Crypto-Christianity
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Crypto-Christianity is the secret adherence to Christianity, while publicly professing to be another faith; people who practice crypto-Christianity are referred to as "crypto-Christians". In places and time periods where Christians were persecuted or Christianity was outlawed, instances of crypto-Christianity have surfaced.[citation needed]
History
Various time periods and places have seen large crypto-Christian groups and underground movements. This was usually the reaction to either threats of violence or legal action.
Roman Empire
Secrecy is a motif which is found in the New Testament, particularly in
During the initial development of the Christian Church in the Roman Empire, its members were frequently forced to practice their faith in secrecy.[citation needed] The official policy under Trajan forced Christians to make a choice: they could choose to recant their faith, which meant that they would be allowed to live, or they could choose not to recant their faith, which meant that they would be executed as martyrs.[2] The term crypto-Christianity can be applied to that segment of the church population which concealed its Christian beliefs as a means to avoid persecution. In contrast, many Christians, including Polycarp,[3] chose to retain their beliefs and suffer persecution, due to the fact that Christian doctrine did not allow Christians to publicly profess another religion, even if they held a mental reservation against it, which made it stricter than the Muslim practice of taqiyya and Jewish opinions on the matter, but many did so out of weakness:
All the inhabitants of the empire were required to sacrifice before the magistrates of their community 'for the safety of the empire' by a certain day (the date would vary from place to place and the order may have been that the sacrifice had to be completed within a specified period after a community received the edict). When they sacrificed they would obtain a certificate (libellus) recording the fact that they had complied with the order.[4]
Japan
Christianity was introduced to
During this period, faithful converts moved underground into a crypto-Christian group called kakure Kirishitan or "hidden Christians". Crypto-Christian crosses and graves, cleverly styled during these two centuries to resemble Buddhist imagery, can still be seen in the Shimabara Peninsula, Amakusa islands and far south in Kagoshima.
Shūsaku Endō's acclaimed novel Silence draws from the oral history of Japanese Catholic communities pertaining to the time of the suppression of the Church.
Ottoman Empire (Balkans and Asia Minor)
An early attestation and justification of crypto-Christianism is found in an epistle of Patriarch Ioannes 14th (Ιωάννης ΙΔ') (1334-1347) of Constantinople to the Christians of Bithynia (Asia Minor). He says that "those [Christians] who by the fear of punishment [by the Muslims] want to believe and practice Christianity secretly, they will be also saved, provided they study god's orders as far as possible".[5]
Due to the religious strife that has existed in the
Crypto-Greek Orthodox reportedly lived in many parts of the Ottoman Balkans and Anatolia. A good description of the Crypto-Christians among
Further information is contained in "The Crypto-Christians of the Pontos and Consul William Gifford Palgrave of Trebizond," London: Valiorum Reprints, 1988, from Peoples and Settlement in Anatolia and the Caucasus 800–1900, by Anthony Bryer
Crypto-Armenians are believed to represent at least two groups of Armenians which are living in modern-day Turkey. One group has been Islamized under the threat of physical extermination, particularly during the Armenian pogroms of the mid-1890s and the Armenian genocide of 1915. Representatives of a different, much smaller crypto-Armenian group live in separate villages which are inhabited by Turks and Kurds in Eastern Turkey (on the territories of the traditional Armenian homeland). This group differs from the above-mentioned "Islamized" group due to the process and depth of its Islamization.[8]
Middle East
In the first few centuries the Christian religion spread rapidly around the Mediterranean region with Egypt and Syria becoming especially important centers of the religion. Even as the Roman Empire disintegrated between the 5th and 7th centuries, the Christian faith only deepened in the Eastern Mediterranean. During the 7th century the
As oppression of Christians arose under the Fatimid Caliph Al-Hakim, Christian (and Jewish) practices became more hidden. Secretive communities appeared in Egypt during the 11th century and in Morocco in the 12th century under the Almohads' rule. Many Crypto-Christian communities existed in Middle-East till the 19th century, as Muslim authorities continued to tolerate minimal requirements of obedience by converts. From late 19th century onward most of crypto-religious groups disappeared as a result of the rise of nationalism in the new Middle Eastern states.[9]
Soviet Russia and the Warsaw Pact
Many Christian communities in the Soviet sphere of influence during the Cold War had to go underground in so-called
People's Republic of China
Intra-Christian cases
In addition to Christians practising their faith secretly in a non-Christian society, there have been instances of crypto-
Crypto-Protestants have sometimes practised in Catholic territories. During the early modern era, this was the case for French
Additionally, historically Eastern Orthodox populations in the Balkans and Eastern Europe that had come under the dominion of various Roman Catholic polities (the
See also
- Linobambaki
- Vallahades
- Cretan Turks
- Crypto-Calvinism
- Crypto-Judaism
- Crypto-Islam
- Crypto-Paganism
- Crypto-Hinduism
- Nicodemite
- Doctrine of mental reservation
- Live and Become
- San Manuel Bueno, Mártir
- Taqiyya
Notes
References
- ^ David F. Watson, "Honor Among Christians: The Cultural Key to the Messianic Secret", Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 2010, pp. 1-10, passim.
- ^ Trajan in Pliny, Letters 10.97.
- ^ "Polycarp", Theopedia.
- ^ Decius: 249–251 AD, University of Michigan, archived from the original on 2011-03-30.
- ^ Ioannes 14th (patriarch), "Promittit Nicaeensibus reversuris in sinum ecclesiae remissionem" (Πιττάκιον πατριαρχικόν εις τους ευρισκομένους εις την Νϊκαιαν), published by Franz Miklosich & Josef Müller in Acta et Diplomata Graeca Medii Aevi Sacra et Profana (1860), p. 184. Mentioned also in Kitsikis Dimitris, "The importance of bektashism-alewism for hellenism", Athens, "Hekate", 2006, p. 47, in Greek language.
- ^ "Hristiyan", Karalahana.
- ^ F. W. Hasluck (1929) Christianity and Islam Under the Sultans, ed. Clarendon press, Oxford, vol. 2, pp. 469-474.
- ^ The Armenian ethnoreligious elements in the Western Armenia
- ^ Reinkowski M. (2007) Hidden Believers, Hidden Apostates: The Phenomenon of Crypto-Jews and Crypto-Christians in the Middle-East, in Washburn u.a. (Hrsg.): Converting cultures : religion, ideology of transformations of modernity. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2007 pp. 408 -433
- ^ "https://pure.royalholloway.ac.uk/portal/files/26864394/Chrysovalantis_Kyriacou_Thesis_2_vols.pdf"
- ^ Véghseő, Tamás. "Reflections on the Background to the Union of Uzhhorod/Ungvár (1646)".
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- S2CID 163987636.
External links
- Centre for the Study of South Eastern Europe
- The Turkish-Cypriot Community and the Cryptochristians
- Chaglar, Alkan, "Proselytism and Crypto-Christians in Cyprus", Toplumpostasi.
- The Catacomb Church
- Russia's Catacomb Saints
- Gizli Hristiyanlık - Crypto Christianity at Pontus region (Turkish)
- Crypto-Christians of the Trabzon Region of Pontos - Full article