St. Barbara and the Martyrs of the Armenian Genocide: A Witness to Radical Forgiveness
by Barbara K. Harris
Throughout the ages there have been incredible acts of love and kindness demonstrated across religious groups, cultures, and ethnic populations. These actions reveal a selfless and sacrificial love for the other. Mother Maria Skobtsova, who is the focus of another chapter in this book*, was one individual who demonstrated such love. As a Russian emigre in Paris during the German occupation, she tirelessly worked to provide baptismal certificates for Jews. This led to her arrest and deportation to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. While there, it is believed that she selflessly and sacrificially took the place of another who was in line for the gas chamber.
Tragically, despite such loving acts, individuals and communities have also shown an astonishing ability to inflict evil upon each other in all its various manifestations, including humiliation through murder, slander, slavery, torture, and discrimination, to name just a few. Virtually all ethnic, cultural, and religious groups have been at times both perpetrators and/or victims of such acts of degradation and inhumanity; African Americans, Native Americans, Tutsis, Hutus, Jews, Christians, Hindus, Shintos, Sunnis, Shi’as, Baha’is, black South Africans, and the list goes on. This article examines forgiveness as an expression of divine love and the Christian response to evil and intolerance as experienced by St. Barbara, an early Christian martyr, and by the 1.3 million Armenian martyrs of the early twentieth century. Their examples as intentional and unintentional martyrs have transformed me and my response when encountering abuse.
The witness of these martyrs vividly exemplifies the words of our Lord:
St Barbara The Great Martyr
Imagine living in a time and place in which a young woman is considered an extension of her family’s dignitas.[2] In the fourth-century Roman Empire, power and social station were of utmost importance. Dignitas refers to one’s perceived political and socio-economic status, an asset that demands attention and cultivation. The pursuit of dignitas requires that one dress, look, speak, and behave in a manner dictated by the prevailing social mores. In such circumstances, a woman is allowed very few choices. In fact, purity, beauty, family honor, and fortune—all vital dimensions of dignitas—are highly prized commodities in consideration of a marriage partner or, more accurately, a family alliance. Any deviation from this formula is severely punished. Respect for one’s personhood is lost in this mix, and one becomes objectified by family and society.
St. Barbara the Great Martyr [3] was a young woman in such a society, defined by her father’s name (Dioscoros), social standing (he was a man with high political ambitions), and pagan beliefs (in the Roman gods). She lived a privileged life as the only daughter of a wealthy and influential man and was raised in an influential Roman outpost. Dioscoros was an important political figure who had the responsibility to govern the district in which Barbara’s family lived. This meant that they were expected to be models of Roman aristocratic life. They dressed, worshipped, entertained, and lived as full citizens, enjoying the benefits of an upperclass life. Roman citizenship afforded many rights, and Barbara’s father’s position afforded many privileges.
Anything she wanted was granted: delicious foods, elegant clothing, fine jewelry, excellent tutors, and luxurious furnishings. So cherished was Barbara by her father that he built a special tower to protect her from the many unwanted influences of that time. In his mind, her purpose in life was to increase the family’s dignitas by marrying a person of equal or greater social rank and wealth. Dioscoros saw his household as an extension of his dignitas. Everyone in the household, including servants and family members, was expected to obey his desires and be attentive to him. This was quite natural, because everyone in the district was also expected to obey him.
The tower in which her father installed her did not prevent Barbara from having access to information, through the women who served her. She was barely eighteen when she learned through these relationships that “God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). How astonishing it must have been for her to discover that she was created in the image and likeness of God, and that this God became human so that she could become like God. With an open heart and mind, Barbara thirsted for truth, and in a short period of time, studied the veracity of these teachings.
Because she had no friends outside the home, her maids were her companions. Through them Barbara learned more of this new religion— one that was radically different from the idolatry of the Romans and their emperor worship. Barbara was informed about a belief in one God, in three persons. Her discussions with these friends turned into lessons, and these lessons continued over many days, until she made the decision to become a believer. The transformation was an interior one: her outward appearance remained the same, but her inward self was radically changed.
All this happened without her father’s knowledge or approval. He was a traditional man, opposed to new religions because they were seen as a threat to the Roman Empire and the status quo. Anything contrary to the norm—anything that could potentially hinder his political ambitions— was unacceptable.
Barbara did not know how he would react. She was a beloved daughter who hoped for the best, separated as she was from the world. Yet the more she grew in this new faith, the more she desired to honor this Triune God. It is generally believed that Barbara did so in one small way. She asked the builders of her family’s new bathhouse to have three windows installed, instead of the two that were planned. The legend states that she was so pleased with the result that she drew a cross on the wall with her finger.
When her father discovered this deviation from “the plan,” she happily told him that: “These three windows prefigure clearly the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, which be three persons and one very God, on whom we ought to believe and worship,” and she proceeded to tell him about her new faith.[4] In an instant he became enraged and turned on her. She was no longer his cherished daughter whom he could manipulate to his best advantage; she immediately became a cancerous influence to be excised, from the pristine Roman landscape. He beat his only daughter and locked her up as a prisoner in her own home.
Barbara had defied her father in order to respond to a calling from God. The consequences were real. She was dragged before the governor of the province, where she was encouraged to renounce Christ and to offer sacrifices at the local temple. She refused. For this she was tortured and sentenced to death. Simeon the Translator called her father “a child of the man-slaying devil”[5] because of his intense madness toward her as a person with abnormal religious beliefs. Such was his intolerance toward this Christian faith that Dioscoros carried out the death sentence himself by beheading his formerly beloved daughter. She is remembered in the following hymn of the Church:
Orthodox Christians believe that all of humanity has been created in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1:26). Although people are free to choose whether or not to believe this, Orthodox Christians are expected to refrain from judging others for their choices in belief. Rather, it is their responsibility to respond to others by loving them as Christ would have (John 13:34). Archbishop Desmond Tutu confronts us with the reality that:
Both of these stories remind us of how final a choice murder is. Humanity has not yet learned the lesson of loving one’s neighbor as one’s self. Humankind has been (after the Fall) endowed with the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 3:22), in this way becoming more like God. Thus, there is no excuse for ignorance of the differentiation between good and evil. Although St. Barbara’s father was vengeful because of her disobedience, and Cain was envious of Abel’s gift to the Lord, their heinous actions are both based upon anger. In fact, St. John Cassian names this sin and the way out of it:
Martyrs of the Armenian Genocide
I am another Barbara whose own family has been the recipient of the same intolerance experienced by St. Barbara. Perhaps it was the same seed of envy and hatred identified above that came to full bloom in the hearts of those who perpetrated the Armenian genocide (1915-1923) in Turkey. My yiayia’s (Greek grandmother’s) last vision of her homeland—while she was running for her life toward the Mediterranean Sea—was of being chased by an armed and angry mob with an unquenchable thirst for the blood of non-Turks, because they believed that Turkey was for Turks only. She was in her late teens at that time, and she never returned to Palies Fokes, Turkey. She was fortunate. She escaped prior to 1915 with her life and with most of her family. Making her way to Morgantown, West Virginia, she lived a safer and perhaps less eventful life—although one might consider rearing four children in a new homeland just as eventful.
Many others were not so fortunate. Shamrig Marifian, the grandmother of an acquaintance, recounted the horrors of her family’s forced march from Yerevan, her hometown, to Etchmiadzin. She talks about the separation from family members, starvation, forced marriages, and her eventual migration to orphanages in Istanbul and Athens; finally, she tells of her reunion with family in East St. Louis, Illinois. In the videotaped account of her life, the tension and sadness in her face, the shaking in her voice, and her hand-wringing brought to life the fear, pain, and utter helplessness she must have felt.[16] As I continued to watch Shamrig on the video, it was as if she had been transported back in time and place to relive those atrocities she experienced as a small child—thus retraumatizing her and continuing the abuse. Shamrig and one of her sisters were the only survivors of her immediate family.
Historical Framework and Tensions
The land that is present-day Turkey was predominantly Orthodox Christian in the years prior to 1453. In that year the Ottoman Muslims overthrew the Byzantine Christian empire in the East and proceeded to change the culture from Christian to Muslim through their laws and practices. The Ottomans were excellent military strategists who continued their conquest toward the West, venturing as far as Austria. It is important to note that in Turkey, tensions between Muslims and Christians as well as between other religious groups (Jews, Kurds, Assyrians, etc.) are deep seated and have evolved over the course of many centuries.
Discovering the reasons for escalation of Turkish intolerance toward non-Turks during the latter part of the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth centuries requires a bit of attention, because many complicated influences converged at this time. This chapter will not attempt an in-depth examination of all the factors contributing to the formation of modern Turkey or to the Armenian genocide.[17] Rather, the intent is to offer a brief examination of how these atrocities were perpetrated against an innocent people and to consider how Orthodox and other Christians, as inheritors of their martyric legacy, should respond.
The everyday reality in which Muslims and Christians lived under Ottoman rule was an imbalanced one. Muslims had conquered and were ruling, whereas Christians had lost, and were made to be subservient. So long as both parties accepted that premise, all was right with their world (at least from the Muslim perspective). However, the latter part of the nineteenth century saw the decline of the Ottoman Empire. In general, public law, particularly concerning finance and organization, was administered through edicts (fermans) from the Sultan. Civil law concerning personal issues (marriage and inheritance) was subject to the rulings of the Sharia:[18]
These and other Turkish nationalists worked against their recent history of defeats in Europe to regain their dominance, albeit of a smaller area, of their own remaining territories. They adopted openly racist policies to resubjugate Christian peoples within their borders and used violence to enforce these policies. Their stated concern was to develop a national Turkish identity—“Turkey is for Turks” (meaning Muslim Turks)—and to avoid partition by the Western Allies. The Ottomans returning half-starved and humiliated after defeats in the Balkans were intentionally settled into predominantly Armenian areas to help set the stage for future murders, tortures, kidnappings, and death marches. Imagine the depth and breadth of rage that may have been felt toward Christians “enjoying the privilege” of living in their homeland. They were defeated by Christians and then settled in predominantly Christian areas. The stage for the genocide was more clearly constructed,[31] and the atmosphere continued to worsen:
The Armenian Genocide
The pro-Turkish nationalists worked to obliterate the Armenian people through various atrocious acts (taking away their arms, restricting their movements, etc.).[34] It is noteworthy that although such acts were encouraged by the nationalist Turks against Armenians, there were Turks who did offer assistance or relief to the Armenians. This is significant because these persons were under the constant threat of death for providing such aid. Taner Akçam, who is frequently cited in this paper, dedicated his book A Shameful Act to one such family. It is a sad commentary on those times and on present-day Turkey’s lack of transparency that more examples of such courage are not available to document here.
