Nearly 15 million Christians make their home in the Middle East, with some two-thirds of that number in Egypt alone. American Christians may think of Middle Eastern churches as recent missionary plants. But there have been churches in the Middle East for as long as there have been churches. Not only have Christians been a continuous presence in the Middle East, they have also been devoted to evangelism and missionary endeavors.
During a recent conference on Christians in the Middle East, sponsored by Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding (EMEU), CT’s executive editor, David Neff, gathered four leaders active in the life of the Middle East church to discuss the progress of missions, East-West relations, and the role of the church in the Middle East’s future. Participating in the discussion were Wafik Wahbah, a Presbyterian pastor from Cairo; Jean Bouchebl, a Lebanon-based field director for World Vision International; Mitri Raheb, a Palestinian Lutheran pastor from Bethlehem; and American Ray Bakke, executive director of International Urban Associates and founder and chair of Emeu.
MIDDLE EASTERN CHURCHES ARE NOT OFTEN THOUGHT OF AS BEING MISSIONARY MINDED. GIVE US AN OVERVIEW OF EVANGELISTIC WORK STEMMING FROM YOUR RESPECTIVE COUNTRIES.
Wahbah: The Coptic church—the original church of Egypt that was founded during the first three centuries of Christianity—has a strong history of evangelism. According to Coptic tradition, the church was started by Saint Mark and was composed of various Jewish communities. Eventually, it converted members of the Egyptian population. From there, it reached out to other parts of the Middle East—particularly Ethiopia. Later on, the church became separated by political and theological conflicts. But during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, through the renewal of the church and the centrality of the Bible in the church’s life and ministry, Egyptian Christians began to regain a vision for being a missionary church inside of Egypt.
Bouchebl: Lebanon has always been a country of refuge for Christians who have been persecuted in the Middle East. As a result, today we see a beautiful mosaic of church groups—Orthodox, Catholic, evangelical Protestant. During Lebanon’s civil war, many Christians had to go out into the Gulf States to find employment. However, they didn’t go only for the sake of improving their economy; they also went to carry the mission of Christ to the non-Christians.
Raheb: There is a type of missionary outreach typical to Palestine that is not often considered. Palestine is the land with the historic holy sites, where Christians from all over the world come, seeking to draw closer to God. Our land, therefore, becomes not only a mission field to heathens but also to these pilgrims who come to Palestine looking for a special religious experience. So, in addition to evangelizing the unbeliever, we are now stressing the need to minister to these spiritual pilgrims—that they might experience the love of God in their Palestinian brothers and sisters.
IN PALESTINE, AS WELL AS IN OTHER MIDDLE EASTERN COUNTRIES, THERE IS A DWINDLING CHRISTIAN POPULATION. HOW IS THIS AFFECTING THE CHURCH’S WORK IN THE MIDDLE EAST?
Raheb: The problem of Christian emigration is terrifying for the whole Christian community in the Middle East, but especially for Palestine. Last year we published the most detailed study on this subject—120 pages. What we found is that this problem could make the Holy Land a so-called Christian Disneyland, with nice, old churches where groups can come and wander, but without any real, living community. The Holy Land will lose its soul and sense of significance if there are no Christians there. Therefore, one of our main objectives presently is to encourage young people to come back and work in Palestine in the mission of the church.
Bakke: It’s interesting that Mitri is one of only six evangelical Lutheran Palestinian pastors in the West Bank, while sixteen Lutheran Palestinian pastors now live in the U.S. The U.S. has become the catch basin of Middle East peoples, including its Christian leaders. You can view that as an enormous problem, or you can say that in the twenty-first century, when Arabs are projected to outnumber Jews in the U.S., we will already have an Arabic-speaking church here that’s ready to reach them. Although the immediate results of emigration are terribly bleak and should be addressed, the larger picture may be that the Lord is preparing the U.S. for a harvest in the Arab world by having churches at both ends of the migrant stream.
Bouchebl: This emigration problem is also true for Lebanon, Syria, and other countries throughout the Middle East. All the Arab communities are coming here to the U.S., and I agree that God is preparing the U.S. for something big. The prosperity that this country is enjoying now is not to remain just for the U.S.; perhaps it is to be shared with the world.
Wahbah: In Egypt, the emigration problem is not immediately visible, because Egypt has the largest Christian population in the whole Middle East. The 7 to 8 million Christians living in Egypt today are estimated to make up two-thirds of all Christians living in the Middle East. And they form at least 12 percent of the whole population of Egypt. So if we are talking about 2 or 3 million Egyptians living outside Egypt, proportionately that is not as dramatic as the numbers of people leaving Palestine or Lebanon.
However, it’s still a fact that emigration, as well as other factors, is affecting Egypt’s Christian community as a whole. Those who do emigrate are usually the educated, the professionals, and the ones most needed for leadership. The problem is that the people who stay are the ones that are unable to move. They don’t have the means to function in the Western setting.
HOW SHOULD THE CHURCH APPROACH THIS PROBLEM OF EMIGRATION?
Raheb: To some extent, emigration is a sign of the alienation of Christians in the Middle East. Many Christians no longer feel a sense of belonging to Middle Eastern society. The question that I ask myself every day is: Where do I belong? I have many possibilities to be here in the West, many opportunities. But do I belong here? Not ethnically speaking, but theologically speaking, in the sense of where I am needed.
You have millions of Christians here in the U.S., but that is not so in Palestine. Therefore, one mission of the church should be to encourage Christians who are in the Middle East and help them sense the importance of their calling. They need to be told, “Your presence in the East is not without meaning. It has a very powerful meaning, and what you can do there nobody else can do.”
