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Church World Service Findings from Middle East Delegation
Inform U.S., International Relations on Solidarity, Unity
“There is no fear in love; perfect love casts
out fear.”
1 John 4:18
From 24 October to 1 November 2004, a delegation of Church World Service and the heads of U.S. mission agencies traveled to five countries in the Middle East to visit churches and ecumenical partners of long-standing. The visit also provided the opportunity to meet with government and other religious leaders.
The purpose of the delegation was fourfold: to meet with new ecumenical leadership during a time of institutional change and learn their vision for ecumenism in the region; to express solidarity with the churches and peoples of the Middle East during a time of deep disturbance and apprehension over U.S. policy in the region; to bring a voice and a view from the U.S. to the region different from the U.S. government; and to discuss the role of the churches’ diakonia and witness in the Middle East at this time.
The Middle East Council of Churches, the regional ecumenical body including Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant churches in its membership, coordinated the visit. The delegation is extremely grateful for all the efforts of the MECC on their behalf.
The Middle East Council of Churches has an important past and an important future. From the time of its creation in 1974, the churches in the Middle East have expressed through the Middle East Council of Churches the Gospel mandate of our Lord Jesus Christ that all may be one, as He and God the Father are one. Churches separated for millennia have come closer together in faith and love, and the wounds of bitter histories are healing. In the MECC, the churches, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant, have found ways to relate to one another respectful of their integrity and uniqueness. All the church leaders with whom the delegation met, whose communities of faith often extend across national borders, affirmed the continuing importance and need for all the churches from the region to come together to speak and act as a single body. Churches in the U.S., too, have found in the MECC a way to unity with their sister churches in the Middle East, leading them into relationships of mutual discovery and enrichment.
The churches in the Middle East are exhibiting enormous creativity and courage in witness and service in their region. We visited and learned about far-reaching efforts in literacy education, poverty alleviation and economic development, to address the needs and rights of women and girls, and to provide early childhood care, refugee services and public health. Many of these efforts are pioneering in nature and have had a large impact for the good on government programs. Dedicated volunteers are pouring themselves out in service to their fellow Christians and to anyone in need.
Like the movement for Christian unity globally, however, the churches in the region and their ecumenical body, the MECC, are facing many challenges internally and externally. Expectations for even greater unity among the Middle East churches have not been met. Differences have emerged about the direction of ecumenical work and the shape of the ecumenical organization. Practical collaborations in mission still suffer from ambivalence and a sense of competition. The ecumenical movement is in a self-critical moment that calls for renewed support within the region and encouragement from its brothers and sisters around the world.
We heard cited constantly, by Christians and Muslims, by religious and political leaders, reference to the use of the word “Crusade” by President Bush to describe the U.S. intervention in the region. To the people of the region, the Crusaders came not with love, but with the sword, came not as liberators but as conquerors, and brought not life, but death and destruction. Although the Bush administration has attempted to repair the damage caused by the decision to use this language, the continued association of the Bush administration with prominent leaders of the U.S. Christian right who routinely use similar language and who have spoken against Islam has only served to reinforce this impression.
The delegation met with ecumenical colleagues of the MECC Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Program and from the CWS/multi-agency “All Our Children” campaign who provided first-hand accounts of the reality of contemporary Iraq. If anything, the Iraq they described is even worse than that reported in the U.S. media. The current stories of Iraq from the U.S. government can be as misleading as stories of weapons of mass destruction and ties to terrorism were before the U.S.-led invasion and occupation.
The recent election of the U.S. president offers the opportunity to take a fresh approach to the Middle East. We heard a willingness and readiness to work with the U.S. to address issues of concern to all, including poverty, injustice and violence. Positive attitudes toward the U.S. people were expressed to us, while there was sharp criticism and disagreement with U.S. policies. This would be an opportune moment for members of the new presidential administration to engage in open dialogue with governments in the region. People lamented to us that, for the past four years, the Bush administration has been uninterested in dialogue, even with staunch friends and allies. As was expressed to us, the U.S. government has much information about the Middle East, but little knowledge. It can no longer afford to dismiss the knowledge of the people of the Middle East themselves.
The problems that the churches are addressing are vast and call into question the priorities of governments and philanthropies, which could be doing more to address the same problems. For example, we were dismayed to find continuing high rates of illiteracy in an internationally distinguished country such as Egypt. The prominence of geo-political issues in the Middle East should not distract us from the urgent needs of people who are poor and disadvantaged.
