#christianity can be reconstructed (and in some cases reclaimed)

[the-queerium]

i come across a lot of posts about people discussing their experiences with other religions in contrast with christianity, and often they talk about how christianity is focused on fear and a tense relationship with God and not questioning etc etc. and i just want to say that yes, those things are present in an overwhelming and discouraging number of churches, but christianity itself is not unable to have those elements. christianity can be a place of learning and peace and guidance and love and a place where you’re encouraged to dig into things and question and wonder without being condemned. it can be and many times it is. it can be.

[pinoy-culture]

before I ask my question, I just wanted to say thank you so so so much for keeping up your blog and consistently giving out information where its readily accessible!!!

maybe this will make me sound like an idiot but to preface, I’m a mixed filipino american. My mom is filipino and some chinese and my dad is some sort of european and puerto rican. i was wondering, in your opinion, do you think it’d be okay for me (eventually) work with diwata and anitos? And how can I start? Ive been trying to communicate with my ancestors and I’ve been looking for books to one day buy (im extremely broke so your blog and any filipino witches i come across is all the info i can get) but i honestly have no clue where to start other than with my ancestors (weird dreams lately but nothing ancestor related i think). i took a DNA test as a gift and it pointed, predominantly, to the Western Visayas so im assuming i should study more on pre-colonial Bisayan culture (my lolas from iloilo so it makes sense i guess) but i also know that “blood quantum” is a colonizer concept so i dont wanna rely on it too much :/ sorry to ramble but pls help lol

First, I'd like to say thank you for following the blog! It really does mean a lot to me to hear from others over the years on how much my blogs have helped them learn about our history and culture.

Now as for working with our diwata and the anito, that is completely ok. The whole blood quantum thing among some Filipinos I honestly don't agree with. As long as you have a family member who is Filipino, you are Filipino regardless of your "percentage" and of how you look. If you have Filipino blood in you, the ancestors are there with you. Even if you weren't raised within Filipino culture or a Filipino household because your parents never brought you up in it, or you are an adoptee like some I've met over the years. Your ancestors are your ancestors regardless. They see you and know you and that is all that matters.

Now there really isn't any book focused specifically on reviving our precolonial beliefs and practices. Yes, some did survive and some even blended in with a form of Folk Christianity in the Philippines. You can see many of the older practices and beliefs still alive, but they have been replaced with Catholic imagery and Saints.

But, in regards actually believing in and worshiping our old deities, doing rituals dedicated to the deity, or even some rites of passage like the Tagalog first menstruation rite of passage, or making carved figures dedicated to the diwata and anito, or performing maganito/paganito or atang to the diwata and anito, majority of Filipinos don't do this, or even know it.

So for being an Anito Reconstructionist, which is a label I personally use for my spiritual beliefs and others have adopted, there really isn't a book for it. A Reconstructionist in other ethnic spiritual paths, such as the Celtic, Roman, Aztec, Kemetic, Greek, Norse, etc., are those who look at historical records to try and piece together what was once practiced and believed in prior to Christianity. Over many years, these different spiritual paths have eventually come together, formed a community, and have resources like books and teachers. They have had the time to do all the research and put together a more formal spirituality based on those Pre-Christian beliefs and bringing it to the modern day where they have hundreds to thousands of people who have gone back to those beliefs. With some, they have even created temples, shrines to their deities, and even have celebrations.

Unfortunately that is not the case for us. However, due to the growing interest in our precolonial beliefs and practices over the years, I can see Anito Reconstructionism growing within the next several years. It already has, with many people actually trying to learn more about these beliefs and our old deities. The amount of people of people I've seen and talked to who have expressed their interest to reclaim these precolonial beliefs and practices is nothing compared to 10 years ago when it was hard to even find one or two people who did.

It is why I've been writing this book for a few years now dedicated to helping others in wanting to reclaim our precolonial beliefs and practices as a starting point in their research. For now though, I always recommend those who are starting to simply just read the historical texts. Grab a notebook and write down notes. Organize your notes into deities, rituals, how to make an offering, any prayers to a specific deity, how to set up an altar, etc.

Seeing as your family is from the island of Panay in the Western Bisayas, like my moms side are from, I would start with looking at the Bisayan precolonial beliefs and practices. A really good reference is reading Francisco Alcina's History of the Bisayans (1668). Volume 3 is available online in English which you can find here. Volume 3 goes into a lot of detail in the beliefs and practices. The Boxer Codex, if you are able to get a copy of the English translation, is also really good reading material.

