Brawl at Bethlehem

Posted December 28th @ 5:23 pm by Andy Print This Post

Tell me this doesn’t sound like fodder for a bad comedy sketch: seven people were injured during a brawl between Greek Orthodox and Armenian priests at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. It wasn’t lofty theological differences that sparked this particular religious conflict, however:

The brawl apparently began when Greek Orthodox priests set up ladders to clean the walls and ceilings of their part of the church after the Christmas Day celebrations.

Armenian priests claimed that the ladders encroached on their portion of the church, which led the two sects to exchange angry words which quickly turned to blows.

Witnesses said that the robed and bearded priests scuffled for more than an hour using fists, brooms and iron rods as weapons.

Pastors—next time one of your church services doesn’t go according to plan, take comfort in the fact that it could always be worse.

Filed in: Christmas, Funny, Strange

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4 Comments

  1. John
    December 29, 2007 at 19:00

    Another great example of why we would do well to avoid separating the sacred from the mundane in our wee little brains.

  2. mo
    January 1, 2008 at 03:38

    Sounds like a Monty Python skit.

  3. danr
    January 2, 2008 at 15:14

    New Bethlehem Version:
    “By this will all the world know you are my disciples”... by how well you protect the exact boundaries of your portion of your sacred church building from others of competing sects.

    The enemy rejoices over such headlines, giving more fodder for those who believe Christianity (and religion in general) “poisons everything” (ala Hitchens).

  4. Siarlys Jenkins
    January 5, 2008 at 15:51

    This simply emphasizes that “the church” is a human institution, not a divine one. Jesus may have established a fellowship, an ecclesia, but he did not establish a hierarchy, a dogma, a doctrine, a ritual. All of these are fine if they help bring SOME people to God, but they are not THE WAY. Fortunately, the USA was founded by people who understood that, and refused to establish any human proposal as God’s Way, or presume that the state could sort it out. Otherwise, we’d all look about as silly as those priests fighting turf wars in the church (which may or may not be where Jesus was really born).

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