Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May/June 1998, Pages 110-111

Christianity and the Middle East

Gulf Interchurch Office Expands, Moves From Bahrain to Dubai

By Rev. L. Humphrey Walz

Convenience and a generally pleasant, cloudless climate have made the Persian/ Arabian Gulf region a congenial place to settle for the chemists, laborers, scientists and others involved in the extracting and marketing of its oil and gas resources. It has therefore been natural for the short-term and long-term immigrants involved to develop the types of religious life, both congregational and denominational, to which they were accustomed back home. In 1981 the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC) established a regional Gulf Liaison Office which was originally in Bahrain and which recently moved to the more populous Dubai. The accession to the MECC of the Church of Sweden Mission, with its extensive programs in Dubai, was the final determinant in the move, the better to serve the Council’s enlarging constituency.

Lewis Scudder, editor of the lively MECC Newsreport, sees the Gulf churches, unlike those elsewhere in the Middle East, as “overwhelmingly migrant and expatriate.” This feature he sees as unique within the region, and perhaps in the world. Thus the MECC Gulf Liaison Office “serves at a point where the church is experimenting with truly creative challenges.”

Reverend Rolf Peterson, who with his wife, Kirstin, is a veteran of service to the Church of Sweden Mission (CSM) in East Africa and the Middle East, is the new executive officer.

EMEU Invites Falwell to Joint Review of Christian Problems Under Israeli Sway

Citing devastating consequences on the Middle East peace process and the plight of Palestinian Christians, Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding (EMEU), a Chicago-based organization with a 12-year history of work in the Middle East, has asked Rev. Jerry Falwell to reconsider his pledge to contact 200,000 Evangelical pastors on behalf of Israel. In its letter to Mr. Falwell, the board of directors of EMEU, representing leaders of major Evangelical publications, institutions and churches, asked for a “day of prayer and fasting” to consider the consequences of his actions on the “dying Middle East peace process” and on Middle Eastern Christians.

Noting that the Palestinian Christian population has dropped dramatically since Israel’s creation in 1948, due to various political and economic pressures, there is a realistic possibility that this community will disappear. The EMEU leaders added: “If this trend continues, there will be no living Palestinian church in a generation, only empty museums and so-called holy sites to be visited by Western and Asian tourists.... As Evangelical leaders, we must call into question policies and practices that cause the decline of Christ’s church.”

The EMEU letter asks Rev. Falwell to consider whether he is submitting to an Israeli Likud government political agenda that “misses the spirit of the Hebrew Torah and of Jesus himself,” while the Christian community in Jerusalem and the surrounding region is suffering from the policies of the same “Likud government.” The letter continues: “We urge you to listen to your sisters and brothers in these lands before pursuing this policy.”

The EMEU board has invited Rev. Falwell to travel with them to visit the Christians of Bethlehem and see the Holy Land from that perspective.

“We are living in exceedingly violent times, particularly in the Middle East,” the EMEU letter states. “As the United States begins to prepare the international community for military action against Iraq, the long anticipated peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors is dying.” EMEU fears that innocent civilians will again be the victims, and that it is possible American tourists and Christian pilgrims will be targeted.

The letter concludes by asking Rev. Falwell to join EMEU in taking three steps that might offer a “middle path to peace and justice for Jews and Palestinians:”

1. To join EMEU in a week of prayer and discernment for peace with justice in the Middle East, and inviting the nation’s churches, synagogues and mosques to join the effort
   
   
2. To set aside a national day of prayer and fasting for peace in the Middle East
   
   
3. To urge Rev. Falwell to come to Bethlehem for a week together to see and experience the situation first hand, and to join at a conference at Bethlehem University, organized by Palestinian Christians, to consider how they will survive in the coming years.

Dr. Don Wagner, director of EMEU and professor of religion at North Park University in Chicago, telephone (773) 244-5785 or Dr. Gary Burge, secretary of EMEU and professor, New Testament, at Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL, telephone (630) 752-5932, can keep Washington Report readers posted on recent developments, which so far have not included a reply from Falwell.

American Evangelicals Urge Falwell To Reconsider Initiative With Israeli Prime Minister

For over three centuries fundamentalist dispensationalists have pointed to portions of Matthew, Revelation and the Old Testament as cryptically foretelling the precise date of the end of the world, with the coming in glory of Jesus and the wiping out of His enemies with a massive massacre at Armageddon (Megiddo).

In 1980 Falwell was claiming that the 40 years of the final countdown to the second coming of the Messiah and the “Rapture” of the faithful to their heavenly reward had begun. The year 2020 would be the crucial awaited time, he said. For some reason he sees the creation of the State of Israel as the fulfillment of the final step of the prophecy of the end.