The abuse began slowly and slyly, then escalated to increasingly blatant acts of inhuman behavior, including raiding homes, confiscating knives, and hanging prominent citizens.[35],[36] Men were butchered, even dismembered.[37] Priests and others had horseshoes nailed to their feet.[38] Women and girls were raped.[39] Children were kidnapped from their families to become servants in Muslim families. The vast majority of non-Muslims could not expect any help at all from Muslims because an edict was issued which said that “any Muslim who protected or hid an Armenian would be punished by hanging.”[40] One of the most heart-rending and vivid examples of these heinous acts is described in an eyewitness account by a young girl, Dovey (Aghavni) Kassabian. It reveals the depths to which the Committee of Union and Progress Turks had descended in their choice to embrace the evil of genocide:
Denial of the Armenian Genocide
To this very day, the Turkish government does not admit “the shameful act” (Kemal Atatürk's words) that it perpetrated on the Armenians. The current Turkish government only admits that a relatively “few” Armenians were killed as a response to the threat posed by them to incite a civil war. The facts bear witness to quite the opposite, as Armenians were responding in self-defense to the murders of their people, murders incurred through the assaults of the Ottoman, and later the CUP, Turks. It should also be noted that the Turkish government still ardently objects to the term “genocide” used in association with the “Armenian situation.” The word “genocide” was coined by Rafael Lemkin to describe the atrocities perpetrated against the Armenians. The following statement from the Armenian National Institute’s website on the genocide articulates the history of this word and its use:
Continuing Religious Intolerance
The intolerance of Turks towards non-Turks continues to this day; non-Turkish citizens of Turkey are suffering daily from the slow strangulation imposed on them by restrictive and discriminatory application of laws. This includes and is not limited to the Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, Jews, and Kurds.[45] In a report on the elimination of religious intolerance in Turkey, the United Nations has described the situation in Turkey as one in which “the active policy of Turkization, as an expression of nationalism, has meant that the great majority of society has come to regard citizenship solely in terms of Turkish ethnicity and Muslim identity,”[46] to the exclusion of these non-Muslim elements. This report also states that “this particular form of nationalism pervades not only State institutions but society as a whole, and generally conveys a message that leaves no room for the Christian minorities. These policies have sparked the massive departure of members of these minorities from Turkey.”[47] In sharp contrast to the situation in Turkey, Archbishop Tutu reminds us of our connectedness and our interdependence, citing blasphemy against God when we lose sight of this:
What are the effects on Turkey of perpetuating lies, and discriminatory policies and practices for so long a time? The vast majority of Turkey’s own citizens today may unknowingly be colluding with “ethnic cleansing” in their own country. Perhaps all too many Turkish citizens allow themselves to remain naive yet complicit partners in effectively eliminating all but one voice, one religion. Imagine, instead, a culturally diverse Turkey—one in which Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, Jews, atheists, agnostics, and others are all allowed the same rights in practice, not just in theory. This appreciation for cultural and religious diversity could translate into a previously unknown national strength. In turn, this strength, based in mutual respect, could lessen the chances of the nation falling prey to radical or fundamentalist entities intent on imposing a culture of domination, intimidation, and violence. Such a fresh and creative venture would have the potential to eliminate a large obstacle blocking Turkey’s application to the European Union.
Perhaps there are ways in which United States foreign policy has been complicit in perpetuating present-day Turkey’s denial of its past. The United States-Turkish relationship is complex and multilayered. On a political level, Turkey allows the United States to operate strategic airbases along its eastern border. But the Turkish government is quite aggressive in threatening to prohibit the use of its land if the United States officially recognizes acts against the Armenians as genocide, or tries to force Turkey to admit that what was done to the Armenians was in fact genocide. By allowing Turkey to dictate these terms, the United States falls short of its own moral standard on this issue.
In this difficult situation there are no clear-cut or easy solutions. To accomplish a resolution would require interested stakeholders (including Turkish officials, Armenian Church officials, etc.) to sit down and work out a mutually respectful understanding of the situation. At present, it seems that the stakeholders are not interested. Even today, Turkey supports activities and individuals in the US who deny the Armenian genocide.[49] This is as absurd as attempting to hide an elephant in a broom closet. Sadly, Turkey is not alone in denials of genocide. Other countries and ethnic groups have experienced and/or perpetrated genocide: Rwanda, South Africa, Sudan, Nazi Germany, Cambodia, China . . . and this list is by no means complete. What has humanity learned through the centuries about how to respond (individually and corporately) to such situations? How have we allowed ourselves to be changed by these events?
Forgiveness and Love in Action
In such circumstances, it is extraordinarily difficult to separate the sin from the sinner. The sinner always has the possibility to change, to choose to depart from evil and walk toward the good. Such metanoia[50] requires courage and strength. Christians today are challenged not only to forgive, but also to love. In the end, perpetrator and victim alike stand in judgment before God, where they will account for their actions. There are no excuses.
There are, however, recent examples of such courage and strength found in the efforts of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. [51] Archbishop Tutu described this commission as
Survivors of Abuse: Forgiveness and Love
For survivors of atrocities to expect an admission of guilt as a prerequisite to forgiveness becomes in itself a stumbling block to salvation. Desiring and working toward an authentic relationship with Christ require a measure of defiance of societal expectations and a surrender to the example of Christ, the suffering servant and Savior of all. Jesus “made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross” (Phil 2:7-8). We are also called to become like Christ by emptying ourselves of our self-centeredness, instead inclining ourselves to do His will so that we may “shine as lights in the world” (Phil 2:15). We are reminded by St. Paul that “the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor 1:18). Paul continues, “We preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength” (1 Cor 1:23-25).
So what appears to be a “weak” position in worldly terms in actuality requires a great deal of strength. Civil engineers acknowledge that the strength of a building lies in its ability to be flexible through the use of concrete reinforced with steel rods. Under stressful environmental conditions such as high winds or earthquakes, the building may vibrate and sway, but will not crumble. A building without the flexibility of steel rods is more likely to become unstable, crack, and be destroyed. In like manner, a Christian without forgiveness is not flexible enough to withstand all the challenges in this life.
Those who perpetrate evils on innocent victims (and even on no-tso-innocent victims) unwittingly drink condemnation unto themselves. Such perpetrators need prayers all the more. This seems paradoxical. Christians maintain that Christ came “for the life of the world—that is, for the life of the whole world. How, then, can one not be compelled to pray for those who blame the victims? As noted earlier, the Turkish government continues to deny the outright torture, murder, and intentional extermination of 1.3 million Armenians. History books have been rewritten.
The current generation of Turkish citizens generally believes that only a few Armenian insurgents were justifiably killed.[53] They have been blinded by a fabricated, counterfeit history projected onto them, and collectively lack the moral resolve, inquisitiveness, and courage to uncover the truth. In a recent incident, a small number of respected Turkish scholars courageously sought to discover the whole truth and write about it. As a consequence of their actions, they were either imprisoned or banished from their homeland.
As impossible a change as such a fresh initiative may seem to be for some, Archbishop Tutu remarked that people emerged transformed by the Truth and Reconciliation experience:
The Orthodox nun, theologian, and philosopher Mother Maria of Normanby has said, “To suffer injustice can, at the utmost, destroy the body, but to do injustice would of necessity harm the soul and in the end destroy.”[57] Again, Archbishop Tutu speaks from his experience while instructing us:
We can only follow this course when we are authentically acting with humility by doing the right thing, like the publican, as opposed to acting self-righteously, like the Pharisee. This is a difficult but necessary condition to receive the transformational love of God. Think of Peter’s question: “How many times must I forgive?”
We can learn from the response of Marietta Jaeger to the events that occurred on a camping vacation in Montana. She and her husband’s youngest daughter, seven-year-old Susie, went missing on the last night of the trip. Susie was killed. Marietta describes her eventual response to the murder:
Personal Reflections and Challenges
I am outraged by the events that have occurred and profoundly saddened by the loss of family members resulting from the coerced “Turkification” of Turkey. I am forced to face my own prejudices without feeding them. I remember that these catastrophic events began as a seed in a heart and mind that had turned away from God. How often during the day do I turn from God? Can I stand in truth before God and confess innocence?
Absolutely not! I am a sinner. I struggle with forgiving others who have harmed and betrayed me, albeit in a far less extreme manner than the examples of St. Barbara and the Armenian people. I struggle with praying for those who hate me. I struggle when praying for the situation in present-day Turkey. I struggle to separate Turkish policies from Turkish citizens when I remember that all are created in the image and after the likeness of God. I struggle when people who think they know me make inferences about my life that are not based in truth. I struggle with being around such people.
I groaned in Istanbul when the state-licensed tour guide in Hagia Sophia[63] told all in my group what a great monument the edifice was to the Christian and Muslim faiths. A part of me wanted to take over the tour group narrative to reveal the lies the guide was extolling as fact.[64] My “good sense” prevailed only when I thought that type of response might put me in prison, and I was not prepared for that. I was on vacation, after all! So I console myself with the knowledge that “there is nothing covered that will not be revealed, and hidden that will not be known” (Matt 10:26). Truth-telling is important and should not be motivated by self-righteousness, because self-righteousness eats away the purity of the truth-telling.
And yet, for my own good, I must forgive all. Christ presses this point after instructing his disciples how to pray (the Lord’s Prayer): “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matt 6:14 15). If I do not forgive and love my enemy, I condemn myself. But if I do surrender, I open myself to God’s grace, mercy, and love. What a choice! I can be like St. Barbara: confess Christ, forgive all, and surrender myself to the consequences. I could even be like the women who chanted the communion hymn while enduring their excruciatingly humiliating and painful death—always looking to the endpoint as my starting point. Recalling the gentle yet firm words of St. Gregory of Narek’s Prayer 49 helps me to choose Christ:
Not to trivialize the situation, it is as if the Armenians in Turkey were “ploughed under,” only to come up as beautiful flowers, fragrant flowers not just in heaven, but on earth—in the faces of the people we meet and come to know. We are all connected through these rich relationships, horizontally to those on the earth and vertically to those who have ascended before us:
NOTES
1. Kyriaki Karidoyanes FitzGerald, Persons in Communion: A Theology of Authentic Relationships (Berkeley, CA: InterOrthodox Press, 2006), 55-56.
2. "Dignitas" is defined as the quality of being worthy, honored, or esteemed. In Roman times a person’s dignitas also included family name (lineage), patronage, and fortune.
3. Some scholars claim that the life of St. Barbara is fictitious: “There is considerable doubt of the existence of a “virgin martyr called Barbara and it is quite certain that her legend is spurious. There is no mention of her in the earlier martyrologies; her legend is not older than the seventh century, and her cultus did not spread till the ninth” (One Hundred Saints: Their Lives and Likenesses Drawn from Butler’s Lives of the Saints and Great Works of Western Art [New York: Bulfinch Press, 2007], 86). If Barbara did in fact exist, there is disagreement about the actual location of her home (some possibilities: Heliopolos, Egypt; Heliopolos, Lebanon; Tuscany; Rome; Antioch; or possibly Nicomedia). If Barbara lived in Lebanon during the second century, then she would have lived near three great temples: the Temple of Jupiter (depicted on the coinage of the time), the Temple of the Sun, and the Circular Acropolis. There is also disagreement about her date of birth and repose. Some date her repose to the early to mid-200s, whereas others place her nearly one hundred years later (ca. 310). In either case, the late second and early third centuries were times of turmoil throughout the Roman Empire, and consequently, Christians were in constant danger. A traditional account of St. Barbara’s life can be found in The Lives of the Holy Women Martyrs, translated and compiled from the Greek of The Great Synaxaristes of the Orthodox Church (Buena Vista, CO: Holy Apostles Convent, 1991), 528.
4. One Hundred Saints, 85.
5. Lives of the Holy Women Martyrs, 534.
6. Joseph Raya and Jose De Vinck, Byzantine Daily Worship (Allendale,NJ: Alleluia Press, 1969), 532.
7. Dr. FitzGerald describes an authentic life in Christ as one “marked by coherence between our deepest identity as a child of God and the manner in which we live our life. Such a life is marked by continuity between our beliefs and our actions, between our words and our deeds. Such a life is marked by continuous honesty with our own self before God and others. Such a life is marked by integrity before God and others” (Persons in Communion, 38). She continues by identifying humility as “arguably the most powerful virtue in assisting us to become our true selves in the presence of God. Genuine humility requires courage, and in many ways wielding it is counter-intuitive for most of us” (ibid.). St. Barbara's actions were consistent with her beliefs, and thus they were authentic.
8. FitzGerald, Persons in Communion, 39. Dr. FitzGerald differentiates humility and humiliation by describing humiliation as “a dangerous and poisonous mechanism used by one human being seeking to diminish and distort the value of other persons... it is toxic and life-effacing. Humiliation does not enhance the life of another person. The objective of humiliation as a weapon is very precise. The action of humiliation seeks to control and ultimately annihilate the other experientially ‘from the inside out’” (ibid.).
9. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time (New York: Image Books, 2004), 47.
10. John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, bk. 2, chap. 12, in vol. 9 of Niceneand Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, trans. E. W. Watson, L. Pullan, etal., ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (reprint, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1979), 31; italics added.
11. The Philokalia: The Complete Text, vol. 1, compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and St. Makarios of Corinth, trans. and eds. G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware (London: Faber and Faber, 1983), 82.
12. Kyriaki FitzGerald and Thomas FitzGerald, Happy in the Lord: The Beatitudes for Everyday (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2000), 170.
13. Mother Maria of Normanby, The Fool and Other Writings, ed. Sister Thekla (Normanby, UK: Greek Orthodox Monastery of the Assumption, 1980), 98.
14. St. Grigor Narekatsi, Speaking with God from the Depths of the Heart: The Armenian Prayer Book of St. Gregory ofNarek, trans. Thomas J. Samuelian, poetic ed. Diana Der Hovanessian (Yerevan, Armenia: Vem Press, 2002), 219.
15. St. Chrysostom, Homily 19.10, in vol. 10 of Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, First Series, trans. George Prevost, eds. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, online at Christian Classics Ethereal Library, accessed May 3, 2007, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnfllO.iii.XIX.html.
16. Shamrig Marifian, 1910-2005, in a videotaped account recorded by her
loving family, speaks of her explusion from Turkey and arrival in America. I was provided with a copy of this videotape by Shamrig’s granddaughter, Jane Matoesian.
17. “The definition in the United Nations’ Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which the United States finally ratified in 1988, offers a useful standard for judgment. Article II of the convention states: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a nation, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group” (Donald E. Miller and Lorna Touryan Miller, Survivors: An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999], 45). “Armenians take considerable pride in having been the first nation to accept Christianity. The Apostles Thaddeus and Bartholomew brought the Christian gospel to the Armenians as early as A.D. 43, and this event is commemorated in the name of the mother church, the Armenian Apostolic Church. The Armenian Church is sometimes also called the Gregorian Church, in honor of Saint Gregory the Illuminator, who converted the Armenian sovereign Trdat III to Christianity in about A.D. 301. In A.D. 506 the Armenian Church reaffirmed its independence from both Constantinople and Rome and has remained separate to the present. Currently, there are two rival branches of the Armenian Church: the Mother See is Etchmiadzin, Armenia, and the Cilician (Sis) See in Antelias, Lebanon, each of which appeals to Armenians of somewhat different political inclinations” (ibid., 33).
18. Taner Akçam, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility, trans. Paul Bessemer (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006), 21.
19. “The meaning of ‘dhimma,’ a notion in Islamic jurisprudence, reflects the Islamic obligation to protect the dhimmi [conquered people]; the word also connotes ‘right,’ ‘agreement,’ or ‘mercy.’ According to the understanding reached by the dhimmi and the Islamic state, their lives and property are inviolate, and their freedom of religion and worship are guaranteed. In exchange, the dhimmi are obliged to display subservience and loyalty to the Muslim order and to pay a tax known as the jizya’. The relationship is not one of equals, but one of tolerance and forbearance” (ibid., 22-23).
20. Ibid., 22-23.
21. Ibid., 24.
22. Ibid., 27.
23. Ibid., 31-32.
24. Ibid., 35.
25. Ibid., 27.
26. Ibid., 45.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid., 49.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. “This last point is crucial for the subsequent Armenian genocide, because it was precisely those people who, having only recently been saved from massacre themselves, would now take a central and direct role in cleansing Anatolia of ‘non-Turkish’ elements. The dimension of this migration and its results become easier to understand when we recall that between 1878-1904 some 850,000 refugees were settled in predominantly Armenian areas alone” (ibid., 87).
32. Ibid., 98. “Porte” means “gate”; the term referred to the court in the Ottoman Empire where government policies were established.
33. Ibid., 101.
34. Peter Balakian, The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 189-90. Balakian continues: “One remarkable document was discovered and translated in early 1919 by British officials in Turkey, who labeled it ‘The Ten Commandments.’ It is a blueprint of the Armenian extermination operation and appears to have been the centerpiece of a secret party meeting, which took place sometime in late December 1914 or in January 1915. The document was obtained by Comm. C.H. Heathcote Smith, the right-hand man of Adm. Somerset Calthorpe, the British-high commissioner in Constantinople. Fluent in Turkish, Smith had served as British consul in Smyrna before the war, and he first learned of the ‘The Ten Commandments’ from the former Brit ish intelligence agent Percival Hadkinson, in Smyrna” (ibid.). The text of the document is as follows (ibid.):
(1) Profiting by the Arts: 3 and 4 of Comite Unionand Progres, close all Armenian Societies, and arrest all who worked against Government at any time among them and send them into the provinces such as Bagdad or Mosul, and wipe them out either on the road or there.
(2) Collect arms.
(3) Excite Moslem opinion by suitable and special means, in places as Van, Erzeroum, Adana, where as a point of fact the Armenians have already won the hatred of the Moslems, provoke organised massacres as the Russians did at Baku.
(4) Leave all executive to the people in provinces such as Erzeroum, Van, Mamuret ul Aziz, and Bitlis and use Military disciplinary forces (i.e., Gendarmerie) ostensibly to stop massacres while on the contrary in places as Adana, Sivas, Broussa, Ismidt and Smyrna actively help the Moslems with military force.
(5) Apply measures to exterminate all males under 50, priests and teachers, leave girls and children to be Islamized.
(6) Carry away the families of all who succeed in escaping and apply measures to cut them off from all connection with their native place.
(7) On the ground that Armenian officials may be spies, expel and drive them out absolutely from every Government department or post.
(8) Kill off in an appropriate manner all Armenians in the Army- this to be left to the military to do.
(9) All action to begin everywhere simultaneously, and thus leave no time for preparation of defensive measures.
(10) Pay attention to the strictly confidential nature of these instructions, which may not go beyond two or three persons.
35. “Virginia Meghrouni wrote that ‘continually, day and night, officers searched for weapons in Armenian homes . . . even small kitchen knives were confiscated; so were historical materials and books listing names of Armenian leaders.’ She described the shock that went through the community when deportation notices were posted in Kayseri on June 15. All over the city Armenian shops and businesses were ordered closed immediately, and Armenians were informed that they must be prepared for a deportation; in doing so they were instructed to leave their goods and belongings behind and their money in the bank, and that all would be safeguarded. Shortly thereafter, twenty prominent Armenian men were hanged in the town square” (ibid., 228).
36. Ibid., 270: “Farther west in the great port city of Smyrna, the American consul, George Horton, documented a similar Turkification frenzy in a report to Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan in February 1915 . . . [Horton said,] ‘lawless Turkish bands are appearing in increasing numbers in this district and are spreading a reign of terror among the Christians of all races.’ Horton closes his letter to Bryan with the refrain of a song Turkish students in Smyrna were singing: Revenge! Revenge! Revenge! Let us kill, let us cut to pieces, Let us swim in blood up to our knees, Revenge! Revenge! Revenge! Let us wipe the stain from our clothes.
37. Ibid., 230-31, 244-45, 247.
38. Peter Balakian, Black Dog of Fate: A Memoir (New York: Broadway Books, 1998), 214.
39. Balakian, Burning Tigris, 255.
40. Ibid., 266.
41. This is the hymn sung during the offering of Holy Communion in the Divine Liturgy. The words remember Christ’s sacrifice unto death. The women sang this in anticipation of their own sacrifice unto death.
42. Balakian, Black Dog of Fate, 216-17.
43. It may seem that I have made the assertion that perpetrators remain in a stagnant state of hatred. Because no data is available about the present state of the perpetrators of this recorded incident, one cannot know. I remain steadfast in the knowledge that with God all things are possible, that forgiveness is given and received even at the eleventh hour.
44. “Frequently Asked Questions about the Armenian Genocide,” Armenian National Institute, accessed May 22, 2006, www.armenian-genocide.org/genocidefaq.html.
45. United Nations General Assembly, Elimination of all forms of religious intolerance: Interim report of the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on the elimination of all forms of intolerance and of discrimination based on religion or belief, Addendum 1: Situation in Turkey, A/55/280/ Add.l (August 11, 2000), 15-23.
46. Ibid., 26.
47. Ibid.
48. Desmond Mpilo Tutu, No Future without Forgiveness (New York: Image,1999), 196-97.
49. William H. Honan, “Princeton Is Accused of Fronting for the “Turkish Government,” New York Times, May 22, 1996.
50. “Metanoia” is the customary Greek word for repentance. Genuine repentance is closely associated with confession. It literally means a radical turning away from something; this also involves a reciprocal turning toward something else.
51. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa was a government agency established after the fall of apartheid in 1990.
52. No Future without Forgiveness, 83.
53. The Armenian Genocide, directed by Andrew Goldberg, aired on Public Broadcasting Service April 2006 (New York: Two Cats Productions), DVD.
54. Tutu, No Future without Forgiveness, 120.
55. Ibid., 28.
56. Ibid., 30.
57. The Fool and Other Writings, 98.
58. God Has a Dream, 53.
59. “Also [Jesus] spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector [or publican]. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other men—extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.’ And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 18:9-14).
60. “Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, ‘Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?’ Jesus answered, ‘I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times’” (Matt 18:21-22).
61. “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. The servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go. But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded. His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’ But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened. Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart” (Matt 18:23-35).
62. Marietta Jaeger, “The Power and Reality of Forgiveness: Forgiving the Murderer of One’s Child,” in Exploring Forgiveness, ed. Robert D. Enright and Joanna North, foreword by Desmond Tutu (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998), 13-14.
63. Hagia Sophia is the Church of Holy Wisdom in Istanbul (formerly Constantinople), Turkey. It was once the main church for the Eastern Christian faith and home of the ecumenical patriarch. After the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople in 1453, the church was turned into a mosque. In more recent years Hagia Sophia has become a museum, and is touted as a great example of the best of both the Muslim and Christian faiths.
64. Construction of this church began under Emperor Justinian I in 532 and was completed some five years later. Ancient visitors were impressed by the structure both inside and out. Some seven hundred years later, when Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque, the mosaic icons were whitewashed and all Christian symbols were removed. Muslim additions included a mihrab (niche in the wall indicating the direction to Mecca) in the apse where the altar used to stand, a sultan’s gallery, a dais for sermons, and a loggia for muezzin, as well as the construction of external minarets. In 1935 Hagia Sophia was converted into a museum by Kemal Atatiirk. Sources used in this paper indicate that relations between many Muslims and Christians have been less than hospitable over the course of the centuries. For the tour guide to indicate otherwise seemed a misrepresentation of reality.
65. St. Grigor Narekatsi, Speaking with God, 215.
66. John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, bk. 2, chap. 12, 31.
67. FitzGerald, Persons in Communion, 57.
68. George L. Papadeas, Greek Orthodox Holy Week and Easter Services: A New English Translation (South Daytona, FL: Patmos Press, 1963), 460, adapted.
+ + +
Barbara K. Harris is a graduate of Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, with an MA in Church Service, and of Washington University in St. Louis, with an AM in Non-Profit Management. She resides in St. Louis, Missouri, where she is exploring the intersection of practical theology, leadership, and education. She also serves on the Board of St. Catherine's Vision.
*(Source: Harris, Barbara K. "St. Barbara and the Martyrs of the Armenian Genocide: A Witness to Radical Forgiveness" in "Encountering Women of Faith: The St Catherine's Vision Collection Volume 2." Edited by Presbytera Kyriaki Karidoyanes FitzGerald (Massachusetts: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2011) 121-153.)
