Despite Bombing, Beirut Universities Take the Long View

By Reverend L. Humphrey Walz

"In Wake of Lebanon's Civil War, Sense of Optimism Develops at Two US-chartered Institutions." So ran the headline in the Chronicle of Higher Education, introducing paired articles on the American University of Beirut (AUB) and Beirut University College (BUC). Although four of their American faculty members were still being held hostage, and the State Department had not rescinded its warning to Americans, who have been so much a part of both campuses, against visiting or remaining in Lebanon, there were solid grounds for optimism. Throughout the 15 years of civil war their premises had been, militarily speaking, oases of peace. And now, for well over a year, the city of Beirut had become more placid and secure.

The pre-dawn November 8 car bomb explosion that devastated AUB's administration building, suspending classes for a day, interrupted the upbeat mood but has not dashed long-term expectations. This became immediately obvious that very evening. At the climactic event of AUB's 125th anniversary celebrations, alumni and friends thronging New York's Waldorf Astoria Hotel cheered President Frederic P. Herter's declaration of determination to carry on. A rebuilding drive is encouragingly under way. Over $160,000 was pledged spontaneously at the banquet.

AUB and BUC, now nonsectarian, both have Protestant missionary origins. In 1810, the clergy and laity of the primarily Congregationalist American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions looked for regions beyond their national borders in which they could most valuably express their activist faith. The Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii), suffering traumatic mass disillusionment with traditional deities, was one of two fields chosen for concentration. The other was the disintegrating Ottoman Empire, "the sick man of Europe." Its Asiatic provinces, including Syria (then embracing present-day Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and the occupied territories), were languishing from official neglect and corruption.

The "Ed. and Med." missionary approach produced many schools and clinics. By 1866, their growing number of secondary school graduates needed higher education. In Beirut, it was the Rev. Daniel Bliss upon whom the board depended to establish the "Syrian Protestant College," which evolved into the American University of Beirut.

Sixty-seven years later, under Presbyterian stewardship, the Beirut Women's College supplemented all-male AUB with comparable educational opportunities for women. (Both are now co-educational, and BWC has become Beirut University College.)

A third missionary-generated educational enterprise, somewhat different in scope, is International College. Though comparatively new to Beirut, it has reached the century mark this year.

Originally established by Congregationalists in Izmir, it encountered increasing difficulties under Turkish rule. Moved to Lebanon after World War II, its faculty of more than 200 now serves more than 3,000 students from kindergarten through secondary levels.

Three centennial articles—about IC's founding, its coping with dramatic changes, and its internationally sought-out Education Resources Center (ERC)—appeared in the September-October issue of Aramco World. To serve its stated purpose, "to assist governments, international agencies and private groups in the Middle East with their primary and secondary educational projects," ERC maintains a comprehensive circulating library and corps of evaluative, management, teaching and curriculum consultants.

Western and Arab Christians Ponder Hopes for Peace

After adjournment of the week-long International Christian Consultation on "Signs of Hope in The Middle East," held in Cyprus in October, Arab delegates took groups of American, Canadian and European guests to their home parishes and environs to observe at first-hand the situations they had discussed. Hosted by the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC) and co-sponsored by the US-based Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding, the conference's more than 150 participants represented 54 Western Evangelical organizations, plus at least two members from each of the historic Middle Eastern churches, some dating back to Apostolic times.

Discussions covered theology, mission, relief and development, all in the context of yearnings for greater unity—especially within and between the ancient churches of the area and the Western Christian bodies that support their work. The Western visitors were encouraged to plan more closely with indigenous Christians in developing medical, educational and other missionary programs.

The importance of counteracting the political, military, economic and emotional factors underlying sectarian strife was highlighted by the fact that it was deemed still unsafe to hold such a consultation in the more conveniently located MECC Beirut headquarters building rather than in Cyprus. Though there are welcome signs of spiritual renewal and cohesion in Lebanon, the lingering dangers of violence there—too often instigated by parties claiming "Christian" or other religious labels—made it advisable to hold the consultation elsewhere.

