Related:
Squaring The Circle In Syria For Two Centuries.
The Return of The Ottomans? Syria's Collapse And The Coming Pogroms.
The Evolution of Political Football In Jerusalem.
Political Intrigue In The Holy Land Two Centuries Ago.
Power Follows Justice, or How The British Supplanted The Ottomans.
Jonathan Parry - Promised Lands: The British and the Ottoman Middle East.
An excerpt from, "Promised Lands: The British and the Ottoman Middle East" by Jonathan Parry, Princeton University Press, 2022, Pg. 227 - 232:
By June 1841, Friedrich Wilhelm's aspirations had coalesced into a new and more plausible plan: a joint Anglican-Lutheran bishopric of Jerusalem. This would symbolise the fellowship between the two Protestant churches, would give them crucial political weight and institutional presence at Jerusalem, and would allow them to take the fight to papal missionary activitv in the East and eventually to Islam. It would provide Middle Eastern Protestantism with a recognised episcopal head who could reach out to other Churches, would give weight to the Anglo-German LJS mission, and would encourage German Lutherans to appreciate the merits of episcopalianism. The as yet unbuilt Anglican church in Jerusalem would be a purified temple for a "national and universal Christian foundation." Friedrich Wilhelm IV sent Bunsen to Britain that month to persuade the archbishop of Canterbury of the idea.
He needed no persuasion. Archbishop Howley, and Bishop Blomfield of London, had already been thinking hard about a bishop for the Middle East. This was part of their concern to build the Church's global role, which was threatened both by the papacy and by internal challenges. At home, it was under pressure from Dissent and from the Liberal government's preference for loosening the Church-state partnership after the pluralist constitutiona reforms of 1828-32. In the 1830s, legislation was introduced making some of the historic revenues of the Church of England in Ireland and in Canada available for the needs of the non-Anglican majorities there. So the Church was now very conscious of the need to rely on its own resources to raise its global profile. The episcopal structure was weak in the colonies, and Howley and Blomfield did not trust voluntary missionary activity to spread sound religious doctrine there. In the course of the 183os, the diocesan structure in Canada, India, and Australasia was extended, but this was known to be just the first step needed in a strategy of stronger local organisation throughout the empire, headed by bishops. Howley and Blomfield began a major campaign for colonial bishoprics, building on the public mood in Britain in favour of Church defence, which was reviving the fortunes of the Conservative party. Ashley, Lindsay, and the young William Gladstone were among the Tories active in it. This led to the founding of new bishoprics in New Zealand, Tasmania, Guiana, and Antigua in 1841-42.85 An indication of the growth of Anglican enthusiasm for global evangelising activities at this time is shown by the increase in the annual voluntary income of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, which had been £1,459 in 1821 and £7,402 in 1831, but rose to £44,318 in 1841 and £84,909 in 1851. The income of the CMS, which had benefited much more from the enthusiasm of the 1810s and 1820s, rose from £39,814 in 1832 to £90,305 in 1842. Average yearly LJS income was £12,687 in the 1820s and £30,020 in the 1840s.
Blomfield definitely intended this global mission to include the original Christian heartlands of the Middle East, where Anglican activity lagged so far behind that of Roman Catholics. His appeal of April 1840 for new bishoprics envisaged the day when the Church of England would "be recognised, by all the nations of the earth, as the stronghold of pure religion, and the legitimate dispenser of its means of grace: and will be a chosen instrument in the hands of God for purifying and restoring the other branches of Christ's Holy Catholic Church." In October 1838, Ashley had already floated the idea of a bishopric at Jerusalem, linked to Malta and the existing Anglican chaplaincies around the Mediterranean.
