Because we honour Saints Sergios and Bacchos in the Orthodox Church today, I cannot help but make two related addendums here. What has happened since to the holy resting place of Saint Sergios in Syria, is sadly an all too familiar tale in that country. The bottom-up œcumenism that held in the Middle Ages between the Muslims and the Christians was not so much fractured as it was actively attacked by Muslim fundamentalists and sectarians, following the dæmonic political ideology of Quṭb ’Ibrâhim. The Basilica was badly damaged when the Sunnî extremist, takfiri-jihâdi fighters of Dâ‘iš entered ar-Ruṣâfa; and they also destroyed a priceless ancient icon of Saint Sergios. The town of ar-Ruṣâfa was liberated on the nineteenth of June, 2017, by the Syrian Arab Army with support from the armed forces of Russia. This was cause for much celebration by the Arab Christians of Raqqa Governorate, although the damage to the holy site was done, much of which can never be repaired.
Likewise, when Ma‘lûlâ was attacked by Sunnî Salafist rebels of Jabhat an-Nuṣra, according to Reuters they entered Mâr Sarkîs monastery there, did great damage to the building, and smashed the icons and crosses. The building itself was damaged by shelling in the effort to retake the city. But now, thanks to the fact that the Syrian Arab Army controls Ma‘lûlâ, the indigenous Arab and Aramaic Christians who live there now at least have the chance to rebuild. The Christians of Syria are indeed grateful to Baššâr al-’Asad, who has proven himself to be a progressive and non-sectarian president in the country. At least now they have some modicum of protection and stability from which they are able to rebuild their fragmented communities.
But unfortunately, while the local cultus of Saints Sergios and Bacchos, and their icons were being attacked by reactionary right-wing Sunnî extremist forces, the plight of the Arab Christians with their patient supplications to these saints being invisible to Western eyes, the international cultus of Saints Sergios and Bacchos has come under a different, but – as we shall see – related attack.
The close companionship of these two saints, mentioned above in the hagiography, has been taken and reinterpreted by certain elements in the LGBTQ+ community. The source of this reinterpretation is a thesis by a professor at Yale University, John Boswell, a convert to Roman Catholicism from the Episcopal Church. Boswell’s thesis held that, according to the evidence from late hagiographies, the two saints were not only close companions but also gay lovers. Unfortunately, this thesis was built more upon wishful thinking than upon facts, and its central thesis – that early Christianity was more tolerant of homosexuality than mediæval Catholicism – has been consistently debunked by both sæcular historians and theologians of the Roman Catholic Church.
Now, in criticising Boswell’s scholarship I understand that I am leaving myself open to accusations of homophobia and anti-gay sentiment – the more so since I happen to belong to the Orthodox Church and happen to adhere to traditional Orthodox teachings on sexuality. However, it is not this blog’s policy to indulge in homophobic attacks on people, and I will not brook any scrutiny of Boswell’s sex life. At any rate, it is not needed and not relevant. We must instead examine Boswell’s connexions to the same American intelligence agency that funds jihâdist terror against Middle East Christians, through his ideological preferences and connexion to one CIA-funded academic in particular.
Indeed, his thesis draws more upon idealist, social constructivist ideas about sexuality and upon postmodernist theory than upon actual history or actual examination of social relations in the præ-modern Middle East, where close male friendships did exist, and where clearly homosexual relations also did exist – but the two of them were not contiguous. Even today in the Middle East there is a great deal more tolerance of expressions of affection between men, which is not extended to homosexuality! Boswell was, in point of fact, a close friend of the French philosophe Michel Foucault, one of the founding fathers of poststructuralist analysis, on whose work Boswell relied heavily for his analysis of these so-called ‘gay saints’, and who warmly welcomed the study when it was published. The Foucauldian dimensions of Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality are quite clearly apparent in his attempt to bring to bear a hermeneutic of suspicion upon primary documents and the writings of, for example, Saint John Chrysostom, and his attempt to portray an ‘alternative history’ in which faithful gay Christians were always ever acting against the institutional and social power of a hostile Church – and occasionally succeeding. In so doing, as explained above, Boswell erased the Middle Eastern-ness of these saints and their cultus, and successfully excluded from the conversation the voices of the people who have venerated them for over sixteen hundred years.
