Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania. The tension between nationalist and conservative Orthodoxy dominated the scene. In the period between the two world wars, the Patriarch of Constantinople acknowledged the autonomy of Orthodox churches in the Balkans, Estonia, Latvia, and Czechoslovakia.Early in the 20th C, the ancient patriarchates of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch were ruled by Arabs. But the newly formed states existed under the shadow of Western powers. This was a time when out of a desire to identify with larger groups who could back them up politically and militarily, a large number of Middle Eastern Christians became either Catholic or Protestant. But an emergent Arab nationalism reacted against Western influence. The growth of both Protestantism and Catholicism was curbed. By the second half of the 20th C, the only nations where Eastern Orthodox Christianity retained its identity as a state church were Greece and Cyprus.The fall of Constantinople in 1453 was viewed by Russian Christians as God's punishment for its reunion with the heretical Rome. They regarded Moscow as the “3rd Rome” and the new capital whose task was to uphold Orthodoxy. In 1547, Ivan IV took the title “czar,” drawn from the ancient “Caesar” a proper name that had come to mean “emperor.” The Russian rulers deemed themselves the spiritual heirs to the Roman Empire. Fifty years later, the Metropolitan of Moscow took the title of Patriarch. The Russian Church then churned out a barrage of polemics against the Greek Orthodox Church, Roman Catholics, and Protestants. By the 17th C, the Russian Orthodox Church was so independent when attempts were made by some to re-integrate the Church with its Orthodox brothers, it led to a schism in the Russian church and a bloody rebellion.Now—I just used the term “metropolitan.” We mentioned this in an earlier episode, but now would be a good time for a recap on terms.The Roman Catholic Church is presided over by a Pope whose authority is total, complete. The Eastern Orthodox Church is led by a Patriarch, but his authority isn't as far-reaching as the Pope. Technically, his authority extends just to his church. But realistically, because his church is located in an important center, his influence extends to all the churches within the sphere of his city. While there is only one pope, there might be several Patriarchs who lead various branches of the Eastern Orthodox Church.A Metropolitan equates loosely to an arch-bishop; someone who leads a church that influences the churches around it.Peter the Great's desire to westernize a recalcitrant Russia led to an interest on the part of Russian clergy in both Catholic and Protestant theology. Orthodoxy wasn't abandoned; it was simply embellished with new methods. The Kievan school adopted a Catholic flavor while the followers of Theophanes Prokopovick leaned toward Protestantism. In the late 19th C, a Slavophile movement under the leadership of Alexis Khomiakov applied some of Hegel's analytics to make a synthesis called sobornost; a merging of the Catholic idea of authority with the Protestant view of freedom.Obviously, the Russian Revolution at the beginning of the 20th C put an end to all this with the arrival of a different Western Philosophy - Marxism. In 1918, the Church was officially separated from the State. The Russian Constitution of 1936 guaranteed “freedom for religious worship” but also “freedom for anti-religious propaganda.” In the 1920s, religious instruction in schools was outlawed. Seminaries were closed. After the death of the Russian Patriarch in 1925, the Church was forbidden to name a successor until 1943. The State needed all the help it could get rallying the population in the war with Germany. The seminaries were re-opened and permission was given to print a limited number of religious books.In the late 20th C, after 70 years of Communist rule, the Russian Orthodox Church still had 60 million members.In a recent conversation I had with a woman who grew up in Czechoslovakia during the Soviet Era, she remarked that under the Communists the Church survived, though few attended services. Freedom of religion was the official policy under the Soviets. But in reality, those who professed faith in God were marked down and passed over for education, housing, and other amenities, thin as they were under the harsh Soviet heel. You could be a Christian under Communism; but if you were, you were pretty lonely.Several years ago, when Russia opened to the rest of the world, I had a chance to go in with a team to teach the Inductive Study method as part of Russia's attempt to teach its youth morality and ethics.A senior citizen attended the class who between sessions regaled us with tales of being a believer under Communism. He looked like something straight out of an old, grimy black and white photo of a wizened old man with thinning white hair whose wrinkled face speaks volumes in the suffering he'd endured. He told us that he'd spent several stints in Russian prisons for refusing to kowtow to the Party line and steadfastly cleaving to his faith in God.It's remarkable the Church survived under Communism in the Soviet Bloc. Stories of the fall of the Soviets in the early '80s are often the tale of a resurgent Church.There are other Orthodox churches in various parts of the world. There's the Orthodox Church of Japan, China, and Korea. These communions, begun by Russian missionaries, are today, indigenous and autonomous, with a national clergy and membership, as well as a liturgy conducted in their native tongue.Due to social strife, political upheavals, persecution, and the general longing for a better life, large numbers of Orthodox believers have moved to distant lands. But as they located in their new home, they often transported the old tensions. Orthodoxy believes there can only be a single Orthodox congregation in a city. So, what to do when there are Greek, Russian or some other flavor of Eastern Orthodox believers all sharing the same community?Keep in mind not all churches in the East are part of Eastern Orthodoxy. Since the Christological controversies in the 5th C, a number of churches that disagreed with established creeds maintained their independence. In Persia, most Christians refused to refer to Mary as Theotokos = the Mother of God. They were labeled as Nestorians and declared heretical; though as we saw way back when we were looking at all this, Nestorius himself was not a heretic. Nestorians are more frequently referred to as Assyrian Christians, with a long history. During the Middle Ages, the Assyrian church had many members with missions extending as far as China. In modern times, the Assyrian Church has suffered severe persecution from Muslims. Early in the 20th C and again more recently, persecution decimated its members. Recent predations by ISIS were aimed at these brethren.Those churches that refused to accept the findings of the Council of Chalcedon were called Monophysites because they elevated the deity of Christ over His humanity to such a degree it seemed to make that humanity irrelevant. The largest of these groups were the Copts of Egypt and Ethiopia. The Ethiopian church was the