The Church They Fight Over: Part I

The Church of the Holy Sepulcher is within the walled Old City of Jerusalem. The site is venerated by most Christians as Goglotha, the Hill of Calvary, where the New Testmanet says that Jesus was crucified, and is traditionally identified as the place where Jesus was buried. (There is strong historical evidence and reasons for this, but I’ll pass on that background for now.)

Since the Middle Ages, control of the church and its many internal areas has been a subject of argument between a handful of Christian denominations. The custodians are six: the Eastern Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic, Roman Catholic, Coptic Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox and Syriac Orthodox churches. Each denomination “controls” a specific area assigned to their denomination, and times and places of worship for each community are strictly regulated in the common areas.

Establishment of these divisions centuries ago didn’t prevent fighting from occasionally breaking out from time to time. Arguments over turf pop-up still every now and then. Some examples:

• On a hot summer day in 2002, the Coptic monk who is stationed on the roof to express Coptic claims to the Ethiopian territory there moved his chair from its agreed spot into the shade. This was interpreted as a hostile move by the Ethiopians, and eleven were hospitalized after the resulting fracas.
  


• In another incident in 2004 during Orthodox celebrations, a door to the Franciscan chapel was left open. This was taken as a sign of disrespect by the Orthodox and a fistfight broke out. Some people were arrested, but no one was seriously injured.



• On Palm Sunday, in April 2008, a brawl broke out due to a Greek monk being ejected from the building by a rival faction. Police were called to the scene but were also attacked by the enraged brawlers.
  


• Most recently, a clash erupted between Armenian and Greek monks on Sunday, November 9, 2008, during Sunday mass.

The three minute battle was captured on video and posted on YouTube. Here is the fight, directly outside the little chapel area that leads into the rock hewn cave where tradition places the burial location of Jesus. A moronic brawl, some of it certainly having to do more with ethnic and nationalistic issues – but still………too incredibly stupid. Worth watching if click on the link below (or you can cut and paste).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEpZJnydbj8&feature=related

Under the “status quo” agreement, as it is called, no part of what is designated as common territory may be so much as rearranged without consent from all communities. This often leads to the neglect of badly needed repairs when the communities cannot come to an agreement among themselves about the final shape of a project.

A sign of this state of affairs is located on a second-story window ledge over the church's entrance. Someone placed a wooden ladder there sometime before 1852, when the “status quo” defined both the doors and the window ledges as common ground. The ladder remains there to this day, in almost exactly the same position. No one can agree who has the right to move it. It can be seen to occupy the ledge in century-old photographs and engravings, and I can attest to the fact it was still leaning up there again tonight --- 156 years later. No one has touched it since before our Civil War! (Well, maybe not THAT incredible. Kind of like my house, when I think about it. I really must move that ladder of mine this spring!) Just look at the pictures I took outside last week, and you can see it (and the shadow it casts) by the second floor window to the right.

None of the communities controls the main entrance. In 1192, Saladin assigned responsibility for it to two neighboring Muslim families. The Joudeh were entrusted with the key, and the Nusseibeh, who had been the custodians of the church since the days of Caliph Omar in 637, retained the position of keeping the door. This arrangement has persisted into modern times. Twice each day, a Joudeh family member brings the key to the door, which is locked and unlocked by a Nusseibeh.

I stayed around the door tonight until 7:00pm to watch them close the church.

Sure enough, two Arab Muslims come by and chat with the Israeli soldiers and police that are on duty around the plaza. One of them takes a ladder (no, not THAT one) to padlock the front door, and locks the church for the night. Can't trust any of those Christian clergy to do it without a full-scale fight erupting.

I asked him if I could take his picture later, and he gladly obliged.

After a few minutes, the the plaza in front was deserted and quiet. No way of knowing what battles might have been taking place inside, however.