World Vision’s executive director for international relations until March 1, 2009, Thomas Getman managed World Vision’s liaison activities with the UN and the World Council of Churches and was responsible for diplomatic relations with UN government member missions in Geneva and with countries on sensitive negotiations.
He served until recently on the board of principals for the UN Deputy Secretary General for Emergency Relief and as chair of the premier NGO consortium International Council of Voluntary Agencies.
From 1997 to 2001, Getman served as director of World Vision’s programs in Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip where he was responsible for $5-8 million a year in relief and development projects in Palestine and Israel and advocacy for peace with justice.
Previously, Getman served for 12 years as director of government relations and special assistant to the president of World Vision United States at which time he founded WV’s office in DC. Getman interpreted U.S. government policy, pressed for needed foreign assistance, and advanced human rights, relief and development concerns.
From 1976 to 1985, as a Congressional staff member, Getman helped negotiate protocols with the presidents of Uganda and Zambia and encouraged warring factions to move forward with peace negotiations. In the mid-1980s, Getman played a central role to persuade the South African Foreign Ministry to cease support for the Mozambican rebel group Resistencia National Mocambicana (Renamo). He also was an adjunct speech writer for other national political figures, including President Gerald R. Ford.
Before joining World Vision, Getman served as legislative director and senior speech collaborator to U.S. Senator Mark Hatfield. In the US Senate, his primary assignments were African foreign policy and social justice, human rights and welfare issues. His most notable legislative contribution was to participate in the drafting team for the Anti-Apartheid Act of 1985. Getman also served as a regional director for Young Life for nine years in New England.
I caught up with Tom at St Mark’s Church on Capitol Hill in Washington and asked him about the role of Christian Zionism, his hopes for the new US administration and the changes needed in US policy in the Middle East.
I am at Fuller Theological Seminary participating in the third Evangelical Christian Muslim Conference. The theme is “A Common Word between us and you“. The conference has brought together evangelical and Muslim scholars from many educational institutions, mission agencies and countries to enhance the work of justice and peace.
Among the evangelicals here are: Donald Wagner, Leith Anderson, Gary Burge, Len Rogers, Colin Chapman, Dudley Woodbury, and Martin Accad. Muslim leaders include: Mahmoud Ayoub, Assad Busool, Asma Afsaruddin, Muhammad Sammak, Jamal Badawi, Sayid Sayeed, Abed Ismail.
Several present were signators of the Common Word declaration and the Christian Response initiaited by Yale. The two previous conferences in Chicago (November 2006) and Tripoli (January 2008) were formative and educational meetings with important friendships gained and fruitful dialogue exchanged. Sponsors include North Park University in Chicago, Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena and the World Islamic Call Society of Tripoli.
During the conference I delivered a paper entitled “Christian Minorities living under Muslim rule” You can read it here or as a pdf here.
“I am glad to commend Stephen Sizer’s ground-breaking critique of Christian Zionism. His comprehensive overview of its roots, its theological basis and its political consequences is very timely. I myself believe that Zionism, both political and Christian, is incompatible with biblical faith. Stephen’s book has helped to reinforce this conviction.”
Revd Dr John Stott, Rector Emeritus, All Soul’s, Langham Place, London, the principal framer of the Lausanne Covenant (1974) and founder of the Langham Partnership International (author of more than 40 books including Basic Christianity, The Cross of Christ, The Contemporary Christian, Evangelical Truth and New Issues Facing Christians Today, and eight New Testament expositions (Acts, Romans etc.) in the ‘Bible Speaks Today’ series published by IVP).
What it means to act as an advocate for global engagement. Christianity Today
Lynne Hybels
What struck me most as my Arab driver artfully maneuvered the roundabouts and winding streets of Amman, Jordan, was the sense of timelessness in a city made of stone. One of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, Amman boasts a 5,000-seat amphitheater built in the 2nd century that is still in use today, and a Christian church built in 326 A.D. On the modern, western side of the city, the gleaming white stone repeats the ancient theme in stately homes, five-star hotels, and a massive, blue-domed mosque in which nearly 3,000 worshipers gather in prayer.
But it was Arab Christians, not architecture, that had brought me to Amman. I spent the next five days in a secluded retreat center listening to lectures and talking with men and women whose stories shook my understanding of what it means to be a Christian in the Middle East. Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding sponsored the gathering and billed it as an opportunity for American and European Christians to “listen to the church in the Middle East.” The conference brochure should have come with a warning: “You will leave this place feeling sick at heart, and your tears will continue to fall long after you return home.”
