Lino Vamvakoi

I collected this story from www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk It is a website well worth a visit.

Notes from the Global Church July 14, 2009
The crypto-Christians
by Philip Jenkins
For most American Christians, restraints on the open expression of religious loyalties normally involve situations in which believers might be seen as imposing their views on others—through evangelism in the workplace or school, perhaps. But in many parts of Africa and Asia, in societies dominated by other religions or by militant atheist regimes, Christians experience such negative pressure that they refrain from even admitting they are Christians. Millions survive as crypto-Christians.
Just how common these covert believers are is a mystery. In theory, hidden believers should be immune to study, as they would never break cover; the people who can be studied are only the less discreet. But we often do hear of crypto-Christians, and the stories are startling. According to the World Christian Encyclopedia, as of 2000 Syria's Christian population was fewer than 5 percent, but most observers think that number is far too low. And the true number has surely risen with the influx of Christian Iraqi refugees. A million semiclandestine Iraqi believers would raise the size of the Christian minority to at least 10 or 12 percent.
In India, some guess the number of crypto-Christians is 20 million. Worldwide, the crypto-Christian population runs well into the tens of millions. For what it's worth, the World Christian Encyclopedia speaks of 120 million hidden believers. If that figure is right, crypto-Christians would by themselves constitute one of the world's largest religious groups.
Although many of these believers are isolated individuals and families, some sizable communities have demonstrated astonishing powers of survival. In the 17th century, the Buddhist/Shinto nation of Japan annihilated a Catholic missionary presence that seemed to be on the verge of converting the nation. After persecutions that killed tens of thousands—even a suspicion of Christian loyalty could lead to execution—the organized church presence was destroyed by 1680. Yet many thousands of "hidden Chris tians," Kakure Kirishitan, some how maintained their secret traditions in remote fishing villages and island communities, and they continue to this day.
This catacomb church strayed from mainstream Catholicism, and many of its practices make it look like a Shinto sect: its eucharistic elements are rice, fish and sake. Its followers once knew nothing of the wider church, believing themselves to be the world's only true Christians. The stunning 1997 documentary Otaiya allows us to hear very old believers reciting Catholic prayers that first came to the region over 400 years ago—some recalled in church Latin and 16th-century Portuguese. Believers lovingly display a fragment of a silk robe once worn by one of the martyred European fathers. The film shows us the two last living members of the indigenous hereditary priesthood, both frail men in their 90s—the distant successors of St. Francis Xavier and the Jesuit pioneers.
Jesus reportedly warned his followers never to deny him publicly, lest he deny them at the Day of Judgment. Throughout the history of Christianity, though, conquests and revolutions have repeatedly led to persecutions and forced conversions, and at least some Christians have responded by maintaining a subterranean faith. When the Muslim Ottomans overran the Balkans and the Near East, many Christian believers publicly accepted Islam but continued to practice their true faith at night and in secret places. They became Lino vamvakoi: they were like a cloth in which cotton (vamvaki) was covered by linen (lino), so that they showed only one side at a time.
The phenomenon of crypto-Christianity is likely to become much more common in the coming decades. Defensive tactics are scarcely needed when the vast majority of Christians live in self-defined Christian nations, but they become acutely relevant when millions of believers live in deeply hostile environments, in societies that are (for instance) predominantly Muslim or Hindu.
That is especially likely in a global age, when the faith is spreading rapidly in Africa and Asia, powered by new forms of media and electronic communication. In turn, the rapid spread of Christianity inspires opposition from other established faiths and ideologies. In the worst cases, believers can survive only by practicing concealment and subterfuge, however they reconcile that behavior with the text of scripture. Whatever the prognosis, crypto-Christianity is an important—and evocative—part of the worldwide Christian story.
Philip Jenkins teaches at Penn State University.

The CITY ..... noise, bustle, anonymity yet !!

I come to the garden ....... noise in the background but a moment to enjoy.

Time to pause awhile to reflect ... to pray.

In a London church ... details later.
"In memory of people with haemophilia who have died as a result of treatment with contaminated blood products."
Remember those who died, yes, but remember family members left mourning, and those in medical practice who carry the pain of a failed procedure to heal.
Lord, Hear our prayer.

The ... A ... Cathedral

Memory fails me - ( No longer It was a painting by Fernand Cormon : "Une Forge") but a visit to the Queensland Art Gallery a few years back had a painting of the inside of a factory which was cathedral like. On a walk with Katrina we came to this power station which reminded me of this 19th Century secular statement of power. Like many church buildings it is a failed building.
Seeing I had this photo I wish to anticipate revisiting and reflecting on this modern, but not post-modern architectual "monster"

Old Testament revisited ... to read again

I have noted in an earlier post that Walter Brueggemann is worth reading. He provides great and refreshing readings from and of the Old Testament.


