The God of Abraham
Happy Hanukkah!
No, I am not a Christian. This said, I was born and raised in a Christian family in a Christian nation and understand well the teachings of the New Testament. Indeed, I was baptized in the Christian faith shortly after I was born, and, as an early teen, I received my first communion after many hours of study of the Lutheran catechism. Unfortunately, as my study neared completion I suffered a severe case of appendicitis and received my first communion alone separated by time and occasion from my religious classmates.
Sometime after I was confirmed I noticed a rift between my parents to which I was never made privy. We stopped going to church every Sunday, and my parents began playing cards with the parents of the children with whom my brothers and I associated after school. Something was about, but I knew not what. I minded my own business — what was expected of me, and what I was eventually allowed to do. Puberty is a challenging time for most children, but my mother had made it an especially troubling time for me.
Like many, I suppose, who were raised in the early post-war liberal institutions of American academia, I was confronted with different philosophies of thought. My study was strongly influenced by those with whom I came into contact, and these were from many different parts of the United States as well as other countries.
While still at home my father had taught me to think for myself. As a result, I attended the university with an open mind, unafraid of new ideas, and eager to learn from others. It mattered little who they were so long as they were willing to discuss intelligently. In the end I was left with a wealth of new knowledge, but had drifted from the theology of my religious upbringing — not the upbringing per se for I still took an avid interest in religion and remained morally motivated. Rather, I became an adventurer of new culture and all morality — in effect, humanity itself.
The prayer of my childhood that was instilled in me by my mother was now absent, and I became separated from my family by the trauma of circumstance and the historical era in general. A void set in — a void that I felt compelled to fill. And, fill it I did. First with recreational drugs in an attempt to attain a mystical experience and then with thoughts of suicide. Three times over the course of several years I kneeled, put a knife to my stomach, and challenged myself to confront my own sense of emptiness. I had always believed myself to be courageous and now was my chance to prove my courage. Each time I stood up a little wiser — my sense of courage unwavering. I had come to terms with death. It was now my friend — my freedom of last resort. It was a quiet, comprehensive struggle that I would not revisit, but once, until I returned to the United States in 2015 unlikely to part again until I had left a meaningful and worthy mark on my homeland.
Twenty-seven of the previous thirty years I had spent overseas in such places as Yokohama and Tōkyō, Japan, Hong Kong, and Jubail and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Substantial time was also spent in South Korea and Thailand. My previous three years in Europe — both West and East Germany, as well as France — prepared me well for my Asian experience. I had now explored the world’s three great religions in both mind and body and had discovered many differences and similarities. No, I was not an arm-chair intellectual who read about the world from the safety of his own culture. Rather I had put my American up-bringing to the test and had bounced it off of countless people in eight different nations on three continents — never giving it a name, and rarely, but when required, ever revealing my national identity and Christian up-bringing.
I watched the Twin Towers collapse from my apartment window in Mah On Shan, Hong Kong. It was in the fall of 2001, and I was still employed at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. I had heard the commotion in a neighboring apartment and was able to watch the collapse through two open windows — mine and theirs. I knew that something was terribly amiss, and my eyes turned to Israel and the US Government — not Saudi Arabia. Little did I know at the time that I would one day be living and working in the Saudi Kingdom.
My desire to spend a summer in an Israeli kibbutz while still enrolled as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor came before I was introduced to non-state terror by America’s national media. It was also before my subsequent interest in the Ottoman Empire and empire in general.
The present State of Israel was a nation begotten of empire. It was a mistake, and one with which the world continues to struggle to this day. I have long viewed the tiny Jewish state as a thorn in the side of world history. Alas, if the Israelis were The Chosen, then it was not the majority of those who currently occupy the land that they have claimed as their own. No, I am not recommending, as do some of my friends, that Israel be pushed into the sea. And, I applaud those Israelis who stand up against their own self-righteous state. This said, the Israeli nation behaves on the world stage like a young punk spoiled by a wealthy sugar daddy. And, unfortunately, her sugar daddy is America — my homeland.
