Friends
We know so little about Christians in the Middle East. There is a silence about the Christians who live and worship there. Reading Revelations 8 vv 1 ‘when he opened the seventh seal there was silence in heaven for about half an hour’.
The origins of the Christian communities in the Middle East are rooted in the birth and first development of Christianity in the old cities of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Damascus. Several million Christians continue to live in the Middle East at the beginning of the twenty-first century; most are scattered in Egypt (3.5 million), Jordan (150,000), Israel (105,000), the Palestinian territories (76,000), Syria (950,000), Lebanon (1.35 million), Iraq (615,000), Turkey (115,000), and Iran (150,000). Although their numbers have declined considerably in modern times, these communities represent an autochthonous Christian presence whose origins date further back than the birth and spread of Islam in the Middle East. Most Middle Eastern Christians are Arabs or, to a lesser extent, belong to such long-established groups as the Assyrians or the Armenians.
Middle Eastern Christianity is characterized by a plurality of churches, bearing witness to the rich cultural and religious life and the historical evolution of the Christian communities of the early centuries. In the nineteenth century, due in part to the increasing political and economic presence of the European states in the Middle East, many more Protestant and Latin missionaries arrived. The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem was restored in 1847, and at the same time Eastern Protestant communities were formed. After twenty centuries of historical evolution, the Eastern churches have been divided into four great families.
The various churches have their own institutions, including eparchies, community councils, various kinds of pastoral structures, ecclesiastical courts, and schools (in countries where confessional schools are allowed). One church's institutions often extend into the geographical regions of the other churches. The desires of individual churches to maintain their own identities and liturgical traditions has not prevented ecumenical activities, which led to the formation of the Council of the Churches of the Middle East (CCME) in 1974. All Middle Eastern Christian churches participate in the CCME, which helps to promote a more unified approach to the problems and issues facing Middle Eastern Christians. The prospect of ecumenism, even if it is sometimes difficult to achieve in concrete terms, is one of the few remaining sources of renewed energy for the Arab and Eastern churches in the long term.
Iran's Christian minority numbers are mostly ethnic Armenians and Assyrians, who follow Armenian Orthodox and Assyrian Church of the East Christianity respectively.
There are at least 600 churches serving the nation's Christian adherents. In spite of the fact that every country in the Middle East has at least a small number of worshippers of Christ and in spite of the fact that the vast majority of native Christians are Arabic speakers themselves, Christians in the Middle East are often isolated.
Prayer: O Lord our God, who brought your people into a good land, and sends showers of blessing that the earth shall yield its increase; flourish within us your gift of faith that, in our worship, our churches, our communities, and our lives, we may honour and renew your creation and join in obedience with the wind and the waters, the wilderness and the desert, the birds of the air and the fish of the sea, and all created things to give glory and praise to the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation, Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.