Christians In the Middle East
A nearly forgotten part of world history, critical to the situation in our contemporary world, is how Muslims and Christians lived with and learned from one another in the early centuries of the Islamic era (seventh-tenth centuries).
The world’s leading authority in the intimate relationship between Muslims and Christians in the Near East, The Rev. Dr. Sidney H. Griffith of Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, will be coming to Regina to lecture at Luther College/University of Regina on Monday, April 12, at 2:30 p.m. - “Living Together in Baghdad: Muslim-Christian Relations in Abbasid and Contemporary Times.”
The organizing of the lecture is the result of the interest and cooperation of three local scholars. Matthew Livingstone, S.J., professor of philosophy at Campion College, has lived in the Middle East and Africa and has become involved with several Arabic-speaking Christian monasteries in Syria. Franzvolker Greifenhagen, Assistant Dean of Luther College and Associate Professor in the Religious Studies Department of the University of Regina, who focuses on both the Old Testament and on Islam. Robert Kitchen, minister of Knox-Metropolitan United Church, has published several translations of early Syriac Christian writings on the spiritual life. With the support and assistance of Campion College and the Regina Jesuit Community of Campion College, Luther College, the Religious Studies Department, the Canada Research Chair in Social Justice, and Knox-Metropolitan United Church, they were able to lure Dr. Griffith from balmy DC to Regina in the middle of the winter.
The recent book by Sidney Griffith, The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque: Christians and Muslims in the World of Islam (Princeton University Press, 2007), examines how the Eastern churches adapted to life under Islamic rule as a fellow “People of the Book.” His focus centers upon the vibrant intellectual life in Baghdad during the Abbasid caliphate (750-935) when Christian and Muslim scholars studied with and under one another.
Dr. Griffith has also become deeply involved in contemporary Christian-Muslim relations, both in publications and engaging in inter-faith dialogue. His lecture will aim to wed an historical perspective on how Christians and Muslims lived, worked and studied together in the first three centuries of the Islamic era and how those relationships might encourage and inspire similar benefits in the 21st century.
In preparation for Dr. Griffith’s lecture, there will be two study sessions at Knox-Metropolitan United Church (Tuesdays, January 26 and February 2, 7:30 p.m.) presenting the background and context of Oriental and Arabic-speaking Christianity in the Middle East. Matthew Livingstone will give an overview of Arabic-speaking Christianity and its relationship today to Islam. Robert Kitchen will offer a similar overview of the Oriental Churches that flourished in the Middle East before and after the rise of the Islamic movement.