An Open Letter to Abp. Justin Welby

Re: A Response to the Letter of Condolence for the Loss of the Assyrian Patriarch

To His Eminence, Archbishop of Canterbury, +Justin Welby, 

Greetings and Salutations in the Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ! We are deeply moved by your good wishes and thank you for your condolences during this difficult time of grief, as our Church and all the Assyrian people mourn the loss of His Holiness, +Mar Dinkha IV! We covet your continued prayers and ask that you and your Church continue to intercede for the suffering Church of the East in Syria, Iraq and around the world. 

We pray that our suffering witness for the Faith will not be forgotten by the Christian Community around the world, for we know that we can only remain strong through the help and encouragement of our brothers and sisters in lands of freedom, where Christ is still openly preached, where theological education is still readily available, and where the resources that persecuted Christians need can still so easily be prepared and disseminated. 

As the chief pastor and head prelate of one of the world's largest, greatest Churches, blessed with such great liberty and so many valuable and scholarly resources, God will ask an account - for, "To whom much is given, much is required!" Christians around the world are still desperately in need of your Church's example in its rich legacy of mission work, humanitarian aid, and high standards of academic excellence. It is up to you and the many other leaders of the Anglican Communion to guide your people through repentance, faithfulness and orthodoxy of heart and outward action. 

We pray for you and the entire Anglican Communion, that you all will be strengthened, kept in the right faith, and that Anglicanism will successfully resist the ever-increasing trends of liberalism and secularism that attempt to distract Christianity from the Truth of the Gospel, offering a cheap substitutes for the strength and beauty of the Holy Tradition, a tragedy which scorns the blood of two thousand years of Christian martyrs. 

It is truly tragic to see the history of our Great Assyrian Church's suppression under Islam being played out again in the West under the heavy and silencing hand of secular humanism, political correctness and multiculturalism, all which conspire to cast doubt upon God's existence and attempt to blame the human history of weakness and lust for power upon the Church that Christ founded through His Boundless Love and sacrifice for the world upon His Glorious Cross! 

While many empires and states did bend the Church to their will at different times and in various places, our Church's experience should be a living rebuke to this false history, showing that Christianity does not consist of human governance usurping divine authority, but that it always has maintained, at least in part, a pure motivation of ascetic self-denial and an uncompromising desire for the Return of Christ and the establishment of His Kingdom. 

We pray that in this time of struggle and confusion that your Church will be strengthened by the witness and history of the Church of the East, and that Anglicanism would whole-heartedly return to the Orthodoxy of the Living and Holy Tradition, rather than wandering, so unnecessarily, in a wilderness of bankrupt, decadent and worldly Western philosophy. 

May God richly bless both our Churches and enable all of us to come together in greater love, mutual respect and brotherly kindness, reaching the world with the message of Christ's redemption in His Apostolic, Catholic and Orthodox Church! 

In the Name of the Holy Trinity, of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen! 

Sincerely, 

A Shepherd in Christ's Church