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MIDDLE EAST EXPERT IS OBERLIN COLLEGE BACCALAUREATE SPEAKER
MAY 20, 2002-- Charles M. Sennott—a veteran newsman currently covering the war on terrorism from the Middle East and the author of The Body and The Blood: The Holy Land's Christians at the Turn of a New Millennium -- will present Oberlin College's 2002 Baccalaureate Address on Sunday, May 26.
Sennott, London bureau chief of the Boston Globe and former Middle
East Bureau chief for the publication, will present his talk during the
baccalaureate service which will be held at 4 P.M.
on May 26 in Finney Chapel, located at the corner of Professor and Lorain
streets. The event is free and open to the public.
Thomas J. Klutznick '61, chairman of the College's Board of Trustees,
will introduce the speaker. The program will include Rise Up, My Love,
My Fair One by Healey Willan and O, Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem
by Herbert Howells sung by the Black River Singers under the direction
of Marci Alegant. Performing with them will be David S. G. Kazimir at
the organ. Alegant is assistant dean of the Oberlin Conservatory and Kazimir
is assistant director of Conservatory Admissions.
In The Body and the Blood, timely and firmly grounded in the troubled
history of the region, Sennott asks questions of the spirit as well as
of politics: two thousand years after Jesus' birth, is there a place for
his followers in the land he called home? Has the West fatally misunderstood,
even abandoned, the Christians of the Middle East? And most provocatively,
could Christianity help answer the riddle of peace in the region?
A Massachusetts native, the award-winning reporter and his family live
in Jerusalem. His book, subtitled A Reporter's Journey, is his
journalistic pilgrimage through the Holy Land in the year 2000. Braving
war zones, often on a daily basis, Sennott spent the turn of the new millennium
retracing the path of Jesus' life from Bethlehem to Emmaus through the
local Christian communities, a population which is disappearing dramatically
in the land where the faith began.
He found a region riven by political revolt, religious conflict, apocalyptic
prophecies and the quest for Jerusalem-just as it was 2000 years ago.
A century ago, Christians represented as much as 20 percent of the population
of what is today Israel.
Today the West Bank and Gaza comprise less than 2 percent of the total
population. Historians and demographers fear that within two more generations,
native Christianity could virtually disappear in the Holy Land.
Media Contact: Betty Gabrielli
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