Hilaire Belloc once wrote that the loss of a family home where previous generations had lived and loved for centuries is “a sharp foretaste of death.” It is a sense that there will be no return, that the collective memory enshrined in the walls of the house will be no more; newcomers, who have no memory of the place and its traditions, will not even recognise its history.
Roger Scruton, that great philosopher of place, wrote that “belonging is a relationship in history.” What happens when both memory and history become weapons of war, when space itself, both sacred and secular, becomes a means by which the enemy destroys the signs and symbols which were, in a sense, the family home, erasing all memory of their presence with deliberate intent?
Conquerors have often destroyed important symbols of the subjugated people’s history or converted them to new use, but there has been a powerful development over the last several decades of the deliberate, systematic destruction of symbols—especially sacred symbols and the signs of the actual presence of a people—to deny historical reality, the eradication of memory as a weapon of war.
This was not just the Taliban destroying ancient Buddhist shrines in Afghanistan; it was far more deliberate and wide-ranging. It is ongoing in one country and seemingly unchallenged by the international community. That might be because, in two specific areas, the attempt to destroy the historical presence of a people was and is being perpetrated by Islamic forces against a Christian culture.
When the forces of the Islamic State (ISIS) swept through Syria and Iraq, beginning in 2014, they immediately began destroying both churches and the Christian symbols within them. Visiting both Syria and Iraq many times, I have seen every Cross in a church defaced, statues broken, and icons scratched and damaged. There was a reason, for example, that ISIS used churches in Mosul as torture centres, prisons, and often places for target practice. It was not only to blaspheme and insult their true purpose, to gloat over the defeated Christian populace, but also to deny the building ever had a sacred use. There was far worse to see. In many places, ISIS destroyed Christian graveyards, something I saw with my own eyes. They not only destroyed the graveyards; they dug up the bodies of the Christian ancestors and threw them away. If there are no graveyards, it means the people were never there. The policy was not merely cultural vandalism; it was deliberate and planned.
Scruton wrote that “sacred spaces are steeped in the hope and sufferings of those who have fought for them. And they belong to others who are yet to be.” To eradicate hallowed ground not only denies the reality of an historical presence but also attempts to ensure that those who are “yet to be” will never return.
This policy is happening in another part of the world at this very moment. This time, not the work of a revolutionary force, but the work of a nation feted across the globe, especially because it has seemingly unlimited amounts of oil and gas. The oldest Christian nation on earth, Armenia, is suffering an historical and cultural genocide to accompany not only the physical genocide of 1915 to 1917 but the forced expulsion of all the Armenian citizens from the territory of Artsakh, or Nagorno-Karabakh, in 2023. In every area that the Islamic nation of Azerbaijan takes from Armenia, churches, monasteries, and religious signs and symbols have been destroyed. Graveyards are desecrated. The famous Armenian khachkar’s, the decorated stone Cross so typical of Armenian culture, some from at least the 9th century, have been broken, moved, or vandalised. Following the example of their Turkish overlords, who accompanied the Armenian genocide of the last century with a similar policy of the destruction of memory and presence, the Turkic Azerbaijanis are seeking to eradicate all signs of the ancient Christian history of Armenia, present since the 4th century. It is, in fact, the prevailing policy and the absurd fantasy of the government of Azerbaijan that the very state of Armenia has never existed, which is precisely why all historical signs must be eliminated. Meanwhile, the world watches and fills the oil tanks and pays the petrodollars.
Christians, certainly both Catholic and Orthodox, flowing from their Hebrew past, have a particular concept of memory, most completely and uniquely experienced in the mystery of the Mass, or Divine Mysteries. This is the sense of the past being made present, called anamnesis; not just the idea of the past being recalled, but, in a particular way, the past being truly present by being remembered.
Although not exactly the same, the presence of hallowed structures, signs, and symbols of memory and presence, makes present the reality, as Scruton again says, of “a relationship that binds both the present and absent generations, and which depends upon the perception of a place as home.”
This matters profoundly to a people who have a deep sense of home even if, like the Armenians, they have been forced to be in the diaspora so often.
Perhaps it is less understood and actively neglected in a West increasingly forgetful of home and culture. Ruled by elites, ‘anywhere’ people as David Goodhart has described them, who actually despise place and nation, secular in thought and contemptuous of religion, especially if it is Christian. Across the West, there is a destruction of memory, a denial of the past, exemplified by the refusal to acknowledge the foundational role of Christianity in the European Constitution; there is a reason why the European Commission is probably the most secular institution in Europe. Although churches, as they rapidly empty, are not being bulldozed, or at least not many, they are being used for other purposes, increasingly as mosques in Britain.
For those of us who care, this increased denial of people and place, their history and culture, as a weapon of war, must be fought vigorously. The defence of Christian Armenia is an imperative for all who claim the name of Christian. As in the Middle East, they belong where they have always been, where they deserve to be. As Roger Scruton noted, “By bearing the imprint of former generations, a corner of the earth pleads for permanence.”
