Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threatens a cultural heritage the two countries share, including Saint Sophia Cathedral

Saint Sophia Cathedral was built under the reign of Grand Prince Yaroslav, whose father, Volodymyr, converted the region to Christianity.

The Saint Sophia Cathedral as seen from a surrounding wall tower in Kyiv, Ukraine, on March 26, 2022. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

July 28, 2022

By 

J. Eugene Clay

(The Conversation) — More than 160 Ukrainian cultural sites have been damaged or destroyed since Russia invaded the country in February 2022, according to UNESCO.

The Ukrainian government claims the number of damaged sites is far higher. Russia denies these charges.

Ukrainian officials accuse Russia of deliberately targeting cultural sites, half of which are churches, monasteries, prayer houses, synagogues and mosques. Such a targeting would be a violation of international law.

As a scholar who has spent over 30 years studying Russian and Ukrainian religion and culture, I’m deeply concerned about the cultural destruction of this war, which has already claimed thousands of lives and has turned over 12 million Ukrainians into refugees.

An important monument under threat is Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv. Built in the 11th century, the church is one of Ukraine’s seven World Heritage sites recognized by the United Nations. It represents the common Orthodox Christian faith that many Russians and Ukrainians share.

Saint Sophia and the Byzantine model

Saint Sophia Cathedral was built under the reign of Grand Prince Yaroslav the Wise, whose father, Volodymyr – also known as Vladimir – had adopted Orthodox Christianity in 988.

According to a legend in the early 12th-century “Primary Chronicle,” Volodymyr chose Orthodoxy for the beauty of its worship services. The envoys he sent to Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, visited the famous Church of Holy Wisdom, the Hagia Sophia. Built by Emperor Justinian in the sixth century, the Hagia Sophia is devoted to the Divine Wisdom, who is personified as a woman in the biblical “Book of Proverbs.” Convinced by his envoys’ favorable report, Volodymyr decided to be baptized and to convert his subjects.

After Volodymyr’s death, Yaroslav invited Byzantine architects and artists to build an impressive cathedral for Kyiv just like the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. Yaroslav, who had fought a civil war to succeed his father, deliberately imitated the Byzantine capital to buttress his legitimacy. His new cathedral, Saint Sophia, even took its name from the imperial church in Constantinople.

Christian symbolism in the Cathedral

With 13 cupolas and a central dome that rises 29 meters (about 95 feet) into the air, Saint Sophia is an imposing structure that served as a testament to the power and piety of its ruler. Elaborate mosaics decorate the sanctuary and dome. Portraits of Yaroslav and his family are prominently displayed in the cathedral’s princely gallery, where the ruler attended services.

A view of the interior of Saint Sophia Cathedral.
AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda

A mosaic of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, stands in the apse above the altar. Raising her hands in prayer, Mary is framed by a Greek inscription from Psalm 46: “God is in the midst of Her; She shall not be moved.”

The imagery and language are borrowed from Byzantium. Just as she was seen as a powerful divine protector of Constantinople, so now Mary protects Kyiv. The tall central dome is adorned with a mosaic of an all-powerful image of Christ, known as “Christ Pantokrator,” who gazes down from his throne at his worshipers.

The art historian Elena Boeck calls Saint Sophia “the most ambitious Orthodox Church built in the 11th century.”

Decline and restoration

Saint Sophia Cathedral was consecrated in 1049 and completed around 1062. As the power and importance of Kyiv declined, the church suffered from external attacks and internal neglect.

In 1169, the northern prince Andrei Bogolubskii of Vladimir sacked Kyiv – an event that the leader of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, Metropolitan Epifaniy, has compared to the current Russian invasion. Mongol attacks in 1240, 1416 and 1482 further damaged the cathedral.

Restoration work in the 17th century in the baroque style radically changed the cathedral’s outward appearance. The outer walls were plastered and whitewashed. The church was bombed during the Russian civil war in 1918. Under Soviet rule, the Communists plundered its treasury and secularized the building, which became a museum. In the 1940s, the church again suffered under German occupation.

Saint Sophia Cathedral stands as a monument to the East Slavic cultural heritage that Russians and Ukrainians share. Its extraordinary Byzantine mosaics and frescoes have survived nearly a millennium.

Today, as during the Second World War, Ukraine has been invaded by a foreign army that threatens this heritage. Although Russia has assured the United Nations that its armed forces are taking “necessary precautions” to prevent damage to World Heritage sites, such as Saint Sophia, war is destructive and unpredictable. Whether Saint Sophia Cathedral remains undamaged during this latest invasion remains an open question.

