blip : Beefcake Living In a Poof :

Jonathan, a member of my community here in Durham, wrote this article the other day. I thought is was so good that I wanted to share it.

“How Al Qaeda Beat the Church in Iraq,” by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove.

Even before the bombs started falling from the skies above Baghdad, Christian relief and development agencies were lining up on Iraq’s borders, waiting on a nod from the Pentagon to go in and get to work “on the ground.” When I traveled through Amman, Jordan with Christian Peacemaker Teams just after Operation Iraqi Freedom had begun, the place was abuzz with Americans on cell phones making plans and anticipating how much longer they would have to wait for the go-ahead. Half a century after the success of the Marshall Plan, American Christians knew how to handle a post-war situation. All we had to do was wait for the war to end.

Meanwhile, we have since learned, another international organization was also developing a post-war strategy for Iraq. Al Qaeda saw that an American presence would be required in the aftermath of the war and decided to send in operatives to develop cells of resistance “underground” in Iraq. We now know that this network is well organized and equipped to act quickly and effectively in an ever-changing situation. Whether this network will beat the occupation forces remains to be seen. That it has already beat the church to Iraq, however, is a fact with which we must reckon.

To take this point seriously, I should be more precise: Al Qaeda beat the American church to Iraq. Our failure to recognize the indigenous church that already exists in Iraq exposes the root of our problem: we understand the Pentagon far better than we know our sisters and brothers in “enemy” territory. That being the case, we have served the Pentagon much more faithfully than we have served the Iraqi church. When Donald Rumsfeld called humanitarian aid “force enhancement,” he was not making a radical assertion but simply articulating his perception that the church and America have essentially the same goals in Iraq. That we have not given him much reason to think otherwise is one sign of our failure.

A fellow member of the Iraq Peace Team told me about a conversation he had with a Catholic priest in Baghdad during the bombing. “We do not understand,” the priest said. “People tell us that the Christians in America are in favor of this war. Haven’t they read the Bible?” Seeing the church’s response to Operation Iraqi Freedom through the eyes of an Iraqi Christian helps me to notice the distance between our members inside Iraq and those on US soil. A terrorist network such as Al Qaeda does not suffer from such fragmentation. Unified by a common vision, its members float across national boundaries, operate beneath the surface, and pop up periodically to make their message clear. We may disagree with their message as much as we despise their violence, but we cannot ignore the fact that they are truer to their cause.

I’m reminded of a long-time social justice advocate in Central America who was recently asked how he would like to be remembered. “As a Christian terrorist,” he replied. He wanted to be remembered as someone who organized beneath the surface, not solely through the recognized channels of centralized policy. “I don’t want people to remember me,” he said. “I want them to remember how the kingdom of God exploded here and there at different times because of my work.” No doubt the world will remember for some time the explosions of the Al Qaeda network across Iraq in recent weeks. Would that the people of Iraq could look back 10 years from now and remember the first “explosions” of a church beneath the surface that offered an alternative both to the American occupation and violent resistance. Is this possible? I think so, for not only do we have the example of Al Qaeda, but also the witness of Christians in the house churches of China and the base communities of Central America; the Confessing Church of Nazi Germany and the “underground” communities of the former Soviet Union. When I was in Iraq this spring, I prayed in an Iraqi jail with a man who had visited the churches of Soviet Russia in the late 1980’s, just before their prayers and faithful work exploded in the nonviolent end of the Cold War. “Do you believe in miracles?” I asked him. “Oh yes,” he said, “I’ve seen them.”