wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Middle East missionary dies

[PCUSA NEWS <PCUSA.NEWS@ecunet.org>]

Note #8149 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

04115
February 27, 2004

Middle East missionary dies

Paul Seto, a pioneer in Muslim-Christian dialogue, was 85

by Alexa Smith

LOUISVILLE - The Rev. Paul S. Seto, a missionary who served in the Middle
East and remained at his post in Tehran even through part of the Iranian
revolution, died at his Santa Fe home on Feb. 21. He was 85.

	Seto was born in Haney, British Columbia, a son of Japanese
immigrants, and was known in his youth as "Susumu" - "Susie," for short. He
is said to have changed his name to Paul in honor of the writer of the
epistles, but no one is quite sure when.

	He left the West Coast in the 1940s, shortly before the U.S. and
Canadian governments began rounding up people of Japanese ancestry because of
World War II, but his parents did not escape internment. The family's land
was confiscated, and Seto's parents worked as day laborers under police
supervision while their son attended Garrett Theological Seminary in
Illinois.

	Seto found his calling in the mission field, devoting his life to
crossing racial, political and cultural barriers to create community where
there was none. He was sympathetic to to people of other faiths and
facilitated Christian-Muslim dialogue without compromising his own faith.

	A memorial service is scheduled for 11 a.m. on Saturday, April 17, at
First Presbyterian Church in Santa Fe, NM, which he attended after moving to
Santa Fe in retirement and joining the Presbyterian community at Plaza del
Monte.

	The Rev. Aurelia Fule, a fellow retiree in Santa Fe who worked for
the PC(USA)'s department of theology and worship, said of Seto: "I knew Paul
for 25 years. He was caring, truly loving ... in the deep sense of the word.
He was the most remarkable person, and he shared something of what God's love
must be like for human beings."

	Seto earned a bachelor's degree at the University of California and
graduated from Garrett in 1944. He later studied theology at Princeton and
Hartford seminaries. He was ordained by New Brunswick Presbytery and in 1946
was assigned to Kermanshah, Iran, by the United Presbyterian Church in the
United States of America.

	He and his wife, Genevieve Reynolds Seto, worked in missions until
1963, serving in Aleppo, Syria, and Beirut, Lebanon. Seto taught at Aleppo
College and the Near East School of Theology and worked in a campus ministry
in Beirut.

	Seto's son, Ted, noting that his parents' 1944 marriage was
interracial and therefore illegal in the United States, said mission service
was an attractive alternative at a time when there was little demand for
Presbyterian ministers of Japanese descent.

	"The decision was clearly the right one," Ted Seto said. "In the
field, he was no longer Japanese; he was Christian. That, of course, posed
its own difficulties in the countries to which he was posted, but they were
difficulties common to all missionaries. His extraordinary facility with
languages and great interpersonal skills made him unusually effective. Race
no longer mattered. ...

	"For him, creation of a world in which all could feel included and
cared for was what the church was about, and his life and ministry reflected
that."

In 1963, after his wife died, Seto married her sister, Selma, and they
returned together to Iran, where they served until 1980. They were among six
Presbyterian missionaries expelled from the country after the overthrow of
the Shah.

	Seto later worked as director of the Patterns of Ecumenical Sharing
program at the Stony Point Conference Center in upstate New York. Before his
1991 retirement, he was a coordinator of mission programs for the PC(USA),
serving in Louisville and New York.

	The Rev. Peggy Thomas, who with her husband, Kenneth, served
alongside the Setos in Tehran, said: "Paul Seto understood Jesus' words about
love of the enemy to be at the heart of the gospel. There was nothing beyond
which God could not reach in love - a tough love that has consequences that
God bears and that we bear, but a love that brings us into relationships
without fear or boundaries."

	Selma Seto died in Santa Fe last September.

	Seto is survived by five children - Ted, of Los Angeles; Thelma
Genevieve Seto of Albany, OH; Linda Seto of Taos, NM; Sharon Seto of
Mussoorie, India, director of development at the Woodstock School there; and
Peter Seto, also of Mussoorie, a volunteer at the Christian boarding school -
and 11 grandchildren.

To subscribe or unsubscribe, please send an email to
pcusanews-subscribe-request@halak.pcusa.org or
pcusanews-unsubscribe-request@halak.pcusa.org

To contact the owner of the list, please send an email to
pcusanews-request@halak.pcusa.org