wfn.org | ACNS3334 American bishop urges prayers and aid for Iraqi

["Anglican Communion News Service" <acnslist@anglicancommunion.org>]

ACNS 3334     |     USA     |	  3 MARCH 2003

American bishop urges prayers and aid for Iraqi Christians

by Jan Nunley

[ENS] The Rt Revd Pierre W. Whalon, bishop of the Convocation of American
Churches in Europe, received an invitation to Iraq February 19-23 to pray
with, meet and talk with the leaders of major Christian groups in that
country. Traveling with him were Jean-Michel Cadiot, Iraq specialist for
Agence France-Presse, and Yako Elish, a Chaldean Christian businessman who
served as guide and translator.

Whalon met with bishops of the Chaldean, Syrian Catholic, Armenian Catholic,
and Assyrian churches; the Latin Archbishop (Roman Catholic); a Protestant
church council; the mullah of the Mosque of al-Kadham; and the Shaik of the
Mandaeans (disciples of John the Baptist). He declined an invitation to meet
with Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz and the Mufti of Baghdad as both are
officials of the Saddam Hussein regime. He also led an ecumenical prayer
service at the National Protestant Church in Baghdad and inspected the
closed Anglican church in the city, St. George's. On his return, Whalon
spoke with Jan Nunley of Episcopal News Service.

ENS: What motivated you to go to Iraq at this time?

WHALON: It wasn't my idea. I got an invitation, along with the president of
the French Catholic Episcopal Conference, the president of the Orthodox
bishops, and the president of the French Protestant Federation, and me,
being the Anglican bishop living in France, from the Patriarchate of
Babylon, which is the Chaldean Church--they're uniate Catholics.

ENS: And represent a considerable percentage of Iraqi Christians.

WHALON: The Chaldeans are 85 percent of the Christian population, yes. You
have a very small percentage of Roman Catholics and Protestants there,
Presbyterians--very small numbers on those. Then the rest, you have the
Assyrian Catholic Church; the Nestorian Church, which is a result of a split
in the 19th century; the Armenian Catholic Church; the Syrian Catholic
Church; and also then you have the Armenian Orthodox and the Assyrians also
have an Orthodox church.

ENS: Any Anglicans?

WHALON: I was told there was only one in Baghdad when I was there.

There is a church, St. George's, in Baghdad. It's been closed since the Gulf
War. In terms of permanent chaplain presence they do come by every once in a
while to see if the building is still standing. I asked to have it reopened
so I could look at it and take some pictures so I could report back to Clive
Handford, the bishop of Cyprus and the Gulf.

The Protestant church where I led the ecumenical service [on February 21]
was once an Anglican church, and when it became clear that they were going
to be under the Diocese of Jerusalem in those days and Jerusalem was going
to become the capital of a new Israeli state, they decided they really
didn't want to be Anglicans any more. But they asked me to start talking
about 'can we come back,' because they've had a lot of trouble going it
alone.

I was going to decline this invitation, because I thought, who am I? The
Convocation of American Churches in Europe is my mandate. But when I talked
it over with the presiding bishop and John Peterson [of the Anglican
Communion Office in London] they were very encouraging, and so my mind
changed as a result of that. The other invitees did not go.

It was strange being the only American bishop who's been to Iraq since the
crisis began--of any stripe. So it took on an importance that I had no
idea...an amazing experience.

ENS: What was your sense of the mood of Iraqi Christians?

WHALON: They have a very significant problem. Like all Iraqis, of course,
the prospect of another war is very scary. But on the other hand they're all
resigned to wars--they've had a lot of them. But for the Christians, what
they're really afraid of is after the war, the reason being that the
government that Hussein essentially completely co-opted is based on the
Ba'athist principles--like Syria is. In other words, the state should be
secular, it should not be run by the Muslims, and that there should be
religious tolerance.

So they have official tolerance. There are about 50 church buildings in
Baghdad. Nobody bothers them, they don't bother other people, and the
bishops walk around town in their clerical garb. I walked around, nobody
gave me a hostile glance or gesture. And they think that after Hussein is
gone and after the Americans are gone, it's going to be a hard-line Muslim
government who's going to expel them, massacre them, persecute them.

They're between a rock and a hard place because they end up looking like
supporters of Hussein--Tariq Aziz is probably the greatest example of that;
certainly he is a collaborator. So they're afraid if there's an American
military government they'll be seen as a million collaborators with Hussein.
Whereas privately they...you could hardly call them enthusiastic supporters.

ENS: Is Saddam someone to fear?

WHALON: Saddam really is somebody who's a menace. The stories I got told
would curl your hair. He and his sons have profited enormously from the
embargo. They do not want the embargo to be lifted. We're always talking
about how we're killing these kids with medicine that we're not giving them
and all this other stuff. But on the other hand, they were very clear with
me--in private, of course--that the last person in the world who wants the
embargo lifted is Saddam Hussein, because he's made more money off this,
because he controls the black market, than anyone else.