On the Primary Tension of Old Testament Faith

"The traditions of Israel's faith are in interaction between the full assertion of common theology, which is relentlessly contractual, and the protest [and pain] against it...."

"There is a restlessness in Israel that seeks to move through and beyond or against the common theology, and that restlessness is articulated in Israel's practice of lament.. Israel's lament is a way of protesting against the common theology. The lament in Israel is a way of asserting that the structure cannot always be legitimated and that the pain needs also to be embraced. This pain, when brought to public speech, impinges upon every structure and serves to question the legitimacy of the structure."

"In risking this form of speech, the conventional distribution of power is called into question. It is no longer placidly assumed that God has all the power and the covenant partner must simply submit...."

"In the risk there emerges a new mode of faith between Yahweh and Israel....One never knows, until the bold act is done, whether one has gone too far. Any new speech of this kind that is boldly probing may be the probe that goes too far and evokes the rage of the legitimated one under attack. The regular experience of Israel, however, is that in the moment of honest risk, Israel characteristically discovers that the speech is not only not resisted, but it is taken seriously in a way that permits a newness."

"In the public utterance of such pain, both parties emerge with freshness. Obedience turns out to be not blind, submissiveness required by common theology. It is rather a bold protest against a legitimacy that has grown illegitimate because it does not seriously take into account the suffering reality of the partner. Where the reality of suffering is not dealt with, legitimate structure is made illegitimate when the voice of pain assumes enough authority to be heard."

"Old Testament theology, as distinct from sociological, literary, or historical analysis, must assume some realism in the text - that the poets and narrators in Israel do, in fact, speak the mind of God. God's mind is not closed on this question, because God in Israel must decide about the practice of contractual theology and the embrace of pain that permits and requires life outside the contract...."

"So far as Christian extrapolations are concerned, the challenge of pain-embrace to structure legitimacy is presented in the symbol of the cross; but symbols can be misused. The cross is claimed to disclose God's true character as the source out of which new life comes, and yet the language and claims of a theology of the cross are now used to justify a theology of imperial exploitation that ruthlessly condemns pain and sees competence as the stuff of humanness. Such theology, when not criticized and corrected, lacks compassion toward those who are not capable of effective function. In our contemporary values, therefore, just as in the faith of ancient Israel, there is a moving back and forth between the assertion of common theology and the anguish about it, an anguish that protests against it."

"The laments are not widely used among us, not printed in most hymnals, not legitimated in our theology. Many Christians think the laments are superseded by some christological claim. We have in practice reneged on the bold break made in Israel's protest against the common theology. Unwittingly, by silencing the break of embraced pain, we have embraced the uncritical faith of structure legitimization. Much biblical faith, as commonly held, has in fact become a support for the status quo by using a theological mode that understands God primarily in the categories of structure legitimization. Such a move is reflected in both liturgical use, where the laments have largely fallen out of the repertoire, and in popular theology as reflected in the catechisms, to say nothing of popular proclamation."

from Old Testament Theology: Essays on Structure, Theme, and Text, pp. 18-9, 21.

- Walter Brueggemann.


( please note it was actually posted at 17.22hrs in Brisbane Australia. Not 12:22

A Visit to an Exhibition

Jocelyn and I visited the American Impressionist and Realist Exhibition at the Brisbane Art Gallery on 1st July 2009. So much to see and enjoy. The works of Childe Hassam, John Singer Sargeant and many others.
I was glad we went, taking our own time, joining a guide from time to time, returning to view again. We found the presentation of Australian artists, mainly from the Heidelberg School, a valuable contrast especially given the same time period. The conversation noted below in the Crucifixion story provided one significant connection. Sargeant's wedding gift to the young lady in the portrait was a highlight for Jocelyn.

Crucifixion

This crucifix in a church in Colmar (Kolmar) is perhaps the one spoken of by a friend I made at the Brisbane exhibition of the American Impressionist and Realist painters. A conversation began because we were both taking notes ... for the same reason .... memory failure ... hopefully the notes would jog the failing facility. He had been a committed footballer and a Vietnam vet, but could not talk about Vietnam. I asked him how art had impacted on his life and what it meant to him in addressing Vietnam. "Hard to say" he said but he then spoke of many visits to European galleries and his enjoyment of investigating information about the artists. Art had become a form of healing for him. Then he spoke of THE highlight for him. "Go to Basle then catch a train to Colmar." There you will see the most amazing picture ( I did not pick up whether it was painting or crucifix) True suffering, even the cross beam was bent. More than just physical suffering.
He doesn't attend church now .. too many questions relating to suffering and evil in mankind. I encouraged him to remember this picture / image. For in Christ's suffering is the clue to all other suffering and all loss.