Praying for ‘a new Egypt’

New on The Christian Chronicle’s website, see our exclusive interviews with Egyptian Christians and workers with church-supported ministries that serve the Middle East:

Egyptian Christian Alfred Habashy, center, with Doug Reeves and Sammy Flanary at Sunset International Bible Institute in Lubbock, Texas. (Photo provided by Doug Reeves)

“We ask for freedom, so that anyone can worship, (regardless of) religion,” said Alfred Habashy, a student at Sunset International Bible Institute in Lubbock, Texas. In Cairo, his father works with a Church of Christ near Tahrir Square, the site of the largest demonstrations.
Christians endure persecution in Egypt, which is about 90 percent Muslim, but are allowed to worship freely, Habashy said. If fundamentalist Muslims gain control of the government, they could outlaw the faith entirely.
“If that happens, it will be terrible,” he said. “It will be like Iran.
“So we pray for those in charge. But we believe God is in control. Our Bible tells us that. He has full sovereignty of everything that happens in our life.”

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Take a poll on our home page about the future of Christianity in the Middle East.
Also, see our related editorial about Egypt:

Our prayerful desire is that the new government in Egypt will know Joseph — and recognize the nation’s Christian heritage. We urge Muslim majorities across the nations of the Middle East to recognize that their homeland is the not the enemy of Christianity — it is the birthplace of Christianity.
At the same time, we in the U.S. must transform our understanding of Egypt and the Muslim world. So many of us are concerned about oil and military alliances when our primary concern must be for the spiritual wellbeing of souls in the Middle East.
The “faith factor” must trump the “fear factor” as we reach out to lost souls in the Middle East, said Evertt Huffard, a former missionary in the hometown of Jesus, Nazareth.
“If we really understand that the kingdom is not of this world, then fear should not be a factor in our politics — or our mission in the world,” he said.

Read the editorial.
See our related blog posts about Egypt and the Middle East.
As protests continue across the region, what is your prayer for Eygpt, North Africa and Middle East?

• Feedback
  We are praying for religious freedom as part of the new constitution of Egypt and all countries in the Middle East and North Africa so that the good news of Jesus Christ can go forward without hindrance.

  Daniel Keeran

  February, 28 2011

  The result is unfolding to be much the opposite of what we as Christians had hoped.

  Martha Stanford

  August, 6 2011