The second cause of the continuance of the Ottoman
dominion has been less accidental. Like the early caliphs,
and indeed all able Mussulman dynasties except the
Persian, the ruling house of Turkey has for all these
centuries maintained unbroken the principle that, apart
from creed, ability is the only qualification for the
highest service. Outside the navy, a Turkish grandee must
be a Mussulman; but that granted, there is no obstacle
of birth, or cultivation, or position standing in any
man’s path. Even slavery is no barrier. Over and over
again, a sultan apparently at the end of his resources
has stooped among the crowd, clutched a soldier, a
slipper-bearer, a tobacconist, a renegade, given him
his own limitless power, and asking of him nothing but
success, has secured it in full measure. Equality within
the faith, which is a dogma of Islam, and next to its
belief in a “sultan of the sky,” its grand attraction to
inferior races, has in Turkey been a reality as it has
been in no other empire on earth, and has provided its
sovereigns—who, be it remembered, fear no rival unless
he be a kinsman, an Arab, or a “prophet”—with an endless
supply of the kind of ability they need. The history of
the grand viziers of Turkey, were it ever written, would
be the history of men who have risen by sheer force of
ability—that is, by success in war or by statesmanship,
or, in fewer instances, by that art of mastering an
Asiatic sovereign and his seraglio in which fools do
not succeed. The sultans have rarely promoted, rarely
even used, men of their own house,—which is the Persian
dynastic policy,—have hated, and at last destroyed, the
few nobles of their empire; and capricious and cruel as
they have been, have often shown a power of steadily
upholding a great servant such as we all attribute to the
founder of the new German empire. This equality, this
chance of a career of great opportunities, great renown,
and great luxury, brings to Constantinople a crowd of
intriguers, some of them matchless villains; but it also
brings a great crowd of able and unscrupulous men, who
understand how to “govern” in the Turkish sense, and who
have constantly succeeded in restoring a dominion which
seemed hopelessly broken up. Every pasha is a despot,
an able despot is soon felt, and he has in carrying
out the method of Turkish government, which is simply
the old Tartar method of stamping out resistance, an
advantage over Europeans which is the third cause of
the continuance of the Ottoman empire. He is tormented
with no hesitations in applying force as a cure for all
things. The man who resists is to die, or purchase life
by submission.
—MEREDITH TOWNSEND in “Asia and Europe.”
The moral and religious condition of the people of Turkey, especially
the non-Moslems, was, and still is, without a parallel in any country
in the world.
Since Mohammedanism never encourages progress and education, and since
the principles of Moslem rule in all countries and in all times have
been based upon force, ignorance and fanaticism, it is not difficult to
judge of the condition of these subject peoples, especially after many
generations of oppression.
The most of the races that refused to embrace Islam and elected to
pay a regular tribute for the privilege of continuing to live, were
Christians, such as the Copts of Egypt, the Syrian Christians of Syria,
the Jacobites of Mesopotamia, the Armenians of Armenia and sections
of northern Syria and Asia Minor, the Greeks of Asia Minor, and the
Bulgarians of European Turkey. While all these were Christians by
profession, they had no ecclesiastical relations with each other. Each
race and Church stood by itself, entirely independent of all the rest,
fostering no sympathy the one with the other except in a common cause
against a dominant race.
Under Moslem rule all education among the so called Rayas was
discouraged, and some of the Moslem customs, like the veiling of their
women, were adopted. The low estimate placed upon womanhood by the
conquerors was accepted in a measure by these races, and some of the
worst of the vices of the Moslems became common among the Christians.
With these surroundings, the Christianity of the earlier days so
deteriorated that little remained except the name and the outward
observances of the Church. Because of the absence of modern literature
and general education, the spoken language of the common people changed
to such a degree that the Bible and the rituals of the Church in the
ancient language in which they were written became an unknown tongue
to the masses. Their religion became a religion of form, and the Bible
a closed and sealed book. Surrounded as they were by all the vices of
a Moslem society, dominated by Moslem rulers, the character of the
Christianity among them did not attract their Mohammedan neighbors,
while there was no hope for reform from within.
