Kafity Welcomes Primates To Province
Episcopal News Service. May 11, 1989 [89089]
LARNACA, Cyprus (DPS, May 11) -- The Most Rev. Samir Kafity, President-Bishop of the Province of Jerusalem and the Middle East, welcomed the Anglican Primates to his conflict-ridden part of the world yesterday during a presentation at their meeting in Larnaca.
"We look at this Primates meeting as a pastoral visit to the whole region of the Middle East," he said. "We like to be visited while we are in this huge prison of crisis and suffering. We have one foot in Asia and one foot in Africa and in both places we are in some sort of turmoil."
Bishop Kafity had extended the invitation to the Archbishop of Canterbury for the Primates to come to the Middle East during the last Primates' meeting in Canada in 1986. The assembled heads of the Churches of the Anglican Communion heard from their host something of the history and current ministry of reconciliation of the small number of Christians in the vast area of his province, which stretches from Algiers to the borders of Turkey, and from the northern part of Ethiopia to Iran.
"Wars in the Middle East have become the norm, not the exception," he said. The wars have taken many forms and shapes, as the Middle East has served as a "laboratory for testing sophisticated arms." He asserted that not one country represented by a Primate sitting at the table, including the Middle East countries, can claim innocence.
Bishop Kafity then briefly outlined some of the facets of the current situation. "The forty-year-old conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis, 20 years after the second occupation, is still not resolved. The Middle East has witnessed in 15 years different wars in one country called Lebanon. In different stages, the war has taken different forms. We have just begun to witness a situation of cease fire between Iraq and Iran. Territorial disputes in the Middle East and some North African countries of the Middle East are still prevailing. The concepts of militarism, Zionism, the resurgence of Islam, which takes many forms -- including militant forms -- and the rise of fanaticism among religious groups, not excluding the Christians, are new phenomena in the Middle East. The rise of Arab nationalism is also struggling its way among these ideologies."
Bishop Kafity stressed that a critical ministry of the Christian Church in the midst of all the conflict and pain was to build bridges between the different faith groups so they could work together toward reconciliation and peace.
In the Middle East at present there are 120 million Moslems, 12 million Christians, and 4 million Jews. These three Abrahamic faiths have much in common. All have Semitic backgrounds. All were born in the same place with a shared heritage and roots.
The name of the Anglican provincial publication, The Presence, was deliberately chosen to describe this ministry of reconciliation. "We see the Anglican Communion as the Anglican Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East as present in the Middle East and getting the east and west to communicate and meet theologically, ecclesiastically, and even economically and politically."
Bishop Kafity then gave a capsule survey of the ministry of three of the four dioceses in his area. The Diocese of Egypt and North Africa covers seven countries and faces enormous problems including famine in Ethiopia and the rise of Islam. The Anglican Church, a tiny minority in the midst of the eight million-member Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt, tries to be a "bridge of understanding" between the desert monastic life of the Coptic Church and modern worldwide Christianity.
The Diocese of Iran has suffered a great deal, Bishop Kafity said, having witnessed an Islamic revolution. Their bishop is in exile, and their money and property have been confiscated. "It is under difficulties that the Church thrives. When we say that the gates of hell will not prevail, we witness and evidence that in the life of the Church in Iran, which is still a worshiping, loving community."
Bishop Kafity wryly recalled that at the Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops last summer he was dubbed the "barbed-wire bishop" because there is more of that treacherous fencing in his own Diocese of Jerusalem than in any other.
Speaking of the Palestinian situation in his diocese, Bishop Kafity said that the word "intefada" has found its way into the English dictionary. "This word means a shaking off of the dust of oppression in a peaceful way, not revolution, not resistance, not war," he said. "It is saying yes to peace, no to occupation. We know who we are, and we want to be ourselves side by side with the state of Israel, and this is being met with tremendous force and iron fists."
The Rt. Rev. John Brown, Bishop of Cyprus and the Gulf, which is the fourth diocese in the province, also welcomed the Primates and described his diocese as representative of the whole Anglican Communion in that it is multilingual and multicultural. He emphasized the value of face-to-face dialogue between Christians and Moslems in homes and other informal settings to build trust and confidence.
Gaby Habib, a lawyer and Orthodox layman who is General Secretary of the Middle East Council of Churches, made the final presentation of the session to the assembled Primates. After touching on theological points necessary for an understanding of the Middle East situation, he described something of the ecumenical activities and priorities for the future. These include cooperating to ensure the continuity of the Christian presence in this area, and making a missionary witness.
General Secretary Habib made clear that the Middle East is a region of contradictions. That could be either very destructive, or very creative. The challenge for the Church, he said, is to transform these contradictions such that they are not expressed with hate and violence, but rather in a spirit of love, peace, and reconciliation.