CBN on Constantinople

I can't say that I frequent the CBN website or TV network, however their video on the fall of Constantinople is accurate in its historic detail. While some terms are changed out for Protestants (Christian "service" for "Divine Liturgy", etc.) it is worthy of your time and attention. Several of the page's links are also worth checking.

It's nice to see Protestantism look into some of that Old Time Religion.

View the video itself here, and the full page of features here.

Interesting Historical Perspective

As an Eastern Christian, I am naturally drawn to writings oriented (no pun intended) towards matters dealing with Eastern Christianity and the Christian East itself. It is in this context that I came across the Foreign Policy website "History Lesson" by military historian Edward N. Luttwak entitled "Take Me Back to Constantinople: How Byzantium, not Rome, can help preserve Pax Americana." Below, I present the first paragraph. The whole piece is fairly short, so don't hesitate to go read it.

Economic crisis, mounting national debt, excessive foreign commitments -- this is no way to run an empire. America needs serious strategic counseling. And fast. It has never been Rome, and to adopt its strategies no -- its ruthless expansion of empire, domination of foreign peoples, and bone-crushing brand of total war -- would only hasten America's decline. Better instead to look to the empire's eastern incarnation: Byzantium, which outlasted its Roman predecessor by eight centuries. It is the lessons of Byzantine grand strategy that America must rediscover today.

Professor Luttak is the author of The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire. Blogger Nicholas D. Rosen has an enticing review of it here. It, too, is well worth reading.

Pray that this News is Real and the Results Beneficial

(ANKARA) - Turkey is planning to re-open a Greek Orthodox seminary that was shut down nearly four decades ago, Turkey's culture minister was quoted as saying Sunday.

The European Union, which Turkey is seeking to join, and the United States have long pressed Ankara to re-open the theology school on the island of Halki, off Istanbul, to prove respect for the rights of its tiny Christian minority.

Culture Minister Ertugrul Gunay said the government was inclined to re-open the school, even though a final decision was not yet made, the mass-selling Milliyet daily reported.

"Both my personal conviction and the general inclination I see is that the school will be opened," Gunay was quoted as saying.

"The school does not currently fit into our university system, but another formula will be worked out... There is no political problem," he said.

The minister explained the authorities were grappling with "the technical problem" on whether the seminary should have the status of a university or a vocational high school.

The century-old seminary was closed down in 1971, depriving the Eastern Orthodox Church, seated in Istanbul since Byzantine times, of its only facility to train clergy in Turkey.

The closure was the result of legislation bringing institutions of higher education under state control, an arrangement into which the seminary did not fit.

Gunay conceded that Turkish-Greek tensions over the island of Cyprus at the time were also a prominent factor behind the move.

"What happened in the past is left behind... We need to say new things now," he said.

Keen to boost its struggling EU membership bid, Ankara has in recent years moved to improve the rights of its tiny non-Muslim minorities, mainly Greeks, Armenians and Jews.

A Day to Remember - A Day to Pray

From the Scripps News Service, this sad reminder and warning.