{"id":2495,"date":"2005-09-12T09:18:09","date_gmt":"2005-09-12T09:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/return-the-hagia-sophia.html"},"modified":"2005-09-12T09:18:09","modified_gmt":"2005-09-12T09:18:09","slug":"return-the-hagia-sophia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/return-the-hagia-sophia.html","title":{"rendered":"Return the Hagia Sophia?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s a website dedicated to that purpose<\/a> via a petition<\/p>\n

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If Turkey aspires to join the community of Europe, the first step would be to show a spirit of understanding and a sense of justice, mutual respect and willingness to cooperate, as is the culture of the European Union. The time to restore the spirituality of Hagia Sophia as a place of Christian worship is now. The spiritual \u201credemption\u201d of the Holy Wisdom church might be realized with the same care and respect with which Abd\u00fclmecid, that progressive, proeuropean reformer of the Ottoman Empire, commissioned the last major Ottoman restoration of Hagia Sophia. <\/p>\n

History might neglect but it never forgets. Historic mistakes can be reversed and corrected. By taking the big and noble step of redeeming Hagia Sophia, the Turkish state would prove its genuine respect for the Christians of Europe and the world. Restoring Hagia Sophia to Christian worship would be THE revolutionary gesture of wisdom, progress and civility. Such an act would offer Istanbul the rare privilege of hosting not only a great monument of world art, but also one of Christianity\u2019s most important places of worship, a truly rare diamond.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s a website dedicated to that purpose via a petition If Turkey aspires to join the community of Europe, the first step would be to show a spirit of understanding and a sense of justice, mutual respect and willingness to cooperate, as is the culture of the European Union. The time to restore the spirituality…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nReturn the Hagia Sophia? - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/return-the-hagia-sophia.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Return the Hagia Sophia? - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Here’s a website dedicated to that purpose via a petition If Turkey aspires to join the community of Europe, the first step would be to show a spirit of understanding and a sense of justice, mutual respect and willingness to cooperate, as is the culture of the European Union. The time to restore the spirituality…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/return-the-hagia-sophia.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-09-12T09:18:09+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Return the Hagia Sophia? - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/return-the-hagia-sophia.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Return the Hagia Sophia? - Via Media","og_description":"Here’s a website dedicated to that purpose via a petition If Turkey aspires to join the community of Europe, the first step would be to show a spirit of understanding and a sense of justice, mutual respect and willingness to cooperate, as is the culture of the European Union. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2495\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}