(J. Eugene Clay, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, Arizona State University. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

For Biden, Palestinian struggle has an Irish Catholic cast

The comparison to the Irish reflects a new and important value to Palestinians who aspire to live in a free and independent state of their own.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and US President Joe Biden stand in front of the honor guard in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, Friday, July 15, 2022. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

July 25, 2022

By 

Daoud Kuttab

(RNS) — When President Joe Biden ended his visit to Israel on the morning of July 15, his motorcade with both the U.S. and Israeli flags was scheduled to drive to an East Jerusalem hospital before heading to the Palestinian town of Bethlehem. Eyewitnesses say Biden personally removed the Israeli flag from his limousine before he made the borderless crossing into Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem. The U.S. team previously insisted that they would not allow Israeli security to escort him as he made the visit to the Palestinian areas.

Symbols are important. But it is not clear whether symbols can be translated into reality. Biden picked up the theme when he compared Palestinians to his own ancestors, Irish Catholics.

“There’s a great poem from ‘The Cure at Troy,'” Biden told Palestinian doctors, nurses and others gathered at the Lutheran-run Augusta Victoria Hospital on top of the Mount of Olives in East Jerusalem. “It goes like this — and it’s classically Irish, but it also could fit Palestinians. It says:

‘History says, Don’t hope
On this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme’”

Biden concluded by saying he prayed that this is a reachable goal. “It is my prayer that we’re reaching one of those moments where hope and history rhyme.”

But a little more than an hour later, after meeting Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Biden called on Palestinians to wait because the time “was not ripe for negotiations” even though Palestinians have been under Israeli military occupation for more than half a century.

With the humanitarian and political mission to Palestine over, Biden was given a chance to spend some time at one of the oldest churches in the world, Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity. Before entering the historic church, a group of Palestinian children from the nearby Terra Santa Girls School gathered to sing John Lennon’s timeless “Imagine” as they waved tiny Palestinian flags.

Biden had some quiet time kneeling and praying at the adjacent Church of Saint Catherine. He also heard from church leaders about the troubles they are facing, especially in Jerusalem, where church property is being taken over by fanatic Israeli groups using uncouth legal maneuvers with the tacit support of the Israeli government that claims to support freedom of religion but in practice discriminates against non-Jews. Later Biden tweeted that the “Palestinian city of Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ, is a place of enormous significance to me and Christians across the world. This holy land and the Church of the Nativity remind us that everyone must be free to practice their faith in peace, safety, and dignity.”

Church leaders said that even though this was not his first visit, they felt Biden showed genuine respect for the sanctity of the church and appeared to be moved by what he saw and heard.

It is hard to separate individual feelings and aspirations from the hard-core politics of the day. The comparison to the Irish reflects a new and important value to Palestinians who aspire to live in a free and independent state of their own. The Biden administration has insisted from its first days on the right of all Palestinians to live in “peace, safety, and dignity.” Right now, almost every aspect of Palestinian life is void of these basic values.

The decisions and policies of politicians and world leaders are often guided by interests and political considerations. But it has been seen time and time again that if there is a debate or two sides to a particular policy decision, the personal touch of a leader and his or her spiritual and personal bias can often sway an argument. Palestinians who followed the visit of Biden to Palestine and his short time with them felt he was sincere in wanting Palestinians to live in peace and with dignity. Only time will tell if the hope and history will actually rhyme or if it’s simply a line repeated by lovers of Irish poetry.

MORMONISM IS A CULT

A real Joseph Smith photo — or not? Why do Mormons care so much?

The polarized response to the photo reveals less about Joseph Smith than it does about us.

Opinions abound about a newly released image of Joseph Smith Jr. If the claim is accurate, it is the only known photograph of the prophet. RNS photo illustration

July 28, 2022

By 

Jana Riess

(RNS) — On July 21, Mormons were rocked by news that a great-great-grandson of Joseph Smith had discovered a daguerreotype he believes to be the only known photograph of the prophet.

Almost immediately, the Mormon social media world exploded.

Everyone, it seems, has an opinion about this. Even before they had read the John Whitmer Historical Association Journal article that lays out the considerable evidence supporting the claim, every rando on the internet was suddenly an expert on death masks, facial recognition software and the conventions of 19th-century portraiture.

People are saying he’s either too old or not old enough. He’s either too weathered and craggy or he’s been unforgivably yassified.

And the usual: He’s either a charlatan who was out to have sex with your daughters and steal all your money, OOOOOOOOOR he’s an angelic paragon of everything that is good.

See! The photo proves it. It’s all right there.

 

Over the last week I’ve been fascinated by the response — and the vehemence of that response — from various quarters of the Mormon world.

Occasionally, legitimate questions are raised about the evidence for authenticity, like this excellent post at Ardis Parshall’s Keepapitchinin blog, urging caution about hasty conclusions.

But for the most part, Mormon social media has not been filled with people using the best tools available to analyze and evaluate historical evidence, but people defaulting to their previously held views of Joseph Smith.