Jealousies and discords sprang up between the Christians of various
sects whenever they came into contact, like that between the Greeks and
Bulgarians in Macedonia, and the Greeks and Armenians in Asia Minor,
and the Syrians and Armenians in northern Syria. The reigning sultans
have not been slow to note these jealousies and to take advantage of
them in dealing with the various sects. Had the Christians of Turkey
during the last century been united, they might have accomplished much
by way of securing privileges for themselves. But even the people of a
single national Church have not been able to agree upon many important
questions, so that the sultan and his subordinates have not found it
hard to control these superior races, superior in themselves in many
respects to their masters. If any one seemed to be giving more trouble
than usual, methods were found to divide still more, and so weaken and
subdue them. The same methods have been constantly employed with the
various religious bodies of his empire that have been successfully
used with the European nations who have caused him trouble by
interfering with his peculiar views of government or unjust methods of
administration. He has usually succeeded in playing off the jealousies
and cupidity of one against another so that concerted action became
impossible and he has been left to work his own will in his own way.
While the sultan has learned cunning by these conditions and gained no
little advantage to himself, neither the subject Christian races of his
empire nor the European nations outside have seemed to learn a lesson
which is of service to them in changing existing conditions.
Under these circumstances, religion to most of the people of the
country became but a form and a mark of nationality. No conversion,
in the ordinary sense of the word, was required for admission to the
Greek, Armenian, Bulgarian, or any of the Oriental Churches. All
children were baptized in infancy and so grew up within the Church,
with no religious instruction except as to fast and feast days and the
proper forms to be employed in the ritual observed in the Churches. In
all services the language used was no more understood by the people
as a whole than Latin would be comprehended by an ordinary country
audience in England or America. There was no educational or moral test
for the priests except that they should be able to pronounce the words
of the regular Church services and find the proper places from which
to read. The writer once asked an Armenian priest where he studied.
He said he was a baker and when he decided to become a priest he went
to a monastery and studied for forty days. That comprised all of his
schooling, except that he knew how to read simple narrative when he
began. I asked him if he understood the ritual and the Scriptures
that he read. He replied, “How should I know? This is the ancient
Armenian.” Even as late as fifteen years ago it would have been
difficult to find a Christian priest of any kind or class in the
interior districts who clearly understood the ritual of the Church or
the Scripture read in the service. Ordinarily the selection of priests
was not based upon special ability, education, or moral worth. There
were, of course, noble exceptions to this most general rule.
The priests being such, and some of them most grossly ignorant and
unfit, and there being in the Churches no religious instruction, it is
easy to understand how the moral tone of these Oriental Churches sank
rapidly under the rule of the Turk, with no power in themselves to
rise above these conditions and institute a reform. A Church without a
Bible, with an ignorant priesthood, with a ritual beautiful in itself
but dead to the people, with no religious instruction and no test
for church-membership, could not be expected in any land or in any
age to keep itself unspotted from the world. Under these conditions
Christianity came to be largely a name and the practises of religion
only a form.
The resisting power of the Oriental Churches in Turkey was largely
vitiated by the lack of the true spirit of Christianity within. At
the same time, it was surrounded by evil influences and by open
persecutions heavy to bear even by a living, vitalized Church. The
pressure of the Mohammedans, both individually and as a government,
was directed to force all professing Christians to abandon their
ancestral faith and become Moslems. The heavy hand of the government
was constantly upon them, while faithful Moslems were not slow to
let the persecuted ones know that, should they become Mohammedans,
their burdens would become lighter. Under these conditions there has
constantly been more or less apostatizing from Christianity. In times
of unusual persecution the number of these has increased.
At the same time, in order to avoid attention and thereby avert
conflict, the Christians, in many cases, conformed to the outward
practises of their Moslem masters. Their women veiled themselves when
in public and covered their mouths at all times. Efforts to provide
a general education for their children were largely abandoned and
wide-spread illiteracy prevailed. The vices of the Mohammedans, some of
them the vilest known to men, were practised by many of the Christians,
and falsehood was so common that truth came to be almost a curiosity.
To cheat or deceive a Turk was considered in itself almost a Christian
virtue. In the conflict with Islam, Christianity, in its ignorance, was
driven to the wall and lost nearly everything except its ancient Bible
and most excellent ritual, with houses of worship, a hierarchy and a
form to which it adhered with most commendable tenacity.
These untoward conditions were aggravated by the fact that, in Turkey,
the Church came to be a political organization, presided over by an
appointee of the sultan, who was capable of being dismissed by him
if he chose to exercise his power. Each Church with its political
patriarch at Constantinople constituted a little state within a state.
Every Church represented a separate race or nation whose rights
within the empire were vested in the rights of the Church, directed
by the patriarch. At the patriarchate were recorded—and it is true
to-day—all births, marriages and deaths. Individual existence in the
empire was recognized only through the Church. The Christian’s sole
representative at Constantinople to speak for him in case of injustice,
or to secure a privilege, or to obtain his legal rights, was the
patriarch of his own peculiar Church.