last Eastern church to receive State support. That support ended with the overthrow of Haile Selassie in 1974. The ancient Syrian Monophysite Church, known more popularly as Jacobite, continued in Syria and Iraq. Its head was the Patriarch of Antioch who lived in Damascus. Technically under this patriarchate, but in reality autonomous, the Syrian Church in India has half a million members.As we saw in a previous episode, the Armenian Church also refused to accept the Chalcedonian Creed, because it resented the lack of support from Rome when the Persians invaded. When the Turks conquered Armenia, the fierce loyalty of the Armenians to their faith became one more spark that lit the fuse of ethnic hostility. In 1895, 96, and again in 1914 when the world was distracted elsewhere by The Great War, thousands of Armenians living under Turkish rule were massacred. A million escaped to Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Greece, France, and other Western nations where the memory of the Armenian Holocaust lives on and continues to play an important role in international relations and the development of foreign policy.
This episode is titled “Meanwhile, Back in the East” because before we dive into the next phase of church history in Europe, we need to catch up on what's happening to the East.The Mongol Empire of the 13th and 14th Cs occupied the largest contiguous land empire in history. Rising originally from the steppes of Central Asia and stretching from Eastern Europe to the Sea of Japan; from Siberia in the north to Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Iranian plateau, and the Middle East. At its greatest extent it spanned 6000 miles and covered about 16% of the planet's total land area.Genghis Khan was a shamanist, but recognizing the need to unite the Mongol clans. He adopted a policy of religious toleration that remained official policy during his reign and that of his son Ogedai. Several of the tribes that formed the core of the Mongol horde were Christians in at least a cultural sense. The Keriats, Onguds and Uighurs owed the Christianization of their culture to the Eastern expansion of Christianity we've looked at in earlier episodes.It's important to insert a short parenthetical comment here. Knowing what devastation the Mongols wrought during the 13th and 14th Cs and the literal wagon-loads of blood they spilled, we have to be careful when we call these tribes Christian. They certainly weren't evangelical missionaries. Their faith was a highly-distorted Nestorian version of the Gospel that exercised little restraint on the barbaric rapaciousness that marked their conquests. Still, they called themselves ‘'Christians and their claimed allegiance to the Gospel had a huge impact on what happened in the Middle East.Genghis Khan's son Tolui, married a Christian woman from the Keriat tribe. One of their sons was the Mongol ruler Hulegu. Another was the famous Kublai Khan, founder of the Yaun Dynasty in China. While Hulegu seems to have identified as a Christian, Kublai certainly favored Christians in his court. When Hulegu conquered Baghdad, the Islamic capital of the day, his Christian wife urged him to destroy the city's mosques but protect the churches. Her goal was to dismantle Islam in the region and hand it a permanent setback.The Mongols took control of the Caliph's palace and gave it to Baghdad's Christian patriarch. It ended up being made into a grand church. With such obvious favor being shown Christians, many Mongols converted.Asian Christians who'd suffered under the tyranny and oppression of Islamic rule for generations began to look to the advancing Mongol army as deliverers. One writer lauded the genocidal Hulegu and his wife as great luminaries and zealous combatants for the Christian religion. Beleaguered Western Crusaders were stoked by reports of allies in the East doing noble battle with the Muslims. Some Crusaders even sent emissaries to try to link up with the Mongols and help them in their conquest of the Egyptian Mamelukes in 1260. The Mameluke victory at Ain Jalut over the Mongols was a major disappointment.Hulegu's son married a Byzantine princess and he favored Christianity over both Buddhism and Islam. Over the next few decades the Mongols didn't persecute Muslims but they did impose what the Muslims felt was a heavy burden. They were no longer able to treat Christians living among them as a subject people they could extract heavy tolls and fines from. The Mongol attitude was that as long as everyone paid their taxes, they were free to practice whatever religion they wanted. So a huge source of wealth to Muslims was lost.Christians all across the Middle East took advantage of their newfound freedom and hoped things would stay that way indefinitely under a sympathetic Mongol rule. With Hulegu and his heirs in power, Christians began doing things that had been forbidden under Islam; like carrying the cross in public processions, drinking wine, and building churches where none had been permitted.Then, in 1268 in Baghdad, I aks you to pay close attention to. Maybe this will bring a little light to why there's such tremendous hatred on the part of certain elements within Islam towards Christians today; especially in that region of the world. The Christian Catholicos, the title of the archbishop, ordered a man drowned for converting from Christianity to Islam. Muslims were scandalized and rioted. Following Mongol policy, the rioting was brutally crushed. Christians took this as further evidence they were now the favored faith. But that favor was soon to turn against them.The Mongol leaders became increasingly aware that Islam, with its embrace of jihad in the extension of the Faith by the power of the sword, was much more compatible with their values than either Christianity or Buddhism. They began to drift towards Islam until 1295, when the new Khan, Mahmoud Gazahn, persecuted Christianity and Buddhism. His successors followed his policies. During the early years of the 14th C, Christians found themselves under the control of a Muslim super-state. Their position radically change from what they'd known under the Arab caliphate. Now Christians were subject to intense persecution. In the regional capital of Al-Malek in 1338, all Christians in the city were killed. The few traces of faith among the Keriats and Uighurs didn't last much into the 15th C.Islam's victory among the Mongols proved devastating for the remaining Christians of Central Asia and the Middle East. These communities had managed to weather the storm of the Muslim Arab conquest of the 7th C and it settled down to an uneasy peace with their new neighbors. But the brief respite brought by the Mongol invasion allowed the Christians to emerge in a dominant role for a time that they used to inflict the Muslims with real hurt. When a few years later, Muslims were back in control, this time with the authority of a Mongol Muslim powerhouse à Well, they decided it was payback-time. It was the Christians in Egypt who first bore the brunt of this new intolerance.From the start of the 13th C, Egypt was the main target of Western Crusades. Frustrated Egyptian governments regularly retaliated for the Crusades by attacking the