The Resplendent Dawn

The Resplendent Dawn

Flag of The Resplendent Dawn
Motto: God became man, so that man might become God.
[1]
Region	Middle East
Capital	Damascus
Official Language(s)	Arabic, Greek
Leader	Emperor Konstantinos Damaskinos
Population	4.069 billion
Currency	Denarius
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The Resplendent Dawn is an Orthodox Christian Empire in the region Middle East, which encompasses large portions of Syria, along with Lebanon, Jordan, Sinai, and Cyprus.

A History of the Holy Orthodox Christian Empire, commonly known as the Resplendent Dawn, from its Inception, until the Current Era

I. In the Shadows of Empires World War I, the Great War, the War to End All Wars. One modern commentator has described it as "the murder-suicide of the Christian West." Another writes that "In 1914, the West put a gun to its collective head and blew its brains out." This was the war that shocked Europe out of any sense of complacency, the war that toppled empires, the war that led Western Civilization to question its own worth. But, all destruction is followed by creation, and as the Christian West tore itself apart, a new hope was dawning for the long submerged Christian East.

The death of the old empires paved the way for a new one. The Bolsheviks seized power in Russia, and pursued peace with the Kaiser's Germany. Third Rome had been overthrown. For the first time since Constantine, there was no Orthodox Christian Emperor, annointed as God's Chosen. The Turkish Empire was dismantled after the Central Powers surrendered, and many of its territories were left to be administered by the victorious British and French governments. For the first time in more than a millenium, these lands were not ruled by an Islamic power.

In Turkey, Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians found themselves in an increasingly dangerous position. Many Armenians had already been killed, all these groups were targets of continued extermination efforts, especially when Greece and Turkey went to war. Many of these groups fled south into the French mandate, and when the Greco-Turkish population exchange occured, many Greeks chose to go South into Syria and Lebanon instead of being forced into Greece.

Many of these Christian arrivals were passionate about their faith, and because the French government allowed conversions to Christianity, they converted many of the local Muslims to Christianity, as well as bolstering the faith of the long down-trodden Arab Christian minority. In addition, many of the Greeks were enamoured with the Megali Idea, and attempted to establish an Imperial structure in southern Syria and Lebanon. The French government, impoverished by the war, and struggling to rebuild, made little attempt to reign in their visions of glory. The most powerful of these newly established nobles, was the Duke of Damascus.

World War II was a brutally violent exercise that once more shocked the world. The Christian population, due to immigration from other parts of the Middle East, conversions, and refugees from the Soviet Union, had become the majority in a large portion of the French Mandate. This population strongly supported the Free French government. After the war, three states were formed out of the French Mandates: Lebanon, which was a Christian majority state, Northern Syria, a Muslim state, and Southern Syria, a Christian state.

Realizing how dangerous the region could be after the 1948 war between the Arab Muslim states and Isreal, the two Christian states merged. The Duke of Damascus was declared an Emperor of the joined country, an event which was supposed to fortell a resplendent new dawn for Christianity in the Middle East, and this popular phrase lent the Empire its most enduring monicker.

II. The New Dawn of Eastern Christianity The new Orthodox Christian Empire, under its first Emperor Nicholas I, attempted to maintain a peaceful course. While being unabashadly on the side of France and the First World in the Cold War, she stayed out of the Arab-Israeli Wars, and spent her time on internal affairs, such as building a strong economy. The Empire leaned toward the welfare state model based on the European nations, but the state did what it could to help the Church without persecuting other religions.

The Orthodox Christians of what would become the Orthodox Christian Empire were generally very traditional in their leaning. They refused to accept the New Calender after the Pan-Orthodox Conference of the '20s, and managed to lend strength to the Old Calender movement in other areas. The Church of Antioch had been based in Damascus since the Crusades, and was thus the main Church of the new empire. Emperor Nicholas I built a new city called Antioch near Damascus for the Church, though the two cities would eventually be merged due to expanding populations.

The Church of Antioch briefly joined the World Council of Churches when it was founded, but it left soon, disillusioned by that body's behavior. Other Orthodox Churches followed this and left that group, except for the Communist-controlled ones. The Empire was a consistent supporter of the First World against the Second World during the Cold War primarilly because of the many Orthodox Christians who had been enslaved by Communism.

Nicholas was succeeded as Emperor by his son, who became Emperor Nicholas II. Nicholas II focused more on religious issues than his father. While disenchanted with regard to the World Council of Churches and the ecumenical movement, he believed strongly in the mission of Christian reconciliation. His great work was fostering talks with different Christian groups. The Assyrian Church of the East, the Syrian Jacobite Church of Antioch, and the Armenian Churches in the Empire all were reconciled with the Orthodox Christian Church of Antioch. While some Monophysites and Nestorian in other parts of the world held out against union, many of those groups did come into communion with the Orthodox as a result of Nicholas' efforts.

Sadly, one major Christian group in the Empire could not be reunited with the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. That was the Roman Catholic Church. There were some Latins in the Empire, but most were members of the Maronite, Melkite, and Syrian Catholic Churches. Most of the Maronite Church came into union with the Orthodox, and the Melkites and Syrians merged into one Melkite Catholic Church. This would be the main Roman Catholic Church in the Empire. While Nicholas II was very successful in the cause of Christian unity, the Roman Catholic Church was radicalizing drastically as a result of the Vatican II Council in the 1960s, and the resulting tension between the Catholics and the Orthodox would tear apart the nation.

((To be continued... Next: The Great War of Succession))