Getting Started:

In terms of getting started, keep in mind that there is no one monolithic belief system or practice in the Philippines. Before there ever was a Philippines, we were different nations with different beliefs and practices. It is important to know your ethnic groups beliefs and practices and know their history. For example, I am Bisaya (Akeanon specifically) and Tagalog and that is what I work with. Others who I know follow the Bikolano, Kapampangan, or Ilokano beliefs. Though there are some similarities, each ethnic group had their own set beliefs and practices.

I often tell people that you can't just mix and match between them. For example, though I work with both the Tagalog and Bisayan pantheons, I wouldn't dare do a ritual offering to both a Tagalog or Bisayan deity at the same time. It's always separate. You also can't combine 2 similar deities together from different ethnic groups just because they share similar attributes. It's just rude and disrespectful.

Start out small. Set up an altar dedicated to your ancestors. If you have any family members who have passed, put a photo of them on the altar. Leave offerings of rice cakes such as suman, food like chicken adobo, or even a cup of drink such as tuba, lambanog, or even Red Horse beer. But if you can't get access to an alcoholic drink either because one you are a minor or 2 it's not available where you live, you can simply replace it with a non-alcoholic drinks like coconut juice. Get a coconut shell or a seashell to either place these offerings as bowls/plates or even use them to put your kamangyan or incense.

Then start researching how our Bisayan ancestors worshiped and practiced. Study the history and read historical accounts, books, and articles about them. Write down what you have learned on these precolonial beliefs and practices and reconstruct or revive them. This is what Polytheistic Recinstructionists do. I have listed links to these texts here.

Ask questions to your family, particularly your elders. See if they know of anything or if they can share some traditional practices and beliefs they know of have heard of. You would be surprised how, despite some families being really religious, many still believe in the spirits, do some form of ancestor veneration, believe in omens that are being told to you by the ancestors or spirits, etc.

If you can, try to go back to the Philippines and see your family's ancestral home, see where they grew up, etc. Ask about family stories and folk stories. For example, my mom grew up in Aklan and has always told me stories of the aswang and certain omens. She also constantly talks about the mischievous "little people" who play tricks on you (for example putting something down like your keys and then it goes missing, until you find it again somewhere else). In the Western Bisayas, they are known as kama-kama. There is also a story of how her grandmother's cat visited her during her wake. The cat was missing for years, but it came back and stayed sleeping on top of the casket for days before it left. My mom told me that it was the cat paying their respects to her grandmother.

Keep in mind also and acknowledge our indigenous communities who have kept their beliefs and practices. Don't try to take them into your own. I have seen people cherry pick things from the Manobo of Mindanao or the Kalinga in the Cordillera, which is just disrespectful. Many of the IP, though some still have kept their beliefs, it isn't the most important aspect to them. What they are most concerned about are other issues such as losing their homes due to occupation by oil or logging companies, other settlers such as the Tagalog and Bisayans (especially in Mindanao), getting targeted as "rebels" by the Philippine military and often getting killed. But, by cherry picking beliefs especially of the IP groups, it's just disrespectful.

I will be teaching classes on Anito Reconstructionism soon and will have my first class possibly at the end of the month or next month. I decided to do these classes seeing as there is a growing community who are interested, but don't know where to start. I'll be doing a proper announcement on these classes real soon so look out for the announcement and hopefully you will be able to join!

[redantsunderneath]

