wfn.org | Property Is Key to Identity for Pakistan's Presbyterians

[PCUSA.NEWS@ecunet.org]

9-December-1996 
 
 
96487     Property Is Key to Identity for Pakistan's Presbyterians 
 
                      by Jerry L. Van Marter 
 
LAHORE, Pakistan--Representing just 2 percent of the population of this 
officially Muslim country, the Christian community in Pakistan is virtually 
invisible. 
 
     Yet, Christian churches -- particularly the Presbyterian Church of 
Pakistan (PCP) -- are influential far beyond their numbers.  Their 
importance to Pakistan society lies chiefly in their highly developed 
educational and medical ministries among the largely poverty-stricken 
population. 
 
     And thus property -- the parcels of land and the schools and clinics 
that inhabit them -- is the source of both the churches' identity and their 
survival. 
 
     "Our dignity and means of witness is property," said Edgar Khan, 
treasurer of the Presbyterian Church of Pakistan, during the Nov. 12-13 
consultation here that established the Presbyterian Property Trust in 
Pakistan.  "Take it away from Christians here and they will die." 
 
     The trust was established to enable the PCP and the Presbyterian 
Church (U.S.A.) to jointly administer dozens of properties in Pakistan that 
are owned by the PC(USA).  Ownership of many of the properties will 
eventually accrue to the Pakistani Presbyterians. 
 
     The urgency of the property consultations for the Pakistanis was 
unmistakeable.  "Schools and hospitals are the identity of the church in 
Pakistan," explained Sharif Alam, a delegate to the property consultation 
from the PCP's Gujranwala Presbytery.  And, he added, "they have been a 
good influence on the Muslims." 
 
     Because they are such a minority in Pakistan, Christians -- more than 
their counterparts in the United States -- view their property as central 
to their evangelistic enterprise.  "To be a missionary church in a Muslim 
country our witness must be in our services to our people," said Maqsood 
Kamal, a teacher at Gujranwala Theological Seminary.  "Our influence is not 
in our numbers, but in the leaders we produce to influence our society," he 
said, "and our schools and hospitals are the places where those leaders are 
developed." 
 
     There is also a psychological factor at work in the church's property 
holdings, said Parvaiz Rahmat Ullah, chair of the PCP's finance and 
property resource committee.  "Most of our members are very poor and can 
never hope to own property of their own," he explained.  "Their only sense 
of ownership is church property." 
 
     The PCP, a tiny community in a country where Christians are barely 
tolerated, is in a state as financially precarious as that of most of its 
members.  "Property is most of our resources," said PCP moderator Arthur 
James.   
 
     And so the importance of property -- and of the negotiations that 
created the property trust between the PCUSA and the PCP -- cannot be 
overestimated.  "Property is our most basic ingredient of production," said 
James Mall, a property consultation delegate from Faisalabad Presbytery. 
"We produce for God." 

------------
For more information contact Presbyterian News Service
  phone 502-569-5504             fax 502-569-8073  
  E-mail PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org   Web page: http://www.pcusa.org 

--