In July 1840, just after the signing of the Treaty of London, Howley and Blomfield sent George Tomlinson on a mission to the Levant. He was Howley's former chaplain and secretary of the Church's senior outreach society, the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK). The three men hoped to build on increased public interest in the Ottoman Empire, and to create connections with the historic Churches of the East. After Tomlinson returned, they proposed that an Anglican bishop, based in Malta, should coordinate this activity around the Mediterranean, and in April 1841 Blomfield connected this idea with the colonial bishopric campaign. In December 1840, Howley pressed the government to secure toleration for Christians as well as Jews in the Ottoman Empire, particularly so that the ancient Churches of the East could maintain their independence from aggressive Roman missions. One of the particular objects of Tomlinson's journey was to make contact with the bishops of the Greek Orthodox Church and to urge more cooperation in the circulation of printed Bibles in Greek, Arabic, Turkish, and Armenian throughout the region. This would be facilitated by the current political understanding between Britain and Russia. Tomlinson argued that, as Anglicans could not beat the Greek Church's local strength among Orthodox laymen, they should work with it: "the only rational---and, as it appears to me, the most Christian---way of improving their spiritual condition, is to support and improve their own institutions."
So when Bunsen arrived in London in late June, he found that the Church hierarchy was very keen on his idea of a Protestant bishopric of Jerusalem. The Germanophile Queen Victoria shared this view, and terms were settled. Nomination to the post would alternate between Britain and Prussia, but the archbishop would be able to veto the Prussian nominee. A Lutheran candidate would have to receive Anglican ordination. The government passed the legislation necessary to allow a bishop of the Church to minister in a foreign country and to be a foreign subject. The king of Prussia gave half the endowment necessary to pay the bishop's stipend; the British portion was raised by voluntary means, superintended by four lay trustees.
The territorial remit of the Bishopric of Jerusalem was agreed to be the heartlands of Christianity in 500 CE: Palestine, the rest of Syria, Chaldea, Egypt, and Abyssinia. So it complemented a Malta-based Mediterranean bishopric, which was created in 1842. The latter had to be called the Bishopric of Gibraltar since the British government had already acknowledged a Roman Catholic bishopric of Malta, but its Malta base signified that its jurisdiction would reach through the eastern Mediterranean, as far as the British embassy in Constantinople and the consular chapel in Smyrna. It therefore fell to the bishop of Gibraltar to liaise with the Greek Church around the shores of the Aegean, in the way that Tomlinson had foreshadowed in his 1840 report. Unsurprisingly, Tomlinson was appointed to the Gibraltar see in 1842, by Peel whose children he had tutored.
The Jerusalem episcopate was founded on the principle of cooperation with the Syrian, Nestorian, and Coptic Churches---rather than challenging the authority of their patriarchs, which the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem did. The bishop was also told to be on good terms with the Greek Church, and Howler appointed George Williams as the bishop's chaplain in that particular hope. Howley's official "Statement of Proceedings" described the bishopric's object as to secure "relations of amity [with] the ancient Churches of the East, strengthening them against the encroachments of the see of Rome, and preparing the way for their purification." By setting forth pure Christianity in Jerusalem for the first time, it also promised to help the "desultory efforts" so far made for the conversion of Jews. "The hand of Providence" could be seen in the recent events in the Ottoman Empire that had allowed Britain and Prussia to open a door for "the advancement of the Saviour's kingdom, and for the restoration of God's ancient people to their spiritual birthright."
In other words, the Jerusalem bishopric represented both main facets of Protestant religious interest---most immediately, to reach out to the Churches of the East, but also to promote the welfare of Jews in whatever ways might become practicable. In Jerusalem itself, however, its creation strengthened the impression that the aim of Britain and Prussia was to play the game of sectarian Christian rivalry. The Spanish minister assumed they would press for a separate millet for Protestants. The French consul in Beirut feared that Britain would attempt a protectorate over the Maronites. When the first bishop, Michael Solomon Alexander, a converted Prussian Jew who was professor of Hebrew at King's College London, arrived in early 1842, he faced so much antagonism from the existing denominations that Hugh Rose, the consul-general in Syria, had to get the Ottoman government to guarantee his protection. "All are more or less, I regret to say, against him." Aberdeen, the new Tory foreign secretary, was conscious of the need to pacify the other powers and the Ottomans over his appointment. In May 1842, he reminded Alexander, who was known to have a particular interest in the conversion of Jews, that he was forbidden to proselytise. His jurisdiction was merely spiritual, so he could not offer British protection to any Ottoman subject whom he might convert. In any case, Alexander could not reach out to the European Jews, since Russia, through Bardaki and Bazili, continued to protect them- and Bazili was upgraded to be consul-general in Syria in 1849. In the autumn of 1842, three Russian Jews who were being tried by Bardaki for an offence wanted to escape his jurisdiction. They took refuge with the LJS missionary Ewald, claiming to be interested in Protestantism. Bazili demanded that they be handed back; Young supported his request. Alexander refused to do so, but eventually had to give in. Relations between Young and Alexander never recovered, and Rose had to make clear to the latter that to give asylum to Jews who were subject to Russian authority violated international law.
