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Christianity in Iraq coming to a bloody end
by Scott Gilbreath ~ January 5th, 2009
In one of the great tragedies of church history, one of the most ancient Christian communities is being destroyed before our very eyes. The Assyrian, Chaldean, and Orthodox churches of Mesopotamia appear headed for a bloody end. As recently as 1970, Christians made up 5-6 percent of Iraq’s population; today, they are less than 1 percent and dwindling rapidly.
Philip Jenkins, author of The Lost History of Christianity, outlines the story in Christianity Today online.
[U]nderstanding the history of Iraq’s churches should make us still more keenly aware of the tragedy we see unfolding. Not only are these churches — Chaldean, Assyrian, Orthodox — truly ancient, they are survivals from the earliest history of the church. For centuries indeed, the land long known as Mesopotamia had a solid claim to rank as the center of the church and an astonishing record of missions and evangelism. What we see today in Iraq is not just the death of a church, but also the end of one of the most awe-inspiring phases of Christian history.
[…]
When the Roman Empire became Christian, Mesopotamia became the main refuge for those theological currents that the empire now labeled heretical: the Monophysites or Jacobites, and the Nestorians. Ultimately, most of the Christians of modern Iraq look to one of these movements as their spiritual ancestor.
[…]
These Mesopotamian monasteries were also the base camps for one of the greatest missionary enterprises in Christian history. Especially between the 7th and 9th centuries, the Church of the East was establishing bishoprics and metropolitans across Asia — through Afghanistan and Turkmenistan, into Tibet and Kyrgyzstan, and as far as India and China.Looking at the world in 850 or so, few observers would have doubted that the Christian future lay in the Middle East and Asia, rather than in the barbarian-ravaged lands of Western Europe.
But it was not to be. Muslims began systematically persecuting Christians in the 13th and 14th centuries, obliterating the church across the Middle East and Central Asia. That persecution has continued to the present day, even intensifying during the 20th century, thus bringing us to what appears to be the impending destruction of Christianity in Iraq.
h/t: Sanctus
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January 7th, 2009 at 02:34 PM
[...] NSCOTT– Christianity in Iraq coming to a bloody end; Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East; [...]