Bishop’s warning over Middle East Church
ICC Note
“In Iraq , Christians have suffered extreme deprivation, sometimes due to sheer religious hatred, sometimes just caught in the cross-fire, sometimes because, amazingly and quite wrongly, they are regarded as representatives of a western faith.”
By Adrian Hall
03/10/2009 Islam (Religious Intelligence)-The Christian church in its homelands in the Middle East is undergoing a “rapid attrition”, the Anglican Bishop of Chichester has warned.
Bishop John Hind, in a House of Lords debate on religious persecution, pointed to the “extreme deprivation” suffered by Christians in Iraq .
“In places where different faiths have coexisted for centuries we see the rapid attrition of the Christian church in its ancestral homelands,” he said.
“In Iraq , Christians have suffered extreme deprivation, sometimes due to sheer religious hatred, sometimes just caught in the cross-fire, sometimes because, amazingly and quite wrongly, they are regarded as representatives of a western faith.
“So we cannot disown our own particular responsibility and the pressure on Christians in some parts of the world.”
He said that persecution does not always take a violent form and there are “perfectly legitimate” attempts to persecute people based on the rule of law.
