Vicar: Dire Times For Iraq's Christians

Tells 60 Minutes Most Of Iraq's Christians Have Fled Or Been Killed

(CBS)  This segment was originally broadcast on Dec. 2, 2007. It was updated on June 26, 2008.

From the time of Jesus, there have been Christians in what is now Iraq. The Christian community took root there after the Apostle Thomas headed east in the year 35.

But now, after nearly 2,000 years, Iraqi Christians are being hunted, murdered and forced to flee -- persecuted on a biblical scale in Iraq's religious civil war. You'd have to be mad to hold a Christian service in Iraq today, but if you must, then the vicar of Baghdad is your man. He's the Reverend Canon Andrew White, an Anglican chaplain who suffers from multiple sclerosis and from a fanatical determination to save the last Iraqi Christians from the purge.

White invited 60 Minutes cameras and correspondent Scott Pelley to an underground Baghdad church service for what's left of his congregation. White's parishioners are risking their lives to celebrate their faith.

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"The room is full of children, it’s full of women, but I don’t see the men. Where are they?" Pelley remarked.

"They are mainly killed. Some are kidnapped. Some are killed. In the last six months things have got particularly bad for the Christians. Here in this church, all of my leadership were originally taken and killed," White explained. "All dead. But we never got their bodies back. This is one of the problems. I regularly do funerals here but it's not easy to get the bodies."

Many Iraqi Christians' churches are destroyed or abandoned. The congregation is smuggled in and out of this secret sanctuary. Even letting 60 Minutes come to the service was a terrible risk. White is among the last Christian ministers here, a savior with crosses to bear. Larger than life, stricken with MS, and by his own reckoning, driven a little bit mad.

He was first sent to Baghdad by the Archbishop of Canterbury nine years ago, well before the Christian persecution.

"You were here during Saddam’s reign. And now after. Which was better? Which was worse?" Pelley asked.

"The situation now is clearly worse” than under Saddam, White replied.

"There’s no comparison between Iraq now and then," he told Pelley. "Things are the most difficult they have ever been for Christians. Probably ever in history. They’ve never known it like now."

"Wait a minute, Christians have been here for 2,000 years," Pelley remarked.

"Yes," White said.

"And it’s now the worst it has ever been," Pelley replied.

To understand the history of Iraqi Christianity, start with the Last Supper. One saint to the right of Jesus is the Apostle Thomas, who took the gospel and headed east after the death of Christ.

In modern times, under Saddam, Christians were treated much the same as Muslims; Saddam's right hand man, Tariq Aziz, was Christian.

Before the war, it's estimated there were about a million Christians in Iraq. They were a small minority, but free to worship, free to build churches, and free to speak the ancient language of Jesus, Aramaic. But, after the invasion, Muslim militants launched a war on each other and the cross.

[reply60min]

re: scalia
on the recent 4th guantanamo ruling allowing proper rights to the accused, he opined/fear mongered "if we let the prisoners go, they will kill again". What an argument against mccain!
Jeffrey toobin ("the nine", interviewed on moyers) has it right. scalia is just as guilty of "legislating from the bench" and failure of "strict interpretation" of the constitution. if the goal was really to interpret "a well regulated militia..." then english academics should have created equivalent constructed phrased, polled for interpretation, and the result would likely show the prefatory clause and operative clause syntactically bound. the smug and hypocrite scalia only gloats not because he is right, but because he can bully with the narrow 5 of 9 majority vote (largely installed by partisan politics), besides, the "rights" of the individual can be limited when it interferes with the rights of the masses (stolen cheap "saturday night specials") or to law enforcement safety. btw, recall it was at the same time bush told iraqis they needed to incorporate more women in parliament, that the female representation in the supreme court was reduced by 50% (o''conner retiring and roberts replacing). With pro choice women''s rights in contention, the 1 of 9 disparity must have looked like pure hypocrisy to the iraqis.

