Flagging It All Up

I am astonished that Ulster Unionists fly the flag of the Stern Gang. They ought to fly that of the British Mandate of Palestine, with the SDLP reasserting itself by flying that of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem.

With the latter ought that nun to have replaced the ISIS one that she took down in London, and the local council ought then to have hung the former alongside it.

From Palestine to Iraq, Arabism is bound up with Christianity, and perhaps especially with Catholicism.

The roots of the Melkite separation from the Orthodox Patriarchates of Antioch and Jerusalem in order to return to Petrine Unity lay in the persistent appointment of Greeks instead of Arabs as the bishops of Arab cities, culminating, in 1724, in the purported deposition of an Arab Patriarch of Antioch in favour of an imposed and imported Greek.

The Orthodox Patriarchs of Antioch remained Greeks until 1899, and those of Jerusalem remain so to this day, whereas every Melkite Patriarch, now for 290 years and counting, has been an Arab, while the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem is the second Palestinian in succession to hold that office, such that any return to recent centuries' occupancy of it by Italian missionaries is now quite inconceivable.

Mother Agnes Mariam of the Cross is a Melkite.

Similarly, whereas the Assyrians tend to see themselves as a distinct ethnic group, the Chaldean Catholics are far more likely to define themselves as Catholic Arabs, and have long been prominent in politics of that persuasion, quite out of proportion to their numbers. There have been successive waves of conversion from the Assyrian to the Chaldean Patriarchate on broadly or strongly those lines, most recently since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

And that is all before speaking of the Maronites.

Meanwhile, within Ulster Unionism, not only is there the matter of anti-British terrorism and of the service of certain regiments in British Palestine, but there is also the emerging theological critique of Zionism within the Church of Scotland and the Presbyterian Church of the USA, there are the former's several congregations and pastoral ministries in the Holy Land, there is the fact that the Protestant communities (including the significant Anglican presence in Jerusalem) have their roots in the Reformation of Unreformed Churches rather in the conversion of Muslims or Jews, and within that there is the notable Baptist element, not least in Gaza City.

Let the flags of the British Mandate of Palestine and of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem be flown from every lamppost in Northern Ireland. You could still tell Orange from Green areas, and vice versa, by which one was flown above the other one.