In January 1844, Young lashed out at religious people in Britain who imagined that his role as consul in Jerusalem was "to shape a course in order to meet the views of a popular reading of Prophecy" about Jewish restoration. They needed to "regard the actual condition of these Countries" and understand "the real position and wants of their present inhabitants," or else they would damage Britain's cause, and the Jews, by stirring up hostility from Latins and Greeks. When Alexander died suddenly in November 1845, the LJS mission in Jerusalem had only made thirty-one converts. There was now a clear gulf between its aspirations and the priorities of the British government. When Thomas Tully Crybbace travelled from Stirling to London to advocate the return of the Jewish nation to Palestine, he was drily told by the head of the Foreign Office that this matter did not come "under [our] cognizance."
The British government continued to try to uphold Jewish rights in more practical ways. In April 1841, at Ponsonby's suggestion, Palmerston issued a circular to British consuls in the empire that they should watch for cases of oppression or injustice to Jews and report them to local authorities and to Constantinople. He reminded them that in the Edict of Gülhane the Porte had pledged to protect the legal rights of all its subjects; moreover, the sultan had issued a special firman guaranteeing Jewish civil rights after his meeting with Montefiore in November 1840. Palmerston had also wanted to get special assurances from the Porte for European Jews settling in Palestine, because he thought that they would not otherwise risk their capital. However, Ottoman ministers (and Ponsonby) had argued that that there was no evidence that this was required, and that it would create awkward precedents and tensions. In fact, there was hardly any sign of European capital investment.
Bishop Alexander's clash with the Russians also further delayed the attempt to build the Protestant church in Jerusalem. Despite the lack of permission for construction, a foundation stone had been laid, but then local complaints prevented further digging. In February and August 1841, Palmerston got Ponsonby to press the matter at the Porte, finding it difficult to understand how, "at a moment when the whole of Syria has so lately been restored to the Sultan by the powerful interposition of Great Britain, so small a favour as this could be refused to the British Government upon grounds of a pedantic adherence to Mahomedan doctrines." Construction began again, but permission was still unforthcoming. After the affair of the Russian Jews, the local governor pointedly stopped the work in January 1843.
As sectarianism increased, the Ottomans were becoming more adept at playing the powers off against one another. Other European powers felt the need to set up consulates in Jerusalem: Prussia in 1842, France and Sardinia in 1843. Moreover, in 1842, the Greek Orthodox patriarch of Antioch sent a delegation to Russia to seek material and moral support against intensified Catholic and Protestant missionary activity in the region. As a result, an archimandrite, Uspenski, was sent on a tour of Syria and Palestine in 1843-44 to find ways of strengthening the Orthodox position. In 1845, one visitor to Jerusalem observed that "in a paltry, inland, eastern town, without trade or importance of any kind, sit the five consuls of the great European powers, looking at each other, it is difficult to say why or wherefore."
Bishop Alexander's personal history gave him a particular concern with the Jews of Palestine. However, for many churchmen at home, the primary anxiety about the East continued to be the threat from Roman Catholicism. This led to Britain becoming entangled with both the Druze and the Nestorians. In each case, the original cause was the zeal of local American Protestant missionaries.
