Will Christianity Survive in Iraq?

on February 1, 2014

Some church buildings in Iraq were built as far back as the ninth century.

Even though many of these structures have survived, they are now protected by blast walls, barbed wire, police vehicles and security cameras. Worshippers are patted down and checked for explosives before being allowed to enter the buildings.

During the Christmas season last year, three bomb attacks killed 37 people in Baghdad. Over 50 were injured.

Iraqi police say the bombings targeted Christians.

The BBC reports that the worst attack happened on Christmas, when a bomb exploded in a parked car at St. John’s Catholic Church in Baghdad. Police reported 26 people killed and 38 more injured.

The Chaldean Catholic Archbishop of Baghdad Louis Raphael I Sako says that since 2003, more than a thousand Christians have been killed in Iraq (and others kidnapped and tortured). Sako is calling on Western nations to help end what he calls the “mortal exodus” of Christians from the Middle East.

A report in the U.K. Telegraph says that a decade after the U.S. government overthrew Saddam Hussein’s secular regime, the Christian population has dropped from over a million to as little as 200,000.

The Telegraph also quotes Archdeacon Temathius Esha, the last remaining Christian priest in   Dora, a Bagdad suburb, as saying originally the community had over 30,000 families, now there are only 2,000 left. He says many remaining Christians would leave, if they had the means.

Struan Stevenson is the President of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Iraq. In November of last year he visited the country to investigate the conditions of Christians.

Stevenson says many Iraqi Christian leaders have expressed concern over the current Iraqi government. He says Christian leaders pointed to the bombing of the large Greek Orthodox Virgin Mary Church in Baghdad on November first of 2010. Two car bombs exploded near the church and then men with weapons stormed the church taking hostages. The European official says 52 people were killed and 67 others were wounded in a failed rescue operation. He says many Christian leaders believe that the rescue attempt by the Iraqi military, acting on the orders of the Prime Minister, was a deliberate operation to wipe out the Christian hostages.  Stevenson says the event triggered a mass exodus of Christians to other countries.

In 2013, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), again designated Iraq as a “country of particular concern. USCIRF has recommended CPC status for Iraq since 2008 and placed Iraq on its watch list in 2007.

The USCIRF says over the last several years the Iraqi government has made efforts to increase security for religious sites and worshippers, and provide a stronger voice for religious minorities in Parliament.

However, according to the USCIRF “the government of Iraq continues to tolerate systematic ongoing and egregious religious freedom violations, including violent religiously motivated attacks.”

Herman Teule, is professor of Eastern Christianity at Radboud University in the Netherlands.  Last year he spoke to the Department of Religion at Duke University about the future of Christianity in Iraq.

Tuele says the Christian heritage of what is now Iraq dates back over 2,000 years. The Dutch professor notes that  the oldest church in Iraq – the Assyrian Church of the East – dates to the 2nd century A.D., before the founding of Islam. Teule adds that the Chaldean Catholic Church can be traced back to the 16th century in Iraq and was firmly established in the 19th century when a number of Assyrians “accepted the authority of the Pope and split from the Assyrian mother church.” These churches along with the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Syriac Catholic Church and the Armenian Church, are the main Christian churches in Iraq today.

Tuele says many Iraqi Christians think the future of Christianity in Iraq may be in the Kurdistan region of the country.

Between 2004 and 2006, Sarkis Mamendo served as Minister for Finance and Economy and Deputy Prime Minister in Iraqi Kurdistan. He is an Iraqi Assyrian Christian who formulated policies and provided resources for Christians living in the area.

Teule said money was funded into churches, schools, orphanages and even monasteries in Kurdistan.

The region has become a natural place for Iraqi Christians to migrate, according to Tuele. He says since 2006 the number of Christians in the Kurdistan region has “probably more than doubled.”

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