Copts, the native Egyptian church. In the mid-13th C, Egypt was ruled by the Mamelukes and with the loss of Baghdad to the Mongols, the center of gravity of the Muslim world shifted to Mameluke Egypt. They considered the Christians in their region as a 5th column, in cahoots with the Mongols pressing west toward Egypt. After the loss of Baghdad, it wasn't hard to imagine a world in which Egypt would stand alone as the last great Muslim power in a Middle East dominated by Christian-Mongols.The greatest Mameluke leader was General Baibar, the Scourge of both Crusaders and Mongols. Baibar hated Christians in general, but had an extra dose of loathing for those of the European variety. When he captured Antioch in 1268, he wrote the city's Crusader ruler, who'd barely escaped, “Had you stayed, you'd have seen the crosses in your churches smashed, the pages of a false testament scattered, the patriarchs' tombs overturned. You would have seen your Muslim enemy trampling over the places where you celebrated Mass, cutting the throats of monks, priests, and deacons upon your altars--bringing sudden death to the patriarchs and slavery to your royal princes.”This attitude was radically different from the tone of earlier Muslim-Christian affairs. It reflected Baibar's fury at the Christian alliance with the Mongols who themselves were utterly brutal in their conquests. This intolerance was increasingly evident in Egyptian policies toward their still substantial Christian minority. Persecution in Egypt wasn't new, but things deteriorated quickly after the Mameluke-Mongol wars.Between 1293 and 1354, the Egyptian government launched four campaigns to enforce the submission of Christians and Jews and drive them to accept Islam. Each wave of violence became more intense and better organized. A review of this half-century gives us a much better understanding of the ancient hostilities that have inflamed the Middle East ever since.A quick sketch of what happened.In 1293, an initial persecution fizzled when the sultan's officials realized the Christians they were about to execute controlled the country's finances and were the most competent scribes.In 1301, a vizier visiting from Morocco was appalled at the wealth and status of Egyptian Christians and Jews. In Morocco, they had to pay a steep fine if they refused to convert and were subject to all kinds of public indignities. But in Egypt they held high public office, wore rich clothes and rode the best mounts. The vizier's criticisms moved Egyptian officials to install the same rules as Morocco. A wave of repressive laws followed, and ordinances closed all the churches and synagogues outside of Cairo. Some ancient churches were demolished, relics burned. Non-Muslims were dismissed from public employment and were forced to wear distinctive clothing; blue turbans for Christians, yellow for Jews. They were forced to ride only on donkeys and whenever a Muslim approached, they had to dismount and bow. Visitors to Egypt said that the enforcement of these rules continued all the way into the 19th C.The effects of this crisis linger to the present day, since the rigorous Muslim legalism that emerged at that time shaped modern Islamic fundamentalist movements. From the 1290s, Muslim jurists produced ever harsher interpretations of the laws governing minorities, particularly through the work of militant puritanical scholars like Ibn Taymiyyah. His life was shaped by the disasters of the Mongol wars which forced him into exile in Egypt. He saw his goal as the militant restoration of Islam in the face of its enemies at home and abroad. His work has had a long afterlife. Ibn Taymiyyah is regarded as the spiritual godfather of the Wahhabi movement and of most modern extremist and jihadist groups. Among many others, Osama bin Laden cited him as a special hero.The Muslim hostility toward Christianity in the early 14th C was reflected in outbreaks of extreme anti-Christian violence. In 1321, Muslim mobs looted and destroyed Cairo's Coptic churches. Usually, a Muslim cleric would give the signal for the attacks by mobilizing crowds in the mosques under the cry of “Down with the churches.”Now, the sultan tried to keep order, but the hatred of Christians was too powerful to contain. They were blamed for setting fires across Cairo. When some of the accused confessed under torture, the authorities were forced to support the popular movement. At one point, the Sultan faced a mob of 20,000 calling for the forceful suppression of Christians. In order to safeguard his rule, the Sultan permitted purge. The government went further and announced that anyone who found a Christian was permitted to beat him and take his goods.By the mid-14th C, Muslim writers had a whole catalog of anti-Christian charges that bear a close resemblance to the libelous anti-Jewish tracks - The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Christians were accused of being spies, ever on the lookout for opportunities to betray the Muslim cause. Cases in both Egypt and Syria proved, and I'm using air-quotes around that word “proved”-- they were serial arsonists. Some were even reported to have planted a bomb in the Great Mosque of Medina.Given modern-day stereotypes of Islam in the West, it's ironic that Christian minorities were then so feared because they allegedly plotted terror attacks against prestigious symbols of Muslim power.In a society founded on honor and family pride, the humiliations of these new policies were too much to bear for many wealthy urban Christians who then converted to Islam. Other, poorer Christians proved firmer; particularly if they were located in rural areas where government policies were slower to penetrate. But later waves of intimidation wore down there resistance. Violence in the 1320s reduced Christian numbers and prepared the way for the disasters of 1354. From the end of the 14th C, Egypt's Coptic Christians were reduced to a minority they retain up to the present day. The Coptic Church entered a period of hibernation that lasted until the mid-19th C. This is sad when we consider that Egypt had been a major center of Christianity for hundreds of years, and the place of dozens of vital and prolific monasteries. What were once the thousand monks of Bufanda, were reduced to just two.Once their Mongol rulers converted to Islam, conditions became equally difficult for the Christians of Mesopotamia and Syria. Between 1290 and 1330, the story of Christianity in these parts, like that in Egypt, becomes a long list of disasters and ever harsher laws. One edict commanded that churches be demolished and services halted. All clergy and Christian leaders were to be executed. The storied churches of Tabriz, Arbella, Mosul, and Baghdad were torn down. Bishops and priests were tortured and imprisoned. Some laws struck directly at ordinary believers rather than just the institutions and hierarchy. Some of these edicts came from the Khans themselves while others came from the initiation of local governors. But the effects were just as damaging. Even when the Khans tried to limit persecution, they could hardly stem the zeal of local officers. In some cities, local laws ordered forcible conversion to Islam and prohibited the