PROPHECY
The Future of Christianity in Europe In the context of the historic struggle between Islam and Christianity, it seems European Christianity is dying out. But is a resurgence around the corner?
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n a highly symbolic move, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently joined as many as 350,000 people for Friday Islamic prayers at the famed Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. Making the Hagia Sophia into a mosque again fulfilled his long-held dream to restore the monument as a symbol of Ottoman grandeur.
The Hagia Sophia has always been a prime source of contention between Islam and Christendom. Before it entered its most-recent secular phase, it had been one of Islam’s greatest mosques for five centuries. But for its first 900 years it was Christendom’s greatest cathedral.
Cathedral, mosque and museum
Istanbul, formerly known as Constantinople, was founded as an imperial capital in A.D. 330 by Roman Emperor Constantine the Great. He envisioned it as a new Rome to surpass the old Rome. It strategically overlooked the Bosporus, the maritime choke point that divides Europe and Asia. Constantine’s son completed the first basilica and dedicated it to Hagia Sophia (divine wisdom in Greek). Emperors and empresses of the newly Christianized empire were crowned there.
“It was,” said Mr. Erdogan, “the yearning of our people and it has been accomplished.” He described the Hagia Sophia’s previous conversion into a secular museum— in 1935 by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the republic’s founding leader—as a mistake now rectified. As Mr. Erdogan attempts to establish a new Ottoman Empire, he has built more than 17,000 mosques throughout Turkey. Istanbul alone already boasts more than 3,000 other mosques.
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DISCERN
Hagia Sophia: A cathedral for billions
November/December 2020