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict remains a fundamental source of the region's and the world's current problems. Repeatedly we heard references to the Christians in the United States who are very close to the U.S. government and who advocate for unqualified support to the State of Israel, regardless of the situation of Palestinian people. Many Muslims have come to assume that all Christians support these policies, including their Christian neighbors in the Middle East. We find that Christians are too often placed on the defensive because of this, and grieve that they are suffering in this way.
At the level of Muslim leaders and government officials in the Middle East, one finds an ability to distinguish among the different views that U.S. Christians have about Israel and Palestine and about the U.S. role in Iraq. The years of careful cultivation of relations between Christian and Muslim leaders, and of the exchange visits between the region and the United States, have helped at this high level to avoid confusion. At the popular level, however, the U.S. government's refusal to criticize and influence Israel on key points affecting Palestinians' rights and welfare and the public statements of U.S. officials have endangered Christians in the Middle East.
Moderate Muslim leadership in the Middle East (and elsewhere) must be listened to, not only talked at. Many Muslim leaders are moderate and cooperate with Christians in building good, civil relationships. Some are aware of the greater sense of vulnerability that the minority Christian community feels and we heard specific examples of responsiveness to that community. Most problems Christians faced in the places we visited were not due to official government policies, but rather to concrete situations in which the majority sometimes single-mindedly pursues its own goals without sufficient consideration to a minority.
Hospitality and cooperation between Christian and Muslim neighbors have always existed in the Middle East as a “dialogue of daily life,” and are being strengthened by creative, intentional programs of interfaith dialogue; we in the West could learn a great deal from these forms of coexistence. We found, however, that many Christians feel deep uncertainty about the future, and about their future place in many Middle Eastern societies. Too often extremism rears its head and intimidates everyone. For this reason and also because of the persistence of unemployment, lack of economic opportunity and poverty, large numbers of Christian youths seize the opportunity to emigrate.
All whom the delegation met welcomed us with warmth and candor. In these times, they are visited by fewer and fewer from outside the region, and have begun to feel estrangement and isolation from Christian brothers and sisters. Sincere appreciation was expressed for the timeliness of our presence. Our friends new and old are well aware of the fear that has gripped people in the United States and around the world. People wisely fear dangers that they know, and yet always fear most what they know not. For many people in the U.S., the Middle East remains an unknown region, reduced to images of violence and sounds of discordant voices. In the United States, a politics of fear has been shouted out loudly to silence other voices and visions. Like fire set by an arsonist, fear is fanned into a flame that would consume all reason and emotion, and reduce mind and heart to dust and ash.
Through the words of the Apostle John, Christians are taught and teach a different way, the way of love that casts out fear. Time and again, our friends in the Middle East challenged and invited the U.S. churches to overcome fear, to reject the fear mongers, and to reach out to those very ones from others seek to separate us. Patriarch Ignatius Hazim of the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch shared a sense of frustration that the U.S. churches seem to be responding to effects, rather than finding their voices to address the causes.
Two decades ago, in the time of the renewed Cold War, the churches joined with many others in civil society to create a new “citizen diplomacy” that reached across deep divides and over high barriers to establish human contact and relationships. To the simplistic rhetorical visions of empires of good and evil were added the complex realities of flesh and blood human beings, created in the image and likeness of God by a love divine that neither ceased nor changed with political and economic systems. In myriad ways, knowledge of others, of their lives and hopes and fears, helped to create a context in which the idea of mutual assured destruction of tens of millions became eventually unthinkable.
Now as then, love must cast out fear. There is deep fear in the region that the turmoil in Iraq will expand in ever widening circles to engulf neighboring countries. Looking to Iraq, our ecumenical friends and colleagues see chaos, and attacks against the lives and property of Christians that never happened before. They are aware of currents of thought among influential U.S. policy makers that would deliberately de-stabilize countries like Syria and Iran, despite the evident failure of these policies in Iraq. In this, they perceive an arrogant recklessness in which, despite protestations of good intentions, the lives of real Middle Eastern people count for little. This arrogance mongers fear and exploits ignorance.
The churches of Christ in the U.S. are called to cast out fear through love, to reach out to their brothers and sisters in faith in the Middle East and, in solidarity with them, to all the people of the region, and in humility to engage in a ministry of presence and accompaniment.