The Maronite Church is typical of Lebanon’s tradition of being not only physically but philosophically and intellectually at the crossroads of the world. The Maronite rite came to Lebanon directly from the Church of Antioch, but it is Roman Catholic, preserving its ancient language and rituals through the Patriarch of Antioch and the Middle East, but preserving also its allegiance to Rome. Maronite priests are often married, for a married man may become a priest. A man may not, however, marry after he takes the Maronite vows of the priesthood.

At the age of five, Gibran was sent to a village school under the auspices of the Maronite Church. When he was eleven, he had memorized all the Psalms. At thirteen, he entered Al Hikmat, a church college, where he remained for five years. At Al Hikmat, he studied with Father Joseph Haddad, whom Gibran described as “the only man who ever taught me anything.”

In his maturity, after he had written The Prophet, Gibran wrote Jesus, the Son of Man, a book which reflects Gibran’s deep knowledge of the Bible and of both Western and Eastern thought; for Gibran wrote not only of Arab philosophers but also of such men as St. Augustine, whom the West considers the Father of Latin theology. Augustine, nevertheless, was of Lebanese origin (Punic or Phoenician); he had been educated in the Phoenician schools of Carthage and was 33 before he accepted Christianity. Augustine accepted St. Paul’s belief in man’s original sin, but defined evil as that evil that man does voluntarily; St. Augustine wrote that only with help and through grace could man attain salvation, a premise which is now an orthodox doctrine of the Church.

Also, even a cursory review of Gibran’s works reveals that he had familiarized himself with the works of the ancient Lebanese, the high priests of Eshtar, Baal and Tamuz; he knew, too, Moses, the Prophets, the Beatitudes, and had read deeply of both Christian and Islamic theology. Gibran’s thirst had taken him to the fountains of Buddha, Zoroaster, Confucius, Voltaire, Rousseau, Nietzsche, Jefferson, Emerson and even to Lincoln. Gibran recognized that our religions advocate discipline and guidance, first through ceremonial practices, and secondly through prescribed ethical conduct.

Although religious rites vary greatly, Western ethics today are still those codified by Gibran’s ancestors along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, rules which advocate prudence, temperance, courage, justice, love, mercy and self-sacrifice.

Gibran was a rebel, but only against ceremonial practice, not against the ethos of his ancestors. Barbara Young, Gibran’s secretary in the latter years of his life, has written, “Organized religion had no attraction for this man.” But careful reading proves that Gibran was not agnostic; his anger was against religion as it was practiced, not against the religious man.

When Gibran was growing to manhood, the Turks ruled Lebanon, and the Maronite Church accepted a feudal role in order to survive within an Islamic society. Buttressing the feudal position of the church, the Christian Lebanese, the Maronites, zealously donated more lands to the church than it could cultivate; therefore, as the church turned more and more to the practice of sharecropping, it became increasingly a feudal master and employer of its own members. As the Church’s secular power grew, some of its hierarchy, its bishops and priests, used their position and the Church’s power to advance and enrich friends and relatives.

Gibran grew up too near the Church not to recognize its worldliness. He lost his first love to the nephew of a rapacious bishop. Then, leaving his own land, he saw the contrast provided by liberty, tolerance and freedom in America. His rebellion against the religious, then, was not only personal, but grew from the very ethos he had first learned from the religious.

Gibran later wrote a story in Arabic called “Kahlil the Heretic,” in which a novice tries to convince the monks to distribute all their possessions and to go preach among the poor. “Let us restore to the needy the vast lands of the convent and let us give back the riches we have taken from them. Let us disperse and teach the people to smile because of the bounty of heaven and to rejoice in the glories of life and of freedom.

“The hardships we shall encounter among the people shall be more sanctifying and more exalting than the ease and serenity we accept in this place. The sympathy that touches a neighbor’s heart is greater than virtue practiced unseen in this convent. A word of compassion for the weak, the criminal and the sinner is more magnificent than long, empty prayers droned in the temple.”

The monks, of course, unable to make Kahlil obey their rules, throw him out of the monastery.

“The feudal lord proclaims from his castle that the Sultan has appointed him as overlord to the people and the priest proclaims from his altar that God has appointed him as guardian of their souls.”

“The feudal lord binds the poor ‘fellah’s’ arms while the priest filches from his pockets. Between the lord representing the law and the priest representing God, the bodies and the souls of the people of Lebanon wither and die.”

In another story, also written in Arabic, “John the Madman,” Gibran tells of John’s reading the New Testament, which ordinary men were forbidden to read.

One day, reading and meditating, John neglected his herd, the heifers slowly wandering into the monastery’s pasture. The monks kept the heifers and demanded payment for damages. Unable to pay, John’s mother ransomed the herd by giving the monks her heirloom necklace in payment. Thus John became a crusader against the church, a preacher in the public square:

“Come again, O Jesus, to drive the vendors of thy faith from thy sacred temple.… They fill the skies with smoke from their candles and incense but leave the faithful hungry.”

The monks had John arrested and refused to free him until his father testified that he was insane. Therefore no one listened to John because the public was led to believe he was a madman.

Gibran, writing a friend about “John the Madman,” said, “I found that earlier writers, in attacking the tyranny of some of the clergy, attacked the practice of religion. They were wrong because religion is a belief natural to man.