Bringing the Kingdom Down to Earth - Part 2

Keeping in mind the teaching and examples of Christ and His Apostles in the New Testament, as we reviewed in our last issue of Hosken-News, let's now consider the Early Church's implementation in the first several centuries. In Lesson 003 - "Historical and Christian Perspectives of Disability" of our course "Ministry to Handicapped and Poor" it states:

In the third and fourth centuries A.D., there were certain holy men (St. Anthony, Jerome, Ambrose - a bishop in Milan) who were credited with miracles of healing of disabilities. Their bones, tombs, or clothing were thought to bring healing. From these practices, pilgrims and disabled tried to get these objects in order to be healed. This practice was even sanctioned by Ambrose and he brought the sacred objects into the cathedral beneath the altar. It was also in the third and fourth centuries that women were ordained in the Early Church by the laying on of hands. They were commissioned to anoint the ill and visit the sick. They also shared the message of good news to those women who were confined to the home because of debilitating illnesses.

In the Eastern Orthodox Church, the institution of clergy-physicians was begun. The fathers of the church frequently studied medicine along with their general and spiritual education. These priest-physicians served the court and wrote textbooks on medicine. As a result of this type of education, hospitals were established. The most famous of these early hospitals was Basilias established by St. Basil in Caesarea of Cappadocia. St. John Chrysostom established several of them in Constantinople. Usually, the hospitals contained a house for the elderly, for disabled, for contagious disease, acute disease, and travelers. Oftentimes, a church or cathedral was part of the group of buildings where people came for healing and rest.

By the time of Justinian, physicians were part of the imperial order to serve in hospitals (527-565 A.D.). By the end of the 7th century, the hospitals were forced into a lesser role by the invasions of the barbarian tribes. As a result of the decreased influence of hospitals, people returned to the church and the healing powers of the relics of the saints. Acceptance of physicians by the Church decreased, but the medical and spiritual healers often complimented one another. Sometimes the medical treatment center and the shrines of healing saints were located together. It was also at this time, 416 A.D., that oil was consecrated for use in healing. The type of healing described above was in effect until the end of the twelfth century.

Constantinople was destroyed in the Fourth Crusade in 1204. Existing hospitals after this time became secular - having no connection with the church. They became schools of medicine for the training of physicians. The shrines of healing continued, and the ill and disabled came to them for free medical healing. By 1410, Symeon, Archbishop of Thessalonica wrote the liturgical service for healing and for use in the Orthodox Church. Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Empire in 1453. The Turks decided that the religious leaders among the various peoples of the empire were also the ethnic leaders. The Orthodox Church patriarch was the leader in all things pertaining to the subjected Orthodox believers. This arrangement was not a happy one for all Orthodox, but all these peoples survived 400 years of Turkish rule under the protection of the Orthodox patriarch.

Under the Turkish system, new, but fewer and smaller hospitals were founded. The most important was the Baloulke Hospital, which remains to this day. The church also established medical institutions for the care of the mentally ill and leprosy.

What actually happened under Turkish Muslim rule was that Christians were considered "dhimmis" - that is, second-class members of society with little or no rights to practice their faith openly in public. They were allowed to conduct worship services within the four walls of churches, but only rarely were they allowed to care for "the poor, the maimed, the lame and the blind" as Christ and His Apostles taught and did. This psychological "box" of confinement carried over even after the collapse of the Turkish Ottoman Empire at the end of World War One. In the Eastern Church, religious practice under Communism was stifled in a remarkably similar way to that under Islam.

Even in the West with the rise of humanism and secularism, we see the same phenomenon of confining Christian religious practice to the four walls of churches. Why is this? I believe it is because Islam, communism and secular humanism all deny the Incarnation. This denial of God becoming a human being has resulted in "spiritualizing" Christianity, "kicking God upstairs," removing religious practice from everyday human life, and turning the social functions of the Church over to the domain of the state. During our 20 years of foreign missionary work in Central Europe and Russia, we often ran into the attitude: "let the government do it," instead of realizing that caring for the poor and disabled is the proper domain of the Church, not the state. There are only a few remnants of Orthodox social work being revived from the pre-communist era in Russia. And the same attitude is becoming more and more prevalent in the West: the persecution in the East mutates into discrimination in the West. T.S. Eliot once wrote:

Christians are still persecuted, but nowadays not usually overtly on the ground that they are Christians. They are persecuted because they do not hold the approved political views; or one church is recognized and controlled, and those Christians are persecuted who belong to the wrong church; or being Christians, they are denounced for having collaborated with the Germans during the war, or perhaps with the British or the Americans after it. In the West these things do not yet happen. But persecution is only the extreme limit of discrimination. People prefer to associate with the like-minded to themselves; those who rise to power tend to favor and to promote those who resemble themselves; and when a man who is not a Christian has an appointment to make, or a favor to bestow, he may genuinely believe that the candidate who is of his own kidney is more worthy than another candidate who is a Christian.

Thus the profession of Christianity might become, if not exactly dangerous, at least disadvantageous; and it is sometimes harder to endure disadvantage than to face danger, harder to live meanly than to die as a martyr. Already, we say, we are a minority. We cannot impose our standards upon that majority when it explicitly rejects them; too often, mingling with that majority, we fail to observe them ourselves. Like every minority, we compound with necessity, learning to speak the language of the dominant culture because those whose language it is will not speak ours; and in speaking their language, we are always in danger of thinking their thoughts and behaving according to their code. In this perpetual compromise, we are seldom in a position to pass judgment on other Christians, in their peculiar individual temptations: it is hard enough, reviewing our own behavior, to be sure when we have done the right or the wrong thing. But we can and should be severe in our judgment of ourselves.

It is high time for Christians in both East and West to break out of this psychological "box" that confines our practice of our faith to the four walls of our churches. You can enroll for our four-week course "Ministry to Handicapped and Poor" by clicking on Practical Ministries. It starts on 18 August - that's just four weeks away! Don't hesitate - enroll today! And invite your friends in your church to enroll along with you!

(Linked to www.Hosken-News.info of 20 Jul. 2014.)