Concurrent events only underscored its call for increased candid dialogue, and cooperation with "our Muslim and Jewish brothers and sisters." In Cairo's suburban Imbaba slum, a crowd, incited by "Muslim extremists, " burned down the Free Methodist Church during a two-day rampage against Christian-owned shops and homes.

In Zababdeh, on the occupied West Bank, Israeli soldiers expelled doctors, nurses, ancillary staff, patients and relatives from the Community Health Center and officially closed it down indefinitely. Jointly operated by the Roman Catholic Patriarchy, the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees, and local volunteers, the Center had been providing desperately needed curative, preventive and rehabilitative services for 12 villages with 22,000 inhabitants.

Meanwhile, the self-appointed "International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem," which describes itself as both "Zionist" and "Evangelical," claimed that it had roused thousands of Christian fundamentalists in 70 countries to support the Sharon-Shamir-Likud militant and confrontational programs with which it openly collaborates.

Regarding Middle East peace negotiations, the Consultation solicited prayers that the nations involved might strive to rise above rivalries for power and material advantage to bring about a just peace, an equitable solution to conflicting claims to Jerusalem, and an end to Palestinian homelessness.

Jerusalem Patriarch Home After US Visitation

Archbishop Michael Sabbah, Nazarethborn former president of Bethlehem University, has, since 1988, been the Latin (Roman Catholic) Patriarch of Jerusalem. This entails local responsibilities with Catholic and ecumenical colleagues and with parishioners, most of whom, like himself, stem from ancient Christian Palestinian stock. It also makes him international Grand Prior of the Order of Knights and Ladies of the Holy Sepulchre, whose traditional responsibilities are to protect historic rights to Christian holy places in the Holy Land, stimulate pilgrimages to them, maintain specified educational and benevolent institutions and support the Christian presence there.

Coordinating their schedules with the Catholic Near East Welfare Association and its president, John Cardinal O'Connor, several of that Order's American units invited Sabbah to address their assemblies across the country. While in the United States he was given further attentive hearings by, among other leaders, UN Secretary General Peres de Cuellar, White House Chief of Staff John Sununu, Secretary of State for the Near East and South Asia Edward Djerejian, Msgr. Robert L. Stern of the Pontifical Mission for Palestine, and the archbishops of Boston, Washington, St. Louis, Baltimore and Chicago. Such conversations have an added symbolic significance for those Christian Palestinians who have felt that both the UN and the United States, including fellow Christians, have been unduly insensitive to their plight and deaf to their pleas.

The Voice of Experience

Speaking out of a range of pastoral and ecclesiastical involvement, as a Palestinian ministering to fellow Palestinians under Israeli occupation, Sabbah gave his hearers in America a heightened sense of what peace between the parties can mean to those whose needs confront him daily. These include wounded and disabled civilians, survivors of torture, families of "detained" prisoners being held incommunicado and without accusation or trial, and people whose homes have been sealed or demolished by the military, whose relatives have been deported, and whose land and water resources have been seized. His parishioners also have been cut off from markets, jobs and classrooms, have had their orchards cut down, their children and young folk hurt and humiliated, and they have had discriminatory taxes levied against them, without receiving the benefits normally accorded taxpayers.

He expressed special thanks for those Israelis who also recognize the need to achieve lasting peace through equal justice, human rights and security for all. The Israeli government's ban on the freedom of Israelis to talk politically with like-minded Palestinians is one obstacle to peace that US citizens can ask congressional help to remove as a violation of the human rights upon which all US foreign aid is predicated.

Sabbah and fellow heads of Jerusalem churches and members of the Middle East Council of Churches will continue the task, as he expresses it, of working toward "a peace which armies and politicians cannot bring about unaided, a peace nourished by prayer, vision, sensitivity, forgiveness and love for all God's sons and daughters, even one's enemies." With his fellow Christian clerics, he also stresses the necessity of more active linkage with "Muslim and Jewish brothers and sisters" in individual and collective efforts to end the "confusions, anarchy and discord so devastating to the Holy Land and to all humanity. " This was also his message to a Jewish delegation in Baltimore, and to the Muslim and Christian leaders who attended an Arab-American reception honoring him in Chicago.