All Photos from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_genocide
by Barbara K. Harris
Throughout the ages there have been incredible acts of love and kindness demonstrated across religious groups, cultures, and ethnic populations. These actions reveal a selfless and sacrificial love for the other. Mother Maria Skobtsova, who is the focus of another chapter in this book*, was one individual who demonstrated such love. As a Russian emigre in Paris during the German occupation, she tirelessly worked to provide baptismal certificates for Jews. This led to her arrest and deportation to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. While there, it is believed that she selflessly and sacrificially took the place of another who was in line for the gas chamber.
Tragically, despite such loving acts, individuals and communities have also shown an astonishing ability to inflict evil upon each other in all its various manifestations, including humiliation through murder, slander, slavery, torture, and discrimination, to name just a few. Virtually all ethnic, cultural, and religious groups have been at times both perpetrators and/or victims of such acts of degradation and inhumanity; African Americans, Native Americans, Tutsis, Hutus, Jews, Christians, Hindus, Shintos, Sunnis, Shi’as, Baha’is, black South Africans, and the list goes on. This article examines forgiveness as an expression of divine love and the Christian response to evil and intolerance as experienced by St. Barbara, an early Christian martyr, and by the 1.3 million Armenian martyrs of the early twentieth century. Their examples as intentional and unintentional martyrs have transformed me and my response when encountering abuse.
The witness of these martyrs vividly exemplifies the words of our Lord:
You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven ... (Matt 5:43-45)Yes, Christians must love and forgive even when faced with hatred from family members, close friends, and neighbors—those with whom there was thought to be a good relationship, one in which there was at least mutual acceptance, and at best total trust and surrender. Professor Kyriaki FitzGerald, Orthodox theologian and psychologist, eloquently speaks of the consequence of not responding with forgiveness and love, of turning away from God:
When we fail to recognize our neighbor, not only do we increasingly become less than our “true self” but also we fail to follow the command of our Lord. In an insidious manner, we drift further and further away from and become ever more cold to the presence of the Kingdom. The Lord says to us: “You are the salt of the earth. But, if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned? It is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot” (Mt. 5:13). These words are a powerful affirmation of our responsibility. They are also a warning![1]
St Barbara The Great Martyr
Imagine living in a time and place in which a young woman is considered an extension of her family’s dignitas.[2] In the fourth-century Roman Empire, power and social station were of utmost importance. Dignitas refers to one’s perceived political and socio-economic status, an asset that demands attention and cultivation. The pursuit of dignitas requires that one dress, look, speak, and behave in a manner dictated by the prevailing social mores. In such circumstances, a woman is allowed very few choices. In fact, purity, beauty, family honor, and fortune—all vital dimensions of dignitas—are highly prized commodities in consideration of a marriage partner or, more accurately, a family alliance. Any deviation from this formula is severely punished. Respect for one’s personhood is lost in this mix, and one becomes objectified by family and society.
St. Barbara the Great Martyr [3] was a young woman in such a society, defined by her father’s name (Dioscoros), social standing (he was a man with high political ambitions), and pagan beliefs (in the Roman gods). She lived a privileged life as the only daughter of a wealthy and influential man and was raised in an influential Roman outpost. Dioscoros was an important political figure who had the responsibility to govern the district in which Barbara’s family lived. This meant that they were expected to be models of Roman aristocratic life. They dressed, worshipped, entertained, and lived as full citizens, enjoying the benefits of an upperclass life. Roman citizenship afforded many rights, and Barbara’s father’s position afforded many privileges.Anything she wanted was granted: delicious foods, elegant clothing, fine jewelry, excellent tutors, and luxurious furnishings. So cherished was Barbara by her father that he built a special tower to protect her from the many unwanted influences of that time. In his mind, her purpose in life was to increase the family’s dignitas by marrying a person of equal or greater social rank and wealth. Dioscoros saw his household as an extension of his dignitas. Everyone in the household, including servants and family members, was expected to obey his desires and be attentive to him. This was quite natural, because everyone in the district was also expected to obey him.
The tower in which her father installed her did not prevent Barbara from having access to information, through the women who served her. She was barely eighteen when she learned through these relationships that “God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). How astonishing it must have been for her to discover that she was created in the image and likeness of God, and that this God became human so that she could become like God. With an open heart and mind, Barbara thirsted for truth, and in a short period of time, studied the veracity of these teachings.
Because she had no friends outside the home, her maids were her companions. Through them Barbara learned more of this new religion— one that was radically different from the idolatry of the Romans and their emperor worship. Barbara was informed about a belief in one God, in three persons. Her discussions with these friends turned into lessons, and these lessons continued over many days, until she made the decision to become a believer. The transformation was an interior one: her outward appearance remained the same, but her inward self was radically changed.
All this happened without her father’s knowledge or approval. He was a traditional man, opposed to new religions because they were seen as a threat to the Roman Empire and the status quo. Anything contrary to the norm—anything that could potentially hinder his political ambitions— was unacceptable.
Barbara did not know how he would react. She was a beloved daughter who hoped for the best, separated as she was from the world. Yet the more she grew in this new faith, the more she desired to honor this Triune God. It is generally believed that Barbara did so in one small way. She asked the builders of her family’s new bathhouse to have three windows installed, instead of the two that were planned. The legend states that she was so pleased with the result that she drew a cross on the wall with her finger.
When her father discovered this deviation from “the plan,” she happily told him that: “These three windows prefigure clearly the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, which be three persons and one very God, on whom we ought to believe and worship,” and she proceeded to tell him about her new faith.[4] In an instant he became enraged and turned on her. She was no longer his cherished daughter whom he could manipulate to his best advantage; she immediately became a cancerous influence to be excised, from the pristine Roman landscape. He beat his only daughter and locked her up as a prisoner in her own home.
Barbara had defied her father in order to respond to a calling from God. The consequences were real. She was dragged before the governor of the province, where she was encouraged to renounce Christ and to offer sacrifices at the local temple. She refused. For this she was tortured and sentenced to death. Simeon the Translator called her father “a child of the man-slaying devil”[5] because of his intense madness toward her as a person with abnormal religious beliefs. Such was his intolerance toward this Christian faith that Dioscoros carried out the death sentence himself by beheading his formerly beloved daughter. She is remembered in the following hymn of the Church:
O honorable and triumphant Barbara,Kyriaki FitzGerald would likely characterize the relationship between Barbara and God as authentic [7] and the one between father and daughter as inauthentic. It is conceivable that a man such as Dioscoros used “humiliation . . . as a weapon to control”[8] those around him. Dioscoros was playing the game of life by the “rules” he had been taught as a Roman citizen. Barbara learned a different set of “rules,” and the cost of adhering to them was her life.
you believed in God the Holy Trinity
and renounced the multiplicity of pagan deities.
You fought for your faith with great courage
and were not frightened by your persecutors’ threats,
but declared instead in a clear voice:
“I adore one God in three divine Persons.”[6]
Orthodox Christians believe that all of humanity has been created in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1:26). Although people are free to choose whether or not to believe this, Orthodox Christians are expected to refrain from judging others for their choices in belief. Rather, it is their responsibility to respond to others by loving them as Christ would have (John 13:34). Archbishop Desmond Tutu confronts us with the reality that:
The endless divisions that we create between [us] and that we live and die for—whether they are our religions, our ethnic groups, our nationalities—are so totally irrelevant to God. God just wants us to love each other.[9]The Evangelist John reminded his flock that “he who says he loves God and hates his brother is a liar” (1 John 4:20). John of Damascus continues with this line of belief:
God made him [humankind] by nature sinless, and endowed him with free will. By sinless, I do not mean that sin could find no place in him (for that is the case with Deity alone), but that sin is the result of the free volition he enjoys rather than an integral part of his nature; that is to say, he has the power to continue and go forward in the path of goodness, by co-operating with the divine grace, and likewise to turn from good and take to wickedness, for God has conceded this by conferring freedom of will upon him. For there is no virtue in what is the result of mere force.[10]The murder of Barbara by her father is reminiscent of the first murder recounted in Genesis 4, where Cain murders Abel out of envy for the gift offered to God. The exchange between Cain and God after the murder of Abel reminds us that God sees us as we are (not as we appear to be): “The Lord said to Cain, ‘Where is your brother?’ He said, ‘I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?’ And the Lord said, ‘What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground’” (vv. 9-10).
Both of these stories remind us of how final a choice murder is. Humanity has not yet learned the lesson of loving one’s neighbor as one’s self. Humankind has been (after the Fall) endowed with the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 3:22), in this way becoming more like God. Thus, there is no excuse for ignorance of the differentiation between good and evil. Although St. Barbara’s father was vengeful because of her disobedience, and Cain was envious of Abel’s gift to the Lord, their heinous actions are both based upon anger. In fact, St. John Cassian names this sin and the way out of it:
Our forth struggle is against the demon of anger. We must, with God’s help, eradicate his deadly poison from the depths of our souls. So long as he dwells in our hearts and blinds the eyes of the heart with his sombre disorders, we can neither discriminate what is for our good, nor achieve spiritual knowledge, nor fulfil our good intentions, nor participate in true life; and our intellect will remain impervious to the contemplation of the true, divine light... for it is written, “Man’s anger does not bring about the righteousness of God.” (Jas. 1:20)[11]This message is further reinforced by Orthodox theologians Fr. Thomas and Kyriaki FitzGerald, who say:
When we behave in an evil manner or speak in an evil way, we only contribute to the power of evil. It is as if we become an accomplice to the forces which struggle against God. When we respond to evil with good, on the other hand, we break the power of evil. We do not give it any further authority. And, we remain faithful to our vocation to live our life as the sons and daughters of God.[12]It is important to establish a framework within which to live by looking to the endpoint of life as the starting point.[13] A choice to work toward eternal life with Christ begins here and now—today. This must by necessity be done in all aspects of life while at the same time forgiving, but not forgetting, the atrocities that have been committed against humanity by other human beings. This can be monumentally difficult for fallen humanity, yet with God all things are possible. On this point, St. Gregory of Narek, a late tenth- and early eleventh-century Armenian theologian and mystic, poetically reminds us that God can melt away our sins, debts, and despair in his Prayer 49:
For wherever forgiveness reigns, sin is banished,St. John Chrysostom’s commentary on “and lead us not into temptation" from the Lord’s Prayer elucidates the Christian response to the evil one as well as the consequences of this response:
and wherever your [God’s] living word gives encouragement,
there is no despair.
And wherever your gifts abound, debts are dissolved.
And the hand of God being close by, nothing is impossible.
Rather, everything basks in the light, filled with strength and
invincible potency.
Yours is salvation, life, renewal, mercy, and at the same time,
a sweet kingdom, incorruptible and glorified forever. Amen.[14]
Here [Christ] teaches us plainly our own vileness, and quells our pride, instructing us to deprecate all conflicts, instead of rushing upon them. For so both our victory will be more glorious, and the devil’s overthrow more to be derided. I mean, that as when we are dragged forth, we must stand nobly; so when we are not summoned, we should be quiet, and wait for the time of conflict; that we may show both freedom from vainglory and nobleness of spirit...For wickedness is not of those things that are from nature, but of them that are added by our own choice. And [the evil one] is so called preeminently, by reason of the excess of his wickedness, and because he, in no respect is injured by us, wages us implacable war. Wherefore, neither said [Christ], “deliver us from the wicked ones,” but “from the wicked one;” instructing us in no case to entertain displeasure against our neighbors, for what wrongs soever we may suffer at their hands, but to transfer our enmity from these to [the evil one], as being himself the cause of all our wrongs.[15]
Martyrs of the Armenian Genocide
I am another Barbara whose own family has been the recipient of the same intolerance experienced by St. Barbara. Perhaps it was the same seed of envy and hatred identified above that came to full bloom in the hearts of those who perpetrated the Armenian genocide (1915-1923) in Turkey. My yiayia’s (Greek grandmother’s) last vision of her homeland—while she was running for her life toward the Mediterranean Sea—was of being chased by an armed and angry mob with an unquenchable thirst for the blood of non-Turks, because they believed that Turkey was for Turks only. She was in her late teens at that time, and she never returned to Palies Fokes, Turkey. She was fortunate. She escaped prior to 1915 with her life and with most of her family. Making her way to Morgantown, West Virginia, she lived a safer and perhaps less eventful life—although one might consider rearing four children in a new homeland just as eventful.
