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Soldier4Christ
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« Reply #33 on: June 26, 2005, 01:11:00 PM » |
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Amen to that Cris.
Here is some more news on Christianity in Iraq.
Evangelicals building a base among Iraqis
Other Christians, Muslims see threat
By Caryle Murphy, Washington Post | June 26, 2005
BAGHDAD -- With arms outstretched, the congregation at National Evangelical Baptist Church belted out a praise hymn backed up by drums, electric guitar, and keyboard. In the corner, slide images of Jesus filled a large screen. A simple white wooden cross adorned the stage, and worshipers sprinkled the pastor's Bible-based sermon with approving shouts of ''Amen!"
National Evangelical is Iraq's first Baptist congregation and one of at least seven new Christian evangelical churches established in Baghdad in the past two years. Its Sunday afternoon service, in a building behind a house on a quiet street, draws a couple of hundred worshipers who like the lively music and the focus on the Bible.
''I'm thirsty for this kind of church," Suhaila Tawfik, a veterinarian who was raised Catholic, said at one service. ''I want to go deep in understanding the Bible."
Tawfik is not alone. The US-led toppling of Saddam Hussein, who limited the establishment of new denominations, has altered the religious landscape of predominantly Muslim Iraq. A newly energized Christian evangelical activism here, supported by Western and other foreign evangelicals, is now challenging the dominance of Iraq's Christian denominations and raising concern from Muslim and Christian religious leaders about a threat to the status quo.
The evangelicals' numbers are not large -- perhaps a few thousand -- in the context of Iraq's estimated 800,000 Christians. But they are emerging at a time that the country's traditional churches have lost their privileged status and have seen their flocks depleted because of decades-long emigration. Now, traditional church leaders see the new evangelical churches filling up, not so much with Muslim converts but with such Christians as Tawfik seeking a new kind of worship experience.
''The way the preachers arrived here . . . with soldiers . . . was not a good thing," said Baghdad's Roman Catholic archbishop, Jean Sleiman. ''I think they had the intention that they could convert Muslims, though Christians didn't do it here for 2,000 years."
''In the end," Sleiman said, ''they are seducing Christians from other churches."
Iraq's new churches are part of evangelicalism's growing presence in several Middle Eastern countries. In neighboring Jordan, for example, ''the indigenous evangelical presence is growing and thriving," said Todd Johnson, a scholar of global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts.
Nabeeh Abbassi, president of the Jordan Baptist Convention, said in an interview in Amman that there are about 10,000 evangelicals worshiping at 50 churches in Jordan.
While most evangelicals in Jordan come from traditional Christian denominations, Abbassi said, ''we're seeing more and more Muslim conversions."
Iraq's Christian population has been organized for centuries into denominations such as Chaldean Catholicism and Roman Catholicism. While Hussein's secular regime allowed freedom of worship, it limited new denominations, particularly if backed by Western churches.
During the US-led invasion in 2003, American evangelicals made no secret of their desire to follow the troops. Samaritan's Purse, the global relief organization led by the Rev. Franklin Graham -- who has called Islam an ''evil and wicked" religion -- and the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, the country's largest Protestant denomination, were among those that mobilized missionaries and relief supplies.
Soon after Hussein's fall, they entered the country, saying their prime task was to provide Iraqis with humanitarian aid. But their strong emphasis on sharing their faith raised concerns among Muslims and some Christians that they would openly proselytize.
Then the security environment deteriorated in Iraq -- four Southern Baptist missionaries were killed, Westerners were kidnapped, and at least 21 churches were bombed -- forcing most foreign evangelicals to flee. But Iraqi evangelicals remain.
''For Christians, it's now democratic," said Nabil Sara, pastor at National Evangelical Baptist. Some church leaders, however, are questioning that premise.
''Evangelicals come here and I would like to ask: Why do you come here? For what reason?" said Patriarch Emmanuel Delly, head of the Eastern rite Chaldean Catholic Church, Iraq's largest Christian community.
In interviews, Delly and Sleiman were torn between their belief in religious freedom and the threat they see from the new evangelicalism. They also expressed resentment at what they perceive as the evangelicals' assumption that members of old-line denominations are not true Christians.
''If we are not Christians, you should tell us so we will find the right path," Delly said sarcastically. ''I'm not against the evangelicals. If they go to an atheist country to promote Christ, we would help them ourselves."
Sleiman charged that the evangelicals are sowing ''a new division" because ''churches here mean a big community with tradition, language, and culture, not simply a building with some people worshiping. If you want to help Christians here, help through the churches [already] here."
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