The problem is that Foucault was more of an apologist and defender of political power than he was a critic. It was not for nothing that the Central Intelligence Agency sought him out and began assiduously propagating his ideas in order to attack and fragment the French Left, and by extension the Left throughout the world. Speaking of the French Left, if I were feeling truly Sorelian today, I might also point to the well-cushioned academic positions which both Foucault and Boswell held as evidence that ‘where you stand is where you sit’. But the CIA had found an incredibly useful tool in Foucault’s thought: they could turn hermeneutics of suspicion upon the traditional tools of the left for self-organisation: upon vanguard political parties and upon labour unions in particular. We can thank Foucault for the fact that so much of the modern Western ‘green’ and ‘anarchist’ and ‘social liberal’ political blocs, and sadly not a few left ones as well, are all too ready to attack and discredit any successful movements for œconomic justice in the Third World, which thereby are forced to deal with all the messy problems of attempting to use the political power they have gained.
Let us not, by the way, pretend that LGBTQ+ concerns are automatically ‘left’ or even ‘progressive’. President Trump has a significant following among gay men in particular, and is polling at 45% among gay men thanks to Milo Yiannopoulos and Trump’s own stated support for same-sex marriage. The far-right Proud Boys hate group led by VICE founder Gavin McInnes is officially welcoming to LGBTQ+ members, seeing gay tolerance as one of the marks of a putatively-superior Western civilization – this is an instance of what queer theorist Jasbir Puar called ‘homonationalism’, and it is absolutely a problem.
Thus it should not be a surprise that the same elements of Western liberalism that, encouraged by a Yale professor’s book, bring icons of ‘gay saints’ to pride parades, are also willing to attack the left in countries like Syria for their support of imperfectly-progressive leaders like Baššâr al-’Asad (and before him, his father; and before him, Nâṣir; and before them, Sukarno and Zhou Enlai). They are also willing to make common cause with ‘moderate rebels’ and ‘democrats’ who smash icons and raze churches dedicated to the same saints! We can see this in pinkwashing and homonationalist liberal outlets that claim an affinity with Orthodox Christianity. Public Orthodoxy and the utterly odious Orthodoxy in Dialogue, both give platforms to virulently pro-interventionist and pro-war views against Syria and most of its people, while they also try to claim these Syrian saints as literal ‘gay icons’.
I’m sure that Public Orthodoxy and Orthodoxy in Dialogue would be appalled and offended, and take massive umbrage at being lumped in with an obnoxious group like the Proud Boys. Still, ultimately, they stand for the same thing. They stand for an idea of ‘Western civilisation’ that stands apart from and above the messy, dirty and less-developed societies of the Third World… which also happen to be the societies in which Orthodoxy is capable of having an independent witness which inclines politically to the left. The only difference is the liberal veneer and pretense of concern for ‘human rights’ and ‘democratic norms’ that Public Orthodoxy and Orthodoxy in Dialogue cloak themselves in to make their chauvinism appear that much more respectable to unsuspecting leftists and liberals. And they wouldn’t be caught dead saying something as gauche as ‘poophole’ when talking about Africa or the MENA, but clearly quite a few of them think it all the same.
So although I find ACROD priest Fr Edward Pehanich’s concerns for stateside florists and photographers and caterers a bit… um… quaint as yet, it is actually quite hard to disagree with him that these are attacks on the Faith, as well as attacks on the Third World and Non-Aligned politics. It is hard to think of an adjective other than ‘dæmonic’ for these sorts of attacks, which hold up these saints as icons of first-world libertinism – while actually encouraging fundamentalists to butcher the people in their homeland who have asked their intercessions for centuries, and continue to do so now, for a certain modicum of peace.
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