Historical Framework and Tensions
The land that is present-day Turkey was predominantly Orthodox Christian in the years prior to 1453. In that year the Ottoman Muslims overthrew the Byzantine Christian empire in the East and proceeded to change the culture from Christian to Muslim through their laws and practices. The Ottomans were excellent military strategists who continued their conquest toward the West, venturing as far as Austria. It is important to note that in Turkey, tensions between Muslims and Christians as well as between other religious groups (Jews, Kurds, Assyrians, etc.) are deep seated and have evolved over the course of many centuries.
Discovering the reasons for escalation of Turkish intolerance toward non-Turks during the latter part of the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth centuries requires a bit of attention, because many complicated influences converged at this time. This chapter will not attempt an in-depth examination of all the factors contributing to the formation of modern Turkey or to the Armenian genocide.[17] Rather, the intent is to offer a brief examination of how these atrocities were perpetrated against an innocent people and to consider how Orthodox and other Christians, as inheritors of their martyric legacy, should respond.
The everyday reality in which Muslims and Christians lived under Ottoman rule was an imbalanced one. Muslims had conquered and were ruling, whereas Christians had lost, and were made to be subservient. So long as both parties accepted that premise, all was right with their world (at least from the Muslim perspective). However, the latter part of the nineteenth century saw the decline of the Ottoman Empire. In general, public law, particularly concerning finance and organization, was administered through edicts (fermans) from the Sultan. Civil law concerning personal issues (marriage and inheritance) was subject to the rulings of the Sharia:[18]
According to Islamic civil law, Muslims in an Islamic nation enjoy the full rights and duties of “citizenship,” while the dhimmi’s [conquered person’s] rights are limited to protection from violence and depredation. [19] The dhimmi are to be endured. Their presence is not contested so long as they accept the authority and superiority of Muslims and the Islamic order. . . Under Ottoman rule the dhimmi were organized according to religion or sect, and these groups were known as millets. The autonomy of each millet was recognized through a sultanic letter of permission. Each millet administered the great majority of its own affairs, “not only the clerical, ritual, and charitable affairs of their flocks, but also education and the regulation of matters of personal status like marriage, divorce, guardianship, and inheritance.”[20]
Apart from such legal inequalities, the dhimmi were also subject to humiliating practices. They were forbidden to conduct their religious observance in a way that would disturb Muslims. The ringing of church bells and construction of churches or synagogues were forbidden. Permission from the state was required to repair existing churches. Additionally, dhimmi were prohibited from riding horses and bearing arms and were obliged to step aside for approaching Muslims when traveling on foot. The color of the dhimmi's clothing and shoes and the quality of fabrics had to be distinct from that of Muslims . .. Armenian shoes and headgear, for example, were to be red, while the Greeks wore black and Jews turquoise. Their homes too were painted different colors. They were forbidden to wear clogs and had to attach small bells to the coverings worn in the bathhouses.[21]Due to various political and social influences, however, the landscape eventually began to change:
From the late eighteenth century on, wars between the Ottomans and different European powers resulted in peace treaties that brought significant privileges to Ottoman Christian subjects which, in turn, paved the way for the eventual independence of these non-Muslim communities. The Christian minorities, infected with the spirit of progress and freedom blowing in from Europe, began to revolt against political and economic oppression and demand equality, followed by autonomy, and eventually territory. The Ottomans generally met these demands with violent suppression and terror, whereupon foreign powers would intervene, even to the point of war. After defeat, the Ottomans were then forced to accept the insurgents’ demands and agree to reforms granting autonomy. But these were usually reforms only on paper, and new revolts would ensue, followed by new foreign interventions, beginning the cycle all over again. This process would continue until the rebellious community achieved independence.[22]Non-Muslim communities wanted to be placed on an equal level with Muslims, and in fact some reforms were made in Turkey (for example, the Imperial Rescript of 1839, the Reform Edict of 1856, the 1876 Ottoman Constitution, to name a few). This was in part due to the influences of Protestant missionaries from the West functioning throughout the Turkish countryside.
While the reforms were expected to bring about closer relations between Muslims and non-Muslims, in fact the very opposite occurred. The conceptual basis for such transformation simply didn’t exist, either among the ruling elite or within the general society. According to leading Tanzimat reformer Mustafa Reşit Pasa, the full equality promised in the Imperial Rescript would erase the difference between the groups, and thereby end the 600-year dominance of Ottoman Muslims. This was unacceptable to the general Muslim population. Mustafa Reşit Pasa maintained that without proper preparation, Muslims would resist the reforms, even possibly respond with violence. Just as he feared, Muslims created disturbances and these led to massacres.[23]The Muslim-Christian balance had tipped toward a more equal position. The Muslims found it utterly intolerable to be equal to or subject to those they had formerly ruled (in Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia, etc.). Therefore, violent reactions on the part of the Muslims to Christians were seen by the Ottoman Turks to be entirely justified.
The hatred that the Muslim population felt toward the Christians only increased with the Russian, English, French, and later German interference in Ottoman internal affairs. The loss of superior status had shaken the Muslims’ confidence, which resulted in the loss of their tolerance. Massacres against Armenians, which by the late nineteenth century had become almost routine, can best be understood against this background.[24]Sultan Abdul Hamid II was noted as saying:
By taking away Greece and Rumania, Europe has cut off the feet of the Turkish state. The loss of Bulgaria, Serbia and Egypt has deprived us of our hands, and now by means of this Armenian agitation, they want to get our most vital places and tear out our very guts. This would be the beginning of totally annihilating us, and we must fight against it with all the strength we possess.[25]In the early twentieth century, power was most assuredly in the hands of the Ottomans. Abdul Hamid II fully supported Muslim attacks against Christians and worked with Muslim clerics to encourage these sorts of actions as a fulfillment of their religious duty:[26]
[The perpetrators of the 1894-96 massacres] are guided by the prescriptions of the Shari’a. The law prescribes that if the “rayah,” or cattle, Christians try, through their recourse to foreign powers, to overstep the privileges allowed them by their Musselman [Muslim] masters and free themselves from their oppression, their lives and property are forfeited, and they are at the mercy of the Musselmans. To the Turkish mind, the Armenians tried to overstep those limits by appealing to the foreign powers, especially to England. They therefore consider it their religious duty and a righteous thing to destroy . . . the Armenians.[27]As the Ottomans struggled through the fall of the sultanate and the rise of the Union and Progress movement to the rule of Young Turks, a “Turkish” identity was being formulated.
For all their difference, these divergent currents—Ottomanism, Islamism, Turkism, and Westernism—shared one core premise: the nationalism of a dominant ethnic group, which was understood to mean the Turks.[28]In fact, Namik Kemal, a leader of the Young Ottoman movement, reinforced this ideal when he said, “We can compromise with the Christians only when they accept our position of dominance.”[29] He was openly racist, as was Ali Suavi, another member of the Young Ottoman movement, who believed “that the Turkish race [is] older and superior on account of its military, civilizing, and political roles.”[30]
After the Balkan Wars, the Armenians repeated their demands forreform. On 31 March 1913, the Armenian patriarch appealed to the grand vizier, delivering a letter stating that “the situation of the Armenians has deteriorated even further, to the point that we fear for their wholesale elimination.” He announced that he was calling on the Ottoman state’s sense of responsibility as a last resort. When the request went unanswered, the General Council of the Armenian Patriarch resigned on 4 May 1913, claiming that this was the only possible option, “because it had not, until now, seen a single result from initiatives and requests concerning the situation in the provinces, which had been sent numerous times to the Porte.”[32]One of the key reasons why Ottoman Turks (and later the members of the CUP, or Committee of Union and Progress— the dominant party at the time) were so threatened by the Armenians was that if they succeeded in partitioning to form their own country, modern-day Turkey would simply not exist.[33]
The Armenian Genocide
The pro-Turkish nationalists worked to obliterate the Armenian people through various atrocious acts (taking away their arms, restricting their movements, etc.).[34] It is noteworthy that although such acts were encouraged by the nationalist Turks against Armenians, there were Turks who did offer assistance or relief to the Armenians. This is significant because these persons were under the constant threat of death for providing such aid. Taner Akçam, who is frequently cited in this paper, dedicated his book A Shameful Act to one such family. It is a sad commentary on those times and on present-day Turkey’s lack of transparency that more examples of such courage are not available to document here.
The abuse began slowly and slyly, then escalated to increasingly blatant acts of inhuman behavior, including raiding homes, confiscating knives, and hanging prominent citizens.[35],[36] Men were butchered, even dismembered.[37] Priests and others had horseshoes nailed to their feet.[38] Women and girls were raped.[39] Children were kidnapped from their families to become servants in Muslim families. The vast majority of non-Muslims could not expect any help at all from Muslims because an edict was issued which said that “any Muslim who protected or hid an Armenian would be punished by hanging.”[40] One of the most heart-rending and vivid examples of these heinous acts is described in an eyewitness account by a young girl, Dovey (Aghavni) Kassabian. It reveals the depths to which the Committee of Union and Progress Turks had descended in their choice to embrace the evil of genocide:
The crowd lined the square, some people were sitting in chairs, some Arabs selling quinces, people burning incense, the Turkish women in burugs were sitting on hassocks eating simits. The sun was terribly hot, and on the black walls some cranes were perched. In the middle of the crowd there were fifteen or twenty Armenian women, some a little older than me, some my mother’s age. They were dressed in their daily clothes. Some in long fine dresses, others, who were peasants, in simple black. They were holding hands and walking in a circle slowly, tentatively, as if they were afraid to move. About six Turkish soldiers stood behind them. They had whips and each had a gun. They were shouting, “Dance. Giaur. Slut.” The soldiers cracked the whips on the women’s backs and faces, and across their breasts. “Dance. Giaur. Slut.” Many of the women were praying while they moved in this slow circle. Der Voghormya, Der Voghormya (Lord have mercy), Krisdos bada raqyal bashkhi i miji meroom (Christ is acrificed and shared amongst us [41]), and occasionally they would drop the hand next to them and quickly make the sign of the cross. Their hair had come undone and their faces were wrapped up in the blood-stuck tangles of hair, so they looked like corpses of Medusa. Their clothes were now turning red. Some of them were half naked, others tried to hold their clothes together. They began to fall down and when they did they were whipped until they stood and continued their dance. Each crack of the whip and more of their clothing came off.
Around them stood their children and some other Armenian children who had been rounded up from the nearby Armenian school. They were forced into a circle, and several Turkish soldiers stood behind them with whips and shouted, “Clap, clap!” And the children clapped. And when the soldiers said, “Clap, clap, clap,” the children were supposed to clap faster, and if they didn’t, the whip was used on them. Some of the children were two and three years old, barely able to stand up. They were all crying uncontrollably. Crying in a terrible, pitiful, hopeless way. I stood next to women in burugs and men in red fezzes and business suits, and they too were clapping like little cockroaches.
