From The Church Times-
CHRISTIANS in Iraq face a sombre and fearful Christmas, as the prospects for 2011 look, at best, uncertain.
“There’s been great fear, and there’s been a lot of anxiety,” Canon Andrew White, Chaplain of St George’s, Baghdad, told the BBC at the weekend. “We lost many of our families who have disappeared or been killed.” Some 500 of the formerly 4000-strong congregation were no longer present, he said.
The string of attacks on Christian targets this year, culminating in the siege in October of a cathedral in Baghdad in which more than 50 people were killed (News, 5 November), prompted the Iraqi government to erect concrete walls around churches and increase security in other ways. Despite the introduction of these new precautions, most churches in Iraq have decided not to risk the lives of members of the congregation, and have cancelled Christmas services and celebrations.
St George’s is one of the excep tions. Canon White said it was important for the Christmas-worship programme to continue, despite the current mood of fear: “Now it’s Christmas, and we are going to have a wonderful time. The only thing we can concentrate on is the fact that Christmas is good news and a time of hope. When you have lost everything, Jesus is all we have left.”
Canon White said he had always encouraged Christians to stay in Iraq because “we need people here to maintain Christianity. But it’s very difficult to do this now, when people have been killed.”
More here-
http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=105973
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