Mideast Christian Leaders Meet in Cyprus : Conference: For the first in more than 1,500 years, leaders of all major churches gather to discuss their problems and prospects.

For the first time in more than 1,500 years, leaders of all major churches of the Middle East gathered this week to review the problems and prospects of Christians in the region where their religion was born.

Not since the Council of Chalcedon in the year 451 outside Constantinople (now Istanbul) have the prelates of the multitude of Christian churches based in the Middle East sat together.

At Chalcedon, the issue was the divine and human natures of Christ, and it produced a schism in the young faith. This week, at a hotel conference hall in Nicosia, questions of doctrine were not on the agenda. The issues were more worldly, including the social and political pressures on the region’s 12 million Christians, a historic but small minority in a predominantly Muslim Middle East.

Born in Mideast

“The important thing is for Christianity to be seen as an integral part of this region,” explained the Rev. Douglas duCharme, a spokesman for the host Middle East Council of Churches. “Islam tends to see the West as the home of the Christians, but Christianity was established in the Middle East six centuries before Mohammed received his revelations. The Christians are not guests. They belong here, part of the fabric and spiritual makeup of the region.”

While Christian emigration is a concern, there appeared to be no anti-Islamic tone to the agenda. Past council conclaves have, for instance, supported the Palestinian cause, and a similar resolution probably will emerge from this one. Final reports of the committees will be put to a vote today.

The historic nature of this conference was marked by the attendance of representatives of the Middle East’s seven Catholic churches, of which the largest is the Maronites, the denomination tightly wrapped in the the history of Lebanon. The Catholic churches of the region, which joined the council last March, recognize the primacy of the Pope, but not the Latin liturgy and canon law.

Voting Rights

The three longstanding member families of the independent council are the Oriental Orthodox, which includes Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox (with 6 million followers the largest Christian church in the Middle East); the Eastern Orthodox, made up of three Greek churches and the Orthodox Church of Cyprus, and the Protestant and Episcopal churches.

Each of the 24 member-churches have voting rights on the issues debated here. Non-voting observers included two representatives of the Vatican’s Council for Promoting Christian Unity.

In a message to the council, Pope John Paul II noted the divisions among Christian churches through the centuries and commented that “By the grace of God, the churches have decided now to walk together down the road toward recovery of their full unity in Christ.”

The long centuries of Christianity in the region were evident in the full sessions of the conference, where the clerical dress of many participants appeared unchanged from earlier eras. Headwear included the stovepipe and onion-shaped hats of the Orthodox, many of whose delegates wore full beards and jeweled enamels of the Virgin Mary. An estimated 80% of the Middle East Christians are Orthodox, compared to about 30% worldwide.

Topical Concerns

Despite the traditional dress, however, the concerns were topical. Issues that affect Christian communities from Iran in the east to Morocco in the west were on the agenda, including ecclesiastical matters such as the effort to choose a single date for Easter and a uniform version of the Lord’s Prayer in Arabic, which is the primary language in the churches of the region.

Much of the hallway discussion, however, focused on the problems of Christianity as a minority, conference participants said.

“Most of the Christians feel at home in the Middle East,” DuCharme said, “but there are stresses. The conflicts in the region breed insecurity.”

Muslims sense a difference beyond religion between themselves and their Christian countrymen, who have long had contact with the West and have had the benefit of good, church-based schools. As the pressure builds, a number of Christians are emigrating.

Statistics are sketchy, but DuCharme said, for instance, that the estimated Christian population in Jerusalem’s Old City is only a third of the number before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

“One gets the impression that it’s a big problem,” he remarked, “and it’s a thorny one. How do you tell people not to leave when they feel they’re in a hopeless situation?”

Gabriel Habib, the council’s general secretary, recently laid the emigration of Christian Palestinians in the West Bank to Israeli military and economic pressures in the occupied territories.

Divided on Issue

“Soon,” he wrote last year in a council publication, “the Holy Places could become stones without people, guarded perhaps by some Western religious orders and visited by foreign pilgrims.”

The churches themselves are divided on the issue of emigration. Some help their parishioners to go abroad; others insist that they should remain in the lands where Christianity began. Council officials have suggested that money will have to be put into the Christian communities for housing, education and pastoral counseling if emigration is to be checked.

The problem of perceptions of the Christians’ place in the Middle East lies not only with Muslims and Jews. Habib relates the story of the Western tourist, discovering his guide is Christian, asking, “So when did you convert?”

These Christians and their forebears have been in the Middle East since the events recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. The Apostle Paul taught in Cyprus, where the conference was held.