Anglican cleric finds Iraqis seeking solace in religion

~ The number of Iraqis attending the Rev. Andrew White's church has grown to about 900.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Attendance is booming at the Rev. Andrew White's church as more Iraqi Christians seek solace in religion to cope with a life of car bombings, kidnappings and deprivation.

Every month, "Canon White," as he is known here, travels to Baghdad to minister to the faithful, including Western Protestants and Iraqi Assyrian Christians -- who must be bused into the U.S.-protected Green Zone to hear him preach after al-Qaida put a price on his head.

Over the past three years, the number of Iraqis attending his services has grown to about 900, said the 41-year-old British Anglican priest.

"People turn to religion when they are desperate," White said in an interview in a Green Zone coffee shop after conducting three Easter services, "because if you've got nothing else, you turn to God."

Muslims too are showing new interest in their faith, especially after the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003 enabled majority Shiites greater freedom to perform their rituals.

Source of stability

White said Iraqis of both faiths have seized on religion as a source of stability and hope in the chaotic atmosphere of foreign military occupation, insurgency, economic deprivation and political uncertainty.

The tall, bespectacled cleric began visiting Iraq regularly in 1998, and he has witnessed profound changes since that time.

During those early visits, he would preach at St. George's Anglican Church, an arrangement facilitated by Deputy Prime Minister Tarek Aziz, the most prominent Christian in the national leadership and now a U.S. detainee.

Secular society

Under Saddam, White said he found a more secular society where, on the surface, tensions between religious groups seemed nonexistent. But over time he began to realize that divisions were there -- Iraqis were simply too terrified to speak frankly.

White recalled receiving a dinner invitation from Odai Saddam Hussein, Saddam's most ruthless son. He declined, but the man who delivered the invitation began to weep, pleading with him to accept. Otherwise, Odai would kill the messenger, White said.

Throughout the dinner, "I was quite clearly in the presence of evil," White recalled.

Because he loathed Saddam's regime, White said he was one of the few religious figures in Britain to publicly support the U.S.-led invasion. The end of the Saddam regime was "suddenly like the pressure cooker lid being taken off," he said.

Iraqis felt free, liberated.

"You could see it in their faces," White said.

But with the lid off, sectarian divisions began to surface, and eventually boiled over. Churches and mosques have been bombed. Four of White's top lay leaders disappeared on their way home from a conference in Jordan last September.

Distrust and discrimination replaced hope and national pride. Those targeted because of their religion turned to it all the more, he said.

Last year, White himself received a letter from al-Qaida in Iraq warning him to leave and offering $30,000 to anyone who killed him.

"I was really upset about that," White joked. "I thought -- is that what I'm worth? And then he put it up to $4 million. I was a lot happier about that" until coalition authorities ordered him to stay in the Green Zone.

"So I've not been outside for a year," he said.

His Iraqi Christian congregation assembles at a downtown church and members are taken by bus to the Green Zone for services.

White said he has been struck by the rise in religious extremism, something he has seen firsthand by assisting as a mediator in 94 kidnappings, including Westerners. Only 27 of the victims have been released.

"They really think they're doing the work of God, and that's why we've got big problems," he said of the religious extremists. "Religion when it goes wrong, it goes very wrong. It puts people in danger. And when somebody thinks that God is telling them to do something, how do you change them?"

What the country needs, he says, are religious leaders of all faiths willing to discuss their differences and politicians with the will to govern in a spirit of unity.

"I don't have imminent hope," he said, clutching his Bible.