VAL and BILLIE EILISH: THE WORLD'S A LITTLE BLURRY

I shouldn’t be allowed to watch documentaries. All that any documentary seems to be about (at this point, to me) is the relationship between itself and the truth. I don’t know if it’s 2000's reality TV or that one time I watched Capturing the Friedman’s and Waco: The Rules of Engagement back to back that broke me, but what interests me isn’t the subject matter but standpoint epistemology of the thing. These two docs are very different, diametrically opposed in almost every way, but both are defined by the ways in which the text struggles against reality. Val is about an old man who used cameras (himself) to capture his entire life as he pretended to be someone else on film. He is infirm, occluding his laryngotomy tube to talk, and his handlers try to manage his naps around meet and greets where he sells the shell of the person he once was for the fans who still care. It’s forbears are archeological dead celebrity docs that try to find the elusive star at the center (Robin Williams, Heath Ledger, Amy Winehouse) and those about reclaiming memory (Alzheimer Project, Waltz with Bashir) but it’s just… he’s the cameraman and he’s still shuffling around. Closest comparison (minus the age part) is probably Kid 90, which was being cut at the same time. This doesn’t get at how weird this is, though. He used to make movies with his brother, who drowned during a seizure and haunts the movie (he would put up his brother’s drawings in shots on film sets, the talks about or around the event constantly). He often hands off the camera to people so he can be seen in his world with complex instructions (when I walk off, focus in on that speaker so when I go onstage you will hear my first line) and when the camera hits a mirror he lingers (as in the video of his newborn baby). He seems to always be performing, an aspect of life we are all familiar with by now but less common when this footage was taken. His wife is uncomfortable on camera, usually mugging or hiding, and you get the feeling the distancing from his life is intentional as he focuses on internal transformation away from ego resolution, but he still needs to be seen, his sense of self tied up in an object permanence issue. The movie is structured as someone trying to sort through memories of their life and come to terms with them, although the memories in this case is a small warehouse full of video tapes and film canisters. In his current life he can only communicate with difficulty and tries to convey reaction with meaningful-but-of-what glances and gestures. Effacement by time and looming death drench the whole enterprise - when his brother dies he says his father “lost his charisma” (just contemplate that). His current simulacra of celebrity makes him feel like a ghost, signing “you can be my wingman anytime” multiple times for people who this means something to. So he brings up the footage and tries to reconstruct his life (his credit as cinematographer is both funny, touching, and chilling). This thing is full of interesting moments. He is doing a line reading of Hamlet at Juilliard and Peter Kass stops him to ask where the performance is coming from. He responds that he has never considered killing himself which causes Kass to explode, insisting that no-one in the history of the world has not had that thought. This seems to rob us and him of a potentially revelatory moment as Kilmer seems different, spiritual in an unusual way… maybe the reason why he never thought of that was more interesting than that point. His entreaty to Marlon Brando to tell him what his earliest childhood memory is is responded to by Brando asking for him to rock his hammock with repetition of the question only yielding feedback on the rocking until neonatal-fat Brando’s satisfaction at being rocked seems like an answer. The argument with John Frankenheimer who does not want to be filmed is something else. The major things going on are here are being haunted vs feeling like a ghost and an arrested Lacanian mirror phase that complicates his intersubjective context, with the karmic

self-assessment of who he is trying to chill in the middle. The filmmaking knows this and orients itself as a process of evaluating memory where what is true seems elusive, heavily edited, and hall-of-mirrors-like. The question of what is performance is a subconscious struggle. Conspicuous in their absence are his own feelings on his decline beyond the fact that he “doesn’t believe in death,” real insight into his marriage (and breakup, other than an allusion to his method acting Jim Morrison being a problem) and relationship with his kids (who are around all the time, but seem like Sixth Sense characters), and the fact that he’s a legendary asshole on set. This last is, like, the one thing everyone knows about him. But you can sort of sense this stuff secondarily, right off the edge of the screen and in him relentlessly projecting onto his parents. The real crux is the study of a man who never feels seen, but tries to become so by disappearing into someone else, who needs recording devices so that he can capture himself properly, all controlled performance; someone unaware of his own loneliness brought about by not being very good at making himself available because his “self” is externally resolved and constant inner transformation masks the unformed nature of his ego at rest. The film accomplishes this by allowing him to reveal what is absent by his preoccupations and bearing witness to his deflection mechanisms, so that he is no closer to knowing himself but, by being manipulated in a way we can see the frame of, we kind of get a glimpse. Good experience, wish there was more Christian Scientist material (that seems like an angle of understanding the film wasn’t interested in). Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry is about a young girl who is followed by cameras capturing her entire life as she pretends to be herself on stage. She has a Simone Biles flavored psycho-physical compromise that everyone tries to “handle” while she sells herself as the person she isn’t to fans who care, at least right now. This is in the tradition of Truth or Dare mimics that seem de rigueur for female pop stars. Closest comparison is Miss Americana. This movie feels made by spreadsheet to contain scenes to develop the official narrative of an in-her-brother’s-room, in her suburban parent’s house, sui generis composite genius who is on the edge of mental unfitness trying to be as normal as she can in this crazy merry go round called fame. The obviousness of the put on is diffused by the relative lameness of the pieces. In some respects this is the typical documentary “look for the cracks for insight” play, but it is consciously using that as a tool too and doing it badly - the manufactured insight escape moments largely ring false. This comes off as a Zoom background era counterfeit, a series of YouTube clips where Markeplier or whoever lets the mask slip a little in the most forced bit of unbiddenness possible. There is a boyfriend who feels like a story mandated version of “from Canada.” But the interesting thing is the way it recapitulates the way modern pop is put together, not by writing, not by spontaneous “feel your way,” but by putting bits of ideas together and trying to emulate form. There are a lot of moments in the film that feel like they could have been real, but the non-actors were asked to do another take and can’t quite nail it. It actually has such a boner for produced casual that it is pretty much allergic to authenticity, which is quite a thing for a documentary. The major things going on are here are grappling with whether she brings anything musically to the table (the brother seems like the musical force, she’s afraid her voice is bad, they make a point to show her idea notebooks as work product), her wish to only perform if she can give the fans her best show (possibly her version of just wanting to call in sick, understandable) is at odds with her being the center of a machine that has to move, her as a product of a not entirely with it older parents who gave their kids an open creative runway

