08332
April 28, 2008
Tense times
Iraqi Christians, including Presbyterians, continue to hold up despite violence, fear
LOUISVILLE – It’s been five years since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime, and though Iraqi Christians, including Presbyterians, are surviving, the situation is as tense as ever, said one Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) leader close to the situation.
“The situation in Basra (Iraq’s third-largest city) is really getting more tense and more violent,” the Rev. Nuhad Tomeh, the PC(USA)’s regional liaison for Syria, Lebanon, Kuwait and Iraq, said in a recent interview. And in Baghdad, curfews have been instituted, he said.
Christians are especially traumatized in Mosul, where last month the body of Paulos Faraj Rahho, the Chaldean Catholic archbishop of Mosul, was found in a shallow grave. He had been kidnapped in late February after leading prayers at a local church.
Mosul is the “most sensitive situation,” Tomeh said. “Automatically Christians there are more fearful of their lives.”
“Some Christians have tried to leave” the country, said Tomeh, who is based in Beirut, Lebanon. “They were really fearful of what could happen.”
“The situation is still very tense,” he said.
Car bombs, drive-by shootings, clashes between militants and the Iraqi army and police, and scores of deaths have become the “norm” throughout Iraq.
Tomeh said Christians are still able to worship “to a certain extent,” and in some places it’s “off and on.”
The Presbyterian presence in Iraq includes the Evangelical Church (Presbyterian Church) in Baghdad and the Assyrian Presbyterian Church in Baghdad, which have merged; the Evangelical Church (Presbyterian Church) in Basra, the Evangelical Church (Presbyterian Church) in Kirkuk and the Evangelical Church (Presbyterian Church) in Mosul.
“They are very careful, and any kind of public meetings they are doing it on a low-key kind of situation,” Tomeh said.
Yet at the same time, he added that more and more Iraqis are looking to the church.
“They are definitely seeking the church more for belonging, for being affiliated, for help,” Tomeh said. “People are really suffering, so they come to the church.”
“This gives the church a big responsibility to care for them physically and socially,” he said. The churches need money for training, and relief supplies and “sometimes just to cover their own expenses.”
The PC(USA) has several ways to assist those in Iraq, including through Extra Commitment Opportunities (ECO’s). Some of the ECO accounts related to Iraqi can be located here on the denomination’s Web site.
Tomeh said additionally Christians in the United States must keep the Iraqi people lifted up in prayer.
“They are always asking for prayer for them” and “for peace in general,” he said. And, they also make a plea for anything that can be done on an international level by church leaders “to minimize this violence.”
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