Recently, Christianity Today magazine featured a symbol on the cover from Arabic that many have used in social media to protest the destruction of the world’s oldest Christian communities. This is at least some improvement over the past. One Christian college was considering a Middle East Studies program and had a strong track in Muslim and Jewish perspectives. They had to be reminded that Christianity was not just born in the Middle East, but has had a continuous history there.
Syria and Lebanon have had active churches, schools, and monastic movements for centuries. Out of this history comes great art, architecture, theology, and philosophy. Never forget that prayers were offered to God in the Three Persons in Arabic long before Islam. Anybody who takes the Bible seriously, and everyone should, owes the best forms of Biblical interpretation to a school of thought based in Antioch.
The centuries of endurance of persecution stands as a rebuke to grifters in the pulpit or people who view the Middle East as a museum for tours. The Church is alive in the Middle East.
Most important, the churches of Lebanon and Syria do not just hand over a history, but are a people. The Church of the Middle East, particularly in Syria and Lebanon, is not just a memory, but alive with voices that should be heard. Every Sunday my own home church prays for missing bishops and pastors under fire. It’s hard to make it as a pastor when inflation guts the power of money and the needs around you are so great.
The next time you hear about “Arab immigration” remember the Christians who have blessed America by coming here from the Middle East. These brave pioneers have enriched cities like Los Angeles, New York . . . and Houston. Whenever I visit the community of Saint George here, I want to listen, learn, and serve. It is not enough, not nearly enough, to put a symbol on a Facebook page, though solidarity is always a good thing. We must dedicate ourselves to making sure that churches in the Middle East that are nearly as old as the Faith herself are not destroyed by terrorists.
The Saint Constantine School is a chance to serve the children of Antioch and by serving them first, giving to all God’s children in Houston. My adopted family has so much to give, so much that must be preserved, and that might only be able to sustain itself (for now) in the United States. As usual, Antioch will not serve her own children without helping other children as the inter-faith orphanages of Syria attest.
We live in homogenizing times where everything tends to plunge toward the easiest, fastest, and simplest. To be a Christian in the Middle East has been hard, slow, and complicated for centuries. The result is a tough, patient, and rich heritage. As American Christians in other traditions (Catholic and Protestant) become a minority in this land, wisdom points to the Syrian church as a model. We have survived. We are evangelical, optimistic, victorious.
A remnant has, is, and always will survive. You don’t have to wonder if this is true: look and see. Nothing has stopped the faithful in Antioch, the place we were first called Christians, and nothing can. This is not through some false prosperity gospel, but by the eternal message of the Faith that Jesus came to have mercy on sinners . . . of whom we are chief.
Get a good church history book. If it doesn’t cover Eastern Christians, then it is no good.
Read some sermons on Acts by John Chrysostom for devotions.
Take a moment and learn about Antioch. Go beyond the “n” and stand in true solidarity with greatness.
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