By the time the Jews were banned by the Romans from Jerusalem in 135 A.D. Christianity had distanced itself from the Jewish faith, and its teaching had spread across much of the Roman empire. By the time of Constantine, the Great, in the early 4th century Christianity had become a world religion in its own right and was adopted as the religion of the Roman Empire. The assumption among Christian believers was that Jesus Christ was the promised Messiah of the Old Testament, and that Jews who rejected Christianity foolishly rejected the prophesy of their own prophets.
Although the split of the Roman Empire was not sudden, it did become permanent under the reign of Theodosius I in 395 A.D. With this division the Holy Lands were passed to Theodosius’s son, Arcadius, as part of the eastern half of the empire. Indeed, of the five principal patriarchates of the early Christian Church four of them were located in the eastern half of the empire. These included Alexandria (Egypt), Jerusalem (Palestine and Syria), Antioch (Turkey), and Constantinople. Only Rome was located in the western half.
When Odoacer, the Germanic king, sent the imperial regalia of Rome to Zeno, the East Roman Emperor, in 476 A.D., the Western Roman empire officially came to an end. Although Rome would remain an important See of the Christian church, its importance on the world stage remained diminished even after the appearance of Charlemagne (742-814 A.D.), the grandson of Charles Martel who, at the Battle of Tours in 732 A.D., led the Franks against the Umayyad Caliphate led by Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi, the governor of Al-Andalus of the Muslim-controlled Iberian Peninsula.
No, the formation of the Holy Roman Empire was by no means a straightforward historical process, but by 1054 under the reign of Henry III, when Rome and Constantinople split the Christian world in half through mutual excommunication, the Western world under the leadership of the Holy Roman Empire, was well on its way toward becoming what we know it today.
For much of its history Christianity has been troubled by its understanding of the true nature of Jesus Christ. It appears indisputable that he lived, and that much of what is written about him in the Bible did, in fact, occur. This said, the Christian church had already incurred its first major schism at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 A.D. — somewhat before the Western half of the Roman empire was formally dissolved. The split did not occur between the Eastern and Western halves of the Empire, however. Rather, it split the four patriarchates of the Eastern half into the Chalcedonian Orthodox and the non-Chalcedonian Oriental churches. The Oriental Orthodox churches included the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria and the Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch. The Roman Partriarchate sided with the Chalcedonian orthodoxy agreed by the patriarchates of Antioch and Constantinople.
During the first half of the 6th century Justinian I (482-565 AD) sought to restore the Roman Empire to its former glory and reclaimed Italy, North Africa, and the Iberian peninsula under Eastern Roman rule. During his reign Justinian also took an active role in the reunification of the Christian church. His effort was rewarded with what is the first well-documented occurrence of the bubonic plague. It occurred in 541 A.D. with devastating effects on Justinian’s rule and the future of the Eastern Roman Empire. The prophet Mohammed (570 to 632 AD) appeared shortly thereafter.
I do not see Islam as evil, but I do see it as antithetical to the American philosophy of governance — well, at least, the one upon which our nation was founded.
Islam sought to revive a tradition that had once united all of the Roman empire under a common faith. It eliminated the squabbling of the true nature of Christ by eliminating all question of his divinity. Further, it acknowledged the prophets of the Jews. Where it appears to have become presumptuous is in its insistence that Mohammed is the final prophet — the last before the so-called End-Times outlined in the Christian Book of Revelations — a prophesied event of the Abrahamic tradition that extends back to, and likely even before, the appearance of Zoroaster (Zarathustra).
No, I do not see collective punishment as part of the American philosophy of governance either. And, I would very much like the Christians of America to stand up for once against the atrocities perpetrated against Palestinian Arabs in their name. The State of Israel is a rogue and barbaric state that should be disciplined.
I find your hypocrisy, if you are still listening, my fellow Americans of the Christian faith, disgusting and your continued support for the State of Israel abominable.
If Israel is the Chosen Land, then let the God of Abraham administer to its needs and not the American taxpayer. The State of Israel is not worthy of America’s friendship, and I dare say, neither is the majority of its people worthy of the God of Abraham.
In liberty,
Roddy A. Stegemann, First Hill, Seattle 98104
Author of Mount Cambitas - The Story of Real Money and “A Call for the Restoration of Monetary Order” (Parts I and II)