and now are instrumental in managing her as a resource that is tricky to work with, the work being her and her brother dicking around and making magic happen, and an attempt to paint her as a Beleiber who now is on the the other side of the fan dichotomy. Development of her style, arguably her #1 thing, is sort of left as her telling a video director “I drew this bleeding eye woman, can we do something like this?” and sort of suggesting through letting her point around that she is a de facto co director. At times, it feels like a try at icon forging that someone wanted to fail, but it is probably just the high school conception-to-production level tat ultimately comes off as a larger indictment of making a movie like you make modern pop music - overdetermined manipulation of flimsy elements without a satisfying ethos, that looks too be an insubstantial assemblage of spliced pieces that live of die by their stickiness. But it begins to feel, more and more, that it’s about how non-exciting pop stars can be as people and that a narrative that people respond to can kind of die if you show that’s it’s just work and somewhat normal people trying to be a piece of an illusion. It’s this partitioning away of the hyperreality and an attempt to show the official story acted by the sausage makers trying to pretend the banality is just crazy man. Where Val is a simulation of an habitual performer considering who they actually are selectively sorting their life and failing to confront the loneliness of age and death (more elusive to them than us), this is obvious hoax unintentionally (?) revealing the fabricated nature of the image-music industry by way of demonstrating the strangely normie creatives, green-yellow ombre or no, can’t be arsed to summon a proper freakout (the whining seems authentic, though). Music videos may lie to you, but the official story is strangely correct - kids living in mom’s house cobble together catchy stuff and pull off pop stardom due to social media age production savvy and a little zeitgeisty imagery, it’s just everyone is well adjusted if stressed and someone’s only donning the costume of the online archetype of a specific kind of girl. Val uses the constructed nature of these narratives as a tool wielded in the open to suggest the inner working of a mind failing to be honest with itself while the other is interesting in its transparency and failure to convince us of the loosely conceived fiction, leaving reality apparent as bong resin. Baudrillard would have liked this one more, probably.

[queerasart-blog]

LGBT RIGHTS IN THE 60/70s (Part 1/3) | Issue 2

LGBT RIGHTS  by Émilie Parent and L.D

The common expression of “the Sixties” and “the Seventies” is widely used to refer to the times succeeding the reconstruction of Europe after the Second world war. They do not refer to a specific cultural or intellectual movement, but rather merely to chronological points, from 1960 to 1979. Nevertheless, the context of this time offers room for the apparition of a specific culture and counterculture, based on social changes and liberation of the voice of minorities, that have retrospectively been raised as emblematic of the period.

In 1960, the reconstruction of the damages of the war has ended and the economy has gone back from the predominance of war industries to more regular activities. The arms race and the huge increase in transports and technologies, however, has left the world with an important amount of infrastructures that can now be used for other purposes. This allows for a general increasing of living standards for the population and a renewal of cultural and social norms.

