Mistaken Identity

You cannot imagine my surprise when I descended the stairs from the south balcony of Fourth Presbyterian Church after fulfilling my roll at the Christmas Eve worship and lighting the candles of those seated there  and was greeted by four Chicago Policemen.

“Merry Christmas fellas.” I said.  “What’s up?”

Before the police could answer a man pointed to our director of worship and said, “This guy wouldn’t call the cops so I flagged some down off the street.”

“Why?” I asked more puzzled than ever. 

I had ushered in the center aisle before worship and there had been no trouble.  Nobody acted up during the offering.  The candle lighting portion of service went smoothly. Even with the huge crowds it had been a quiet night.

“Those three guys sitting in the front row.”

“What three guys?  Where?  Everybody has been as good as gold.”

The police were as puzzled as I was.  Should they come in or not?

I suggested they not enter the sanctuary but they were more than welcome to wait in the hall while I went to have a look.

“For the love of God!” I thought to myself.  There were three guys sitting in the front  of middle eastern decent.

You’ve probably forgotten this but on December 22nd of 2016 it was widely reported that terrorists were planning on attacking churches and other soft targets over the Christmas holidays.

The man, described later by our worship director as a “nervous Nelly” saw them  whispering to each other during the service and decided we were soon to be under attack.  I must confess that I looked them over carefully when I returned to the sanctuary.

When the service concluded out of curiosity and guilt I made a special effort to greet the young men who where more than gracious. 

They told me that they were students and they couldn’t find an Orthodox church downtown and decided Fourth looked to be as close as they could come.  They also said they were a little confused by the singing in the worship but delighted that it was in English.  They were also surprised that we had women “priests.”

Aside from the obvious takeaway that profiling can be not only embarrassing but destructive there are two other things to learn from this encounter.          

First, people need to go beyond the short hand media reports they hear and dig deeper than the sound bites that their average newscast provides. 

The Federalist, a darling magazine of the conservative movement reports about the plight of Christians in the Middle East.  Chances are high that they were ancestors of our front row friends.

Assyrian Christians have long endured persecution for both their ethnicity and their faith: the Iraqi Assyrian population, for example, has dropped from 1.5 million in 2003 to approximately 200,000 today. From 1910 to 2016, the proportion of people in the Middle East identifying as Assyrian Christian dropped from 14 percent to 4 percent. Today the Assyrian diaspora exceeds 4 million.

Recent events have exacerbated the persecution, and Assyrian Christians continue to flee the Middle East in droves. ISIS occupied Mosul in June 2014, prompting a mass Assyrian exodus. By July, ISIS declared the city was Christian-free. For the first time in its Christian history, mass would not be celebrated in Mosul.1

Middle Eastern Christians fled to this country to enjoy the blessings of liberty not to abuse or destroy them.  And enjoy them they are because second:

It’s believed that America’s Muslim community is the wealthiest in the world.  According to the Pew Research Institute, 45 percent report making at least $30,000 per year, a higher share than the 36 percent of Americans as a whole. They report owning a business or being self-employed at a higher rate than the general population. Forty percent of Muslim Americans hold a college degree—- compared with 29 percent of the population as a whole—- and according to Gallup, one in three have a professional job. Muslim women are among the most educated in the country - second only to Jewish women - and work outside the home at the same rate as Muslim men. The gender gap in pay among American Muslims is smaller than that of any other religious group.2

 Had the cops calling, carol singing, Christmas Eve Christian  remembered or even known all of this he wouldn’t have hailed officers off the street but spoken to the men and found out that they had no more intention of blowing the place up than we did of burning it down when we gave 1,000 worshipers candles.

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1.  Hodson, Alexandra. "Assyrian Christians Live in Fear of Genocide." The Federalist.  26 September 2016. Web. [http://thefederalist.com/2016/09/28/assyrian-christians-live-war-torn-limbo-praying-genocide/].

2.  Holland, Joshua.  "The Truth About American Muslims." The Nation. 09 December 2016. [https://www.thenation.com/article/heres-why-we-should-all-praise-allah-for-american-muslims/]