Dispensationalists, as they are known, have been making such prophecies for over three centuries, constantly revising their predictions of when and how the stated End-Time is to come, and looking for a new stated time schedule for the return of Christ, the battle of Armageddon and the defeat and condemnation to eternal punishment of those who try to frustrate the self-appointed legions of the Lord. If this sounds confusing we suggest that you try to get hold of some of the original failed prophecies to which Falwell seems to be adding his share.

Just why Netanyahu and the Zionists wish to see their hopes of establishing a secular Jewish state destroyed by 2020 is puzzling unless such claims can be used as stepping stones toward the strengthening of the Zionist state.

Talhami and Habib at North Park

Professor Ghada Talhami and Reverend Gabriel Habib addressed the theme “Syria and Lebanon in the Middle East Peace Process” in April at North Park University, Chicago. Dr. Talhami, a Muslim, is a professor of political science in Lake Forest who has just spent six months in Syria as a Fulbright professor at Damascus University. Habib, a pioneer of the Ecumenical Movement among the churches of the Middle East, served for 20 years as executive general secretary of the Middle East Council of Churches. A Lebanese citizen and member of his government’s Muslim-Christian Council, he is currently working for the National Council of Churches, USA, on related programs and research.

The Talhami/Habib joint appearance at North Park’s Anderson Chapel was sponsored by the Center for Middle East Studies at that university, which has promoted appreciation of Islam since the late 19th century. This interest ultimately led in November 1995 to the development of the Center to provide and stimulate a climate of ecumenical dialogue and interfaith reconciliation through a program of academic study, publishing, conferences, guest lectures, community relations and cultural exchanges within the diverse student body at North Park and its neighboring community.

EMEU Convention Slated for Washington in November

The next national convention of Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding (EMEU) is to be held Nov. 5 to 7 at National Presbyterian Church, Washington, DC on “Religious Freedom in the Middle East: the Case for the Christian Community.”

Confirmed speakers include Rev. Naim Ateek of the Palestinian Christian human rights movement known as Sabeel; Bishop Kenneth Cragg, Christian authority on Islam (currently at Oxford University); Nina Shea of Freedom House, New York; Pastor Craig Barnes of the National Presbyterian Church, Washington; President Joan Brown Campbell of the National Council of Churches, USA; Brother Andrew, director of Open Doors, and others whose qualifications are unique.

The full schedule of participants and themes can be secured from Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding, 1225 West Foster Ave., Chicago, IL 60623, phone (773) 244-5785.

“Israel and Palestine After Fifty Years”

I was pleased in early April when Jennifer Loewenstein of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, sent me informational and promotional material about T.I.M.E (Truth in the Middle East) and its impending four-week series of lectures featuring “Israel and Palestine After Fifty Years.” T.I.M.E., I subsequently learned, is a non-sectarian, non-profit student organization committed to promoting awareness of political, social, economic and cultural issues of the Middle East. Its aims include eliminating the stereotypical portrayal of the inhabitants of the Middle East, calling for an end to human rights violations in the region, and educating the U.S. public about the rich and diverse cultures in the area.

Programmatically the purpose of the organization is to present lectures and films on topics too infrequently discussed in academia or the media. It intends to continue to promote a wider range of timely discussion and ideas than have been available to the American public about the Middle East. It maintains a firm belief in the necessity of free speech—especially on sensitive issues such as the Arab-Israeli conflict—in order to present a full spectrum of debate on related topics.

This year’s Zionist-oriented presentations hailing the 50th anniversary of the state of Israel required, T.I.M.E. believes, much more than festivities and celebratory speeches. Especially in order are closer examinations of the U.S. relationship to Israel and the ramifications of this relationship on U.S. policy in the Middle East in general—policies whose implications, it believes, will persist well into the 21st century.

As a first venture it co-sponsored a series of four lectures with the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the Progressive newspaper, the Institute for Palestine Studies and, at the University of Wisconsin, its Havens Center for the Study of Social Structure and Social Change, Middle Eastern Studies, the Department of Political Science and Sociology and Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication. Jointly they invited as speakers for four Thursdays in April: Palestinian scholar Rashid Khalidi, now with the University of Chicago, author of 1948 and the Palestinian Right of Return; international journalist Robert Fisk of The Independent (London) on “Return of Sender to Sender: How to Report and Not Report From the Middle East”; Harvard political analyst Sara Roy on “Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Fifty Years Later: Current Realities and Future Prospects”; and Dr. Norman G. Finkelstein of NYU on “Uses and Misuses of History: the Nazi Holocaust, Israel and the Palestinians.”

Apart from Jennifer’s neighborly initiative, I’d have known nothing of the above. I trust that when similar undertakings take place elsewhere others will be as concerned as she to get out the word.