Then two soldiers pushed through the crowd swinging wooden buckets and began to douse the women with the fluid in the buckets, and, in a second, I could smell that it was kerosene. And the women screamed because the kerosene was burning their lacerations and cuts. Another soldier came forward with a torch and lit each woman by the hair. At first all I could see was smoke, and the smell grew sickening, and then I could see the fire growing off the women’s bodies, and their screaming became unbearable. The children were being whipped now furiously, as if the sight of the burning mothers had excited the soldiers, and they admonished the children to clap “faster, faster, faster,” telling them that if they stopped they too would be lit on fire. As the women began to collapse in burning heaps, oozing and black, the smell of burnt flesh made me sick.[42]Why did this happen? What had those young women done to be treated in such a horrific manner? The answer is: nothing! They were Armenian Christians, citizens the empire did not want. The CUP Turks were using them as instruments to teach the lesson “you are nothing, and we can abuse you as we wish,” as well as to extract revenge for their losses and mistreatment in the Balkan wars. Those active and passive participants in such acts (soldiers and onlookers) did not realize that:
The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend and those who practice lawlessness. And will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. (Matt 13:41-43)The guards and the lingering “passive,” yet willing, observers all in their own way contributed to these atrocities. Their spiritual transformation, which occurred from the inside out, stands as a reminder of how any of us can, through our choices, either grow closer to or farther away from the God of love. In this context, one pauses to wonder what kind of reward the souls of the perpetrators,[43] submerged in hatred and intolerance as they were, will receive whenever their time comes to stand before His throne, trusting that judgment belongs to Christ. On the other hand, even though not asked to do so, the women and children had become martyrs. Through unspeakable humiliation, pain, and fire, they prayed as they offered their final witness, all the while facing unimaginable wickedness with a grace and dignity lost on their perpetrators.
Denial of the Armenian Genocide
To this very day, the Turkish government does not admit “the shameful act” (Kemal Atatürk's words) that it perpetrated on the Armenians. The current Turkish government only admits that a relatively “few” Armenians were killed as a response to the threat posed by them to incite a civil war. The facts bear witness to quite the opposite, as Armenians were responding in self-defense to the murders of their people, murders incurred through the assaults of the Ottoman, and later the CUP, Turks. It should also be noted that the Turkish government still ardently objects to the term “genocide” used in association with the “Armenian situation.” The word “genocide” was coined by Rafael Lemkin to describe the atrocities perpetrated against the Armenians. The following statement from the Armenian National Institute’s website on the genocide articulates the history of this word and its use:
The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide describes genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national ethnical, racial or religious group.” Clearly this definition applies in the case of the atrocities committed against the Armenians. Because the U.N. Convention was adopted in 1948, thirty years after the Armenian Genocide, Armenians worldwide have sought from their respective governments formal acknowledgment of the crimes committed during W.W.I. Countries like France, Argentina, Greece, and Russia, where the survivors of the Armenian Genocide and their descendents live, have officially recognized the Armenian Genocide. However, as a matter of policy, the present-day Republic of Turkey adamantly denies that a genocide was committed against the Armenians during W.W.I. Moreover, Turkey dismisses the evidence about the atrocities as mere allegations and regularly obstructs efforts for acknowledgment. Affirming the truth about the Armenian Genocide, therefore, has become an issue of international significance. The recurrence of genocide in the twentieth century has made the reaffirmation of the historic acknowledgment of the criminal mistreatment of the Armenians by Turkey all the more a compelling obligation for the international community.[44]
Continuing Religious Intolerance
The intolerance of Turks towards non-Turks continues to this day; non-Turkish citizens of Turkey are suffering daily from the slow strangulation imposed on them by restrictive and discriminatory application of laws. This includes and is not limited to the Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, Jews, and Kurds.[45] In a report on the elimination of religious intolerance in Turkey, the United Nations has described the situation in Turkey as one in which “the active policy of Turkization, as an expression of nationalism, has meant that the great majority of society has come to regard citizenship solely in terms of Turkish ethnicity and Muslim identity,”[46] to the exclusion of these non-Muslim elements. This report also states that “this particular form of nationalism pervades not only State institutions but society as a whole, and generally conveys a message that leaves no room for the Christian minorities. These policies have sparked the massive departure of members of these minorities from Turkey.”[47] In sharp contrast to the situation in Turkey, Archbishop Tutu reminds us of our connectedness and our interdependence, citing blasphemy against God when we lose sight of this:
Our humanity is caught up in that of all others. We are human because we belong. We are made for community, for togetherness, for family, to exist in a delicate network of interdependence. Truly, “it is not good for man to be alone” [Gen 2:18], for no one can be human alone. We are sisters and brothers of one another whether we like it or not and each one of us is a precious individual. It does not depend on such things as ethnicity, gender, political, social, economic, or educational status—which are all extrinsic. Each person is not just to be respected but to be revered as one created in God’s image. To treat one such as if they were less than this is not just evil, which it is, is not just painful, as it frequently tends to be for the one at the receiving end of whatever discrimination or injustice is involved—no, it is veritably blasphemous, for it is to spit in the face of God. And inevitably and inexorably, those who behave in this way cannot escape the consequences of their contravention of the laws of the universe.[48]It is most ironic that today Turkey officially claims to be a secular state even though the Muslim faith is the only fully accepted religion. This is due to the repeatedly stated fear that desecularizing the country “will pave the way for Muslim extremists” to further dominate the political landscape in Turkey.
What are the effects on Turkey of perpetuating lies, and discriminatory policies and practices for so long a time? The vast majority of Turkey’s own citizens today may unknowingly be colluding with “ethnic cleansing” in their own country. Perhaps all too many Turkish citizens allow themselves to remain naive yet complicit partners in effectively eliminating all but one voice, one religion. Imagine, instead, a culturally diverse Turkey—one in which Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, Jews, atheists, agnostics, and others are all allowed the same rights in practice, not just in theory. This appreciation for cultural and religious diversity could translate into a previously unknown national strength. In turn, this strength, based in mutual respect, could lessen the chances of the nation falling prey to radical or fundamentalist entities intent on imposing a culture of domination, intimidation, and violence. Such a fresh and creative venture would have the potential to eliminate a large obstacle blocking Turkey’s application to the European Union.
Perhaps there are ways in which United States foreign policy has been complicit in perpetuating present-day Turkey’s denial of its past. The United States-Turkish relationship is complex and multilayered. On a political level, Turkey allows the United States to operate strategic airbases along its eastern border. But the Turkish government is quite aggressive in threatening to prohibit the use of its land if the United States officially recognizes acts against the Armenians as genocide, or tries to force Turkey to admit that what was done to the Armenians was in fact genocide. By allowing Turkey to dictate these terms, the United States falls short of its own moral standard on this issue.
In this difficult situation there are no clear-cut or easy solutions. To accomplish a resolution would require interested stakeholders (including Turkish officials, Armenian Church officials, etc.) to sit down and work out a mutually respectful understanding of the situation. At present, it seems that the stakeholders are not interested. Even today, Turkey supports activities and individuals in the US who deny the Armenian genocide.[49] This is as absurd as attempting to hide an elephant in a broom closet. Sadly, Turkey is not alone in denials of genocide. Other countries and ethnic groups have experienced and/or perpetrated genocide: Rwanda, South Africa, Sudan, Nazi Germany, Cambodia, China . . . and this list is by no means complete. What has humanity learned through the centuries about how to respond (individually and corporately) to such situations? How have we allowed ourselves to be changed by these events?
Forgiveness and Love in Action
In such circumstances, it is extraordinarily difficult to separate the sin from the sinner. The sinner always has the possibility to change, to choose to depart from evil and walk toward the good. Such metanoia[50] requires courage and strength. Christians today are challenged not only to forgive, but also to love. In the end, perpetrator and victim alike stand in judgment before God, where they will account for their actions. There are no excuses.
There are, however, recent examples of such courage and strength found in the efforts of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. [51] Archbishop Tutu described this commission as
quite appalled at the depth of depravity to which human beings could sink and we would, most of us, say that those who committed such dastardly deeds were monsters because the deeds were monstrous. But theology prevents us from doing this. Theology reminded me that, however diabolical the act, it did not turn the perpetrator into a demon. We had to distinguish between the deed and the perpetrator, between the sinner and the sin, to hate and condemn the sin while being filled with compassion for the sinner. The point is that, if perpetrators were to be despaired of as monsters and demons, then we were thereby letting accountability go out the window because we were then declaring that they were not moral agents to be held responsible for the deeds they had committed. Much more importantly, it meant that we abandoned all hope of their being able to change for the better. Theology said they still, despite the awfulness of their deeds, remained children of God with the capacity to repent, to be able to change.[52]In South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission granted amnesty to the guilty when they confessed. This was difficult not only for the guilty and the victims, but for the families of both. As awful as it was to read the ugly truths spoken by perpetrators and victims, it seemed that truth-telling released poison festering in the souls of both. True healing occurred because the wound was lanced by telling the truth, and the poison was drained. In many instances, victim and perpetrator did not allow their sins to continue to corrode their souls—they reversed the effects of sin. The power the sin held Over them all was dissipated simply by their stating the truth before God, before one another, and even before the entire world.
Survivors of Abuse: Forgiveness and Love
For survivors of atrocities to expect an admission of guilt as a prerequisite to forgiveness becomes in itself a stumbling block to salvation. Desiring and working toward an authentic relationship with Christ require a measure of defiance of societal expectations and a surrender to the example of Christ, the suffering servant and Savior of all. Jesus “made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross” (Phil 2:7-8). We are also called to become like Christ by emptying ourselves of our self-centeredness, instead inclining ourselves to do His will so that we may “shine as lights in the world” (Phil 2:15). We are reminded by St. Paul that “the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor 1:18). Paul continues, “We preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength” (1 Cor 1:23-25).
So what appears to be a “weak” position in worldly terms in actuality requires a great deal of strength. Civil engineers acknowledge that the strength of a building lies in its ability to be flexible through the use of concrete reinforced with steel rods. Under stressful environmental conditions such as high winds or earthquakes, the building may vibrate and sway, but will not crumble. A building without the flexibility of steel rods is more likely to become unstable, crack, and be destroyed. In like manner, a Christian without forgiveness is not flexible enough to withstand all the challenges in this life.
Those who perpetrate evils on innocent victims (and even on no-tso-innocent victims) unwittingly drink condemnation unto themselves. Such perpetrators need prayers all the more. This seems paradoxical. Christians maintain that Christ came “for the life of the world—that is, for the life of the whole world. How, then, can one not be compelled to pray for those who blame the victims? As noted earlier, the Turkish government continues to deny the outright torture, murder, and intentional extermination of 1.3 million Armenians. History books have been rewritten.
As impossible a change as such a fresh initiative may seem to be for some, Archbishop Tutu remarked that people emerged transformed by the Truth and Reconciliation experience:
But there is another side, a more noble and inspiring one. We have been deeply touched and moved by the resilience of the human spirit. People who by rights should have had the stuffing knocked out of them, refusing to buckle under intense suffering and brutality and intimidation; people refusing to give up on the hope of freedom, knowing they were made for something better than the dehumanizing awfulness of injustice and oppression; refusing to be intimidated to lower their sights. It is quite incredible the capacity people have shown to be magnanimous—refusing to be consumed by the bitterness and hatred, willing to meet with those who have violated their persons and their rights, willing to meet in a spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation, eager only to know the truth, to know the perpetrator so they could forgive them.
