RITE AND REASON: As the world seemingly prepares itself for war, Patrick Comerford looks at Iraq from the Christian perspective
The Christmas season traditionally comes to an end today with the Feast of the Epiphany, which also commemorates the visit of the Magi to the Child Jesus. The visiting Magi probably came from Babylon or Mesopotamia in present-day Iraq.
It is easy to forget that, long after the exile, many Jews continued to live in Babylon and Mesopotamia and that present-day Iraq was once a biblical land.
In the Acts of the Apostles, the witnesses of the first Pentecost included "Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia", so that the early church included inhabitants of the area we now know as Iraq. In their liturgy, many of the churches in Iraq continue to use Syriac, the language closest to the Aramaic spoken by Christ.
As the season of peace draws to a close today, and we appear to be on the brink of another war, it is worth reminding ourselves that there is a strong and vibrant Christian community in Iraq. While Iraq's constitution describes Islam as the state religion, freedom of religion, belief and worship are guaranteed. In a population of 23.1 million people, there are about 650,000 Christians, and prominent politicians include Tariq Aziz, a member of Iraq's largest Christian community, the Chaldeans.
Iraq's Christians trace their origins to both the first Pentecost and the early missionary activities of the Apostles, especially Thomas. By the 4th century, there was a thriving church in Mesopotamia under the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Antioch. The See at Seleucia-Ctesiphon, near Baghdad, was once the most important Christian centre outside the Roman or Byzantine Empire.
When the church in Mesopotamia declared its independence, other Eastern Orthodox churches accused it of the heresy of Nestorianism, but it has always denied this. The Assyrian Church of the East, as it became known, was a vigorous missionary church, sending bishops, priests and monks to Tibet, China and Mongolia centuries before the voyages of Marco Polo.
The Assyrian church survived both Muslim and Crusader invasions. Although numbers dwindled through wars, persecutions and massacres, these Christians maintained their unity until the arrival of Latin missionaries, intent on suppressing Nestorianism and forcing union with Rome. Those efforts eventually caused a major rift in the 16th century. Today, Iraq is the only country in the Middle East where the largest church of the Christian minority is in communion with Rome: the Chaldean church remains a vital force in the Christian world of the Middle East.
Despite divisions, the Assyrian church of the East survived, too, although there have been further rifts, massacres at the hands of Kurds and Turks and, collectively, grave disappointment at the failure of the West to recognise Assyrian claims to nationhood after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
Iraq's Christian minority also includes the Syrian Orthodox Church, Syrian Catholics and Greek Catholics, the Armenian Apostolic Church, which also remembers genocide and massacre at the hands of the Turks, and a tiny Greek Orthodox community.
When Anglican missionaries arrived in the 1840s, they insisted that they were there to assist the local church and not to establish another new church. Irish missionaries from the Church Missionary Society who worked in Baghdad and Mosul included the Rev Ernest Lavy and Dr George Stanley, but the first World War disrupted their work, which came to an end in 1919.
All the churches report that the number of Christians in Iraq is shrinking, as many leave the country. Those who remain fear the way extremists can use the present crisis to drive a wedge between Muslims and Christians and to portray the Western powers as Christian nations waging a new crusade against Islam. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has warned that presenting Saddam Hussein as a martyr could strengthen the hand of extremist groups and has said: "Christians in the region, without exception, say their position as minorities would be put seriously at threat."
After his return from Bethlehem to Babylon, one of the Wise Men in T.S. Eliot's Journey of the Magi is left wondering:
. . . were we led all that way for
Birth or Death?
There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt.
I had seen Birth and Death,
But had thought they were different;
This Birth was hard and bitter agony
for us, like Death, our death.
We returned our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here,
In the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
At Epiphany, we might wonder whether the counsels of wise men will prevail, or whether the Christian people of another biblical land will be denied the promise of peace that is part of the Christmas message and face more bitter agony and death.