[reply60min]

Unfortunately the iraq invasion was promoted highly on religious grounds. from the christian airforce, boykin, bush''s "voices from god" go-ahead, ashcroft/rice''s prayer and hymn singing sessions, and well paid mercenary eric prince(of amway fortune)/blackwater, the real "hijacked religion" occured by your own "born again/thou shalt not kill" bush. the unitary/labeled fascist bush and neocons relied on levi strauss'' "the public needs to be lied to because they can''t understand". it bode well in the 2nd term elections with 2 large voting block factions that rely solely on non-questioning and doing what one is told, the church sheep and the military. the west''s religious involvement is inseparable.

[roe1352]

The report was somewhat misleading. It made it look like the Christians in Iraq were from Western based churches. Many (if not most?) of the Christians in Iraq are Assyrian and has essentially been there since for 2,000 years. It seems logical (not fair or right) that Muslim Iraqis would feel resentment for a western religion looking for converts in the country, but their punishment has also been doled out to a religion and people that have been living in their neighborhoods with them for the past 2,000 years.

There are also many Iraqi Assyrians in the US, and also working with the US military. Why not get their angle on this since they have an American and Iraqi perspective?

[reply60min]

(cont from alhura story)
much of israel''s taking of palestine (besides violating 242 and geneva conventions) looses potency if the sympathy falls from the spotlight. It is pure hypocrisy to have a "museum of tolerance" and run a apartheid regime that terrorizes the palestinian population to ethnically cleanse the land for racist zionist inhabitants, simply because they would loose in an equal rights democratic society as the minority. recall when schwarzenegger "donated" $700k (latimes) to the holocaust memorial to have his family genealogy researched for nazi involvement as a precondition for jewish support. Of course, there is a "holocaust industry". The "story" has to be kept alive while people don''t even know of other mass killings that are more significant. ahmadinijad may be a denier to the same extent bush is, but don''t be afraid to admit points that are true.

mcgoiter for vp

CAN YOU PLEASE NOT YELL AT US...TY

last time i checked it was xian catholics who molested those kids not the jews, just a small observation

[reptilian96]

I don''t know why? POPE doesn''t do anything about this propaganda?

rlukas2:
i''m waiting...

and if god doesn''t have a sense of humor, (don''t mock god) then why do we laugh?

i have been speaking honestly. i see it like this: i am a good person, i don''t hurt others, i pay my taxes, i vote and live a happy life. yet if i were to break any law i would get 5 years. this prez who claims to be a xian, kills millions of people and has a moneky grin (sorry to the monkeys) will have nothing happen to him or his cronies. that''s fair? that''s god like? sure. you religon doesn''t work, and ppl are starting to realize this. anyone remeber the priests molesting children? what happend to them? what? NADA!

[reptilian96]

These f**king Arabs and Jews are brothers historically speaking. Ishmail and Issac two son of Abrahim from different wifes. Ishmaili ARABS and Isaac JEWS. All the hardline Jews know about this is a fact but they deny just like they deny Jesus at the time. They are killing each other in the name of same GOD although due to language differencess they call it different. However, I think Jesus is God which they both don''t believe. So, why my Christan country have to get involve in this ignorant religious battle. We need our money here in USA. We don''t need to support Israel at all.We can always make millitary base Where Israel is and control the area. long live USA a solid christan country.

[sda09923]

jerriemc23:
one think that you can count on is the judgment. Read my earlier post. God can not be mocked, remember%u2026
But do you know what will be judged? How does a person get into heaven and why does a person get turned away. Please tell me that. I have spoken, a lot, I am interested in what you think on this and more importantly why do you think that.
If you say that people that claim faith have done bad things, well that is correct.. most of the people that have hurt me the most are .. well you get the idea.. it is always your friends that hurt you the most.. right? But are you able to separate what people do and say and act like from what God is, and does. Can you separate the two things.. you have to.. you can not learn about the motivations of a perfect holy God by looking through faulty people and get a clear picture, right.
If you look at me, I would love it if you saw God, but all too often%u2026 well%u2026 you see me. Does that make sense?
Speak honestly as I have with you.

