Sunday, December 23, 2012

Christianity "close to extinction"

In a word: DUH!  The details are here.

In my own congregation, there are several Arab families who came to the United States fleeing the civil war in Lebanon as well as persecutions from governments and local officials in Syria, the Palestinian territories, Iraq, Jordan as well as being caught between the Jewish and Palestinian conflict (the Israelis, largely, do not seem to distinguish between Arab Christians and Arab Muslims), and there is very little hope among them that Christians will be able to remain a presence in the Holy Land. 

The Arab Spring and the rise of democratically elected Islamist Fascists in places like Egypt and Tunisia and Libya, which will soon probably be replicated in Syria and even Iraq will probably fall into that trend has pretty much guaranteed that though there may be Christians in the Holy Land, those Christians will largely be monks and clergy and mere caretakers of Holy Sites.  Christian families will disappear.  When this will happen, who knows, but the fact is that it is happening.   We should all weep for this.  Christianity will no doubt survive, but the living faith should not and cannot be removed from the place of its own Nativity.  God help the Christians of the Holy Land.

No comments:

Post a Comment