Since US troops ousted Saddam Hussein, they have not been able to keep a lid on sectarian violence in Iraq. The secular dictator's repressive regime may have been brutal to dissidents, but it was very efficient at squelching attacks on Iraq's Kurdish and Christian minorities.
The civil chaos resulting from American occupation has provided opportunities for militant Muslims to attack the Christian community. Many have been driven out of their homes and some have been killed. This has prompted at least one community to form its own militia.
Here is a video report from CBN:
The nominal Christian community of Iraq consists mainly of churches associated with the Eastern rites. Western theologians denominate some of them as Nestorian, although they themselves often repudiate the teachings of Nestorius.
Although I would not be comfortable with the practices and theology represented by the majority of Iraqi Christians, I believe that God has his remnant among them, as He does among Presbyterians, Baptists, etc.
I expect the US gov't to help these beleaguered people about as much as it has helped the persecuted Christians of the Sudan or Burma or India or Indonesia. That is to say, not at all.
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I expect the US gov't to help these beleaguered people about as much as it has helped the persecuted Christians of the Sudan or Burma or India or Indonesia. That is to say, not at all.
Very true....
The Evangelical (presbyterian) Church in Iraq has experienced devastation, thanks to our indifferent, aggressor status.
What a nightmare. All the pastors (mostly Egyptians, trained in the seminaries there that serve the whole Arab world) have been forced to flee the country.
Freedom of religion that was enforced under the "evil" SH has disappeared under lawlessness. All the Islamic radicals that he suppressed out of self-interest now prey openly on Christians of all stripes.
A fourth-generation elder (how many "Christian" families in modern American evangelicalism have produced effective male lay leaders for 120 years?) in Mosul was kidnapped and killed, probably to set an example. Warned not to go to church in the weeks before his kidnapping, he said "No power on earth can keep me from serving God."
The church in Basra (as far as I know) is completely defunct, after decades of work. The church in Baghdad is a refuge center.
Many of us cried out to God in fear for what we saw coming. I, for one, simply could not believe this country could be as purely EVIL as to engage in that attack. But we did it.
I thank God that Christ has lost no one of his. Impossible. But that does not exonerate the guilty of crime.
I have asked God to consider me and my family apart from this land of destruction. To spare us his righteous indignation for the suffering we as a secular nation have inflicted on his church.
I cannot help my birth, any more than I could help my relationship to Adam. But I asked God to consider me in Christ instead. And I know he is faithful to his promise to do just that.
And I've asked him to consider me separate from my native USA, a place I have come to consider beyond redemption, from a secular standpoint. And I have hope that he will spare us, and let us be a part of a remnant for rebuilding.
There comes a time when divine retribution is as inevitable as the tide. When the church is selectively salty, or not salty at all, the surrounding culture is on its way into the cosmic dumpster. Along with a good portion of the chaff.
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