Sometimes, those are reaffirmations of faith — assertions that whether or not the photo is genuine, Joseph Smith was a bona fide prophet and servant of God.

And at the other end of the spectrum, some people utilized the photo to underscore how Smith was a schemer and a pervert.

Among the people who appear to have budged in their prior assessments of Joseph Smith — people who actually changed their minds about him in some way because of the new image — are those who found the man in the photo, somewhat to their horror, more attractive than they expected.

Two of my favorite tweets were in this vein.

 

Meanwhile, there has been a growing Team Hyrum contingent. These people seem to agree the photo in question is probably a genuine daguerreotype made in Nauvoo in the 1840s and that it passed through the Smith family inside a locket for nearly 180 years. But they think the man in the image is Joseph’s brother Hyrum, who was killed by his side in 1844 and whose facial features appear similar, if their death masks are any indication.

All in all, the polarized response to the photo reveals less about Joseph Smith than it does about us.

Joseph Smith is a deeply divisive figure, and the same basic camps that existed in his own day to either revile or revere the man are alive and well in our own. He’s either a con artist or he’s a sainted martyr. A villain or a hero.

And in that sense, even if the daguerreotype is proved beyond a shadow of a doubt to be none other than Joseph Smith, it may make little difference one way or the other in how he is viewed. That’s because everyone who cares enough to have an opinion has already made up their mind.

AND HE STOLE THEIR HOLY UNDERWEAR FROM THE MASONIC INITIATION CEREMONY 

Mormonism and Freemasonry - Wikipedia

JOSEPH SMITH TABLE RAPPER AND SPIRITUALIST

Mormonism's Encounter with Spiritualism

Davis Bitton

Journal of Mormon History

Vol. 1 (1974), pp. 39-50 (12 pages)

Published By: University of Illinois Press

 

https://www.jstor.org/stable/23285880

Utah’s Pioneer Day celebrates Mormons’ trek west – but there’s a lot more to the
history of Latter-day Saints and migration

The Utah holiday is a reflection of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ slowly changing identity, a historian of Mormonism and migration writes.

A couple rides on a float with a handcart during the parade for Pioneer Day, an annual Utah holiday, on July 24, 2019, in Salt Lake City. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)
July 22, 2022

By Jeffrey Turner

(The Conversation) — Each July 24, the state of Utah celebrates “Pioneer Day.” There are parades, rodeos, fireworks, a marathon, hikes and historical outfits, plus lots of red, white and blue – similar to the Fourth of July and other patriotic events in America.

Pioneer Day, however, commemorates something unique: the day Mormon migrants arrived in the Salt Lake Valley. The label “Mormon” refers to any church rooted in the teachings of founder Joseph Smith, although the largest of these, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has rejected the name in recent years.

The first Latter-day Saints to reach Utah had fled Illinois, more than 1,000 miles away. On July 24, 1847, after months on the trail, church president Brigham Young caught sight of the valley and proclaimed, “This is the right place.”

For Latter-day Saints, the holiday involves church activities like talks, dances, potlucks and sometimes reenacting pioneers’ experiences by walking along the “Mormon Trail” with handcarts. In Salt Lake City, there is a large parade called “Days of ‘47” with floats reflecting an annual theme related to pioneers.

As a historian who studies Mormon migration and immigration, I see the pageantry of Pioneer Day as a reflection of the church’s long, complicated relationships with race, nationalism and identity. Each year’s commemorations emphasize stories of hardship and heroism. However, they remember just one story of migration out of many in the diverse history of the church and the region.

Church on the move

Smith founded the LDS church in upstate New York in 1830. Ever since, its history has been one of movement.

Smith claimed to have received revelations and visions indicating that Latter-day Saints should gather to prepare for Jesus Christ’s Second Coming. The church taught that God would gather his people in a place called Zion – a word found in the Bible, often used to refer to Jerusalem or Israel – before Jesus’ return. By converting people to the LDS church and encouraging them to migrate together, 19th-century Latter-day Saints believed that they were building Zion.

KICKED OUT OF TOWN FOR POLYGAMY

In the faith’s first few decades, the LDS church changed headquarters several times, gathering in New York, then Ohio, then Missouri, then Illinois. Each time, their arrival prompted conflict with local communities that did not trust the new church – discrimination that sometimes broke into violence. After Smith, the founder, was killed by a local mob in 1844, Young led a large faction of Mormons on the long, difficult journey to Utah.

Western years

When Latter-day Saints arrived by the Salt Lake in 1847, the area was Mexican territory. The United States gained control of the territory the next year as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War and ceded Western lands to the United States.

