Fr Wiebe wrote; Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2004 01:40:58 -0000 (GMT) From: "The Rev GDVWiebe SSC.,PhD" <gdvw@...> Subject: Re: [FaithandLife] Churches open in Baghdad <snip> . There is no need for 'missionaries'in a land that has been Holy Catholic & Apostolic for 2 millenia. There needs to be a balanced reporting and these 'house churches'(sic) need to get back where they belong. It is significant that the Church was NOT persecuted under the B'aathist regime (indeed some of the B'aathist founders were Eastern Christians).Blessings. GDVW+ ---------------------------------------- Fr. Wiebe+ While there may not have been the sort of persecution of Christians in Iraq during the 1990's as happened in other parts of the world, it seems to me there was a suppression of Christians. I may be entirely wrong, but it seems to me that Iraq is a long way from having such a Christian presence that missionaries are not needed. In an ideal world, it would be nice if Christians could identify those of other communions as Christians and agree as to who is the proper Episcopal Authority in a given territory. The case in America is not so nice as to make it easy for a person to determine that proper authority. Nor is it nice and easy in Europe or at present, and I think it would be well nigh impossible in Iraq. True there are Christians in Iraq. Tariq Assiz was at least nominally one such. Tariq Aziz (also spelled Tareq Aziz) was born Mikhail Yuhanna to a Chaldean Christian family in northern Iraq in 1936. But the fact that a high-ranking member of the Ba’athist Regime was a member of an ancient Christian Communion hardly means the ”land has been Holy Catholic & Apostolic for 2 millennia.” It appears this sort of Christian helped in suppressing Christians and other minorities. The Assyrians have lived under foreign domination since the fall of the Assyrian kingdom to Persian power in the seventh century B.C. Since then, the Assyrians have been subjected to Persian, Arab, and Ottoman domination. As a result of ethnic cleansing by Iranian, Turkish, and Arab-Iraqi forces in the 1920s and 1930s, the Assyrians lost thousands of people and have found themselves mostly concentrated in the mountainous regions north of Baghdad. Under various Iraqi governments, particularly those following the British withdrawal in 1945, Christians in Iraq have been politically suppressed. Although substantial numbers of their intellectuals chose to join the Ba'th regime and identify themselves as Arab Christians, the Assyrians were subjected to systematic attempts by Saddam’s regime to "Arabize" them, a process that included driving ethnic minorities from their lands and seizing their properties, especially in the strategic, oil-rich northern region bordering the Kurdish enclave. This was done partly out of Saddam’s fear of disloyalty on the part of non-Arabs, and partly out of a desire to reward Saddam’s political supporters with their land. “The Iraqi government also forced ethnic minorities such as the Assyrians, the Kurds and the Turkomen to sign 'national correction forms' that require them to renounce their ethnic identities and declare themselves to be Arabs," says Hania Mufti of Human Rights Watch. Today, in the Middle East, Assyrians are spread across Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Iran, where rights groups say they live as small, often discriminated-against minorities under governments largely unsympathetic to their religious and cultural aspirations. In Iraq, most Assyrians live in the North, under Kurdish control in an enclave that was established after the 1991 Gulf War. If the Kurds are eventually able to establish their own state, the Christians may well find themselves the subject of further purges. I agree with you, Fr. Wiebe, Christians in the West should be sympathetic to and support whatever remnants of Christian communities exist in the Mid East. However, in view of the fact that the Assyrian Christians are isolated politically and geographically, I don’t see that it would be wrong for other Christians to witness to the faith in Iraq. I’m not sure who would be good candidates. Anglicans might find it a bit hard to find an audience willing to listen to them in view of the British-American invasion. I suspect American missionaries might find it difficult to gain a hearing as well “Witness” and “Martyr” seem to be interchangeable terms in Christian history. Whoever the brave souls are that attempt to bring the Gospel to the Moslem majority in Iraq will face bombing, blasting and sudden death. Whoever takes up the Cross and follows Our Lord in that place, in my opinion, deserves our prayers and best wishes. It doesn’t appear the Christians in the Mid East have enjoyed a secure place or growth in recent centuries. As for a territorial Episcopate in Iraq, is there really such a thing? Charles+