Christianity and Iraq
Every month Reverent Andrew White AKA Canon White travels to Baghdad to minister to the faithful, including Western Protestants and Iraqi Assyrian Christians, who must be bused into the U.S.-protected Green Zone, to hear him preach after al-Qaeda put a price on his head! Because killing obviously is the solution here (not).
Over the past three years, the number of Iraqis attending his services has grown to about 900, said the 41-year-old British Anglican priest. “People turn to religion when they are desperate,'’ White said in a Green Zone coffee shop after conducting three Easter services.
The apparent Christian revival takes place against a backdrop of resurgent Muslim religiosity. Sunni and Shiite Muslim deaths are mounting daily in sectarian violence and there is massive attendance at both Shiite and Sunni services.
The tall, bespectacled cleric began visiting Iraq regularly in 1998, and he has witnessed profound changes since then. During those early visits, he would preach at St. George’s Anglican Church, an arrangement facilitated by Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, the most prominent Christian in the national leadership and now a U.S. detainee.
Under Saddam, White said he found a more secular society where tensions between religious groups seemed nonexistent. But over time he began to realize that divisions were there - Iraqis were simply too terrified to speak frankly.
White recalled a grim memory of receiving a dinner invitation from Odai Saddam Hussein, Saddam’s most ruthless son. He declined, but the man delivering the invitation began to weep, pleading him to accept. Otherwise, Odai would kill the messenger, White said.
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