Holy Fire
The Battle for Christ's Tomb
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
An insightful look at the "miracle" that has led to centuries of controversy within Christianity.
Every year the "miracle" of the Holy Fire is enacted in front of hundreds of the faithful at Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the church built around the purported tomb of Jesus of Nazareth. For centuries, Orthodox Christian pilgrims have made the arduous journey to witness an oil lamp set aflame by prayer alone, proving that God favors them above all other Christians, as well as Jews and Muslims. But the annual ceremony is marked by
controversy, with charges of fraud and heresy as religious factions battle for control of the church and their place in Christian hierarchy.
Deftly weaving history, reportage, and religion, Victoria Clark has crafted a fluid and fascinating account of how events beginning with the medieval Crusades and European empire-building have slowly led to battles over a lawn chair on the church rooftop.
Holy Fire presents the passionate, often absurd, and always political battle waged by various denominations of Christian churchmen for their Savior's empty tomb as the microcosm of centuries of wider religious power struggles; all at a time when it has never been more urgent for the West to see itself as others do.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Victoria Clark worked for the Observer in Eastern Europe from 1990 to 1996. She is the author of the highly acclaimed Why Angels Fall and The Far-Farers.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Innocents Abroad (1869) Mark Twain wrote of the various Christian groups who had chapels in Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre: "It has been proven conclusively that they can not worship together around the grave of the Saviour of the World in peace." Little has changed, and journalist Clark traces the historical reasons why this is so. Skillfully weaving narrative about contemporary Jerusalem and Israel with a history of the political and religious wrangling over the places deemed holy by Christians, Jews and Muslims, Clark's book reads like a thriller. She follows the various Christian claims to the land (Orthodox and Roman Catholic) as well as the international ones (the Ottoman Empire and the more contemporary interests of England, France, Russia and the United States) from the time of Constantine up to the creation of the state of Israel. Though her personal dislike for evangelicals mars the book slightly, readers will come to understand why small incidents, such as an Egyptian Copt sitting in the Ethiopian section of the rooftop patio of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, can erupt in violence, and why so many nations today continue to take sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts.
