ORANGE, CALIFORNIA (ANS) -- As President Bush rallies international support for an effort to invade Iraq and disarm its current government, a dwindling minority of Christians in Iraq wonder if the West has forgotten them, while they enjoy freedoms that Christians in many other Middle Eastern countries would envy.
"The evangelical churches in Iraq are as evangelical as any evangelical church in America," says Norm Nelson, president and host of "Life At Its Best," after returning from a recent Middle East trip. "They love Jesus Christ and honor him and they worship in freedom," he says. "You can walk or drive to church on Sunday and carry your Bible openly."
In the heart of Baghdad, Nelson found a vibrant church with a worship atmosphere that was "deeply reverent, conducted with decorum and order." With a membership numbering 400 families, their Sunday evening service "was so packed that some were forced to stand in the back."
While their worship is free, there are some restrictions imposed by the secular government, largely controlled by Sunni Arabs. "They are not free to proselytize outside their church property," Nelson notes.
Still, the contrast could not be more striking with Saudi Arabia, one of the United States’ most important allies in the region. "Christians in Saudi Arabia worship in conditions they refer to as ‘the catacombs,’" Nelson says. "They have to be secretive in Saudi Arabia," he says.
Many would be surprised to learn the Bible is so readily available in Iraq. "I know two Bible organizations that distributed a half million New Testaments to the government schools in Iraq, and the government of Iraq allowed them to be distributed in the schools," Nelson says. "You can’t do that in the United States," he says.
"Christians in Iraq said, since the Koran was being distributed free of charge to students, they felt the New Testament should be distributed in schools," Nelson says. "The government of Iraq acquiesced and allowed it," he says. The Middle Eastern Bible Society and the Bible League supplied the Bibles to the schools within the last three years.
"We have a colleague in Jordan who takes Arabic copies of the Life Application Bible and distributes them to 18 cities and towns up and down the Tigris River in Iraq," Nelson says. "When he takes Bibles to the Baghdad book fair, the Bibles are the most popular book he takes," he says.
Nelson feels moved by the spiritual hunger in Iraq, also evidenced by reports from a Christian radio network operating in Amman, Jordan. "They found the most spiritually hungry country in the Middle East is Iraq," he says. "They get more response from their Christian broadcasts in Arabic to Iraq than from all the countries in the Middle East combined."