exercise of Christianity upon the pain of death. One Muslim ruler in Armenia passed ruinous taxes and ordered that anyone who refused to convert to Islam should be branded, blinded in one eye, and castrated. Christians and Jews were to be instantly recognizable by wearing distinctive clothing. In the words of one contemporary, “The persecutions and disgrace and markings and ignominy which the Christian suffered at this time, especially in Baghdad, well the words cannot describe.” The persecution reached its height with wholesale massacres at Arbella in 1310 and at Amita in 1317. There at Amita, where 12,000 were sold into slavery, the destruction of churches and monasteries was so thorough the fires burned for a month. These persecutions had a greater effect on the churches of the Middle East than any other event since the conversion of the Roman Empire. The succession of church leadership that had remained unbroken since the time of the Apostles came to an abrupt end. Whole Christian communities were annihilated across Central Asia and surviving communities shrank to tiny fractions of their former size. Christianity disappeared in Persia and across southern and central Iraq the patriarchs of Babylon now literally headed for the hills, taking up residence on the safer soil of northern Mesopotamia.
This episode of CS is part 3 of our series on The Crusades.A major result of the First Crusade was a further alienation of the Eastern and Western Churches. The help provided Byzantium by the crusaders were not what The Eastern Emperor Alexius was hoping for.It also resulted in an even greater alienation of the Muslims than had been in place before. 200 years of crusading rampages across the Eastern Mediterranean permanently poisoned Muslim-Christian relations and ended the spirit of moderate tolerance for Christians living under Muslim rule across a wide swath of territory. The only people who welcomed the Crusaders were a handful of Christian minorities who'd suffered under Byzantine and Muslim rule; the Armenians and Maronites living in Lebanon. The Copts in Egypt saw the Crusades as a calamity. They were now suspected by Muslims of holding Western sympathies while being treated as schismatics by the Western Church. Once the Crusaders took Jerusalem, they banned Copts from making pilgrimage there.Things really went sour between East and West when the Roman church installed Latin patriarchates in historically Eastern centers at Antioch and Jerusalem. Then, during the 4th Crusade, a Latin patriarch was appointed to the church in Constantinople itself.To give you an idea of what this would have felt like to the Christian of Constantinople; imagine how Southern Baptists would feel if a Mormon bishop was installed as the President of the Southern Baptist Convention. You get the picture = No Bueno.Another long-lasting effect of the Crusades was that they weakened the Byzantine Empire and hastened its fall to the Ottoman Turks a couple centuries later. Arab governments were also destabilized leaving them susceptible to invasion by Turks and Mongols.A significant new development in monastic history was made at this time in the rise of the knightly monastic orders. The first of these was the Knights Templar, founded in 1118 under Hugh de Payens. King Baldwin gave the Templars their name, and from them the idea of fighting for the Temple passed to other orders. Bernard of Clairvaux, although not the author of the Templar rule, as legend has it, did write an influential piece called In Praise of the New Militia of Christ which lauded the new orders of knights.The Templars were imitated by the Hospitallers, who had an earlier origin as a charitable order. They'd organized in 1050 by merchants from Amalfi living in Jerusalem to protect pilgrims. They provided hospitality and care of the sick, and helped morph the word “hospitality” into “hospital.” Under Gerard in 1120, the Hospitallers gained papal sanction. Gerard's successor was Raymond de Provence who reorganized the Hospitallers as a military order on the pattern of the Knights Templar. The Hospitallers, also known as the Knights of St. John eventually moved to the islands of Rhodes, then Malta, where they held out in 1565 in a protracted siege against the Turks in one of history's most significant battles.Another important military order, the Teutonic Knights arose in 1199, during the 3rd Crusade.The knightly monastic orders had certain features in common. They viewed warfare as a devotional way of life. The old monastic idea of fighting demons, as seen in the ancient Egyptian desert hermits, evolved into actual combat with people cast as agents of evil. Spiritual warfare became actual battle. Knights and their attendants took the vows similar to other monks. They professed poverty, chastity, and obedience, along with a pledge to defend others by force of arms. While personal poverty was vowed, using violence to secure wealth was deemed proper so it could be used to benefit others, including the order itself. The Templars became an object of envy for their immense wealth.In studying the relations between Christianity and Islam during the Middle Ages, we should remember there were many peaceful interchanges. Some Christians advocated peaceful missions to Muslims. These peaceful encounters can be seen in the exchange of art. Christians highly valued Muslim metalwork and textiles. Church vestments were often made by Muslim weavers. Such a vestment is located today at Canterbury. It contains Arabic script saying, “Great is Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet.”On the positive side, if there was anything positive to be gleaned from the Crusades, it did promote a greater sense of unity in Western Europe. Remember that one of the reasons Pope Urban sparked the Crusade was to vent the violent habits of the European nobles who were constantly at each other's throats. Instead of warring with each other back and forth across Europe, watering its fields with blood, they united to go against infidels “way over there.”The Crusades also led to increased prestige for the papacy as they were able to mobilize huge numbers of people. The Crusades also stimulated an intellectual revival in Europe as Crusaders returned with new experiences and knowledge from another part of the world.After the 1st Crusade, over the next 60 years, Jerusalem saw a succession of weak rulers while the Muslims from Damascus to Egypt united under a new dynasty of competent and charismatic leaders. The last of these was Saladin, or, more properly, Salah ad-Din. Founder of the Ayyubid dynasty of Islam, he became caliph in 1174 and set out to retake Jerusalem.The king of Jerusalem at the time was (and warning: I'm going to butcher this poor guy's name) Guy de Lusignan. Let's just call him “Guy.” He led the Crusaders out to a hill on the West of the Sea of Galilee called the Horns of Hattin. Both the Templars and Hospitallers were there in force, and the much vaunted “true cross” was carried by the bishop of Acre, who himself was clad in armor. On July 5, 1187, the decisive battle was fought. The Crusaders were completely routed. 