Arab Christians and St. George's Cathedral

The exterior of St. George's

On Sunday morning, I went to Eucharist in Arabic at St. George's Cathedral, the seat of Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem -- part of the Anglican Communion but not, as I learned, a part of "The Episcopal Church" (the church in the U.S. that I'm a part of).

Both The Episcopal Church and the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem are part of the Anglican Communion, so we're connected in that way, but I'd previously thought that the Diocese of Jerusalem was a diocese of The Episcopal Church -- the same church I'm part of in the states -- because of the wording of the title. Not so, I found out after meeting with The Rev. Robert (Bob) Edmunds, Canon Pastor to the English-speaking congregation at the Cathedral.

The Diocese of Jerusalem (which actually covers four countries --Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan -- and the West Bank) is an independent church, but goes by the name "Episcopal" because, quite frankly, they didn't want to be associated with England after the British Mandate ended in 1948 and Britain was so intimately involved in the creation of the state of Israel. The encounter with the British "left a bad taste in many people's mouths," Bob said --especially since many of the Christians in this region are Arab -- so the diocese chose to call itself "Episcopal." In some ways this is a similar story to why The Episcopal Church in the U.S. is called "Episcopal" instead of "Anglican" -- after the American Revolutionary War, the newly-formed country of America didn't want to have much to do with England, and certainly didn't want their churches to be connected to the "motherland" -- and the king, who was a religio-political figure at the time.

Stained glass windows given to St. George's by a church in Atlanta

Bob said it was a bit ironic that they'd taken the name "Episcopal," since in the current context, many people in this diocese "weren't too crazy about some of the things The Episcopal Church is doing" -- namely, ordaining women and gay people. Women are not allowed to be ordained in the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, so I was left with the sinking realization that even if I wanted to apply for a job at the Cathedral in Jerusalem some day in my future career, I wouldn't be eligible. Even within my own denomination, there are still places where I would not be recognized as a priest because I am a woman! Bob said things are changing, and he thinks its likely that women will be ordained in the Diocese of Jerusalem within my lifetime, but it was still a disappointing thing to learn.

I had gone to St. George's for a Eucharist in English on Saturday at noon, thinking that perhaps the Saturday service would be the "main" service of the weekend, given that Sunday is a work day in Israel. (The work week is Sunday-Thursday; Friday and Saturday are the weekend days.) But, it was very small -- the only attendees were me and a young Korean couple.

"Ah, very good, Tracy," Bob said when I told him what I was thinking after the service, but he explained that no, Sunday was still the main day of worship at St. George's. Lots of the "ex-pat" community -- people living in Israel from other countries -- had Monday-Friday work weeks, and all the visitors from the U.S., England, Australia, and other countries used to a Monday-Friday work week expected services to be held on Sundays, so they chose to keep Sunday as the main worship day. For the local Palestinian, Arabic-speaking congregation, they come as they're able, Bob said, but on big feast days like Easter and Pentecost, everyone would be there, taking off work if they had to in order to attend.

The main altar at St. George's

And indeed, Sunday was a much higher attendance than Saturday. The place was nearly full, not just with the usual Palestinian Arab congregation but a whole cadre of white visitors from England, Australia, the U.S., you name it -- those English-speaking visitors who, like me, had shown up to experience a Eucharist in Arabic. I expected the service to be entirely in Arabic and to understand very little of it, but to be able to follow along due to the familiarity of the liturgy. As it turns out, the service was essentially a bilingual one, with the Arabic-speaking priest translating things into English occasionally as we went along. He didn't translate EVERYTHING, but he did make sure that the English-speaking visitors had a sense of what was going on, even taking about five minutes to translate the essential jist of his 15-minute Arabic sermon into English.

As we started the service and began with the Collect for Purity, which in this service was spoken by the entire congregation instead of just by the priest, as is the custom in the American service, I was struck by the familiar Arabic words that opened the prayer: "Allahu akbar," the congregation began the prayer, the same exact words that begin the Muslim call to prayer with which I was so familiar and which formed the core of my only familiarity with Arabic. I'd always been taught this phrase meant, "God is great," or "God is greater," but here it was being used to translate the first phrase in the Collect for Purity, "Almighty God."

I thought of all those mis-informed American Christians who talk about "those Muslims who pray to Allah," and who think "Allah" is a different God than the God of Judaism and Christianity. I'd already known from my religion classes that "Allah" is simply Arabic for "God," and that Arabic-speaking Christians also pray to "Allah," but standing in a church from my own denomination and hearing the opening words to the Muslim call to prayer spoken as the Arabic translation of the opening words of the Eucharistic service so familiar to me brought that home in a new way. Not only are we Christians and Muslims praying to the same God, they use the exact same words to make those prayers when they're speaking the same language. Suddenly "Allahu akbar" didn't seem so foreign, or so "Muslim," anymore.

The hymn-singing was interesting, as people simultaneously sang the (very European) hymns in Arabic and English, whichever was their mother tongue. Seeing the Palestinian man in front of me dressed in a suit and belting out a familiar European English hymn tune with gusto in Arabic produced a strange sort of instant companionship -- we knew the same hymns, even if we couldn't speak the same language! -- but also a twinge of guilt -- didn't this culture have its own music and cultural expression before we imposed Western European music on them?

I wondered what these people's lives were like, being "doubly alien" in this land: they were Arabs in a Jewish state, and Christians among a majority Muslim Arab population. Coming from a land where Christians are in the clear majority, it was an interesting and humbling experience to be in a place where Christians form something like 2 percent of the population. Those of us who have the luxury of belonging to the ethnic and religious majority where we live have only to travel to a different part of the world to realize that that majority status is by no means universal or absolute.