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Bush is an evangelical and perceived as closely associated to American Southern Baptists. There is no discernment that as Baptists in Lebanon we are today totally independent from any external accountability and affiliation. So certainly no Baptist in Lebanon is pro-Israel or pro-Zionist. But this will be the accusation that will be raised. So political statements that are voicing democracy and freedom are going to be perceived as pro-Israel, anti-Arab, and therefore condemnable. If they were true, then it would be a serious crime because Israel is considered as an official national enemy of the Lebanese nation.

CT: Do you still have any of the initial hope you had before last Thursday?

Accad: Right now I'd like to emigrate.

Sanders: You have to keep on hoping. This is a mixed cup. Hope and anxiety go together: the hope that there will still be some change in the right direction as we proceed, and the anxiety of what could happen—either some sort of violence or, probably what is more likely, a continuing down the pathway of restriction of our freedom.

CT: Dr. Accad, why haven't you emigrated before now, as have many Lebanese Christians?

Accad: As a Christian, all my life I could have emigrated, I could have left the country. The only reason why we still are in the country is because we have hope, but it's a spiritual hope. It's a hope in the kingdom that is beyond human kingdoms that are perceived by the human eye. That is really a hope in the kingdom of God. It's a hope that we can still affect positively people around us regardless of political realities. But at the political level, I don't have much hope.

Personally, from a political perspective, I'm very disappointed by the divisions within the society that have come out of the recent few days. I don't have much hope for progress at the national level. National victory means a population that is united and a desire to build and free democratic nation. I don't see Lebanon going in this direction at the moment.

Sanders: It's also the hope that springs from the freedom that we still have to minister here, but even that, of course, is now put in jeopardy.

CT: Has the volatile situation in the past two weeks helped bring together the Catholics, the evangelicals, and other Christians in the country?

Accad: I don't think the united front was at the religious level. I don't think that the recent events have brought Christians more together. It has brought the Lebanese population closer together except that all the manipulations that took place in organizing that Tuesday demonstration have created an artificial feeling that there is no unity. But in the end, the picture presented by the media is usually the one that prevails, whether it is true or not.

Sanders: The prayer meeting that we had at the National Evangelical Church was a demonstration, a rallying of evangelicals. It was a movement of not only prayer but also of patriotism.

I don't see that, of course, as having gone beyond the evangelical community, though there was quite a wide representation of nonevangelicals at that particular service.

CT: How can our readers pray for you and for Lebanon?

Accad: Pray that as Christians we would have vision and hope beyond the human circumstances and what the human eye can see. That we would not lose hope that we would continue to have spiritual vision that goes beyond and that looks at building hearts and the nation at a deeper level. That we would take part in bringing about more freedom to this country in an active way and in a constructive way, not necessarily siding with one side or the other.

Copyright © 2005 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

In 1998, Christianity Today sister publication Books & Culture published "The Forgotten Christians of Lebanon: Once free and equal, Lebanon's Christians now struggle against tremendous odds in a country dominated by Syrian politics and an increasingly Islamized culture." The article is now available in the CT Library.

In 2002, American missionary Bonnie Weatherall was murdered in Lebanon.

For breaking news and background on Lebanon, see the Beirut newspaper The Daily Star, the BBC, and Yahoo's full coverage area.

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March (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49