We have been moved to tears. We have laughed. We have been silent and we have stared the beast of our dark past in the eye. We have survived the ordeal, and we are realizing that we can indeed transcend the conflicts of the past, we can hold hands as we realize our common humanity . . . The generosity of spirit will be full to overflowing when it meets a like generosity. Forgiveness will follow confession and healing will happen, and so contribute to national unity and reconciliation.[54]Let us examine and learn from the courageous example of those in South Africa struggling against their past atrocities. They faced their “demons” head on and offered no amnesty without an admission of guilt. Archbishop Tutu outlined their approach:
In the South African case there was to be no general amnesty. This amnesty was not automatic and the applicant had to make an individual application, then appear before an independent panel which decided whether the applicant satisfied the stringent conditions for granting amnesty. So the other extreme, of blanket amnesty, was also rejected. Apart from the reasons mentioned above, it was felt very strongly that general amnesty was really amnesia. It was pointed out that we none of us possess a kind of fiat by which we come bygones. Our common experience in fact is the opposite— that the past, far from disappearing or lying down and being quiet, has an embarrassing and persistent way of returning and haunting us unless it has in fact been dealt with adequately. Unless we look the beast in the eye, we find it has an uncanny habit of returning to hold us hostage.[55]Archbishop Tutu has also said that there can be “no future without forgiveness.” Indeed,
our nation sought to rehabilitate and affirm the dignity and personhood of those who for so long had been silenced, had been turned into anonymous, marginalized ones. Now they would be able to tell their stories, they would remember, and in remembering would be acknowledged to be persons with an inalienable personhood.[56]There can be no spiritual growth without forgiveness, because when I dehumanize you, I dehumanize myself. When Cain murdered his brother, Abel, something died in Cain, too. When we think we know better than God, we act as did Lucifer, whose pride led to his expulsion from the ranks of angels. We are told, “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt 10:28).
The Orthodox nun, theologian, and philosopher Mother Maria of Normanby has said, “To suffer injustice can, at the utmost, destroy the body, but to do injustice would of necessity harm the soul and in the end destroy.”[57] Again, Archbishop Tutu speaks from his experience while instructing us:
True reconciliation is based on forgiveness, and forgiveness is based on true confession, and confession is based on penitence, on contrition, on sorrow for what you have done ... How can you forgive if you do not know what or whom to forgive? When you do know what or whom to forgive, the process of requesting and receiving forgiveness is healing and transformative for all involved.[56]Christians must take the high moral road and do the work that leads to salvation. I myself must continually, at a deep level and in a dispassionate manner, examine my motives and opportunities. The New Testament is replete with examples of Christ teaching which actions are and are not acceptable to God. These acceptable actions prepare us and open us up to receive His merciful love. The following stories provide only a few examples: the Parable of the Publican and the Pharisee illustrates the contrast between self-emptying (the publican) and self-righteousness (the Pharisee);[59] Christ’s admonishment of Peter to forgive his brother who sins against him;[60] and again, in the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant, Christ exhorts us to forgive and show mercy.[61]
We can only follow this course when we are authentically acting with humility by doing the right thing, like the publican, as opposed to acting self-righteously, like the Pharisee. This is a difficult but necessary condition to receive the transformational love of God. Think of Peter’s question: “How many times must I forgive?”
We can learn from the response of Marietta Jaeger to the events that occurred on a camping vacation in Montana. She and her husband’s youngest daughter, seven-year-old Susie, went missing on the last night of the trip. Susie was killed. Marietta describes her eventual response to the murder:
I had finally come to believe that real justice is not punishment but restoration, not necessarily to how things used to be, but to how they really should be. In both the Hebrew and Christian scripture whence my beliefs and values come, the God who seeks not to punish, destroy or put us to death, but a God who works unceasingly to help and heal us, rehabilitate and reconcile us, restore us to the richness and fullness of life for which we have been created. This, now, was the justice I wanted for this man who had taken my little girl. Though I readily admit that initially I wanted to kill this man with my bare hands, by the time of the resolution of his crimes, I was convinced that my best and healthiest option was to forgive. In the 20 years since losing my daughter, I have been working with victims and their families and my experience has been consistently confirmed. Victim families have every right initially to the normal, valid, human response of rage, but those persons who retain a vindictive mind-set ultimately give the offender another victim. Embittered, tormented, enslaved by the past, their quality of life is diminished. However justified, our unforgiveness undoes us. Anger, hatred, resentment, bitterness, revenge—they are death-dealing spirits and they will “take our lives” on some level as surely as Susie’s life was taken. I believe that the only way we can be whole, healthy, happy persons is to learn to forgive. That is the inexorable lesson and experience of the gospel of Marietta. Though I would never have chosen it so, the first person to receive a gift of life from the death of my daughter...was me.[62]
Personal Reflections and Challenges
I am outraged by the events that have occurred and profoundly saddened by the loss of family members resulting from the coerced “Turkification” of Turkey. I am forced to face my own prejudices without feeding them. I remember that these catastrophic events began as a seed in a heart and mind that had turned away from God. How often during the day do I turn from God? Can I stand in truth before God and confess innocence?
Absolutely not! I am a sinner. I struggle with forgiving others who have harmed and betrayed me, albeit in a far less extreme manner than the examples of St. Barbara and the Armenian people. I struggle with praying for those who hate me. I struggle when praying for the situation in present-day Turkey. I struggle to separate Turkish policies from Turkish citizens when I remember that all are created in the image and after the likeness of God. I struggle when people who think they know me make inferences about my life that are not based in truth. I struggle with being around such people.
I groaned in Istanbul when the state-licensed tour guide in Hagia Sophia[63] told all in my group what a great monument the edifice was to the Christian and Muslim faiths. A part of me wanted to take over the tour group narrative to reveal the lies the guide was extolling as fact.[64] My “good sense” prevailed only when I thought that type of response might put me in prison, and I was not prepared for that. I was on vacation, after all! So I console myself with the knowledge that “there is nothing covered that will not be revealed, and hidden that will not be known” (Matt 10:26). Truth-telling is important and should not be motivated by self-righteousness, because self-righteousness eats away the purity of the truth-telling.
And yet, for my own good, I must forgive all. Christ presses this point after instructing his disciples how to pray (the Lord’s Prayer): “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matt 6:14 15). If I do not forgive and love my enemy, I condemn myself. But if I do surrender, I open myself to God’s grace, mercy, and love. What a choice! I can be like St. Barbara: confess Christ, forgive all, and surrender myself to the consequences. I could even be like the women who chanted the communion hymn while enduring their excruciatingly humiliating and painful death—always looking to the endpoint as my starting point. Recalling the gentle yet firm words of St. Gregory of Narek’s Prayer 49 helps me to choose Christ:
And now remembering the image of your royal kingdom above,John of Damascus reminds us to continually incline ourselves toward our Creator:
God of light for all,
do not let iniquity rule me.
Do not let the haughty rebel steal the grace
of your breath from this creature you made.
Do not let sin trap and rule my mortal body, enslaving me.[65]
Here, that is, in the present life, his [humankind’s] life is ordered as an animal’s, but elsewhere, that is, in the age to come, he is changed and—to complete the mystery—becomes deified by merely inclining himself towards God; becoming deified in the way of participating in the divine glory and not in that of a change into the divine being.[66]I don’t know why the genocide happened. Maybe God allowed it not because of the horrors the martyrs endure, but because of the “after”— what we have done with this experience. Have future genocides been avoided? Has awareness of the Armenian faith grown? Have displaced Armenians taken advantage of opportunities for growth, development, and witness in their new homelands? Have we in the West been exposed to a faith, culture, and experience we would not otherwise have known? Is there an independent Armenian homeland? Yes, much has been lost: women, children, men, churches, art,'literature, homes, businesses, and much, much more. Yet, had this horrible event not happened, a little boy might never have come to America and married the mother of a cherished friend. She might not even have ever existed, and yet she does. Had my grandparents not left Smyrna, I might not exist. And I do value all that I am and am becoming. No matter what plan we think we have for our lives, if we are attentive we will find that we are like fallen leaves— picked up by the wind and carried away, resting when the wind rests, carried away again when the wind picks up. The Lord sends us all over.
Not to trivialize the situation, it is as if the Armenians in Turkey were “ploughed under,” only to come up as beautiful flowers, fragrant flowers not just in heaven, but on earth—in the faces of the people we meet and come to know. We are all connected through these rich relationships, horizontally to those on the earth and vertically to those who have ascended before us:
Whether we recognize it or not, the Triune God has “knit us together” in His love (Eph. 4:16). Each of us shares the same Heavenly Father. And, this Father offers His love to each of us.[67]Every day we should remember the endpoint as our starting point, while rejoicing in the Resurrection by chanting the final ode of the Paschal canon:
It is the day of Resurrection!
Let us shine forth in splendor for the Festival,
and embrace one another.
Let us say, “O brethren,” even to those who do not love us;
let us forgive all things in the Resurrection,
and thus, let us exclaim:
“Christ has risen from the dead, trampling death by death,
and bestowing life to those in the tombs.”[68]
NOTES
1. Kyriaki Karidoyanes FitzGerald, Persons in Communion: A Theology of Authentic Relationships (Berkeley, CA: InterOrthodox Press, 2006), 55-56.
2. "Dignitas" is defined as the quality of being worthy, honored, or esteemed. In Roman times a person’s dignitas also included family name (lineage), patronage, and fortune.
3. Some scholars claim that the life of St. Barbara is fictitious: “There is considerable doubt of the existence of a “virgin martyr called Barbara and it is quite certain that her legend is spurious. There is no mention of her in the earlier martyrologies; her legend is not older than the seventh century, and her cultus did not spread till the ninth” (One Hundred Saints: Their Lives and Likenesses Drawn from Butler’s Lives of the Saints and Great Works of Western Art [New York: Bulfinch Press, 2007], 86). If Barbara did in fact exist, there is disagreement about the actual location of her home (some possibilities: Heliopolos, Egypt; Heliopolos, Lebanon; Tuscany; Rome; Antioch; or possibly Nicomedia). If Barbara lived in Lebanon during the second century, then she would have lived near three great temples: the Temple of Jupiter (depicted on the coinage of the time), the Temple of the Sun, and the Circular Acropolis. There is also disagreement about her date of birth and repose. Some date her repose to the early to mid-200s, whereas others place her nearly one hundred years later (ca. 310). In either case, the late second and early third centuries were times of turmoil throughout the Roman Empire, and consequently, Christians were in constant danger. A traditional account of St. Barbara’s life can be found in The Lives of the Holy Women Martyrs, translated and compiled from the Greek of The Great Synaxaristes of the Orthodox Church (Buena Vista, CO: Holy Apostles Convent, 1991), 528.
4. One Hundred Saints, 85.
5. Lives of the Holy Women Martyrs, 534.
6. Joseph Raya and Jose De Vinck, Byzantine Daily Worship (Allendale,NJ: Alleluia Press, 1969), 532.
7. Dr. FitzGerald describes an authentic life in Christ as one “marked by coherence between our deepest identity as a child of God and the manner in which we live our life. Such a life is marked by continuity between our beliefs and our actions, between our words and our deeds. Such a life is marked by continuous honesty with our own self before God and others. Such a life is marked by integrity before God and others” (Persons in Communion, 38). She continues by identifying humility as “arguably the most powerful virtue in assisting us to become our true selves in the presence of God. Genuine humility requires courage, and in many ways wielding it is counter-intuitive for most of us” (ibid.). St. Barbara's actions were consistent with her beliefs, and thus they were authentic.
8. FitzGerald, Persons in Communion, 39. Dr. FitzGerald differentiates humility and humiliation by describing humiliation as “a dangerous and poisonous mechanism used by one human being seeking to diminish and distort the value of other persons... it is toxic and life-effacing. Humiliation does not enhance the life of another person. The objective of humiliation as a weapon is very precise. The action of humiliation seeks to control and ultimately annihilate the other experientially ‘from the inside out’” (ibid.).
9. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time (New York: Image Books, 2004), 47.
10. John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, bk. 2, chap. 12, in vol. 9 of Niceneand Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, trans. E. W. Watson, L. Pullan, etal., ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (reprint, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1979), 31; italics added.
11. The Philokalia: The Complete Text, vol. 1, compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and St. Makarios of Corinth, trans. and eds. G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware (London: Faber and Faber, 1983), 82.
12. Kyriaki FitzGerald and Thomas FitzGerald, Happy in the Lord: The Beatitudes for Everyday (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2000), 170.
13. Mother Maria of Normanby, The Fool and Other Writings, ed. Sister Thekla (Normanby, UK: Greek Orthodox Monastery of the Assumption, 1980), 98.
