Come, Ye Faithful, Raise the Strain

John of Damascus, 8th century

If you lived in the Holy Land when the poet of our Hymn of the Week, John of Damascus, lived, something about Christian art might have puzzled you. Actually, it wasn’t the art that was puzzling. It was how the art was viewed. You see, the caliph of Damascus, Abdul Malek, was a Muslim, and they don’t generally take kindly to images of anything, which …