It would be another half-century before Utah became a U.S. state, however. The territory was technically under U.S. control, but for the time being, Latter-day Saints celebrated their autonomy. As part of the effort to gather church members together, Young established a micro-loan system that financed converts’ migrations to Utah from both inside and outside the U.S.

Many did not trust the U.S. government, given the church’s previous experiences of discrimination. Nor did many Americans trust the LDS church, partially because of the practice of polygamy – which church leaders formally disavowed around the turn of the 20th century.

Some Americans in the 19th century considered Mormon immigrants to be racially nonwhite, although the vast majority were coming from Europe. Anti-immigrant sentiment was rising at the time, and critics sometimes conflated their fears about Mormon, Chinese and Muslim immigrants.

The U.S. federal government tried to stop Mormon immigration in a number of ways, such as forbidding people who supported polygamy from entering the country in 1891. Even so, hundreds of Latter-day Saints immigrated each year.
Overshadowed stories

Migration stories are a source of pride and identity for many Utahans, and Pioneer Day celebrations have a long history. Within two years of the first Latter-day Saints’ arrival in 1847, they started celebrating the anniversary with cannon salutes, music, bell ringing and speeches.

Later celebrations included reenactments. For the 50th anniversary in 1897, some celebrants reenacted part of the trek along the Mormon Trail and watched a procession of wagons and horse-drawn floats, a tradition that gradually formalized into the Days of ’47 parade.

A covered wagon caravan of Mormon emigrants trying to cross a river in 1879.
Corbis Historical via Getty Images

To some, Pioneer Day symbolizes exclusion and forgetting – especially the church’s impact on Native Americans. In a 2019 op-ed, documentary filmmaker Angelo Baca and historian Erika Bsumek wrote that Pioneer Day “represents a key moment in the history of the colonization of the American West,” which caused “Utes, Paiutes, Shoshone, Goshute and Navajos” to lose “their homes, lands, and even, in some cases, their families.”

Pioneer Day is also the anniversary of the arrival of Black people, both enslaved and free, whose experiences have often been overlooked in Utah history.

However, monuments and written records have helped spark discussion about how to remember their legacy during the holiday.

As Latter-day Saint membership has grown more globally diverse, Pioneer Day celebrations have included more diverse pioneer narratives from the faith’s history. In recent years, church programs have also emphasized stories of how “pioneers” are building up the faith all around the world, not only in Utah.

As Utah and the church continue to become more diverse, Pioneer Day participants will continue to recover histories of migration, displacement and courage that shape their identity in the present through their remembrances of the past.

(Jeffrey Turner, Ph.D. Candidate in U.S. History, University of Utah. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Japanese police raid home of Tokyo Olympics executive: reports

AFP - Monday

Japanese police on Tuesday raided the home of a 2020 Tokyo Olympics board member who allegedly received money from a sponsor he signed a consulting contract with, local media reported.

Haruyuki Takahashi, 78, is suspected of receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars from high street business suit retailer Aoki Holdings Inc., an "official partner" of last year's pandemic-delayed mega-event.

Kyodo news agency reported that could constitute bribery, as Takahashi was considered a quasi-civil servant who was not permitted to accept money or gifts related to his position.

The Tokyo prosecutors' office told AFP it could not comment on individual cases.

A sports consulting firm run by Takahashi is suspected of receiving money from Aoki for a contract signed in 2017, according to local media.

Aoki in October 2018 became a Tokyo Games sponsor, allowing it to use the event's logo and sell officially licensed products.

Takahashi told the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper last week that the money his company received was for consultancy work.

"There was no conflict of interest whatsoever with my position as an organising committee board member," he was quoted as saying.

Aoki issued a statement last week saying it had no comment on reports of the payments.

Takahashi, a former executive at Japan's biggest advertising agency, Dentsu, had served on the Tokyo 2020 board since June 2014.


The Tokyo Olympics organising committee disbanded last month.

Former Tokyo 2020 president Seiko Hashimoto told reporters Tuesday that she would "cooperate fully" with the investigation if instructed to do so.

"Matters such as this coming to light after the fact is very disappointing," she said.

"We have to act in a way that will not tarnish what was achieved even with the pandemic."

The case is not the first time questions have been raised about alleged impropriety around the Games.

French prosecutors launched an investigation into allegations of corruption linked to Tokyo's bid for the Games in 2016.

The former head of Japan's Olympic Committee, Tsunekazu Takeda, stepped down in 2019 as French authorities probed his involvement in payments made before Tokyo was awarded the event.

The French investigation centres around payments made to Singapore-based firm "Black Tidings", which was linked to the son of disgraced former International Olympic Committee member Lamine Diack.

The Tokyo Olympics opened in July 23 last year after an unprecedented one-year delay because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Games were held in largely empty stadiums after fans were banned amid surging virus infections in Japan.

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