14. St. Grigor Narekatsi, Speaking with God from the Depths of the Heart: The Armenian Prayer Book of St. Gregory ofNarek, trans. Thomas J. Samuelian, poetic ed. Diana Der Hovanessian (Yerevan, Armenia: Vem Press, 2002), 219.
15. St. Chrysostom, Homily 19.10, in vol. 10 of Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, First Series, trans. George Prevost, eds. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, online at Christian Classics Ethereal Library, accessed May 3, 2007, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnfllO.iii.XIX.html.
16. Shamrig Marifian, 1910-2005, in a videotaped account recorded by her
loving family, speaks of her explusion from Turkey and arrival in America. I was provided with a copy of this videotape by Shamrig’s granddaughter, Jane Matoesian.
17. “The definition in the United Nations’ Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which the United States finally ratified in 1988, offers a useful standard for judgment. Article II of the convention states: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a nation, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group” (Donald E. Miller and Lorna Touryan Miller, Survivors: An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999], 45). “Armenians take considerable pride in having been the first nation to accept Christianity. The Apostles Thaddeus and Bartholomew brought the Christian gospel to the Armenians as early as A.D. 43, and this event is commemorated in the name of the mother church, the Armenian Apostolic Church. The Armenian Church is sometimes also called the Gregorian Church, in honor of Saint Gregory the Illuminator, who converted the Armenian sovereign Trdat III to Christianity in about A.D. 301. In A.D. 506 the Armenian Church reaffirmed its independence from both Constantinople and Rome and has remained separate to the present. Currently, there are two rival branches of the Armenian Church: the Mother See is Etchmiadzin, Armenia, and the Cilician (Sis) See in Antelias, Lebanon, each of which appeals to Armenians of somewhat different political inclinations” (ibid., 33).
18. Taner Akçam, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility, trans. Paul Bessemer (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006), 21.
19. “The meaning of ‘dhimma,’ a notion in Islamic jurisprudence, reflects the Islamic obligation to protect the dhimmi [conquered people]; the word also connotes ‘right,’ ‘agreement,’ or ‘mercy.’ According to the understanding reached by the dhimmi and the Islamic state, their lives and property are inviolate, and their freedom of religion and worship are guaranteed. In exchange, the dhimmi are obliged to display subservience and loyalty to the Muslim order and to pay a tax known as the jizya’. The relationship is not one of equals, but one of tolerance and forbearance” (ibid., 22-23).
20. Ibid., 22-23.
21. Ibid., 24.
22. Ibid., 27.
23. Ibid., 31-32.
24. Ibid., 35.
25. Ibid., 27.
26. Ibid., 45.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid., 49.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. “This last point is crucial for the subsequent Armenian genocide, because it was precisely those people who, having only recently been saved from massacre themselves, would now take a central and direct role in cleansing Anatolia of ‘non-Turkish’ elements. The dimension of this migration and its results become easier to understand when we recall that between 1878-1904 some 850,000 refugees were settled in predominantly Armenian areas alone” (ibid., 87).
32. Ibid., 98. “Porte” means “gate”; the term referred to the court in the Ottoman Empire where government policies were established.
33. Ibid., 101.
34. Peter Balakian, The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 189-90. Balakian continues: “One remarkable document was discovered and translated in early 1919 by British officials in Turkey, who labeled it ‘The Ten Commandments.’ It is a blueprint of the Armenian extermination operation and appears to have been the centerpiece of a secret party meeting, which took place sometime in late December 1914 or in January 1915. The document was obtained by Comm. C.H. Heathcote Smith, the right-hand man of Adm. Somerset Calthorpe, the British-high commissioner in Constantinople. Fluent in Turkish, Smith had served as British consul in Smyrna before the war, and he first learned of the ‘The Ten Commandments’ from the former Brit ish intelligence agent Percival Hadkinson, in Smyrna” (ibid.). The text of the document is as follows (ibid.):
(1) Profiting by the Arts: 3 and 4 of Comite Unionand Progres, close all Armenian Societies, and arrest all who worked against Government at any time among them and send them into the provinces such as Bagdad or Mosul, and wipe them out either on the road or there.
(2) Collect arms.
(3) Excite Moslem opinion by suitable and special means, in places as Van, Erzeroum, Adana, where as a point of fact the Armenians have already won the hatred of the Moslems, provoke organised massacres as the Russians did at Baku.
(4) Leave all executive to the people in provinces such as Erzeroum, Van, Mamuret ul Aziz, and Bitlis and use Military disciplinary forces (i.e., Gendarmerie) ostensibly to stop massacres while on the contrary in places as Adana, Sivas, Broussa, Ismidt and Smyrna actively help the Moslems with military force.
(5) Apply measures to exterminate all males under 50, priests and teachers, leave girls and children to be Islamized.
(6) Carry away the families of all who succeed in escaping and apply measures to cut them off from all connection with their native place.
(7) On the ground that Armenian officials may be spies, expel and drive them out absolutely from every Government department or post.
(8) Kill off in an appropriate manner all Armenians in the Army- this to be left to the military to do.
(9) All action to begin everywhere simultaneously, and thus leave no time for preparation of defensive measures.
(10) Pay attention to the strictly confidential nature of these instructions, which may not go beyond two or three persons.
35. “Virginia Meghrouni wrote that ‘continually, day and night, officers searched for weapons in Armenian homes . . . even small kitchen knives were confiscated; so were historical materials and books listing names of Armenian leaders.’ She described the shock that went through the community when deportation notices were posted in Kayseri on June 15. All over the city Armenian shops and businesses were ordered closed immediately, and Armenians were informed that they must be prepared for a deportation; in doing so they were instructed to leave their goods and belongings behind and their money in the bank, and that all would be safeguarded. Shortly thereafter, twenty prominent Armenian men were hanged in the town square” (ibid., 228).
36. Ibid., 270: “Farther west in the great port city of Smyrna, the American consul, George Horton, documented a similar Turkification frenzy in a report to Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan in February 1915 . . . [Horton said,] ‘lawless Turkish bands are appearing in increasing numbers in this district and are spreading a reign of terror among the Christians of all races.’ Horton closes his letter to Bryan with the refrain of a song Turkish students in Smyrna were singing: Revenge! Revenge! Revenge! Let us kill, let us cut to pieces, Let us swim in blood up to our knees, Revenge! Revenge! Revenge! Let us wipe the stain from our clothes.
37. Ibid., 230-31, 244-45, 247.
38. Peter Balakian, Black Dog of Fate: A Memoir (New York: Broadway Books, 1998), 214.
39. Balakian, Burning Tigris, 255.
40. Ibid., 266.
41. This is the hymn sung during the offering of Holy Communion in the Divine Liturgy. The words remember Christ’s sacrifice unto death. The women sang this in anticipation of their own sacrifice unto death.
42. Balakian, Black Dog of Fate, 216-17.
43. It may seem that I have made the assertion that perpetrators remain in a stagnant state of hatred. Because no data is available about the present state of the perpetrators of this recorded incident, one cannot know. I remain steadfast in the knowledge that with God all things are possible, that forgiveness is given and received even at the eleventh hour.
44. “Frequently Asked Questions about the Armenian Genocide,” Armenian National Institute, accessed May 22, 2006, www.armenian-genocide.org/genocidefaq.html.
45. United Nations General Assembly, Elimination of all forms of religious intolerance: Interim report of the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on the elimination of all forms of intolerance and of discrimination based on religion or belief, Addendum 1: Situation in Turkey, A/55/280/ Add.l (August 11, 2000), 15-23.
46. Ibid., 26.
47. Ibid.
48. Desmond Mpilo Tutu, No Future without Forgiveness (New York: Image,1999), 196-97.
49. William H. Honan, “Princeton Is Accused of Fronting for the “Turkish Government,” New York Times, May 22, 1996.
50. “Metanoia” is the customary Greek word for repentance. Genuine repentance is closely associated with confession. It literally means a radical turning away from something; this also involves a reciprocal turning toward something else.
51. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa was a government agency established after the fall of apartheid in 1990.
52. No Future without Forgiveness, 83.
53. The Armenian Genocide, directed by Andrew Goldberg, aired on Public Broadcasting Service April 2006 (New York: Two Cats Productions), DVD.
54. Tutu, No Future without Forgiveness, 120.
55. Ibid., 28.
56. Ibid., 30.
57. The Fool and Other Writings, 98.
58. God Has a Dream, 53.
59. “Also [Jesus] spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector [or publican]. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other men—extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.’ And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 18:9-14).
60. “Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, ‘Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?’ Jesus answered, ‘I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times’” (Matt 18:21-22).
61. “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. The servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go. But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded. His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’ But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened. Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart” (Matt 18:23-35).
62. Marietta Jaeger, “The Power and Reality of Forgiveness: Forgiving the Murderer of One’s Child,” in Exploring Forgiveness, ed. Robert D. Enright and Joanna North, foreword by Desmond Tutu (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998), 13-14.
63. Hagia Sophia is the Church of Holy Wisdom in Istanbul (formerly Constantinople), Turkey. It was once the main church for the Eastern Christian faith and home of the ecumenical patriarch. After the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople in 1453, the church was turned into a mosque. In more recent years Hagia Sophia has become a museum, and is touted as a great example of the best of both the Muslim and Christian faiths.
64. Construction of this church began under Emperor Justinian I in 532 and was completed some five years later. Ancient visitors were impressed by the structure both inside and out. Some seven hundred years later, when Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque, the mosaic icons were whitewashed and all Christian symbols were removed. Muslim additions included a mihrab (niche in the wall indicating the direction to Mecca) in the apse where the altar used to stand, a sultan’s gallery, a dais for sermons, and a loggia for muezzin, as well as the construction of external minarets. In 1935 Hagia Sophia was converted into a museum by Kemal Atatiirk. Sources used in this paper indicate that relations between many Muslims and Christians have been less than hospitable over the course of the centuries. For the tour guide to indicate otherwise seemed a misrepresentation of reality.
65. St. Grigor Narekatsi, Speaking with God, 215.
66. John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, bk. 2, chap. 12, 31.
67. FitzGerald, Persons in Communion, 57.
68. George L. Papadeas, Greek Orthodox Holy Week and Easter Services: A New English Translation (South Daytona, FL: Patmos Press, 1963), 460, adapted.
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Barbara K. Harris is a graduate of Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, with an MA in Church Service, and of Washington University in St. Louis, with an AM in Non-Profit Management. She resides in St. Louis, Missouri, where she is exploring the intersection of practical theology, leadership, and education. She also serves on the Board of St. Catherine's Vision.
*(Source: Harris, Barbara K. "St. Barbara and the Martyrs of the Armenian Genocide: A Witness to Radical Forgiveness" in "Encountering Women of Faith: The St Catherine's Vision Collection Volume 2." Edited by Presbytera Kyriaki Karidoyanes FitzGerald (Massachusetts: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2011) 121-153.)
All Photos from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_genocide
More on the History of the Armenian Genocide:
PBS: The Armenian Genocide
Other documentaries and videos can be found via http://www.youtube.com/user/ArmTurk24
Note: although there is a danger of nationalist ideology, perpetuating hate and presenting the issues apart from forgiveness, let us remember Barbara K. Harris' statement of forgiveness in her paper:
"I must forgive all. Christ presses this point after instructing his disciples how to pray (the Lord’s Prayer): “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matt 6:14 15). If I do not forgive and love my enemy, I condemn myself. But if I do surrender, I open myself to God’s grace, mercy, and love. What a choice! I can be like St. Barbara: confess Christ, forgive all, and surrender myself to the consequences. I could even be like the women who chanted the communion hymn while enduring their excruciatingly humiliating and painful death—always looking to the endpoint as my starting point."
Lord Have Mercy On Us All.
