Wielding God's Power: A Framework for Understanding Orthodox Christian-Muslim Relations

Over the past 2 decades, the topic of Christian-Muslim relations has become one of the most talked-about issues in the world, and western Christian historical experiences and sources have usually dominated these discussions. Often overlooked is the fact that vast numbers of Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Christians and Muslims have continuously lived among one another from the beginning of Islam in the seventh century up to the present day. This article asserts that a broad analysis of Orthodox Christian-Muslim relations as a distinct history can reveal insights into the nature of interfaith relationships across time and geographical or linguistic boundaries, highlighting lasting and profound human experiences such as solidarity, spiritual fellowship, traumatic memory, and resistance against injustice. This article will both introduce readers to the key scholarly literature that discusses aspects of this distinct history, and also put these sources into dialog in order to propose ways of approaching this history as a coherent field of study. Specifically, this article argues that theologies of sacred power have structured Orthodox-Christian Muslim relations across time and space. These theologies are here termed "imperial theologies of sacred power," and "vernacular theologies of sacred power." "Imperial theologies of sacred power" refer to the political theological claims that both Orthodox Christian and Muslims empires made to justify their dominance over the other's religious communities as imperial subjects. "Vernacular theologies of sacred power" refers to the relationships that were constructed between members of these communities at the local level when they actively shared sacred spaces and rituals. The concept of "vernacular theologies" is taken from recent theoretical work in Orthodox Christian Studies by Lydia Bringerud (2019), Sarah Riccardi-Swartz (2020), and Helena Kupari and Elini Vuola (2020) and provides a helpful way forward for the further exploration of the historical contours of interfaith relations in Orthodox Christian contexts.