But this is not the only consequence of the war. In the United States, during the years following the Nuremberg trials, emphasis is put on upholding traditional values against the forces of change, as a reaction against the idea of civil disobedience, which has come out stronger of the revelations brought by the trials. The national paranoia raises after the second world war against communists, anarchists and soon extended to any community seen as “subversive”, such as LGBT people. This movement is known as the Lavender Scare, in reference to the Second Red Scare targeting communists. Police and FBI keep lists of known homosexuals and their relatives, friends, as well as the places they meet up. This leads to the closing of a large number of gay bars, arrestations, and public exposure of people in newspapers, further leading to employment and housing discrimination. Meanwhile, in Europe, fascist governments had heavily repressed homosexuality, and the laws they put in place were not always repealed after 1945 - the french law against homosexuality, written in 1942, stayed in place, and homosexuals were often kept in concentration camps even after the liberation of Jews. In the 50s and the 60s, the opposition between the East and the West blocks creates a climate of unnatural tensions between opposed political stances, and social questions often become symbolic banners to raise whenever one wants to make a point.

AMERICA

The position in the Sixties slowly changes compared to the previous decade. The Vietnam war, started in 1954, comes with a rise of protesting movements. In the United States, the Beat Generation is the first cultural movement showing of the emergence of a counter culture rooted in anti capitalism, rejecting materialism in favour of spiritual quest (through the use of psychedelic drugs), personal exploration and sexual liberation. The “Beatniks” are poets and some of them write about homosexual experiences. Although this movement is very male-centered, because girl rebellion is faced with violent backlash, it brings homosexuality to the table for the first time in a positive light.

A few gay activist groups have started to appear in the 1950s. The Mattachine Society is one of them, heavily linked to the Communist Party and often focusing on the actions of police against gay people, which shows again how anticapitalist politics and lgbt activism go hand in hand. Five years later, in 1955, the group of the Daughters of Bilitis is formed, as an alternative to lesbian bars who were harassed more and more often by the police. This social group is asking for a better education about LGBT issues, as well as civil and political rights for LGBT people.

These are the two axes that start developing in the 60s. More and more groups appear, such as the East Coast Homophile Organization (ECHO) in 1963, and the National Transsexual’s Counseling Unit in 1965, the world’s first transgender organization; and these organizations reclaim and obtain civil rights, such as the decriminalization of homosexual acts between consenting adults (1962 in Illinois, 1969 in Canada). The same year, Franck Kameny, teacher in the Astronomy Department of Georgetown University, is fired because of his perceived sexual orientation and enters a judicial procedure against the US government. He creates the Washington, D.C. branch of the Mattachine Society and sides with the Daughters of Bilitis in a number of protests and picket lines in front of the White House, the Pentagon, the United Nations, and the United States Civil Service Commission. In 1966, endocrinologist and sexologist Harry Benjamin publishes The Transsexual Phenomenon; a Scientific Report on Transsexualism and Sex Conversion in the Human Male and Female, opening the door to the idea of sexual transition and advocating for a humane treatment of transsexual people. This is also the year of the founding of the National Transsexual Counseling Unit in San Francisco, which is the world’s first transgender organization.

picket lines in front of the White House, 1965. Kay Tobin Lahusen - New York Public Library Manuscripts and Archives Division

Meanwhile, the cultural background evolves too. In 1961, the Motion Picture Code allows movies to talk about homosexuality and the same year, the first documentary on homosexuality, The Rejected, airs on TV. In 1962, James Baldwin writes Another Country, a novel set in Greenwich Village and deals with bisexuality of both men and women, interracial couples, extramarital affairs, and it becomes a best-seller.

But these attempts stay mild, essentially coming from people of higher social background, and focus mostly on appeasing the tensions by painting the lgbt community as respectable and acceptable for the rest of the population. They tend to ignore gender nonconforming people and transsexual people, who risk appearing too threatening for the status-quo. Vanguard, an organization founded in 1965, insisted on “peaceful co-existence”.

This changes when the decade culminates in the events of Stonewall, on June 29th, 1969. What was a police raid into a gay bar turns into a rebellion from the clients, led by trans women of colour, and leads the way towards a more inclusive and more radical activism. Directly resulting from the riots, the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance are formed, the first being more radical and the second more reformist. These two groups help spreading LGBT activism and serve as an anchor for the whole LGBT community. Newspapers become a new way to share ideas, events and LGBT culture - Gay, Come Out!, and Gay Power, gathered between 20,000 and 25,000 readers. People are then encouraged to come out en masse, by the revolutionary article of reporter Leo Laurence, “HOMO REVOLT: DON’T HIDE IT” published in the leftist magazine Berkeley Barb. The Red Butterfly published Carl Wittman’s Gay Manifesto in 1970, where the LGBT activist encourages all gay people to find refuge in San Francisco. Also In 1970, the commemoration of the Stonewall riots, organized by bisexual activist Brenda Howard, becomes the first Gay Pride, with marches happening in New-York, Los Angeles and Chicago. Brenda Howard is then called the “Mother of Pride”. Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, who were both leaders to the riots, found the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries. 