30,000 perished. King Guy, the leaders of the Templars and Hospitallers along with a few other nobles were taken prisoner. Saladin gave them clemency. The fate of the Holy Land was decided.On Oct. 2, 1187, Saladin entered Jerusalem after it made brave resistance. The generous conditions of surrender were mostly creditable to the chivalry of the Muslim commander. There were no scenes of savage butchery as followed the entry of the Crusaders 90 years before. The people of Jerusalem were given their liberty if they paid a ransom. Europeans and anyone else who wanted to, were allowed to leave. For 40 days the procession of the departing continued. Relics stored in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher were redeemed for the sum of 50,000 bezants. Named after Byzantium where they were the medium of exchange, the bezant was a gold coin of 5 grams.Thus ended the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. Since then the worship of Islam has continued on Mount Moriah without interruption. The other European conquests of the 1st Crusade were then in danger from the unending feuds of the Crusaders themselves, and, in spite of the constant flow of recruits and treasure from Europe, they fell easily before Saladin.He allowed a merely ceremonial Latin ruler to hold the title King of Jerusalem but the last real king was Guy, who was released, then travelled around claiming the title of king but without a court or capital. He eventually settled in Cyprus.We'll go into less detail for the rest of the Crusades as we finish them off over the next episode .The 2nd Crusade was sparked by 2 events; the Fall of the Crusader state of Edessa in Syria and the preaching of Bernard of Clairvaux. And note that the 2nd Crusade took place BEFORE the arrival of Saladin on the scene.Edessa fell to the Turks in Dec., 1144. They built a fire in a large breach they'd made in the city wall. The fire was so hot it cracked a section of the wall a hundred yards long. When the wall collapsed, the Turks rushed in and unleashed the same kind of brutality the Crusaders had when they conquered Jerusalem.Pope Eugenius III saw the Turk victory at Edessa as a threat to the continuance of the Crusaders in Palestine and called upon the king of France to march to their relief. The forgiveness of all sins and immediate entrance into heaven were promised to all embarking on a new Crusade. Eugenius summoned Bernard of Clairvaux to leave his abbey and preach the crusade. Bernard was the most famous person of his time and this call by the Pope came at the zenith of his fame. He regarded the Pope's summons as a call from God.On Easter in 1146, King Louis of France vowed to lead the Crusade. The Pope's promise of the remission of sins was dear to him as he was stricken with guilt for having burned a church with 1300 inside. How grand to be able to gain forgiveness by killing more! He assembled a council at Vézelai at which Bernard made such an overpowering impression by his message that all present pressed forward to take up the crusading cause. Bernard was obliged to cut his own robe into small fragments, to give away to all who wanted something of his they could carry to the East. He wrote to Pope Eugenius that the enthusiasm was so great “castles and towns were emptied of their inmates. One man could hardly be found for 7 women, and the women were being everywhere widowed while their husbands were still alive.” Meaning most of the men set off on the Crusade, leaving the population of France with 7 women to every man. Hey – lucky them!From France, Bernard went to Basel, in modern day Switzerland, then up thru the cities along the Rhine as far as Cologne. As in the 1st Crusade, persecution broke out against the Jews in this area when a monk named Radulph questioned why they needed to go to the Middle East to get rid of God-haters and Christ-killers. There were plenty of them in Europe. Bernard objected vehemently to this. He called for the Church to attempt to win the Jews by discussion and respect, not killing them.Bernard was THE celebrity of the day and thousands flocked to hear him. Several notable miracles and healings were attributed to him. The German Emperor Konrad III was deeply moved by his preaching and convinced to throw his weight to the Crusade.Konrad raised an army of 70,000; a tenth of whom were knights. They assembled at Regensburg and proceeded thru Hungary to the Bosporus. All along their route they were less than welcome. Konrad and the Eastern Emperor Manuel where brothers-in-law, but that didn't keep Manuel from doing his best to wipe out the German force. The guides he provided led the Germans into ambushes and traps then abandoned them in the mountains. When they finally arrived at Nicea, famine, fever and attacks had reduced the force to a tenth is original size.King Louis set out in the Spring of 1147 and followed the same route Konrad had taken. His queen, Eleanor, famed for her beauty and skill as a leader, along with many other ladies of the French court, accompanied the army. The French met up with what was left of Konrad's force at Nicea.The forces then split up into different groups which all reached Acre in 1148. They met King Baldwin III of Jerusalem and pledged to unite their forces in an attempt to conquer Damascus before retaking Edessa. The siege of Damascus was a total failure. The European nobles fell to such in-fighting that their camp fragmented into warring groups. Konrad left for Germany in the Fall of 1148 and Louis returned to France a few months later.Bernard was humiliated by the failure of the Crusade. He assigned it to the judgment of God for the sins of the Crusaders and Christian world.A little more about King Louis's wife Eleanor. Eleanor of Aquitaine was really something. In a world dominated by men, Eleanor's career was something special. She was one of the wealthiest and most powerful people in Europe during the Middle Ages.Eleanor succeeded her father as the ruler of Aquitaine and Poitiers at the age of 15. She was then the most eligible bride in Europe. Three months after her accession, she married King Louis VII. As Queen of France, she went on the 2nd Crusade. Then, with it's defeat and back in France, she got an annulment from Louis on the basis that they were relatives, then married Henry Plantaget, Duke of Normandy and Count of Anjou, who soon became King Henry II of England in 1154. This despite the fact that Henry was an even closer relative than Louis had been and 9 years younger than she. They were married just 8 weeks after her annulment. Over the next 13 years Eleanor bore Henry 8 children: 5 sons, 3 of whom would become king, and 3 daughters. However, Henry and Eleanor eventually became estranged. She was imprisoned between 1173 and 1189 for supporting her son's revolt against her husband.Eleanor was widowed in July 1189. Her husband was succeeded by their son, Richard I, known as the Lion-hearted. As soon as he ascended the thrown, Richard had his mother released from prison. Now the queen dowager, Eleanor acted as regent while Richard went on the 3rd Crusade. She survived Richard and lived well into the reign of her youngest son John, known as the worst king in England's long history. It's this King John who's cast as the chief villain in the story of Robin Hood.The 