Our Eastern Brethren

 

One of the news stories that I have been following in the past days has been the visit paid by the leaders of the three main Christian groupings in the UK to the Holy Land, and particularly the remarks made by the Archbishop of Canterbury, which were widely reported in the British press. Essentially, Dr. Rowan Williams' main argument appears to be that Western and Israeli actions (Iraq and the Wall respectively) are primary reasons for the decline of Middle Eastern Christians.

About the Iraq war, of which I am no great fan, I will comment in other posts. What intrigued me most, however, is Dr. Williams' criticism of the West Bank Wall/Fence as a symbol of what is "deeply wrong in the human heart" and of a "fear of the other and the stranger which keeps all of us in one or another kind of prison". I find it very difficult to share Dr. Williams' views here. This barrier is not about some vague fear of the 'other'. It is about a very specific terrorist threat in a very specific political context. And the controversy that surrounds it (at least among those who accept that Israel needs to survive) is supposed to concern its route not its existence. Which brings me to my main subject, which is that Dr. Williams' intervention is probably meant to win brownie points with the local Muslims (which could be useful in gaining acceptance for local Christians) and possibly also to gain left-wing support for his Church back home. He is certainly not the only Christian leader to have adopted this approach, as Gardjola have recently pointed out. His Iraq article also supports this interpretation.

Now, I happen to think that the Western churches may be pretty much fighting for a lost cause in the Middle East. The chances of a general demographic revival of the Christian populations there seem to me to be rather remote at this stage. The only areas where this is conceivable (if still unlikely) are Mount Lebanon and the State of Israel. As far as the rest of the Middle East is concerned, emigration is probably not such a bad option, when the alternative is gradual assimilation and de-Christianization.

It appears, however, that our strategy has been to try and achieve the exact opposite. The territorial 'federalist approach' still promoted by some groups in Lebanon has been discouraged by the Vatican, which has preferred a less assertive political stance in Lebanon as a price for the community being granted a degree of religious freedom in the Middle East as a whole. Israel, the other safe haven, is barely tolerated by most Western churches (with the exception of American Evangelicals), partly for the same reason. All this in order to buy some more time for other Christian communities that have, for the most part, already disappeared. The Palestinian Christians are an example. Is it worthwhile for us to continue building our Middle Eastern policy around the survival of one church that at this stage has only a few tens of thousands of faithful (around 3% of the Palestinian population) left? So far, the strategy does not appear to have delivered strong results. As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, one has to wait and see whether it will continue to apply the same approach after the personnel changes that the Pope has effected during the past year in the Secretariat of State (the replacement of Cardinal Sodano) and in the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue (the replacement of Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald).

The bottom line, I think, is that the less we meddle with the Middle Eastern Christians (either in the form of Iraq-style military intervention or in the form of Vatican-style political interference or even in the form of Archbishop of Canterbury-style moral posturing) the better it is for them. We may have already helped subvert their chances for independence in Lebanon. We are currently subverting the only state that offers them full religious freedom, which is Israel. Given the poor returns we have achieved so far, and given the obvious fact that governments are better suited to manage foreign policy than are churches, I would suggest that we let our Middle Eastern brothers run their own show politically, whether they get it right or not, and simply limit ourselves to providing plenty of material assistance and spiritual solidarity - plus a home to come to in the West should their position in the Middle East not turn out to be sustainable despite our 'best efforts'. It might also be a good idea to learn from their predicament and to do what we can to avoid ending up in the same situation, if it's not too late.