Lauren Grover/Collegian
Parishioners of St. Thomas Chaldean Church prepare for Mass.
Sunday morning in West Bloomfield, Mich., the parishioners of St. Thomas Chaldean church joined in a ceremony that is part of one of the oldest Christian traditions. Their priest, Father Frank Kalabat, served them the sacrament of the faith their people are dying for on the other side of the world.
Sunday was the election in Iraq, and before his homily Kalabat announced that a bus from St. Thomas would transport parishioners to the polls in Southgate. With their vote they had the chance to voice the authority of law. And now, only law can preserve their culture in the land it grew out of.
This culture is in their Mass: as the service began, women somewhere in the front pews chanted prayers aloud in Aramaic, the language of Christ. It is their language, too. Their Chaldean roots in the Middle East go deeper than those of the Arabs or Jews; they carry on ancient Mesopotamian culture and the Christian tradition of Christ's disciple Thomas.
Now their civilization is part of Iraq, but intense persecution has worked to dispel them. So when they voted as members of one of the largest Chaldean communities in the United States, they voted for their own safety and that of the Iraqi people.
Getting out the vote
“We encouraged our people to vote, to make sure our rights and rites are reconfirmed in the constitution drafted in the new Iraqi National Congress,” Joseph Kassab, president of the Chaldean National Congress in Michigan, said. “If we do not get a good government it could be the end of Christianity there.”
Kassab said lack of educational information and inaccurate census numbers of eligible Iraqi voters started expatriate voting on the wrong foot.
“Not all our people were able to vote,” he said. “But we provided buses to the polls at our own expense.”
About 90 percent of eligible voters in Detroit did not register to vote, and Kalabat was one of them.
“I didn't have the time or the opportunity, the three-and-a-half hour chunk of time,” he said.
But he hopes for what will be best for Iraq: in light of the recent bombings, kidnappings and the harsh persecution of Chaldean and Assyrian Christians in Iraq, Kalabat said once the National Assembly is set it will be up to its individual leaders—Sunni or Shiite—to secure safety for all Iraqis.
“It's not a matter of religion,” he said. “I would prefer to vote for some one who will be good for the people of Iraq. People compare us [Chaldean Christians] with Americans, but we are Iraqis, we are proud to be Iraqis, and we happen to be Christians.”
The story of the Chaldeans
The parishioners of St. Thomas are part of the church formed in 1552 when Assyrian bishops left the Church of the East, the church of the Assyrian Christians.
With the Assyrians, Chaldeans make up most of the small Christian population in Iraq.
The Apostle Thomas converted the Assyrians to Christianity in the first century A.D. In the fifth century they ascribed, as a church, to the teaching of Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, that there are two persons—one divine, one human—in the Incarnate Christ, and that Mary is not God-bearer, or theodokos . In 431 A.D. the Church Council in Ephesus condemned the teaching as heresy, and the Church of the East broke from the universal Church. This was 200 years before Arabs brought Islam to Mesopotamia.
In 1553 the Chaldean Catholics acknowledged the pope's authority, though they did not join with Rome. Today they are an autonomous “uniate” church linked with the Assyrians in preserving one of the oldest lines of Christianity.
The danger for Christians
“If we don't have a good, secular, democratic government, the Iraqi Christian population will start to dwindle,” Kassab said. “It could be the demise.”
In an interview with The Catholic Herald last year, Mar Sarhad Yawsip Jammo, bishop of the Chaldean Catholic Diocese in the western United States, emphasized the importance of Chaldeans and Assyrians uniting so their faith will keep on in Iraq.
“This is a church that has biblical footing; this is a church that is apostolic, where spiritually there is a beginning of humankind,” he said.
Mar Bawai Soro, bishop of the Diocese of Western California of the Church of the East, works with Jammo to strengthen the two churches in Iraq. But the number of Christians there is rapidly diminishing, he told The Catholic Herald .
After World War I, 90 percent of the world's Chaldean and Assyrian populations were in Iraq. By World War II, only 70 percent were still there, and by 2003 their number had dwindled to 40 percent.
“At this rate by 2010 there will be only 20 percent Assyrians and Chaldeans remaining in Iraq,” Soro said.
The size of the Detroit community reflects this trend: 80 percent of the city's Iraqi population is Chaldean.
Joe Kalasho and Mark Shammami, of St. Thomas parish, who have both lived in the United States for over 25 years, said though expatriate Muslims “have the feeling of going back,” most Christians have settled permanently into their new communities.
“At least we have a voice”
Kassab described how Iraqis “walked between bombs, insurgents and threats to vote.”
They came away with a mark of permanent ink on their fingers so they could not vote twice, and the mark made them a possible target in the days immediately following the election.
With the votes in, Kassab said the reaction of his people in Iraq was good—though 250,000 Chaldeans in Northern Iraq were not able to vote because they did not have ballots or polling places.
Of course, the most important ourcome is the possibility of stability.
“They bomb our churches—it is a sad situation,” Shammami said. “We look forward to a stabilized Middle East, a stabilized Iraq, but it will take a long time. People are used to being under the mercy of a person, a dictator or a ruling tribe. Hopefully that will change: hopefully they will learn to live under the law.”
Galia Thomas, a member of St. Thomas, said she voted for the sake of those in Iraq who couldn't because of the danger.
“Our relatives can't go,” Thomas said.
Her cousin, for example, was kidnapped two months ago and tortured until his family sent a ransom of $200,000.
“At least we have a voice,” she said.
The future
Officials will tally the votes within 10 days and then the new government will take charge.
“The Iraqi people themselves have made this election a resounding success,” President Bush said in a BBC report. “They have demonstrated the kind of courage that is always the foundation of self-government.”
For the first time in 66 years they had the opportunity to show they can govern themselves, and those who could vote did so with deep appreciation.
After Sunday's service at St. Thomas, Naja Kajy held out his ballot to show the list of candidates.
“I'm going to vote now,” he said as his wife waited for him. “Hold on, wife.”