John Hagee wrote to me again today. He writes most days. Today he wrote to remind me, “As Christians we have a Biblical obligation to defend Israel and the Jewish people in their time of need. Israel’s time of need is now. There is a new Hitler in the Middle East –President Ahmadinejad of Iran — who has threatened to wipe out Israel and America and is rapidly acquiring the nuclear technology to make good on his threat. Tragically, 2008 has been a year of steady progress for President Ahmadinejad and his nuclear ambitions.”
In case I missed it, John’s email contained not one but two requests for money – in between the paragraphs so I would not miss it, like I’m doing here, except you don’t need to send me any money.
Then John went on to warn me, “As Iran gets steadily closer to obtaining nuclear weapons, we get that much closer to the possibility of a second Holocaust. The risk that Israel and her six million Jews might be “wiped off the map” is too great for us to sit silently by as the world does nothing. As 2008 ends and 2009 begins, we must redouble our efforts to stop Iran. In particular, we must combine fervent prayer with urgent action.”
How John, how?
“In addition to prayer, we must also act to make sure that our fellow citizens and our government recognize the urgency of this threat. Christians United for Israel is determined to focus intensely on the issue of Iran in 2009. We plan to educate Christians across America about the threat of a nuclear Iran. We intend to help our members speak out in their communities and churches to raise awareness on this issue. We plan to communicate the urgency of this issue to our leaders in Washington and demand that they act with greater resolve to stop this threat to America and Israel.”
I knew prayer wouldn’t be enough. If that was all John was asking for I certainly wouldn’t have written this piece, and you wouldn’t be bothering to read it either, but you are and that’s because you know by now that John has other ideas of how to ‘stop Iran’ and being the pastor of an 18,000 member church he doesn’t need to beat around the bush.
At the July 19th, 2006 Washington DC inaugural event for Christians United for Israel, after recorded greeting from George W. Bush, and in the presence of four US Senators as well as the Israeli ambassador to the US, John stated :”The United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God’s plan for both Israel and the West… a biblically prophesied end-time confrontation with Iran, which will lead to the Rapture, Tribulation, and Second Coming of Christ.”
Well that’s everything isn’t it? The whole caboodle as we say in O’l Blighty. Now I don’t want to see anyone ‘wiped off the face of the earth’ least of all my Jewish friends, but bombing Iran back to the stone age won’t win us any friends in the Middle East, John. Trust me, I’ve asked them.
Your friend Ann Coulter suggested something similar after the tragedy of 9/11. She said, “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren’t punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That’s war. And this is war.”
We tried it a thousand years ago. It didn’t work then and it won’t work now. John, I’m struggling a bit with your theology. I’ve read the Bible a few times over the years but I just can’t find that verse you must have in mind that says this is our ‘biblical obligation.’ I thought our ‘biblical obligation’ was to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us (Matthew 5:43-48). Paul said our ‘obligation’ is to tell them about the love of God found in Jesus (Romans 1:14; John 3:16-17). Maybe I’m just reading the wrong translation.
Grace Halsell put her finger on it when she wrote: “Convinced that a nuclear Armageddon is an inevitable event within the divine scheme of things, many evangelical dispensationalists have committed themselves to a course for Israel that, by their own admission, will lead directly to a holocaust indescribably more savage and widespread than any vision of carnage that could have generated in Adolf Hitler’s criminal mind.”
She is right isn’t she? Such a fatalistic view of the future, with its prewritten script, is inherently suspicious and pessimistic about anything international, ecumenical, or involving the European Community or United Nations. Efforts to achieve a lasting peace in the Middle East are spurned as counterfeit and a satanic ploy to beguile Israel. Such paranoia might be deemed a sick joke were it not so pervasive and influential, it seems, in shaping US foreign policy with its perpetual war against the ‘Axis of Evil’. Its greatest danger is surely that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Maybe to call it ‘weird and wacky’ is a little understated.
AMMAN, JORDAN – In a strategic gathering of Middle Eastern, European and American Christian leaders, westerners were given an inside view of the Middle Eastern Church’s struggle in a war-torn land.
Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding’s (EMEU) Sounds of Hope II conference was held in Amman, Jordan on Oct. 15-18. It was a time for over 70 select individuals from various ministries to hear from 11 speakers with experience in the Middle East Church.
According to Dr. Ray Bakke, EMEU chair, the conference was held out of a concern that ignorance in the West was negatively influencing the worldwide Church. “We had people who are evangelical who thought that every Arab was a terrorist or a fat oil sheik,” he said.
Dr. Paul Haidostian (Beirut) and the Rev. Cully Anderson (California) in discussion
EMEU’s purpose is to break down those stereotypes through direct dialog and help to build relationships and understanding across different cultures. As Bakke put it, “It’s not an organization, it’s a conversation.”
Three aspects stood out for Tom Bower, an attendee from Iowa: exposition of biblical material as it relates the Middle East today, a clearer definition of the area’s political and economic issues, and “wonderful networking” between Church leaders from across the globe and across the denominational spectrum.
Speakers from Sudan, Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq shared on everything from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to America’s role in the Middle East, to a loving Christian response to Islam.
Dr. Nabeel Jabbour shared his concern that, after September 11th, some Christians would quit praying for and ministering to Muslims. “If that happens it will be the biggest setback in the history of missions,” he said. “Muslims are about 1.4 billion people in the world. It’s predicted that by the year 2020 they’ll become a quarter of humanity. If we consciously or unconsciously omit them from the Great Commission it will become no more the Great Commission; it will be the Great Omission.”
Jabbour walked attendees through the different belief systems in Islam, explaining that only a small percentage of Muslims are actually radical fundamentalists, but it is the activities of this faction that make the news.
John Sagherian, regional coordinator for Youth for Christ International, said that young Muslims as well as nominal Christians in the Middle East are asking the same question when presented with the biblical truth of salvation: “So what?” He said that they need more than textbook answers.
“I believe the answer lies in our changed lives and our changed values and our love for each other,” Sagherian said. “They need to see Christians living as Christians. And it would help if there were a revival in the West and the Christian West really became Christian.”
But the underlying frustration behind many of the messages given at the conference was over the apathy of westerners toward the Arab Church. Speakers said Christian Zionists have fixated on the renewal of the Israeli state, while ignoring severe abuse of the Palestinian people’s rights.
“Our message to the Jewish people (should be) that it is in the person of Jesus the Messiah that their hopes have been fulfilled, not in their return to the land and in the creation of the state of Israel,” said author and educator Rev. Colin Chapman. “When I see how Jesus has already fulfilled so many of the hopes and dreams of Israel (prophesied of) in the Old Testament, I can see how… the followers of Jesus today can… both hunger and thirst after righteousness, justice and be genuine peacemakers in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
While this conflict is extremely complex, understanding the issues involved touches on a person’s biblical interpretation, theology, politics, interfaith relationships and method of sharing the Gospel. “What is at stake over this issue is nothing less than our understanding of God, our witness to the Gospel and the credibility of the Christian Church,” said Chapman. “The stakes are very high.”
Sounds of Hope II delegates in session
Bakke told attendees about a conversation he had with a Jewish rabbi concerning the current existence of modern Israel. “Every people, to be a whole people, must somewhere in their history be stewards of power. We Jews have always been victims of power. The state of Israel is our first opportunity to be stewards of power,” said the rabbi. Then with a tear rolling down his cheek, he finished, saying, “If God is just, he will have to remove us one more time for what we have done to the Palestinians in this land. We are treating them the way the Nazis treated us.”
Antoine Haddad, vice president of Lebanon’s InterVarsity Fellowship, said that America has had a blind support for Israel, ignoring injustices the Palestinians have faced. He said that this “created seeds for instability in the Middle East region and led to wars and civil wars, dictatorships, poverty, oppressive regimes – all of which have been negatively reflected on the Christian presence in (the Middle East).”
And while the western Church’s response has been poor, Haddad says the Church in the midst of the conflict has also reacted incorrectly: “The response of Christians has been emigration, forsaking the cradle of Christianity and forsaking their roots.”
Archbishop Avak Asadourian (Baghdad) addresses the delegates
In Iraq, Archbishop Mar Avak Asadorian of the Armenian Orthodox Church in Baghdad, is seeing a similar exodus in persecuted Christians.
