Word: sectarian
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Perhaps it was a late-dawning awareness of the extent of the destruction and horror. Perhaps it was sheer exhaustion. Perhaps it was only that the opposing sides needed a chance to replenish arms supplies. Whatever the reason, Beirut last week was tremulously observing a pause in the political-sectarian civil war that has killed at least 3,500, wounded 6,000 more, left more than $2 billion in property damage and destroyed the city's once freewheeling economy. Beirutis have seen eleven previous cease-fires come and swiftly go in the past eight weeks; few believed that...
Each time embattled Beirut tries to pick up the pieces after a makeshift truce dampens political sectarian violence, something happens to rekindle the fighting and paralyze the city. Last week, only four days after the start of another ceasefire, the multifactional civil war between right-wing Christian Phalangists and left-wing Moslems raged anew. In one day there were at least 200 kidnapings. Two of the victims were Americans: Charles Gallagher and William Dykes, the director and deputy director of the regional center of the U.S. Information Service. The first foreigners to be kidnaped during the latest troubles, they were...
...battle-weary people of Lebanon have been riding a psychological roller coaster for the past six months. Their hopes for peace have soared when it seemed that the factional, sectarian fighting between left-wing Moslems and right-wing Christians might halt; they have plunged when violence again erupted. Last week was typical. As yet another attempt at a truce seemed to be taking hold at the start of the week, some of the sand and cement barricades in Beirut were pulled down. Militiamen from both sides poured out of their strongholds; some embraced and even kissed one another. Banks reopened...
...English-inspired "Foppery, Luxury and Recreation." Gerald Carson, a student of American manners, rightly notes that "a prohibitionist in colonial America would have been considered a lunatic." The alcoholic eye-opener was a morning ritual for some upper-class women. In the presence of the bottle, church people overcame sectarian differences. On the Carolina frontier, Episcopalian Charles Woodmason grumbled that "In this Article both Presbyterians and Episcopalians very charitably agree (viz.) That of Getting Drunk...
...system that still sometimes did acknowledge the Christian God and respected the man Jesus. Thomas Jefferson found various religions "all good enough" because they helped preserve peace and order, but he could also be critical. Benjamin Franklin "respected them all," but he took sides against the more dogmatic and sectarian churches, those that "serv'd principally to divide us, and make us unfriendly to one another...