3rd Crusade is referred to as the Kings' Crusade due to the European monarchs who participated in it. It was an attempt to reconquer the Holy Land from the Muslims who, under Saladin, had reclaimed the lands the Crusaders took in the 1st Crusade. The 3rd was for the most part successful but fell short of its ultimate goal, the re-conquest of Jerusalem.When Saladin captured Jerusalem in 1187, the news rocked Europe. The story goes that Pope Urban III was so traumatized, he died of shock. Henry II of England and Philip II of France ended their dispute with each other to lead a new crusade. When Henry died 2 years later, Richard the Lionheart stepped in to lead the English. The elderly Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa also responded to the call to arms, and led a massive army across Turkey. Barbarossa drowned while crossing a river in June, 1190 before reaching the Holy Land. His death caused great grief among the German Crusaders. Most were so discouraged they returned home.After driving the Muslims from the port of Acre, Frederick's successor Leopold V of Austria and King Philip of France left the Holy Land in August 1191, leaving Richard to carry on by himself. Saladin failed to defeat Richard in any military engagements, and Richard secured several key coastal cities. But the English King realized a conquest of Jerusalem wasn't possible to his now weakened force and in September of 1192, made a treaty with Saladin by which Jerusalem would remain under Muslim control, but allowed unarmed Christian pilgrims and merchants to visit the city. Richard departed the Holy Land a month later.The successes of the 3rd Crusade allowed the Crusaders to maintain a considerable kingdom based in Cyprus and along the Syrian coast. Its failure to recapture Jerusalem led to the call for a 4th Crusade 6 years later.The 3rd Crusade was yet another evidence of the European's inability to form an effective union against the Muslims. The leaders and nobility of Europe made great promises of unity when they embarked on a Crusade, but the rigors of the journey, along with the imminent prospect of victory saw them more often than not falling out with each other in incessant and petty squabbles.On Richard's journey back to England he was seized by the afore mentioned Leopold, duke of Austria, whose enmity he'd incurred in the battle for the city of Joppa. The duke turned his captive over to the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry VI who also had a grudge to settle. The Lionheart was released on the humiliating terms of paying an enormous ransom and consenting to hold his kingdom as a fiefdom of the Empire. It's this hostage taking of Richard the Lionhearted that forms the backdrop for the tale of Robin Hood.Saladin died in March, 1193, by far the most famous of the foes of the Crusaders. Christendom has joined with Arab writers in praise of his courage, culture, and the magnanimous manner in which he treated his foes.Historians debate how many Crusades there were. It wasn't as though Kings Henry and Philip said, “Hey, let's make nice and launch the 3rd Crusade.” They didn't number them as historians have since. History tends to ascribe 9 as the number of Crusades, but then add 2 more by assigning them with names instead of numbers; the Albigenian and the Children's Crusades, which took place between the 4th and 5th Crusades.Generally, the 5th thru 9th Crusades are considered lesser armed movements while the first 4 are called the Great Crusades.We'll finish with a quick review of the 4th Crusade.Innocent III became Pope in 1198. He called for the 4th Crusade which was the final blow that forever sundered the Western and Eastern churches, though that was certainly never his aim. In fact, he warned the Crusaders against it.Pope Innocent's plan was simply to destroy a Muslim military base in Egypt. The merchants of Venice had promised to supply the Crusaders with ships at a huge discount; one the Crusaders couldn't pass up. So in the summer of 1202, they arrived in Venice expecting to sail to Egypt. But there was a problem: Only a third of the expected number of warriors showed. And they came up with a little more than half the required sailing fee.A prince from the East offered to finance the balance under one condition: That the Crusaders sail first to Constantinople, dethrone the current Emperor and hand it over to him. They could then sail on their merry way to Egypt. Pope Innocent forbade this diversion, but no one paid him any attention.On July 5th, 1203, the Crusaders arrived in the Eastern capital. The people of Constantinople were by now fed up with Europeans meddling in their affairs and formed a counter revolution that swept the current emperor off the throne, but only so they could install their own fiercely anti-Crusader ruler. Being now shut out of his hopes, the would-be emperor who'd paid the Crusaders way to Constantinople refused to pay their way to Egypt, leaving them stranded in increasingly hostile territory.They were furious. Their leaders decided to try and make the best of it and called for a quick plundering of Constantinople. One of the Crusade chaplains proclaimed; in complete disregard for the Pope's wishes, “If you rightly intend to conquer this land and bring it under Roman obedience, all who die will partake of the pope's indulgence.” That was like letting a rabid dog off its chain. For many of the Crusaders, this was not only an excuse to get rich by taking loot, it meant a license to do whatever they pleased in Constantinople.On Good Friday, 1204, the Crusaders, with red crosses on their tunics, sacked Constantinople. For 3 days, they raped and killed fellow Christians. The city's statues were hacked to pieces and melted down. The Hagia Sophia was stripped of its golden vessels. A harlot performed sensual dances on the Lord's Table, singing vile drinking songs. One Eastern writer lamented, “Muslims are merciful compared with these men who bear Christ's cross on their shoulders.”Neither the Eastern Empire nor Church ever recovered from those 3 days. For the next 60 years Crusaders from the Roman church ruled what was once the Eastern Empire. The Eastern emperor established a court in exile at Nicaea. Rather than embrace Roman customs, many Eastern Christians fled there. There they remained until 1261, when an Eastern ruler retook Constantinople.
