A few years ago I got to go on a pilgrimage to Turkey with a busload of Episcopalians, and it was one of the best travel experiences of my life. (If you've never been on a pilgrimage, it's something like a vacation, only with daily church and lots of Deep Thoughts about the various places you are visiting, in between bouts of scouting out the best hummus.)
On that trip I had reason again and again to think about what happens when religion is too comfortably enmeshed in empire.
Ephesus. Laodicea. Pergamum. We visited one ruin site after another, learning about the successive waves of civilization that took root in those places. Of these, the one I remember most vividly is Laodicea, because it was uncrowded and still being excavated. We got to watch while a capstone was restored to the top of an ancient column. I wondered what the column had looked like in its heyday, and what was the final insult that broke it into pieces: a war? A hurricane? Simple neglect over the course of centuries?
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