by Jennifer Griggs | български | ქართული | ελληνικά | Română | Русский | Српски

We Choose Abundant Life is a document issued by Christian intellectuals and theologians who met together in Beirut on September 29, 2021 to launch their vision for Christians in the Middle East. A stark choice for these Christians is presented in this document, to choose the abundant life that is promised to God’s people in Deuteronomy 30:19b (“Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live”), which is both the choice and the challenge taken up by this group of Christian intellectuals, or the stark alternative which is to resign themselves to the gradual death of Christian communities in the Arab world. Certainly, this situation of sharply declining populations of Christian communities in the Middle East is undeniable. The document of intent, We Choose Abundant Life, promotes a progressive vision of the cultural diversity of Middle Eastern society over a narrow focus on Christians as a beleaguered minority in an Islamic world. Instead, the desire is to reinvent Arabism from the failed modernist project of forced Arabization, to become “a cultural space and an inclusive cultural concept.” This reinvented Arabism includes the diverse richness of identities amongst the Churches of the Middle East, from the Syriac and Armenian traditions to those of the Greek and Coptic churches.