The Body and the Blood: A Reporter's Journey Through the Holy Land at the Turn of the Millennium - Christian Travel Memoir & Middle East History Book for Bible Study and Spiritual Exploration
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SKU:83956570
Product Description
As The Body and the Blood begins, it is raining bullets in the Via Dolorosa. Braving war zones, often on a daily basis, journalist Charles Sennott spent the year 2000 retracing the path of Jesus' life, from Bethlehem to Emmaus, to write about the Holy Land's Christians. His goal was "to open a window for Western Christians into the Middle East conflict, to encourage them to think about the realities of this land, and about what it means if the living presence of Christianity here should wither and die." On his journey, Sennott encounters many salty characters and strange scenes, which he describes with effective "In one Jerusalem parish, there were not enough young Christian men left to carry a casket at a funeral." Sennott, The Boston Globe's Middle East bureau chief, believes that Christianity has traditionally "provided a kind of leavening in the Middle East, a small but necessary ingredient acting as a buffer between the Arab world's broad Islamic resurgence and the strands within Israel of a rising, ultranationalist brand of Judaism." His book is not merely a political travelogue, however. He also makes Middle Eastern Christianity relevant to the everyday lives of Western readers, by showing that Palestinian- Israeli conflicts are rooted in the same social and spiritual conflicts that shaped Jesus' ministry. --Michael Joseph Gross
Customer Reviews
Charles Sennott thoroughly researched and reported on the stories that form the nucleus of this book, and it shows. His book evinces sympathy for all sides caught up in the vortex of conflict that centers in the Israeli-Palestinian problem. Sennott's thesis is that the world (especially the Christian West) remains dangerously indifferent to the diminishing presence of native Arab Christians in the Middle East who are a living link to the Christian past, and who throughout the years have constituted a vital mediating role between Muslims and Jews. With the Christians gone, Muslim and Jewish antagonism comes into more direct contact and the possibility for peace becomes ever more elusive.His anecdotes help the reader get inside the mind of the protagonists and see this ongoing drama from their point of view.Sennott honestly enumerates his biases as he leads the reader to navigate the intensely sensitive and complicated issues related to Arab Christianity in the Middle East.Some interesting insights/topics (I am not necessarily agreeing with the author, but simply relating what he reports):--A significant number of "Jewish" Russian immigrants to Israel are actually Orthodox Christians--Israel has often sought to employ a "divide and rule" strategy to turn Palestinian Muslims and Christians against each other--Some elements of Muslim Palestinian resistance have exploited Palestinian Christian communities, for example attacking Israelis from Christian towns/holy places, knowing that Israelis will have a much harder time responding militarily to these areas due to Western attention to these holy sitesSennott also explores the conflict between Copts and Muslims. Missing is information on Iraqi Christians who have left Iraq in droves. This edition was published prior to America's 2003 invasion though, and at the time it would have been difficult for a Western journalist to get substantive information on the community there.--The Palestinian resistance has become more consciously religious rather than secular/nationalistic, further alienating Palestinian Christians, i.e. dubbing the 2000-2001 conflict the al-Aqsa intifada, which is a Muslim, not a Christian label.All-in-all, a thoroughly interesting read and a well written one--well worth the reader's time.
