On the Road

From the Holy Mountain:

A Journey Among the Christians of the Middle East

by William Dalrymple

Book Review by Steve Silver

In an age of TV, the internet and relatively inexpensive airfares, the idea of inaccessible places and people has become increasingly foreign to us. Yet, William Dalrymple finds such a place and people for us in his fascinating book "From the Holy Mountain." A well-crafted combination of travelogue, history and reporting, leavened with both humor and touching observations, this book is a good read.

Mr. Dalrymple was inspired to take his journey after reading of John Moschos, a sixth century monk, who, with his companion Sophronius the Sophist, traveled the length of the Byzantine East to collect the wisdom of the Desert Fathers. Moschos, liked many others at the time, sensed that his civilization was in its twilight years; he was right. The Arabs began their lightning conquest of the middle east within a century.

Mr. Dalrymple decided to retrace the route of John Moschos to see how the communities of which the monk wrote some 1500 years ago were faring today. He begins his travels at Mount Athos, the Holy Mountain, in Greece and ends at Al Kharga in the desert wastes of upper Egypt. Along the way he travels through Anatolia, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Alexandria.

Recounting the history of the region, and making reference to John Moschos' book The Spiritual Meadow, we are reminded that Christianity is at its roots an eastern religion, that it was birthed in a world far different from our own. Indeed, we in the West often forget about the Orthodox church and its traditions, but Dalrymple helps bring it to life for us in its very many forms. We meet Greek Orthodox, Suriani (Syrian Orthodox), Maronites (who sought protection from the Catholic Church for political reasons) and Copts. There are monasteries throughout the region, some in better shape than others, most unfortunately without a future.

The sad truth is that throughout the region Christianity is dying out. In many places the only Christians are aged people; the younger people emigrate to Greece, America or Canada. What had once been a region rich in national diversity is increasingly defined by homogeneity. For the Greeks, this is a sad legacy of the ill-starred Greco-Turkish war of 1920. The Copts, 15% of Egypt`s population, feel threatened by Islamic fundamentalism. The Suriani, while comfortable today, know that they have benefited from the Assad regime and expect a backlash upon the dictator's passing. Prior to the advent of Islam, the region had been predominately Christian. That all changed in the seventh century. Mass apostasy became the norm as many in the region traded the Christianity of their oft-corrupt Byzantine overlords for the Islam of the then more easy going Arab conquerors.

This book offered many satisfactions. I enjoyed reading of Dalrymple's hair raising journeys in the Maronite hill country of Lebanon, of his visits with the few remaining Greeks in Alexandria (most left after Nasser's nationalization campaign in the 1950s) and of his stay at the monastery of St. Theodusius, the home base of John Moschos himself, in the deserts of Judea. I also was intrigued by the world of Orthodoxy, both past and present, so different from our own, yet professing faith in the same Christ.

But what most captured my attention was the fate of a once great civilization, of a faith that was ubiquitous gone to ground. I could not help thinking that if Christianity can die out in its birthplace (there are ever fewer Christians in the Holy Land), its familiar forms need not be guaranteed here in the future. We in the mainline church have our work cut out for us in the years ahead. One startling statistic: there are more Moslems than Episcopalians (and Congregationalists) in the United States today. Dalrymple's book reminds us that a church that loses sight of the important things — i.e. Christ — in favor of other matters, be they politics, power or forms and symbols will surely fail, even if it dominates society. We have all heard the stories of empty cathedrals in France and England and what amounts to mass agnosticism among the vast majority of Western Europeans; yet Pentecostal churches are booming in Latin America. The outward signs of Christianity change and mutate but the faith flourishes where people remain true to the message of God present among us in Christ.

William Dalrymple, in his engaging travelogue, offers up something more than a good road story — he gives us a view of the past that illuminates the present and offers a possible glimpse of the future. +