Berkeley Barb,1969, Volume 8, Issue 13(189)

And things change slowly from there. In 1972 the movie That Certain Summer is the first gay-themed movie to win an Emmy and in 1973, The Rocky Horror Picture Show meets a huge success, becoming a pop-culture phenomenon for decades to come. 1972 is also the year of the first gay synagogue and of the first gay person to be ordained by a major Christian denomination. Politics also move, even more than culture. Canada is faster at decriminalizing homosexual acts between consenting adults - in 1969. In the United States, it’s in 1973 that homosexuality is removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders by the American Psychiatric Association, under the combined pressure of activism, social changes and empirical evidence. 

One year prior to that was founded the Lesbian Feminist Liberation, by Jean O’Leary, as the first lesbian activist group to counterbalance the domination of gay men in the activist movements and the exclusion of lesbians from most feminist groups, and this group is the first one to organize a meeting of gay activists in the White House, in 1977. The same year, Harvey Milk becomes the first openly gay person to be elected in public office, in San Francisco. In 1978, he encourages the activist Gilbert Baker to create a symbol for the LGBT Community. Since the US flag has become a symbol for people to gather around during hard times, Baker creates the rainbow flag, made of eight lines stacked together representing people stitched together as one community. The colours also have each a meaning: pink for sexuality, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, turquoise for magic, indigo for serenity, violet for spirit - pink and turquoise have later been removed for technical reasons (pink couldn’t be properly rendered) and balance reasons (a pair numer seemed better). The flag becomes extremely popular after the murder of Harvey Milk in November 1978. As the decade closes, the first case of AIDS appears in the US, yet not registered as such. 

(Part 1/3)

[pastorhogg]

What Arab Leaders Think of USAID Funding Persecuted Christians

Middle East believers pray more money won't mean more problems.

Displaced Christians receive food aid in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Ashty Bahro was one of the first to the scene in al-Qosh, traveling 25 miles over mountainous roads from his base in Iraqi Kurdistan to the town where 850 Iraqi Christian families had been newly displaced.

Only weeks earlier, the families had relocated to Teleskof in the Nineveh Plain, following its liberation from ISIS. But the Kurdish independence referendum sparked a new crisis in the region. The Iraqi government moved quickly to reclaim lands controlled by the Kurdish peshmerga fighters. Shia militias linked with Iran also threatened the Christian areas, forcing families to flee once more.

“They are very tired. They just rebuilt their homes,” said Bahro, head of Zalal Life Civil Society Foundation and former director of the Evangelical Alliance of Kurdistan. “Now they are scared to remain in government-held cities.”

Zalal Life distributed 300 food baskets and bottles of water. The government of Hungary donated $2 million in aid for reconstruction. The United Nations wasn’t there.

“People are not happy with the UN; they are using money for administration,” said Bahro. “The help is coming from churches and Christian organizations.”

The Iraqi Christian leader praised charities like Voice of the Martyrs, Tear Fund, Operation Mercy, and World Vision. And he welcomed American vice president Mike Pence’s statement that the US Agency for International Development (USAID) will start to fund Christian groups in the region directly.

“They are here in the area, they know what’s happening, and they go immediately to help,” Bahro said.

Maan Bitar, pastor of the Presbyterian church in Hama, Syria, confirmed concerns that UN aid was not reaching Christians in the Middle East.

“Christians receive only a trickle of the aid and other programs set for IDPs [internally displaced persons] inside Syria,” he said. “In the camps and on the Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan refugee lists, they are virtually non-existent.”

Melkite Archbishop Issam Darwish of Zahle, Lebanon, has tried to fill in the gap. Two years ago he opened a free restaurant for refugees in his diocese that serves 1,000 hot meals a day—to Muslims and Christians equally.

“If the US can help Christian organizations directly, it will be good—if it can be done without discrimination,” he said. “They must serve Muslims and other minorities also. We live together, and want to remain together in our communities.”

