Summary
The ethno-phyletist narrative of the Jerusalem religious bureaucracy, in Papastathis’s account: a myth advocating the primordial, essentialist equation of Orthodoxy with the Greek nation, by which the Greek monks of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem defined the Arab congregation as an institutional out-group with no historical right over the Church’s administration (‘The House of the Priest’: A Palestinian Life (1885-1954), PDF p.62-63).
Details
- Within this ideological framework the Greek monks defined the ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ distinction along ethnic lines and considered the Arab congregation as institutional ‘out-groups’; Arab claims over a common Church community were demonized and treated as an attempt to corrupt religious purity, which was identified with Greek dominance per se (PDF p.63, citing Papastathis (2016), “Secularizing the Sacred”).
- Its practical effects, as Papastathis reports the Patriarchate’s position: ‘Rum’ is restricted to the Greek nation; Syria-Palestine’s Orthodox are arabophones of Greek ethnic origin, not Arabs; indigenous Christians “belong to the Orthodox faith, but from this it does not follow that they are entitled to share the rights on the Shrines enjoyed by the Greek Nation” (PDF p.61-62).
- The narrative was not officially the hierarchy’s stated ground against Arab claims: Papastathis’s conclusion is that the establishment’s counter-strategy was structured, at least officially, on an institutional/legal aspect — the monastic character of the institution and the supposed legally binding Greek custodianship rights over the holy places (PDF p.66).
Related pages
‘The House of the Priest’: A Palestinian Life (1885-1954), Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre, Arab Orthodox Movement, Kallistos Miliaras