Meanwhile, his people go without all kinds of things. If you can imagine
everybody test-driving the worst used cars you'd ever seen at once, that's
what Baghdad's streets look like. We were driving in the car of the brother
of the Chaldean who came with us from Paris, and he had a new car, a
Peugeot. I said, 'You like your new car?' and he said, 'Yeah. It took me 20
years to get it. In 1983 I put a down payment on this car and about three
months ago it arrived. Sometimes they lift the embargo to let some cars in.'

ENS: Do you think Saddam can be fairly compared to Hitler, as he often is?

WHALON: If you think about Hitler you also have to think about the entire
philosophy of the Nazi party, the racial component, the weird mysticism of
it. And in that sense, no, Saddam is not like Adolf Hitler. He certainly is
as ruthless as Hitler or Himmler or Goebbels--or Stalin, for that matter.

But on the other hand, unlike Hitler, Hussein has no knowledge of the
outside world. He's never really been educated outside of Iraq. He really
sees everything mostly on his own personal canvas: 'what it means to me.'
And whatever you think of Hitler, Hitler at least thought in big terms;
Saddam doesn't. He thinks in terms of 'me,' I was told.

And he mostly lives underground now. He's got about 20 palaces and each one
of them has a very deep subterranean living space and he moves from each one
unpredictably. Each palace has to have a meal and a woman waiting for him,
should he happen to show up, and if they don't then they just throw out the
food and tell the lady to come back or something. So he is really cut off
from anything now.

I also was told that his grip seems to be loosening. The Muslims have gotten
him to accept portions of sharia law, which are now applied to the
Christians - intermarriage, for instance; if there are any intermarriages,
the Muslim always wins and always gets the kids to become Muslims. We were
hit up for baksheesh [bribes] by the border guards, and my friend who went
with me, a French Iraqi specialist, said that didn't happen before. We were
also asked for money by beggars, and he said there were never beggars 20
years ago or street crime. So in that sense, Saddam isn't totally in
control, as he once was.

ENS: Did anyone give private indications that Saddam does have weapons of
mass destruction?

WHALON: When I went to visit the mullah at the al-Kadham mosque, he launched
into this diatribe about 'we have no weapons of mass destruction, they'll
never find any because there aren't any, all Bush wants to do is kill us,'
on and on. Of course, French TV was filming him, and there was a guy from
the ministry of religion sitting there.

Whenever I talked to Christians more informally, they always started out by
saying, 'What are these weapons?' and I would say, 'they're the ones Iraq
declared after the '91 war.' 'Oh.' And either the discussion would end there
or they would say, 'Well, yeah...maybe he had some stuff...' One person said
to me, 'Well, of course he has these things, and when your troops come he's
going to set them off on you. But they're going to blow back to our people
and all our civilians are going to get killed, and it will be your fault.'

The other thing they said is that, while nobody's really willing to die for
Saddam, they are willing to die for their homes. And it occurred to me that,
while Arab soldiers in pitched battles are apt to drop their guns and run if
they think things aren't turning their way, in front of their wives they'll
fight to the death. I remember when the Israelis used to have women in
combat. As soon as the Arabs found out they were going to surrender to
women, they became the best fighters in the world.

So if we think we're going to waltz into Baghdad and everyone is going to
say 'thank you for liberating us,' after a bloody street battle, it's not
going to work. Baghdad's five million people, and it's a very spread-out
city, about 50 kilometers in diameter or 30 miles. That's a lot of
miles--about twice the size of Paris. So to have that kind of fighting is
just a nightmare.

And the worst part for me is now that I went and met these people and
started to become friends and was extremely warmly greeted, now I have a
personal problem when we start to shoot. I'm going to be dying to find out
what's happened to all these really nice, fine, hardworking people. They
have the best hospitals, they have the orphanages, the nursing
homes--Muslims don't do those things, or they do them minimally.

[Christians] are the elite of the country. I met the wife of the president
of the Protestant Council. I asked her what she did. She said, 'I teach
medicine. Let me introduce my sister, the pediatrician, and my other sister,
the dentist.' If the Muslims take over, they're not going to be exercising
any more.

ENS: Can they leave the country?

WHALON: I think the last thing they want to do is leave. They've been there
for two thousand years. The official language is Aramean--like Jesus'. One
person said to me, 'We used to be 100 percent Christian in Iraq. Then the
Muslims came. Now we're five [percent].' They've seen people continue to
leave, and they think they're going to have a warm welcome from people
overseas and they don't. So I don't know about evacuation.

They took me to their seminary - all the churches have one big seminary and
it's packed. A number of women students, by the way, even though at this
point none of the churches ordain women. Nevertheless, they were there,
studying theology along with the men, and they asked me questions just like
the men did. They want to build a library, and I knew right away one thing
they need is some technical help in how to build a modern theological
library. We really need to support the hospital efforts with medicine, if we
could gather up medication. And of course if the churches get damaged in the
bombing, help rebuild them--maybe a diocese could take on a church to
rebuild.

The most important thing is to get to know these folks, because we don't
have any contacts with them. We don't know them, they don't know us, and I
just scratched the surface there. There need to be a lot more people besides
me that go.

