RLG203 Lecture
- Song: Researching the Blues (Redd Kross)
- To do well on essay 2
o Read Annabel Wharton’s chapter, “Spectacularized Jerusalem: Imperialism,
Globalization, and the Holy Land as theme Park”
o X3
o Read this chapter
o What is she doing? What is her purpose and point?
- What does it mean to be a Christian?
- Sermon on the Mount
o Carl Bloch 1890
o Matthew 5: 38-39
“You have head that it was said, “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.”
But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right
cheek, turn to him the other also”
- St. Francis Renounces Worldly Goods
o Giotto, 1297-1300
o Upper Church of San Francesco (Assisi, Italy)
o Renouncing yourself
o Engaging in poverty
- Martin Luther King
o Advocate for non-violence
o Standing up to power without fighting back
o Civil moments began in churches
o Christianity as the religion of peace and enduring of violence done to you and not to
others
- The Martyrs’ Last Prayer,
o Victor wasn’t the one who drew blood, but the one who was killed
- The Torment of St. Antony
o Michelangelo
o Battling demons and struggles
o Always about enduring
- What about literal fighting? And drawing the sword
- Around 1095, the crusades were religious sanctioned military campaign to take back the Holy
Land (Jerusalem) from the Muslims
o Western Europe was Catholic
o Crusaders butcher their way there
o It began in western Europe where even Christian cities were robbed; large scale
campaign
- Anders Behring - Norwegian who killed 70 people o Fox News O’Reilly said that Anders can’t be a Christian because he doesn’t belong to a
church or practice any Christian rules
- Bush talking about the 9/11 terrorists as traitors to the Muslim faith because Muslims study and
practice about peace and goodness
- The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
o Seeing hypocrisy in O’Reilly’s statement
- History of violence
- A European Declaration of Independence (Anders Behring)
o Order of Christian knights that are fighting Islamic suppression
o Condemns contemporary Christianity
o Condemns the Pope because of his interactions with Muslims
o Behring killed a lot of children of the labour party in the Norwegian government
- The Knights Templar
o Sean Martin
o Lots of symbols that Behring and others look to
o Fighting Muslims as a way of protecting European pilgrims
o Body guards and bankers
o Templar were rich because they charged fees for their services and charged the pilgrims
for safekeeping their goods
- English Defence League
o No surrender to Al-Qaeda
- The Vision of the Cross
o Circle of Raphael
o “In this sign, conquer”
- Cross of St. George in England
- Xenophobia and racism and romanticism of the pure Christian Europe
- The Order of the Brothers of the House of St. Mary
- Shield cross of the Teutonic Order
o Black cross on silver shield
- Mainly employed by Germans
- Iron cross as the Knight’s cross (Nazis)
- Swastika
o Originated in India
- Adolf Hitler, speech before the Reichstag, 1936
o “I believe that I am acting in the sense of the Mighty Creator...”
- Beautification mass of Franz Jaeggerstatter
o He refused to serve in the German army
o Then he was beheaded
- Why is Jerusalem so important to Christians?
- What are some ways by which Christians have “acquired” the city?
- Pilgrims want to go to the site where Jesus was born and view the things that are written in the
Bible, especially Jerusalem - The empty tomb where Jesus was risen
th
- Before 4 and 5 century, people go to Jerusalem to visit other Christians not as pilgrimages
- Then Constantine changed everything and his mother
- The Finding of the True Cross
o Gaddi
o Hellena finding the cross in where Jesus was hung
- Then the idea of Jerusalem as a holy land emerged and encouraged pilgrims to go there to see
and touch and proliferating; taking back relics and fragments of the true cross
- A couple of monasteries in Europe have gold and jewelled relics that supposedly held wood
pieces of the cross
- Egeria’s travels
o Talks about what Egeria saw and did when traveling in Jerusalem
o Around 7 century, Muslim took over Jerusalem so there were difficulties for Christians
going to Jerusalem
- Christian given indulgences and given open ticket
- The pope said that if you die during the conquest for the Holy Land, you will be treated a martyr
and go straight to heaven
- Souvenir: a sign that you pick up from travels
- Relic: pieces to history, identical
- Replica: a fake remodel; rebuilding
- Whartons develops that idea of other means of possessing Jerusalem
- Assassin’s Creed game where it is situated in Jerusalem; realistic elements of the actual
Jerusalem and map
- Contested site in which different churches own different parts of it
o Muslim family hold the key to the site because all the different Christian churches can’t
agree
- Traversed the path that Jesus walked
- Wharton compared it to the theme park
- The protestants depicted the holy land as they knew it from the Bible; a place without marks of
Catholic and other symbols so they found a place outside the city
o The Garden Tomb of Jerusalem
- The Holy Land Experience in Orlando
o A replica in Florida
o Not a place of shrine, relics and icons
- Who were the types of Christians going to which places?
- How do they possess a space in a different way? What does Wharton mean when she calls the Holy Land Experience “the space of spectacle” and
thereby denies that it is a relic, a rep
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