Image: Illustration by Mallory Rentsch / Source Images: Courtesy of Chaldean Church and of Stephen Rasche / WikiMedia Commons / Unsplash
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- christianitytoday.com
Jayson Casper, May 07, 2020
For 25 years, Stephen Rasche was
a “bare knuckles” international lawyer. But in 2010, he offered his services to
the Chaldean Catholic Church of Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan and has increasingly
dedicated his life to the preservation of this ancient community.
Under the leadership of
Archbishop Bashar Matti Warda, in 2015 Rasche helped found the Catholic
University of Erbil, where he serves as vice chancellor. Also the director of
its Institute for Ancient and Threatened Christianity, Rasche lived this title
as ISIS ravaged Iraq’s Christian homelands in the Nineveh Plains and many
believers fled to Erbil.
After testifying on their behalf
before the United Nations and the US Congress, Rasche allows them to represent
themselves in his recent book, The
Disappearing People: The Tragic Fate of Christians in the Middle East. The
book has won a diverse range of endorsements, from leaders such as Matthew
Hassan Kukah, bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, Nigeria; Yahya Cholil
Staquf, general secretary of Nahdlatul Ulama, the largest Muslim organization
in the world; and Thomas Farr, president of the Religious Freedom Institute.
The US State Department’s Office
of International Religious Freedom reports
that less than 250,000 Christians are living in Iraq, most in Kurdistan or on
the Nineveh Plains. Two-thirds belong to the Chaldean Catholic Church.
CT interviewed Rasche about the
logic of establishing a university during a genocide, how its Catholic identity
functions in a Muslim society, and his enduring optimism for Christianity in
Iraq.
What led you personally to invest
your life in this endeavor?
In 2010, Bishop Warda had just
been made archbishop, and I went to pay him a visit of respect, asking if there
was anything I could do to help. “Yes, in fact,” he said. “You Americans have
made a big mess here, and you could stay and help me. I have 3,000 displaced
families here from the south, they need help, and no one is helping us with
them. We don’t have jobs for them, and there’s a whole range of things I would
like to do.”
I assisted on and off on a
pro-bono basis for the next four years, but by 2014 the situation looked really
desperate. ISIS was maybe 30 miles away from Erbil. But in a visit just after
Christmas, I sat down with the bishop and the priests who told me, “We are
going to stay. Will you be with us here, and help us?”
Honestly, I was skeptical. But
after some deep thinking, I tried to determine the right thing to do and if
there was a calling in this for me.
Tell us more about that calling.
Being an international
transactions lawyer involved a fair amount of bare knuckles litigation. And not
a lot of it, quite frankly, was fulfilling in the sense of believing that you
were providing a meaningful service to the world or to your fellow brothers and
sisters.
An open-heart surgery slowed me
down for a couple of months, which allowed me to really ponder what I’d been
doing and where I was going, particularly with my faith. How much did I really
have? My discernment centered around the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the
Mount. Do I really believe this? And if I really do, then what can I do to show
it?
I can honestly say that those
years on the ground in Iraq, especially 2015–2018 when everything was really
difficult, eclipse all the other working years in my life in terms of a sense
of worth, purpose, and well-being.
What does it mean practically to
have a Catholic university in a Muslim-majority nation?
At a fundamental level, it’s
about presence. It’s to say, “Look, we are a Catholic university, and in the
middle of all of this, we are here.” Our view is very much long term. We see
the importance in planting the seed. At the end of the day, the primary purpose
of the university is to serve as an anchor institution for the remaining
Christian population, so that they can demonstrate their value to the entire
community.
But also, in the US and around
the world, there is a discussion about the importance of religious freedom.
Well, our Catholic university in Iraq was founded during the genocide. This
gives us a unique moral standing and frame of reference that’s not academic.
It’s not theoretical. It’s real. We can speak out and be real leaders on this.
Is there any role desired, or
possible, in terms of witness and gospel?
Over the last 1,400 years in Iraq
and most of the Middle East, proselytizing has been forbidden. What the
Christians have done is practice what they call evangelization by
example—opening hospitals, founding universities—so that the way you live your
Christian life demonstrates your service towards others, regardless of who they
are.
There was an unwritten
understanding that the Christians would not overtly proselytize and share the
gospel, but be indirect and not offend sharia law. But after ISIS and the lack
of any real response from the Muslim world, Archbishop Warda says that this
agreement is now finished. That as we go forward, we will no longer be shy. We
are going to proclaim the gospel, proclaim the teachings of Christ, and whoever
comes to us will come.
Interesting.
He basically said, “Look, what
else can happen to us? They’ve tried to kill us, destroy us, wipe us out with
genocide. And if it means that we’re approaching our end, we’re not going to go
quietly—not anymore.”
Christians in Iraq are at a
historical inflection point. Their presence here can be extinguished quickly in
many ways—primarily if there were to be, God forbid, war or proxy war between
the US and Iran. It would take place right where the Christians are living. It
would make things completely untenable for them.
But I fully expect that if they
make it through this current period, Christians will find ways to assert
themselves in ways that they haven’t before. In the past, they tried to walk
quietly, keep their heads down, and not cause any trouble. I think those days
are over.
Your book features the testimony
of local Christians about their situation in Iraq and the Middle East. Many
might blame Western policies. Others might pinpoint Islam. But how do
Christians identify their own failures? How do they evaluate their own
contribution to their dwindling numbers?
In many respects, they blame a
continuing division and discord that has left them far more vulnerable than if
they were unified and supportive of each other. In some cases, it has also
hindered the well-intended support coming from the West. It occurs between
different groups within the apostolic churches; between the apostolic churches
and the evangelical churches; and even within the evangelical community, where
competing groups want to assist the apostolic Christians in different ways.
This division and discord are a
failing that goes against the core teachings of Christ. While certainly not
unique to the East, it is a failing which has had particularly tragic
consequences for Middle Eastern Christians in the face of their many pressures
over the last decades.
And these pressures have forced
the Christians remaining in Iraq to come to terms with the depth of their faith
and what it really means to them. It’s one thing when it’s the drip-drip-drip
of 1,400 years of persecution. It’s another thing when you have a full-blown
genocide that comes to wipe you out and take everything away. It has happened
every 70 years or so, but this is the first time in their living memory, and it
really shook them.
There are still Christians in
Egypt. There are Christians in Lebanon. But when you look at Iraq, it’s hard to
find hope given the current geopolitical and religious realities. Yet in the
middle of disaster, nobody builds a university.
That’s right.
So what hope do you have?
Projecting into the future, expecting God to strengthen and grow his church in
Iraq, what will it look like?
That Christians present such an
example of service that the people of Iraq will not be able to deny not only
their worth as people but also their worth in how they live their lives.
If they understand that, then
that’s all we get to ask for—anywhere. There may not be many Christians in
Iraq. But as an old priest said once to me, “Well, remember Christ only had 12,
and everyone wanted to kill them, too.”
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