Mennonite
Central
Committee

Syrian churches serve their communities

January 2006

When he was 11 years old, Selwanos Butros al-Nameh was taken to a small orphanage run by the Syrian Orthodox Church in Homs, Syria's third-largest city.

His mother, paralyzed in childbirth, was unable to take care of him. His father, a poor and elderly farmer, could do little to help.

Now, nearly 30 years later, Butros is a bishop in the Syrian Orthodox Church. He oversees about 30 congregations and several church programs, including Homs Orphanage, where he grew up.

"I am happy to say that I was one of them," Bishop Butros says of the 25 children who live at Homs Orphanage today. He encourages them to be optimistic about the future by telling his own story of finding a calling in life — in his case, to be a priest — while living at the orphanage.

Running Homs Orphanage is one of many ways that the Syrian Orthodox Church is helping people in need in its communities. The orphanage is partly funded by the Global Family program of MCC, but the majority of its funding comes from Syrian Orthodox churches in Homs and elsewhere.

In Homs, Syrian Orthodox volunteers also care for people with mental handicaps, and a Syrian Orthodox association gives financial assistance to poor families. Bishop Butros says that these and other social ministries are important to the religious life of his churches.

"This is the essence of Christianity, to be involved in the community all the time," he says. "What are we going to do, sit around and pray and talk theology all the time? No. The church is to be involved in the community."

Most Syrian Christians belong to Orthodox and Catholic denominations that trace their history in Syria to the first decades of Christianity. Celebrating this heritage, the Syrian Orthodox Church conducts its services in the ancient Syriac language, which is believed to be very similar to the language Jesus spoke.

Syria has nearly 2 million Christians, according to some estimates, although it is a predominantly Muslim country. Bishop Butros says that Syrian Christians are not persecuted, but there are some boundary lines between faiths. For example, social custom requires that Homs Orphanage only accept children from Christian families, while children from Muslim families go to a Muslim orphanage in the city.

However, Bishop Butros says that some Muslims do benefit from his churches' work. During the Christmas season, the churches give financial assistance to poor families regardless of their faith.

"Whether they're Muslim or Christian, we don't ask," he says. "We give them what we have."

 

More about Global Family in Syria (Homs Orphanage)