[reptilian96]

FOX NEWS discovered the presence of a massive spy ring inside the United States run by the government of Israel. This seems a harsh gratitude from a nation which obtains 10% of its annual budget from the American taxpayer, $3+ billion a year. Over the years, American taxpayers have been required to send Israel more than four times what the US spent to go to the moon.

the "bib"le is one of the most used, least understood books of all time. if god is such bad A** then why did he need us to write his book, or need a woman to give birth to his son? i mean couldn''t he have just wrote it himself or create "jesus" from thin air. it''s a fictional account of history.

[sda09923]

acolton1:
well that is understandable.. please know that I don%u2019t have a religion, I have a faith%u2026 But I know what you mean. I have always thought that it is a deep desire of every human to know God. It is part of our makeup. Some people feel that in response to that desire, humans created something to satisfy themselves. Certainly this world leaves a lot to be desired. So how do you know? This is kind of what you are asking, or at least saying.. I wish I had more than 1500 characters for this. I can not prove God for you, if I could what use is faith. Which by the way is cherished, and admired, by God.
I think about%u2026
The changes that have happened, and are happening, in my life and in other people%u2019s lives, don%u2019t forget the 12 apostles, how they were changed. Don%u2019t forget Paul.
God, as he describes himself, is nothing like us, he is totally different. If we would have invented him in our image he would not have been the God in the bible, certainly not the New Testament. A God that lays down the life of his own son for a pack of disobedient ungrateful people who did not ask him to, were not seeking him, and for the most part would ignore, reject and mock him. Certainly not a product of the Roman world, nor ours.
I am not putting you or anyone down, I am guilty, more than once..
No God is real, he wants you to know him, personally. That deep desire, God said he put that into every one of us.

acolton1:
i could not agree w/you more. it''s all about the benjamins. they only want to use us and toss us aside. i''m looking forward to the day when the chruch will be held responsible FOR THIER ACTIONS. and yes there good ppl/chruches out there, but for the most part the only hate and divide

rlukas2:
i appreciate your concern, i really do, but your religon doesn''t work for me. i believe we created god in our image, not the other way around.

[sda09923]

acolton1:
yes.. it makes you a target. It requires a lot of courage and strength. Love and faith in what God has said. But the same thing is required no matter where you live. I live in the US. No one is actively trying to hunt me down and kill me for my faith, well not yet anyhow. But the world forces you to choose no matter where you live the world competes for your allegiance, no matter where or who you are?
Instead of giving money, time, effort, all of which I have so little of, I could be enjoying myself.. all I have to do is turn away, from what God has said. It would be so easy. But I lay all that down and sacrifice not just money and time, but the right to pay back wrongs done to me, to forgive when I DO NOT want to, (honesty) In away no matter where you live, don%u2019t you have to give up this life for God. Salvation is free, following God is not.
Can you have both. No.. you really cannot.. So now you have a problem. Do what you want to, what everyone around is doing, what you have maybe been taught, what seems profitable, easy, happy, satisfying.. or do you do what God has said, not because you like it, but because of who he is, what he has done.. Present yourself daily as a holy sacrifice to the Lord our God.. isn%u2019t that what God has said. Are there any but, or unless this or that.. no my friend there are not. There is only one thing that matters, isn%u2019t there.. To know God, to Love God, and to obey God. Is what I am saying true, deep down is it true?

[sda09923]

jerriemc23:
In the book of Mathew. Where the judgment verses are. %u201CWhen you have done these things for the least of my brother, you have done them to me%u201D .. God feels what you feel, even if you brother are the least. Know that you can not be separated from God, his Holy Spirit, that lives inside of you. They can kill us, but they can not take that from us. Some of my friends have laid their lives down for God. You, as a believer, someone that has accepted the Christ are not condemned to this world, but your pain and discouragement are. I know that it is hard, but try to remember that.
Please do not trust those feelings, if you trust your feelings more that what God has promised you are in trouble. That is what Satan wants you to do, to forget the promises of the most high.