This 84th Episode of CS is titled Lost & is a brief review of The Church in the East.I encourage you to go back and listen again to episode 72 – Meanwhile Back in the East, which conveyed a lot of detail about the Eastern Church & how it fared under the Mongols and Muslim Expansion in the Middle Ages.Until that time, Christianity was widespread across a good part of the Middle East, Mesopotamia, Persia, & across Central Asia – reaching all the way to China. The reaction of Muslim rulers to the incipient Mongol affiliation with Christianity meant a systemic persecution of believers in Muslim lands, especially in Egypt, where Christians were regarded as a 5th Column. Then, when the Mongols embraced Islam, entire regions of Christians were eradicated.Still, even with these deprivations, Christianity continued to live on in vast portions of across the East.Let me insert a verbal footnote at this point. Much of what follows comes form the work of Philip Jenkins, whose book The Lost History of Christianity is a stellar review of the Church of the East. I heartily recommend it to all you hardcore history fans.Consider this . . .The news recently reported the attacks by ISIS on Assyrian Christians in Northern Iraq. This is a reprise of 1933, when Muslim forces in the new nation of Iraq launched assaults on Nestorian & Assyrians, in what had once been the Christian heartland of northern Mesopotamia. But now, government-sponsored militias cleansed most of the area of its Assyrian population, killing thousands, and eliminating dozens of villages.Although the atrocities weren't new, the arrival of modern media meant they reached the attention of the world, raising demands for Western intervention.These anti-Christian purges were shocked many & elicited a new legal vocabulary. Within months, the Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin referred to the Assyrians & Christian Armenians before them, to argue for a new legal category called crimes of barbarity, meaning “acts of extermination directed against the ethnic, religious or social collectivities whatever the motive; be it political or religious.” In 1943, Lemkin expanded this idea and coined a new word for such abhorrent behavior—Genocide.Yes = The modern concept of genocide as a horror calling for international sanctions has its roots in successful movements to eradicate Middle Eastern Christians.I mention this less than century old genocidal campaign against Assyrian Christians because we may tend to assume the Middle East has ALWAYS been dominated by Islam, or at least, it has since the 7th C. What we ought to understand instead is that it was only in the last Century that the Middle East wasn't understood as a home to a significant popular of Christians. Take ANY Middle Eastern person out of the 18th C and plant them in the Middle East of today and they would be stunned by the paucity of Christian presence.Until a century ago, the Middle East was a bewildering quilt of religious diversity in which Christians were a familiar part of the social and cultural landscape. Particularly startling for our time traveler would be modern-day Turkey as a Muslim land.Historically speaking, until very recently, Christians were as familiar a part of the Middle Eastern scene as Jews are in the United States, or Muslims are in Western Europe. At the dawn of the 20th C, Christians of the Middle East were about 11% of the population while American Jews are only about 2%!The destruction of the Middle Eastern Christian community is an historic transformation of the region.The decline of Christianity in the Near East occurred in two distinct phases.The first occurred during the Middle Ages and largely as a result of the Crusades. But even then, Christians suffered more or less regionally. The Syriac Church was virtually annihilated while the Egyptian Copts held their own. Reduced to a minority status, they entrenched & proved durable.But the second phase of hostility against Christians began about a century ago with the advent of a new & virulent form of Islamism. Now Christians are being systematically eradicated; either by aggressive assimilation or outright persecution. The 20th C saw the emergence of a form of Islam intolerant of any other faith.The Ottoman Turks began as a rather small power in Asia Minor. After the Mongol invasions destroyed the Seljuks, the Ottomans used the wars that followed to create a power base in Asia Minor. They gradually spread over what had been the Christian Byzantine Empire. By the time they took Constantinople, the Ottoman Empire included the Balkans, and by 1500 they controlled the Black Sea. By 1520 they ruled most of the Muslim world west of Persia, as far as Algiers, and became the main enemy for European Christians. Their European conquests advanced rapidly through the 16th C under such Selim I & Suleiman the Magnificent. In 1526, the Turks conquered Hungary, destroying what was at that time a major European power. Turkish advances weren't reversed until the their loss at Vienna in 1683.Selim I took the title of caliph, and took his role as head of Islam seriously. He ordered the confiscation of all churches, many of which were razed, and Ottoman authorities forced thousands of conversions. A century later, the sultan Ibrahim planned the total extermination of Christians. From the 15th C onward, the pressure to convert to Islam was massive. Throughout Christian territories held vassal by the Turks was levied the “tribute of children” by which Christian families had to give a number of their sons to be raised by the state as slaves, or as elite soldiers, called Janissaries. These janissaries became some of the most feared warriors in the Sultan's army against the Europeans.Ottoman warfare was extremely destructive because it drew on methods stemming from the Turkish heritage of Central Asia. Ottoman forces massacred entire Christian populations, targeting clergy and leaders. In 1480, the Turks destroyed the Italian city of Otranto, killing 12,000 and executing priests by sawing them in half. The destruction of Nicosia in Cyprus in 1570 was a crucial loss to Europe. Accounts of Ottoman warfare and punishment include such gruesome techniques as impaling, crucifixion, and flaying. When a Christian leader in Wallachia, named Vlad decided to use these very same tactics against the Turks, it gave rise to the legend of Dracula.From the 15th thru the 19th Cs, the Turks ruled over a large Christian population on European soil. They called Christians rayah, “the herd,” and treated them as animals to be sheared and exploited. A Bosnian Muslim song says >> “The rayah is like the grass; Mow it as much as you will till it springs up anew.”Though pressure to convert was strong, Christianity survived, and managed to recover in a few places like Greece & Bulgaria. But the Eastern Orthodox Church now followed the way of their earlier cousins, the Nestorian and Jacobite Churches & passed under Muslim rule.As the Near East fell under the control of Islamic states, Western European nations had an ever-greater incentive to find alternative trade routes. This they did by exploiting the seas. Well into the 15th C, explorers dreamed of linking up with the fabled Prester John, and renewing the alliance against Islam. In the mid–15th C, the Portuguese explored the Atlantic & shores of Africa. By the 17th C, Europeans were well on their way to global domination. Rising economic power led to urbanization, and the share of the world's population living in Europe and in European overseas colonies grew dramatically. Demographic expansion vastly increased the relative power of European Christianity.Expanding commercial horizons brought Europe's churches into contact with the tattered shreds of the ancient Eastern Christian groups. Tensions between European and non-European churches were of ancient origin. As early as 1300, Catholic missions in China had met sharp opposition from Nestorians, who naturally saw the newcomers making inroads on their ancient territories. Now, however, the Latin powers were far stronger than