Bouchebl: Realistically, many Middle Eastern emigrants have left because of financial reasons and have come to the U.S. in search of a better existence for their families. We must find those emigrants here in the U.S. who are committed to Christ and his mission and encourage them to go back. I continue to believe that local people first have a responsibility to reach out to their own people. The important thing is that those people who go back to their homelands can be of more value than sending foreign missionaries who have no native connection with the land.
Raheb: One of the most important strategies at the moment is to educate the people in the Middle East concerning the realities of emigration. What I’m telling every man and woman in Palestine now is that the times for emigration are past. The times when we were able to come to the States and make a lot of money are gone. If you want to come to the States, you now have to work 18 hours, and work, as I say in Arabic, “like a donkey.”
Second, most of the people who come here from the East have many problems, for example, with their children. They come out of their countries fearing for the future of their children. But once they get here to the U.S., they discover that they are losing the cultural bond to their children, because mainstream U.S. society has a different system of values. So we need to educate our people that the times have changed. They need to know that the U.S. is no longer the land of a thousand opportunities.
HOW ARE WESTERN EVANGELISTIC EFFORTS BEING VIEWED IN THE MIDDLE EAST?
Bouchebl: I think we need to keep one major focus before us, and that is that missionaries coming to the Middle East need to come carrying Christ only, and not their own mission. What we have experienced in the Middle East are missionaries who want to come and establish their own denominations and traditions among the people. There has to be an emphasis on being a Christian first.
ISLAM IS EXPERIENCING A POWERFUL RESURGENCE IN THE MIDDLE EAST. HOW DOES THE CHALLENGE OF THIS COMPETING RELIGION AFFECT THE CHURCH’S MISSION?
Bouchebl: Islam is aggressive, and it varies from one country to another. The aim of Islam, as we see it, is to make the Middle East region completely Islamic. We know that the day will come when Christians are going to be minorities not only in Lebanon, but also in the world because of the way Muslims increase versus Christians. Because of this, I feel we need to build sincere relationships with people from the Islamic world as long as we have the opportunity to do it.
Raheb: In Palestine, there is a fair amount of cooperation between Christians and Muslims regarding common goals. Three years after the Iranian Revolution, a group of Christians and Muslims established a center for Christian/Muslim dialogue as a response to the phenomenon of a resurgence in radical Islamic fundamentalism. Since that time, we have been holding conferences and workshops regularly to reach a better understanding of each other.
I don’t believe that the Muslims alone will be able to get out of this crisis [of radical fundamentalism] without the Christians. So Christians leaving the region will only make the situation worse. But dealing with the problem, this is our calling.
Bakke: As a Westerner concerned about the Middle East, the more I reflect on our own religious history in the West, including the stormy Belfast discussions between Catholics and Protestants, the more I realize that we have never been successful at resolving conflicts easily or quickly. I don’t think we’re going to solve it quickly in the Middle East, either. It’s intertwined with ethnicity, nationalism, oil politics, and with East-West dialogue. And the peoples in the region are not always in a position to make decisions or to work together on a long-term basis, because the short-term things are pushing them so hard. So, as we look at the conflicts in the Middle East, I think we need patience on the Western side.
A PARTICULARLY SENSITIVE ISSUE AFFECTING U.S.-MIDDLE EAST RELATIONS INVOLVES WHAT HAS BEEN CALLED THE U.S. PRO-ISRAEL BIAS. THIS AFFECTS PALESTINE MOST DIRECTLY, BUT IT ALSO HAS AN IMPACT ON THE OTHER COUNTRIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST. HOW DOES THIS PERCEIVED BIAS IMPACT THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH WHERE EACH OF YOU ARE?
Raheb: There are two tendencies that I fear. There is, on the one hand, the tendency in the Arab world to demonize the U.S., and there is the other tendency in the U.S. to demonize the Palestinians. I’m afraid of both.
I think one important issue we have to keep in mind is that the U.S. is dealing in the Middle East not according to a Christian agenda, but according to economic and political interests. It’s important to realize that Muslims have inherited a skewed view of Christianity, thanks to the Crusades. Just as the Jews have the trauma of the Holocaust, the Muslims still possess the trauma of the Crusades. It may sound illogical, but it’s there. Often they can’t distinguish between the U.S. as a government and the U.S. as a purveyor of Christianity. This is damaging the mission of the church, because the church in the Middle East was always a suffering church, bearing the sign of the cross as a suffering servant. The church in the U.S. is perceived as a wealthy, power-wielding entity. And its political dealings with Israel only reinforce these perceptions in the Muslim mind.
Bouchebl: From the Middle Eastern perspective, it seems that there is no justice coming from the U.S. A good illustration is the Gulf War. All of a sudden, because of the oil, everybody jumped to save Kuwait. There were other wars in the Middle East that lasted for years and years, and the U.S. could have interceded. But it didn’t. This sends a bad message. Israel is viewed as a miniature of the U.S.—existing in the Middle East to implement what the big U.S. wants. Unfortunately, as a result of this apparent paternalistic relationship between the U.S. and Israel, evangelical groups in the Middle East are often looked upon with suspicion as being American pawns.
Wahbah: The problem in Egypt has different dimensions. The U.S. played an important role in the peace effort between Egypt and Israel. But these peace efforts didn’t please all the people, especially the Muslim radicals. This created a problem again of mixing religion with politics. I think the only way out of this is to really make a differentiation that the State of Israel has a political function—it does not have a religious function. The U.S. relationship either with Israel or with Arab countries is generally political. Still, religion is ingrained in Middle Eastern culture. The problem here is that when we mix politics with religion, the results will always be a disaster.
In the Middle East, in the U.S., and throughout the world, Christians must again learn to major on the Cross.
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