Ben Witherington reports on the situation within Iraq for Christians. I will highlight only one paragraph of a much longer and more comprehensive report.
A little history is in order. Two of the oldest forms of Christianity still exist today in Iraq-- Chaldean Catholics and Assyrian Christians. They are still the largest Christian groups in the country, which at one time during the reign of Saddam Hussein were well over 1.5 million in number, but today the total number of Christians in Iraq is likely less than 600 thousand. One of the remarkable signs of the antiquity and continuous heritage of both the Chaldeans and the Assyrians is that they still pray in Aramaic-- the spoken language of Jesus.
There are of course other sorts of Catholics, Syrian Orthodox Christians, and a precious few Protestants in Iraq as well (there is but one Anglican Church, St. George's in Baghdad). But the numbers are dwindling between the car bombs going off next to churches and the families fleeing the country.
It may seem obvious why the Christians are fleeing the country-- the country is in a war and there is chaos. But there is more to it than that. Christians are quite specific targets of Moslem militias, both Sunni and Shiite because they are viewed as being on the side of the 'Western Crusader invaders'. . . .