before, and better able to enforce their will. During the great period of Spanish and Portuguese empire building from the mid-16th to 17th C, the leading edge of Christian expansion was the Roman Catholic Church, fortified by the militancy of the Counter-Reformation. As Catholic clergy and missionaries roamed the world, they found the remnants of many ancient churches, which they determined to bring under papal control.So long-standing was the separation of Western and Eastern churches that the 2 sides never stood much chance of an alliance. As Christianity fell to such dire straits outside Europe, Catholics dismissed foreign traditions as marginal or even unchristian. After the fall of Constantinople, Pope Pius II wrote to the victorious sultan, effectively denying that the non-Catholic churches were Christian in any worthwhile sense: they were “all tainted with error, despite their worship of Christ.” He more or less explicitly asserted the identity of Christianity with the Catholic tradition and, even more, with Europe itself.As Western Christians traveled the world, many were skeptical about the credentials of other churches. In 1723, a French Jesuit reported that “the Copts in Egypt are a strange people far removed from the kingdom of God…although they say they are Christians they are such only in name and appearance. Indeed many of them are so odd that outside of their physical form scarcely anything human can be detected in them.”Latins were troubled by the pretensions of these threadbare Christians, who nevertheless claimed such grand titles. In 1550, a Portuguese traveler reported that the 40,000 Christians along the Indian coast owed their allegiance to a head in “Babylon,” someone they called the “catholicos.” Bafflingly, they had not so much as heard of a pope at Rome. Some years later, envoys dispatched by the Vatican were appalled to discover India's Nestorians called “the Patriarch of Babylon the universal pastor and head of the Catholic Church,” a title that in their view belonged exclusively to the Roman pontiff.For the first time, many Asian and African churches now found themselves under a European-based regime, and were forced to adjust their patterns of organization and worship accordingly.Around the world, we see similar attempts at harmonization. From the 1550s, factions in the Nestorian church sought Roman support, and much of the church accepted Roman rule under a new patriarch of the Chaldeans. Like other Eastern churches, the Catholic Chaldeans retained many of their customs and their own liturgy, but this compromise was not enough to draw in other Nestorians who maintained their existence as a separate church. The Jacobites split on similar lines, with an independent church remaining apart from the Catholic Syrians.The most controversial moment in this process of assimilation occurred in 1599, when Catholic authorities in southern India sought to absorb the ancient Syriac-founded churches of the region, the Thomas Christians. The main activist was Aleixo de Menezes, archbishop of the Portuguese colony of Goa, who maneuvered the Indian church into a union with Rome at a Synod in Diamper. In Indian Christian memory, de Menezes remains a villainous symbol of European imperialism, who began the speedy Romanization of the church, enforced by Goa's notoriously active inquisition. The synod ordered the burning of books teaching Nestorian errors as well as texts teaching practices Europeans deemed superstitious. A substantial body of Syriac and Nestorian tradition perished. Many local Christians reacted against the new policy by forming separate churches, and in later years the Thomas Christians were deeply fragmented.Yet despite this double pressure from Muslims and Catholics, Eastern Christian communities survived. At its height, the Ottoman Empire encompassed the Middle East, the Balkans, and North Africa, & in Europe included millions of subject Christians. Even in 1900, Muslims made up a little less than half the empire's overall population.This survival seems amazing when we think of the accumulated military catastrophes and defeats between 1300 and 1600, and the tyranny of sultans like Selim I. Yet for all these horrors, the Ottomans also found it in their interest to maintain a stable imperial order. After Sultan Mehmet II took Constantinople, he formally invested the new patriarch with his cross and staff, just as the Christian emperors had done previously. Christian numbers stabilized as the Ottomans granted them official status under a system dating back to the ancient Persians. They had their own patriarch who was both religious and civil head. This system endured into the 1920s.Within limits, Christians often flourished, to the puzzlement of western Europeans, who could not understand the distinctive Ottoman mix of tolerance and persecution. Particularly baffling was the extensive use the empire made of non-Muslims, who were in so many other ways denied the most basic rights. Sultans regularly used Christians and former Christians as administrators, partly because such outsiders would be wholly dependent on the ruler's pleasure: eight of the nine grand viziers of Suleiman the Magnificent were of Christian origin.Making their life under the new order more acceptable, Christians actively proved their loyalty. Above all, Orthodox believers were not likely to work with foreign Catholic powers to subvert Turkish rule. The Orthodox found the Muslims no more obnoxious than the Catholic nations, whose activities in recent centuries had left horrendous memories. Apart from the Latin sack of Constantinople in 1204, later Catholic invaders like the Venetians had been almost as tyrannical to their Orthodox subjects as were the Turks. Even in the last days of the empire, a Byzantine official famously declared, “Better the Sultan's turban than the Cardinal's hat!” Matters deteriorated further when the Orthodox saw how Catholics treated members of their own church in eastern Europe.By far the worst sufferers from the carnage of the 14th C were the old Eastern Syriac churches, precisely because they had once been so powerful and had posed a real danger to Muslim supremacy. Neither Jacobites nor Nestorians ever recovered from the time of Timur. If we combine all the different branches of these churches, we find barely half a million faithful by the early 20th C, scattered from Cyprus and Syria to Persia. This implosion led to a steep decline in morale and ambition. Instead of trying to convert the whole of Asia as they had originally envisioned and seemed within their grasp, the Syrian churches survived as inward-looking quasi-tribal bodies. Succession to the Nestorian patriarchate became hereditary, passing from uncle to nephew. Intellectual activity declined to nothing, at least in comparison with its glorious past. Most clergy were illiterate, and the church texts that do survive are imbued with superstition and folk magic.Well …That brings us now back to Europe and the monumental shift the Western Church had been moving toward for some time, as we've tracked over 8 episodes in our series, The Long Road to Reform.We'll pick it up there in our next episode.
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