MidEast report

A report from the Middle East

Report to the Presbytery of East Iowa
June 2002
Darrell Yeaney, Middle East Peacemaking Enabler

Allah Salaam. I bring you greetings in the name of the God of our Lord Jesus Christ from the Christian people and leaders of the churches of the Middle East.

My wife and I have just returned from a three-week mission trip to the Middle East. While there we participated in a 3 1/2 day conference held in Beirut Lebanon, that brought together about 150 Christians from both the west, predominately the US, and 7 countries in the Middle East. Together we discussed and explored the theme: "The church: a sign of hope and healing in the Middle East." Following the conference we traveled extensively throughout Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Palestine. Everywhere we went we encountered warm hospitality and an open reception. The warnings and expressions of alarm from family and friends before our trip proved groundless - except in Israel-occupied Palestine. But in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, the societies are at peace. Americans - as distinguished from American foreign policy - are welcome.

Our self appointed task was to listen and learn what the Christians of the Middle East had to say to us. And in the few minutes remaining, I want to distil and highlight three interrelated messages to us - Presbyterians and other Western Christians.

Their first concern is an acknowledgement and solidarity with the Christians and churches of the Middle East in their suffering and struggle to keep the Christian witness alive. Many western Christians do not seem to know or remember that Christianity was born in the Middle East and has been kept alive be faithful people there through generations of upheaval and suffering. Today the 100s of 1000s of Christians in the Middle East are being exploited by very zealous and competitive churches of the west that we might recognize as fundamentalist and dispensational in their theology and mission strategy. These aggressive western Christians often do not know or believe the churches of the Middle East are Christian, or Christian enough and are doing all they can to entice the children and youth away from their Eastern heritage and to divide the Christian community. Fortunately, this has not been the practice of the Presbyterian or other main line western churches, but it does confuse the majority Muslim community about what Christianity really is about. If our western churches do not recognize and support our brothers and sisters in the East in their struggle to contribute constructively to their society, we undermine their witness to the Love of God for all people thorough service, leadership and community outreach.

Their second message is the larger more difficult and complex concern about the growing economic disparity between the east and the west that also results is the loss of Christians as the young seek opportunities elsewhere. This, of course, is a global problem, but it is a direct challenge to us western Christians to enlarge our vision in order to see God's concern for all of God's children, not just those of us who were born in the west. The challenge is to an economic system that continues to widen the gap between the rich and the poor; a system based on greed, acquisition, accumulation and materialism. The challenge is to call for distributive justice, the cancellation of the crushing weight of debt that denies opportunity and increases poverty and desperation in the countries of the Middle East.

The third concern is political in nature and is pervasive in every country we visited. It is the concern over the Israeli occupation and colonial exploitation of the Palestinian people and land and the US biased one-sided support of Israel and its policies. The Christian churches in the Middle East, which are a distinct minority in a Muslim culture, are being asked by their Muslim friends, why a Christian nation such as the US would continue to support the oppressive, brutal domination and colonial expansion of Israel over Palestine in violation of dozens of international laws, treaties and Human Rights standards. Many of the church leaders of the Middle East have a fairly penetrating insight into US politics that explains this bias, but they do not understand how western Christians can allow this to go on without raising their voices in concern for a fair US policy seeking genuine peace with justice for all people.