Working with Christian organizations isn’t enough to ensure the money will be spent well, according to one Egyptian Christian leader who asked CT for anonymity due to security concerns.

“Often in churches there is an attitude that the money is for God, and the leadership can spend it as it will,” he said. “Without the same level of due diligence and transparent accounting as in NGOs, there may be sincere misappropriation of funds.”

The UN has not always been the best steward either, said Botros Mansour, general director of the Baptist School in Nazareth, Israel. Critical of both the Obama and Trump administrations, he has a different administrative concern: politics.

“Having the US transfer funds directly to persecuted Christians could be a good thing, but American politics will surely mingle in,” the Israeli Christian said. “They will want to brag about the aid to show their success, and to prove to the Christian Right that [President Donald Trump] delivers on his promises.”

The long-term consequences, however, could be disastrous, warns Mansour. Suppose a church is destroyed and US money comes in to fix it. He believes the radicals would come back again, stronger.

“The fuel will be the high-profile appearance of US aid, bringing opposition and resentment,” Mansour said. “American politics and the good of Christians do not necessarily overlap.”

Many Muslims will misinterpret it as proselytization, warns the Egyptian leader.

“It is very dangerous for churches to receive money from governments. It is dynamite,” he said. “I am unequivocally against it.”

For Martin Accad, chief academic officer of the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary in Beirut, it is the lack of current clarity that gives him pause.

“The questions are endless and the concerns are many,” he said. “Depending on how this initiative is presented, churches and Christian groups may be wise to turn down this ‘kindness.’”

Farouk Hammo, pastor of the Presbyterian church in Baghdad, agreed.

“The bottom line is that we do not recommend direct aid from the States to Christians,” he said. “It will agitate our Muslim brothers negatively against the Christian community.”

Archbishop Darwish downplays this threat, though conditionally. His church in the Beqaa Valley has received more than 6,000 refugees, assisted by Aid to the Church in Need.

“Saudi Arabia is here in Lebanon helping the Muslims, so what is the problem?” he said. “Some will make propaganda. But if Christians in the Middle East are open to Muslims, it will be fine.”

Even so, this understanding may not extend as easily to evangelicals, said Brother Khalaf, whose Jordanian ministry, Raja Al Aumam, engages in church planting and reconciliation with Messianic Jews. Many consider his organization an “American Church.”

“It could backfire,” he said. “People already say we are not Arabs, that we are aligned with the Americans against our own people.”

But the Jordanian leader respects Trump and is cautiously in support of the USAID policy change if done well, as it will empower the church to do the ministry. “Maybe we will be targeted more,” he said. “But in some countries, it can’t get worse.”

Similarly, Rafic Greiche, priest and spokesman for the Catholic community in Egypt, welcomes US aid to Christian groups if done in a transparent manner with the government. But projects must be decided on a case-by-case basis. Helping Christians displaced from the Sinai by ISIS aggression? Probably. A sectarian mob attack in an Upper Egyptian village? Maybe.

“There is a danger that some will speak of the West, of Crusades, and try to make trouble,” said Greiche. “It depends on what is funded. If it is a real project—like education—it should work.”

This has been Bitar’s hope with the UN, now frustrated for three years. His Syrian church has petitioned the UN to help reopen the New Generations School in Hama, closed since the 1960s. Jaded by the political agendas of most Western nations, Bitar is suspicious also of their aid.

“They want to bring you a basket of food and a blanket to cover yourself,” he said. “But not to help you live in dignity. It is the minimum to live, not to make a strong nation.”

If USAID offered to help, Bitar would accept it—if it is not conditioned on any political agenda. He has little fear of local reaction. “Muslims will be happy,” he said. “They like to send their children to schools run by Christians.”

Bahro hails Kurdistan as an example of foreign aid working well. The extremists among both Sunni and Shia will never be happy, he said, no matter who serves the Christians. “But the churches here are helping all, especially the evangelical churches,” he said. “We have good relationships with everyone—pastors, priests, and mullahs.”

Amid conflicting Christian reactions and unknown Muslim response, the policy change represents a new approach. Will it make things better or worse?

“Here in our area, the Kurdish Muslims trust Christians,” Bahro said. “In Arab areas, I don’t know.”

Jayson Casper is a Cairo-based Middle East correspondent for Christianity Today.

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