An Ecumenical Jackpot

A church representing four Christian confessions (possibly even five)

The apsidial Virgin Mary at Asinou (photo thanks to G.L. Carr)

“Ecumenism is now braindead,” wrote William Abraham more than twenty years ago. “The best and brightest in the younger leadership of the church have abandoned the ecumenical seas and gone sailing in other waters.” I couldn’t tell you what the best and brightest are up to today or what waters they’re sailing upon. But I can say that at least around here using art history to breathe some life into braindead ecumenism has been a regular strategy. More on how to do that responsibly (I hope) in the forthcoming book Mere Iconography.

In the meantime, I’ve identified a church that represents four confessions at once. I’m not referring to a nondescript airport chapel where a Bible, a few Ikea chairs and a pile of yoga mats aim to reference every known branch of Christianity and every known world religion as well. What I have in mind is considerably more exquisite than anything evoked by drywall, a drop ceiling and fluorescent light. I’m referring to a medieval church—one of the most beautiful I know of—with visual testimony to four branches of Nicene Christianity (Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Miaphysitism and, indirectly at least, the Church of the East). If you read the image above through the closing passage in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, perhaps one can read it through the Lutheran tradition as well.

The paper was just published in the journal After Constantine. There are some fantastic articles in the entire issue which, blessedly enough, is completely open access thank to the Orthodox Academy of Crete. You can download the whole thing here (Special Issue: “Entangled Christianities”).

Please also stay tuned for a new Material Mysticism coming early next week.