ENS: Is the church in Iraq a 'persecuted church'?

WHALON: In the sense that they're not perfectly free. They have to deal with
encroaching sharia provisions. The problem with 'selling' that right now is
that some people will say the Christians are involved in the government,
because you have Tariq Aziz, so they're not really persecuted. By the time
they become candidates for being in that list of persecuted churches,
there's not going to be anybody left.

ENS: How do they feel about American Christians supporting a war with Iraq?

WHALON: I was asked about that, and the way the question was framed was,
'isn't it true that the non-Catholic Christians are strongly influenced by
the Jews?' The person who asked this was a very serious and well-educated
person, and I burst out laughing. And I said, 'Why do you say that?' And he
said, 'Well, among other things, don't they really control all the support
for Israel, and fundamentalist Christians are also interested in the
survival and prosperity of Israel for their own reasons?'

And I said, 'You know, whether there were fundamentalist Christians or not,
the Jewish people in America who support Israel would give a quart of blood
a day if they felt it was necessary for the survival of Israel. You've got
to understand, these people are very, very serious in the United States
about Israel. They see themselves as temporary residents of the States, when
their hearts are in Jerusalem."

I don't think that has anything to do with fundamentalists. Yes, there
certainly is some connection there and some of the people around [President]
George Bush are in that camp. But to see it as some kind of plot or
conspiracy or some kind of big joining of forces is really unrealistic.

ENS: There is a perception, though, that this conflict represents 'the clash
of civilizations,' Christian versus Muslim.

WHALON: What I'm trying to get across to people in France, and I also said
to al-Jazeera and Abu Dhabi and the other Arab networks that interviewed
me--I said I don't think people really understand that what's driving
general American support for this war is fear. Specifically, having been
attacked twice in a couple of months in spectacular ways--the 9/11 attacks
and then the anthrax in the envelopes attacks. Americans are reacting in
fear, saying 'We are going to make sure and we are going to use all our
power to take out anybody who can threaten us in this way again.' And that
has broad support across the board and it has nothing to do with religion.

And you know, people don't understand that. They're just not used to
thinking of American foreign policy or anything being driven by fear. They
don't see us as...as the French say to me, 'We always see the Americans as
sort of a cut above, and we don't understand that they would be afraid.'
Well, of course--think about your own history!

ENS: How do the French react to increasing criticism of France? Does this
surprise them, dismay them?

WHALON: I think both. The viciousness of it is rarely seen before, and
they're bemused by it more than anything else. Personally, being somebody
who's a citizen of both countries and raised in both cultures, it's been
extremely difficult for me to deal with. But I also think that one thing is
for sure: in France, if you want to sell papers, say something against
America; if you want to sell papers in America, say something against
France. It's a formula that both media are very good at exploiting whenever
their income's down.

I think the other thing that Americans aren't aware of is that the French
are very quietly marshalling their forces. French troops are on maneuvers
right now in Qatar, and the De Gaulle, the new nuclear aircraft carrier, has
just finished maneuvers with the [USS Harry] Truman, and has gone home but
it's not giving anybody leave; they're filling up again and turning right
around and going somewhere, they're not saying where. I can't see the French
wanting to be sidelined if it comes down to it, it's just not their style.

ENS: What, if anything, can Christian communities do to support Christians
in Iraq?

WHALON: I think there's several things we can do.

The first is that we can start to publicly pray for them, so that, among
other things, besides God hearing about them from us, we will begin to tell
ourselves, 'Hey, there are a million Christians in Iraq' - because I don't
think most people know that.

Secondly, I think we need to start thinking right now about what kind of aid
we can give them post-war. It's possible that there won't be a war. War's
not inevitable till the first bomb is dropped, and nobody knows how this
endgame is going to play out now. But in the event of a war, and probably
then an ensuing American military occupation, I think we need to make it
very clear to the general staff that we expect that the Christians of Iraq
will be protected, and they will not be accused generally of collaborating
with Saddam any more than anyone else in Iraq.

We took a flight on this Boeing 707, must be 50 years old, in an airport
with exactly one flight leaving--huge airport; of course it's called 'Saddam
International Airport.' I went in the duty-free shop, where there was a
young woman cashier who asked my guide in Arabic, 'Is that the bishop who
was on TV last night?' He said yes, and she asked him to have me come over,
and when I came closer she grabbed my hand with my ring on it, kissed it,
pressed it to her forehead and said in English, 'Thank you, thank you, thank
you,' and started to cry. She was wearing this little cross around her neck.
She was a Christian.

She asked for my blessing, she asked for my autograph, and she explained
that an American bishop coming to Iraq to pray for peace really strengthened
her faith, and that maybe this war could be avoided. Then she grabbed my
hand again and kissed my ring again. I had to sit down, I was so
overwhelmed.

If we can scream loudly that there are a million Christians in Iraq and
they're really in a tough spot, if we start doing that, start praying for
them publicly and get that word out, I think that's the most important thing
we can do for them. And the second part is to plan how we might be able to
help them.

[The Revd Jan Nunley is deputy director of Episcopal News Service]

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