“If the present state of affairs continue in the region of the Middle East and Iraq, then the Eastern manifestation of the Christian Church – the churches that saw the birth of the Lord and worshiped him in his own tongue, giving millions of martyrs throughout 2,000 years – yes, these churches, are already at peril,” Asadorian said. “(This is) a matter not to be taken lightly, otherwise we are going to lose the Eastern manifestation of the Christian Church.”
Although troubles facing the Middle East Church are plentiful, the stories of faith and perseverance were equally abundant. “I had no idea that every time I’d sit down I’d be sitting down next to a person who had the most incredible story ever, and when I’d think I’d come to the most interesting story I’d meet somebody else that would surpass that,” said Cindi Steele, who works with Orthodox Jews in Arizona through Make A Difference Ministries. “I have enjoyed every moment of it.”
Steele attended the conference with her husband and says she is thinking of eventually bringing a club basketball team back to the Middle East to work among the Palestinian people.
Speakers asked Christians everywhere to work to understand the religions and politics of the Middle East in order to have a positive influence, to look for ways to partner or offer aid to the Middle Eastern church, and most of all, to pray for those who are hurting in the Middle East.
Lynne Hybels of Willow Creek Community Church just outside Chicago said that she knows there must be some action after this dialog. She compared the Sounds of Hope conference to her experience of going to Africa five years ago to learn about AIDS. She left Africa asking the question: “How have I ignored this situation? Why didn’t I ever let what I knew in my head travel down to the level of my heart?”
She continued, “And now I’m going home with that same question that I left Africa with: What’s happened this week is that I’ve seen the pain… I’ve heard the anger. I think Christians in the Church in the West have shown a lack of concern. By supporting global policies that have very much hurt the Middle East as a whole we have betrayed our Christian brothers and sisters here. What am I to do? That’s a prayer that I know God will answer, but not easily; but I go home with that prayer.”
The Jordan conference was the second Sounds of Hope event, the first being held at Wheaton College at the Billy Graham Center in Illinois in 2006.
AMMAN, JORDAN – In a strategic gathering of Middle Eastern, European and American Christian leaders, westerners were given an inside view of the Middle Eastern Church’s struggle in a war-torn land.
Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding’s (EMEU) Sounds of Hope II conference was held in Amman, Jordan on Oct. 15-18. It was a time for over 70 select individuals from various ministries to hear from 11 speakers with experience in the Middle East Church.
According to Dr. Ray Bakke, EMEU chair, the conference was held out of a concern that ignorance in the West was negatively influencing the worldwide Church. “We had people who are evangelical who thought that every Arab was a terrorist or a fat oil sheik,” he said.
EMEU’s purpose is to break down those stereotypes through direct dialog and help to build relationships and understanding across different cultures. As Bakke put it, “It’s not an organization, it’s a conversation.”
Three aspects stood out for Tom Bower, an attendee from Iowa: exposition of biblical material as it relates the Middle East today, a clearer definition of the area’s political and economic issues, and “wonderful networking” between Church leaders from across the globe and across the denominational spectrum.
Speakers from Sudan, Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq shared on everything from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to America’s role in the Middle East, to a loving Christian response to Islam.
Dr. Nabeel Jabbour shared his concern that, after September 11th, some Christians would quit praying for and ministering to Muslims. “If that happens it will be the biggest setback in the history of missions,” he said. “Muslims are about 1.4 billion people in the world. It’s predicted that by the year 2020 they’ll become a quarter of humanity. If we consciously or unconsciously omit them from the Great Commission it will become no more the Great Commission; it will be the Great Omission.”
World Vision’s executive director for international relations until March 1, 2009, Thomas Getman managed World Vision’s liaison activities with the UN and the World Council of Churches and was responsible for diplomatic relations with UN government member missions in Geneva and with countries on sensitive negotiations.
John Hagee wrote to me again today. He writes most days. Today he wrote to remind me, “As Christians we have a Biblical obligation to defend Israel and the Jewish people in their time of need. Israel’s time of need is now. There is a new Hitler in the Middle East –President Ahmadinejad of Iran — who has threatened to wipe out Israel and America and is rapidly acquiring the nuclear technology to make good on his threat. Tragically, 2008 has been a year of steady progress for President Ahmadinejad and his nuclear ambitions.”
AMMAN, JORDAN – In a strategic gathering of Middle Eastern, European and American Christian leaders, westerners were given an inside view of the Middle Eastern Church’s struggle in a war-torn land.
