They Shall Not Suffer Alone

In October gunmen forced their way into Our Lady of Salvation Church and killed at least 58 people. There implied message was that Christians are not safe or welcome in Iraq.

It is ironic that one of the legacy of the war in Iraq is the extinction of one of the oldest Christian communities in the world. Before the Gulf War in 1991, Christians numbered about one million. According to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, the population of Iraqi Christians is 500,000 with thousands leaving every month. More than 46 churches and monasteries have been bombed since the start of the Iraq war.

Before the Gulf War, the secular government of Saddam Hussein did not persecute Christians in the way it did the Kurds and some Shia communities. In 1978 Saddam Hussein changed the Iraqi constitution stating that only two peoples lived in Iraq: Kurds and Arabs. The Assyrians, the indigenous population of Iraq were to be called Christians Kurds or Christians Arabs. Those who accepted the change were allowed to exercise their freedom. Those who resisted the change and wanted to maintain their Assyrian identity were persecuted. Christians live in Baghdad and are also concentrated in the northern cities of Kirkul, Irbil and Mosul. This northern area was known in biblical times as Nineveh.

The Christians in Iraq are mainly Chaldean, some who still speak the language of Jesus, Aramaic, and Assyrians. The Assyrians are descendants of the ancient empires of Assyria and Babylon. They embraced Christianity in the 1st Century AD. Other ancient Christians traditions exist in Iraq include: Syrian Catholics, Armenian Orthodox, Armenian Catholic Christians. There are also small numbers of Anglicans and Evangelicals.

Besides prayer, what else can the church in the West do to assist our brothers and sisters in Iraq? How do we come along side them in their persecution? Should they suffer alone?

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