Middle East Christians
There is still a role for Middle East Christians as ‘salt and light’ in their communities, the chief executive of UK Christian development charity BibleLands has claimed.
Addressing a seminar on the Arab Spring at the New Wine Christian conference, on 23 July, Jeremy Moodey suggested that Christians in the West were doing their Middle Eastern co-religionists a disservice by seeing them only as ‘victims’.
He said, in fact, many Arab Christians were active in their communities, expressing their faith through education, health care and other forms of social action.
Mr Moodey said, ‘The Arab Spring has led to a resurgence of Islamism, but it is not inevitable this will lead to persecution of religious minorities. Middle-Eastern Christians’ rootedness in their communities means they have always been outward-facing, expressing their faith and relating to their Muslim neighbours through social action.
‘They are living examples of “salt and light”, in the very land where Jesus used these powerful metaphors, and we Christians in the West should encourage them in this ministry’.
