Daybreak in Turkey / Second Edition

by James L. Barton

The priests being such, and some of them most grossly ignorant and unfit, and there being in the Churches no religious instruction, it is easy to understand how the moral tone of these Oriental Churches sank rapidly under the rule of the Turk, with no power in themselves to rise above these conditions and institute a reform. A Church without a Bible, with an ignorant priesthood, with a ritual beautiful in itself but dead to the people, with no religious instruction and no test for church-membership, could not be expected in any land or in any age to keep itself unspotted from the world. Under these conditions Christianity came to be largely a name and the practises of religion only a form.

The resisting power of the Oriental Churches in Turkey was largely vitiated by the lack of the true spirit of Christianity within. At the same time, it was surrounded by evil influences and by open persecutions heavy to bear even by a living, vitalized Church. The pressure of the Mohammedans, both individually and as a government, was directed to force all professing Christians to abandon their ancestral faith and become Moslems. The heavy hand of the government was constantly upon them, while faithful Moslems were not slow to let the persecuted ones know that, should they become Mohammedans, their burdens would become lighter. Under these conditions there has constantly been more or less apostatizing from Christianity. In times of unusual persecution the number of these has increased.

At the same time, in order to avoid attention and thereby avert conflict, the Christians, in many cases, conformed to the outward practises of their Moslem masters. Their women veiled themselves when in public and covered their mouths at all times. Efforts to provide a general education for their children were largely abandoned and wide-spread illiteracy prevailed. The vices of the Mohammedans, some of them the vilest known to men, were practised by many of the Christians, and falsehood was so common that truth came to be almost a curiosity. To cheat or deceive a Turk was considered in itself almost a Christian virtue. In the conflict with Islam, Christianity, in its ignorance, was driven to the wall and lost nearly everything except its ancient Bible and most excellent ritual, with houses of worship, a hierarchy and a form to which it adhered with most commendable tenacity.

These untoward conditions were aggravated by the fact that, in Turkey, the Church came to be a political organization, presided over by an appointee of the sultan, who was capable of being dismissed by him if he chose to exercise his power. Each Church with its political patriarch at Constantinople constituted a little state within a state. Every Church represented a separate race or nation whose rights within the empire were vested in the rights of the Church, directed by the patriarch. At the patriarchate were recorded—and it is true to-day—all births, marriages and deaths. Individual existence in the empire was recognized only through the Church. The Christian’s sole representative at Constantinople to speak for him in case of injustice, or to secure a privilege, or to obtain his legal rights, was the patriarch of his own peculiar Church.

The political organization extended down through the different provinces and included in its last analysis each individual church. Under the injustice endured by the Christians of Turkey during the past five hundred years, it is most natural that not a few of the members of the Church, if not a great majority, should look upon the organization, not primarily as a spiritual temple, but as a means of securing redress for wrongs suffered, or for obtaining privileges from the Porte. Under the laws of Turkey the Church must exercise political functions. Under the practise of the people, it came to be primarily political, the spiritual being relegated to the background.

General education never existed in that country, but under the sway of the Moslem all education was discouraged. The schools of the Moslems consisted of classes in reading the Koran in Arabic, accompanied by traditional stories of Mohammed and comments upon his teachings. Among the Christians there was little except the instruction of a few youths in monasterial schools where men were trained for Church orders. It is true that now and then among the Greeks and Armenians some bright and inquiring mind far exceeded the ordinary bounds of indigenous scholarship and became conspicuous for learning. But these were rare exceptions. The masses of the people of all classes and religions were in gross ignorance. Even within the last twenty-five years the writer has been in many Armenian villages in which not a person except the priest knew how to read and write, and even his accomplishments ceased with the bare ability to read the ritual of the Church. A leading priest once asked a student who had studied one year in a mission school, “What remains for you to learn after studying an entire year?” Under such a leadership in the Church, and with open opposition to general education among the Turks, it is not surprising that ignorance among the masses became almost universal, with little or no impulse to change.

If the above is true with reference to the education of the men, what could be expected for the girls and women? It is natural that, among the Mohammedans, who accord to women a low place in society and religion, it should have come to be believed in wide areas in the interior of Turkey that women were incapable of learning to read. Among them the vital question calling for early discussion was not, “Shall education be afforded to girls?” but it was, “Can girls learn to read?” This question has been hotly discussed within the last fifty years in the interior of Turkey, with the missionary contending that they can, while leading men of the country have contended with vehemence that the idea was too preposterous to consider. Conviction came only by actual demonstration.

Under such circumstances it is not difficult to imagine the general conditions of society and the deplorable life of the Church. These conditions were more or less modified in the large coast cities like Constantinople and Smyrna, but even in these places, while more educated men were found than in the interior, there was dense ignorance among the masses, and no provision for the education of girls. The entire empire had few newspapers or periodicals of any kind in any language, and the state of education stimulated the production of no great literature, even had there been those capable of producing it. The beginning of the nineteenth century, apart from the revival of learning among the Greeks of the West, may be called the dark age for literature, learning, and religion in the Turkish empire.

Constantinople and Syria were the two centers for Christian work in Turkey among the Oriental churches, because these were the centers of control for all of these churches. The chief patriarch resided at the Porte and was in close touch with his majesty the sultan, while the secondary patriarch resided at Jerusalem, cooperating with his superior at the capital. These churches could best be reached and influenced for evangelical Christianity from the same points.

Missionaries were sent to the ancient churches, not to attack them either in their doctrines or in their practises, but to cooperate with their leaders in organizing a system of education and in creating a sentiment that should demand for the Church an educated and morally upright clergy. It was expected that the Church would accept the modern version of its own Scriptures and encourage its circulation among the people. For the best conduct of a work of this character, the missionaries needed to be in close contact with the centers of ecclesiastical power in all of these churches, that from them the ordinary lines of communication might be utilized in reaching the remote interior districts.