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American Christians Pledge Solidarity With Persecuted Christians In Egypt, Iraq And Syria

May 12, 2014 | Africa
May 12, 2014
AfricaEgyptIraqMiddle EastSyria

ICC Note: In an initiative led by Representative Frank Wolf and Anna Eshoo, more than 200 religious leaders have pledged solidarity with the Christians of Egypt, Iraq, and Syria. In the public event launching the pledge, leaders from a wide range of denominations spanning the theological spectrum expressed their concern with the persecution targeting Christians in the Middle East and expressing their desire to see those communities persist in the region.

By Nina Shea

05/07/2014 Middle East (Fox News) – On Wednesday, May 7, history is being made. On behalf of the suffering churches of Egypt, Iraq and Syria, a broad array of American Christians, with a degree of unity rarely seen since the Council of Nicaea in 325, have joined together in a “pledge of solidarity and call to action.”

Their action results from deepening concern about the “wave of persecution” in the region of Christianity’s roots.

In the “We the People” tradition, the pledge is a grass roots effort, with input from many sources. It is being released publicly on Wednesday morning by Reps. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) and Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), but it does not have any particular institutional sponsor nor a political leader spearheading it.

Some 200 Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox leaders have signed on — from Catholic Cardinal Wuerl, to National Association of Evangelicals’ chair Leith Anderson, to Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori of the Episcopal Church to Armenian Orthodox Archbishop Oshagan Cholayan.

They include many lay civic society leaders, including Robert George of Princeton University, Jim Wallis of Sojourners, George Weigel of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, journalist Kirsten Powers, George Marlin, chair of Aid to the Church in Need-USA, and Lynne Hybels of Global Engagement of the Willow Creek Church.

These Christian leaders have come together across faith traditions and political affiliations in response to the increasingly dire appeals from Middle Eastern Christians. As Baghdad’s Catholic Chaldean Patriarch Louis Sako recently cried out: “We feel forgotten and isolated. We sometimes wonder, if they kill us all, what would be the reaction of Christians in the West? Would they do something then?”

As the pledge recounts:

“While Christians have been leaving the Middle East for many years, and, in these three countries, members of all communities—including smaller religious communities and Muslims—suffer from violence and political turmoil, the Egyptian, Iraqi and Syrian Christian communities, under the additional scourge of intensifying religious extremism, are experiencing a sudden, massive exodus of their members from the region.”

With the rise of Islamist extremists, this situation has become so acute that, regarding the Christians, it is not only individuals who are threatened. The presence of the entire Christian community in the region of its birth is at stake. The pledge emphasizes:

“Since these communities account for most of the indigenous Christians in today’s Middle East, the continued presence of Christians in the region where Christianity originated 2,000 years ago is threatened.”

The pledge states that Egypt, Iraq and Syria have seen “scores of churches deliberately destroyed, many clergy and laypeople targeted for death, kidnapping, intimidation and forcible conversion, and hundreds of thousands of believers driven from their countries.”

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