Vatican Initiative for Lebanese Renewal

By Rev. L. Humphrey Walz

Pope John Paul II has challenged the four Lebanese Eastern-rite Catholic Patriarchs to take a prominent role in mustering "the energy and good will to rebuild, with mobility and freedom, a society worthy of the historical vocation of Lebanon. " He sees the cessation of the 16-year-old armed civil strife there as inviting a major cooperative effort toward that end.

To prepare a sound basis and initial momentum for so daunting a task, he is calling for a Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops "during which the Catholic Churches of Lebanon will question themselves, in God's presence, about their fidelity to the Gospel and their commitment to live up to it. " Though he is ready personally to preside over such an Assembly, he sees its ultimate effectiveness as depending heavily on the Lebanese Catholics themselves, "priests, religious and lay, under the direction of the Patriarchs and Bishops."

Through his special envoy, Cardinal Robert Etchegaray, he is holding consultations on wise and productive timetables for launching and development. For the whole undertaking he expresses "confidence in the assistance of the other Christian Churches in Lebanon," including "the ancient Churches of the East, which were the cradle of our faith. " He has also invited Lebanon's Muslim majority to recognize in "this effort of their Catholic fellow citizens ... their desire to draw closer to them in a society of genuine, peaceful coexistence and sincere collaboration for the restoration of the country."

Palestinian Muslim Joins American Christian Faculty

Hartford Seminary's Duncan Black McDonald Center for the Study of Islam and Muslim-Christian Relations has long been hailed as having the country's foremost library in the field. In inducting Dr. Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi onto its faculty, the 157-year old Connecticut institution sets another record: the Association of Theological Seminaries cites it as its first North American member body to appoint a Muslim as a full professor.

According to a front-page story in the seminary's current Praxis, Dr. Abu-Rabi's Temple University Ph.D. dissertation was on "Islam and the Search for Social Order in Modern Egypt. " That title suggests a deep-seated interest in the relevance of religious factors to public issues. So did the theme of his recent Rockefeller-funded year of research on "Islamic and Western Modernity " at the University of Texas Middle East Center in Austin.

Doubtless his upbringing in Nazareth and undergraduate years at Bir Zeit University added their insights into the nature of Christian-Muslim coexistence and cooperation. They would also have made him aware of the urgency of emphasizing to Muslims ' Christians and Jews a rededication, separately and jointly, to their declared common religious goals of peace, justice, compassion and reconciliation under God.

Nazareth is now hemmed in by Jewish settlements from which Muslims and Christians are equally barred.

In 1948, the final edition of the old standard Universal Jewish Encyclopedia described Nazareth, Dr. Abu-Rabi's birthplace, as a "beautiful town of some 9,500 inhabitants, of whom some 3,500 are Mohammadan and the rest Christian. " Though the 1947 UN Partition Plan had assigned it to the proposed Palestinian Arab state, it soon fell under Israeli military control and is now hemmed in by Jewish immigrant settlements from which Muslims and Christians are equally barred.

As to Bir Zeit, his West Bank alma. mater, it was founded and long maintained by Anglican ("Arab Evangelical") initiative and generosity. After 1967, Palestinian students abroad began to feel the increasing Israeli restrictions on their freedom to return home. Hence, their pursuit of higher education seemed safer on their own turf, and Bir Zeit's enrollment (along with Muslim AnNajah's and Catholic Bethlehem University's) expanded dramatically.

Reflecting the Palestinian scene in general its student body and its financial support became more and more Muslim. The interfaith solidarity did not diminish in that new situation and, since the campus's December 1987 military closure, persists among alumni and supporters.

His combined scholarship and experience served Dr. Abu-Rabi well on the Religious Studies faculty of the Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. They should provide fresh perspectives even at Hartford Seminary.

Iranian and American Imagings of Each Other

Ed Epp, former Mennonite country representative for Lebanon, is back from a team exploration of his American denomination's accomplishments and opportunities in the quake-wracked areas of Iran. He reports having been particularly impressed with what Iranians themselves are doing to help victims.

"People gave up valued ration coupons to others in more need," he has told his Pennsylvania headquarters. "Blankets, mattresses, food, and other relief items have been generously given by people who have little themselves. Many who lost whole families in the earthquake decided that the only response they could give was to help others in equal distress. " His consequent "new images of Iran as not an enemy, but as people who are proud, devout, loving and human" are, he realizes, "incomplete" but nonetheless an important part of the picture.

Remembering his own media-generated concepts of that country, he was not totally surprised at the images that dominate Iranian popular judgments of America: drugs, pornography and homelessness on our streets; support for the resented Shah and for the abusers of the Palestinians; demonizing of Muslims; and praying for the success of hightech destruction of civilians and their means of survival. Reinforced by retentive Middle Eastern memories harking back as far as the Spanish Inquisition and by 20th-century experience, such images help account for the courteously voiced comment of a cooperative Red Crescent official that the "West should understand all the damage they have done to the people of Iran. " Epp hopes that interplay between those people and the Mennonite Americans working among them will not only help correct distorted images of each other but also will generate natural good will in the grassroots to influence healthier trends in the future.

There was much to encourage him to expect reciprocal Iranian responses. Many expressed the conviction that true followers of essential Islam, Christianity and Judaism need never be 16 at odds with each other. " A personal friend of the late Ayatollah Khomeini concluded a conversation with the Mennonite team with: "At last we've found each other!" And the Ministry of Islamic Guidance urged more Christian-Muslim dialogue "that the walls that separate us may be broken down."

The Rev. L Humphrey Walz, D.D., is a retired associate executive of the Presbyterian Synod of the Northeast.