The political organization extended down through the different
provinces and included in its last analysis each individual church.
Under the injustice endured by the Christians of Turkey during the past
five hundred years, it is most natural that not a few of the members of
the Church, if not a great majority, should look upon the organization,
not primarily as a spiritual temple, but as a means of securing redress
for wrongs suffered, or for obtaining privileges from the Porte. Under
the laws of Turkey the Church must exercise political functions. Under
the practise of the people, it came to be primarily political, the
spiritual being relegated to the background.
General education never existed in that country, but under the sway of
the Moslem all education was discouraged. The schools of the Moslems
consisted of classes in reading the Koran in Arabic, accompanied by
traditional stories of Mohammed and comments upon his teachings. Among
the Christians there was little except the instruction of a few youths
in monasterial schools where men were trained for Church orders. It
is true that now and then among the Greeks and Armenians some bright
and inquiring mind far exceeded the ordinary bounds of indigenous
scholarship and became conspicuous for learning. But these were rare
exceptions. The masses of the people of all classes and religions were
in gross ignorance. Even within the last twenty-five years the writer
has been in many Armenian villages in which not a person except the
priest knew how to read and write, and even his accomplishments ceased
with the bare ability to read the ritual of the Church. A leading
priest once asked a student who had studied one year in a mission
school, “What remains for you to learn after studying an entire year?”
Under such a leadership in the Church, and with open opposition to
general education among the Turks, it is not surprising that ignorance
among the masses became almost universal, with little or no impulse to
change.
If the above is true with reference to the education of the men,
what could be expected for the girls and women? It is natural that,
among the Mohammedans, who accord to women a low place in society and
religion, it should have come to be believed in wide areas in the
interior of Turkey that women were incapable of learning to read. Among
them the vital question calling for early discussion was not, “Shall
education be afforded to girls?” but it was, “Can girls learn to read?”
This question has been hotly discussed within the last fifty years in
the interior of Turkey, with the missionary contending that they can,
while leading men of the country have contended with vehemence that the
idea was too preposterous to consider. Conviction came only by actual
demonstration.
Under such circumstances it is not difficult to imagine the general
conditions of society and the deplorable life of the Church. These
conditions were more or less modified in the large coast cities like
Constantinople and Smyrna, but even in these places, while more
educated men were found than in the interior, there was dense ignorance
among the masses, and no provision for the education of girls. The
entire empire had few newspapers or periodicals of any kind in any
language, and the state of education stimulated the production of no
great literature, even had there been those capable of producing it.
The beginning of the nineteenth century, apart from the revival of
learning among the Greeks of the West, may be called the dark age for
literature, learning, and religion in the Turkish empire.
Constantinople and Syria were the two centers for Christian work in
Turkey among the Oriental churches, because these were the centers of
control for all of these churches. The chief patriarch resided at the
Porte and was in close touch with his majesty the sultan, while the
secondary patriarch resided at Jerusalem, cooperating with his superior
at the capital. These churches could best be reached and influenced for
evangelical Christianity from the same points.
Missionaries were sent to the ancient churches, not to attack them
either in their doctrines or in their practises, but to cooperate with
their leaders in organizing a system of education and in creating a
sentiment that should demand for the Church an educated and morally
upright clergy. It was expected that the Church would accept the
modern version of its own Scriptures and encourage its circulation
among the people. For the best conduct of a work of this character,
the missionaries needed to be in close contact with the centers of
ecclesiastical power in all of these churches, that from them the
ordinary lines of communication might be utilized in reaching the
remote interior districts.
In order that misunderstandings may be cleared up, it should be stated
here that missionaries to the Armenians and Greeks were not sent
to divide the churches or to separate out those who should accept
education and read the Bible in the vernacular. Their one supreme
endeavor was to help the Armenians and Greeks work out a quiet but
genuine reform in their respective churches. The missionaries made no
attacks upon the churches, their customs, or beliefs, but strove by
positive, quiet effort to show the leaders how much they lacked and to
help them bring about the necessary changes.
For twenty-six years this quiet work went on with no separation, in
accordance with the desire of the missionaries, as well as in harmony
with the purposes of the Board. When the separation did come, it
was in spite of every effort of the missionaries to prevent it. For
the successful accomplishment of such a purpose only the centers of
ecclesiastical power and influence were available. Only their own
leaders could be expected to inaugurate and carry into execution a
reform movement which would permeate the Church throughout the empire.