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book reviews 371

Kristian Girling The Chaldean Catholic Church. Modern History, Ecclesiology and Church-State Rela- tions (Abingdon-New York: Routledge, 2018), pp. xiv + 244; £ 105 (£ 35.99 e-book); isbn 978-1-138-04005-2 (hbk), 978-1-315-17543-0 (ebk).

This book, originally a PhD thesis in Theology submitted to the Department of Theology, Heythrop College, University of London (2015), is a study of the Chaldean Church in Iraq between the years 2003 (the fall of Saddam Hussein) and 2013, a most critical period characterized by political instability, waves of (anti-Christian) violence and emigration. The Chaldean Church, one of the so- called Uniate or Eastern Catholic Churches is an offspring of the (Nestorian) Assyrian Church of the East – in this sense a truly representative of Asian Chris- tianity – and today the most important Christian community of the country. After a necessary introduction on the nomenclature used to describe the Christians of Iraq (Nestorians, East-Syriac, Easterners, Chaldeans), the book begins with an historical introduction on the complicated beginnings of the Chaldean Church (15th–18th cent.), taking into account the relevant scholarly literature. The most interesting pages are where Girling speculates on the rea- sons why some East-Syriacs left the Church of the East and turned to Rome (pp. 34ff.). It is however difficult to imagine, as Girling holds it, that the Triden- tine Catholic vision really played a role here. I am not also convinced that a presumed Chaldean Arabness was an important factor. Arabic was a language unknown to many Chaldeans, who in the isolated areas where they were set- tled continued to use Syriac and Sureth as much as their Nestorian neighbours. Their Arabization is only a later development and should not be projected back to earlier periods. The emergence of the modern Chaldean Church, the successor of the abort- ed attempts of the previous period, are discussed in chapter two, with some emphasis on the formation of a Chaldean identity against the Latinization promoted by “Rome”. Chapter three deals with the history of the Iraqi Chal- deans after the First World War, largely a “developing genre in scholarship”, as rightly emphasized by Girling (p. 67). He especially refers to the absence of studies on Patriarch Emmanuel ii Thomas, who played a key role in the inser- tion of the Chaldean Church into the post-war Iraqi society and the transfer of the patriarchal headquarters (by Joseph Ghanima) to Baghdad, which gave the Chaldean Church a certain visibility on the national level, especially by the creation of the Jesuit al-Hikma University, which contributed to the creation of a Chaldean elite. Other important issues discussed in this chapter are the Chaldean involvement in Iraqi politics (relationship with the government after the overthrow of the monarchy, cooperation with the Communist party,

372 book reviews the Baath party, cooperation with the Kurds, etc.), with a good analysis of the dilemma of the Chaldean leadership to cooperate with the central leadership in order not to lose a certain working relationship, at the cost however of those Chaldeans living in Kurdish territory, cooperating or not with Kurdish revolu- tionary forces, but in all cases victims of the brutal Anfâl campaigns organized by Saddam Hussein. He downplays may-be a little bit how the neutrality or even support for the Saddam regime of patriarch Bidawid was not always met with approval by his own clergy. Chapters four and five, the central part of the book covering the period between 2003–13, are based on field work conducted in Iraq in 2013. Girling’s analysis of baptismal, marriage or diocesan records gives insight into how the delicate political situation (instability, violence, …) affected church life in several local communities. He gives a number of tables which show the increase or decline of Chaldeans in important centres such as Erbil, Zakho, Mosul, Baghdad, Basra, Kirkuk, etc., reflecting the migration movements from central Iraq to Kurdistan and/or abroad. This kind of research, rarely carried out with regard to the Christian communities of the Middle East, is much needed in order to assess what is really going on in the region. The short chapter six deals with the Chaldean community within Jordan, mainly of Iraqi origin. Girling’s book offers however much more than an historical overview of the Christians of Iraq, an analysis of the political situation or a sociological de- scription of the ecclesiastical situation today. Throughout the chapters, he also tries to understand what is essential to a Chaldean self-understanding or to their ecclesiological identity (which seems a better expression than the more theological term ecclesiology used in the title; cf. his explanation of the term pp. 136–37). Points to be mentioned here are the capacity of the Chaldean leadership to build up a relationship with the political centers of power (cf. pp. 191ff.), which gives the Church a certain visibility on the national level, in op- position to other minorities, such as the Turkmen or the Yazidis (cf. p. 222) and, we may add for the present day period, the Assyrians. I am however somewhat less convinced by Girlings’s attempt to link these modern political decisions to the developments in the First Abbasid (with Timothy i) or even the Sassanid Periods. A second point here is the relationship with the Roman see. Girling argues here that the ecclesiology of Vatican ii, emphasizing the uniqueness of the oriental Churches, contributed to developing a distinct oriental awareness among the Chaldeans. At least in the field of liturgy, it seems that rather the opposite is true. Latinizing liturgical reforms were introduced in the churches of Baghdad and some parishes of Mosul to the extent that at the beginning of the third millennium the Chaldean liturgy as celebrated in Baghdad was not too different from the Latin-rite celebrations (use of Arabic instead of Syriac

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book reviews 373 and Sureth, liturgy versus populum, etc.), a notable distinction with the developments within the Church of the East. Despite the Vatican ii emphasis on the distinctive identities of the various sui juris Churches in the juridical field, in other domains the theological and liturgical intuitions of the Council led to a drifting apart of the Eastern Catholic and their “Orthodox” mother-churches. A third point is the relationship of the Chaldean Church with the other Christian communities of Iraq, briefly evoked in several chapters. We should be grateful to Kristian Girling for his in-depth study of the most important Christian community in Iraq and for drawing our attention to the role played by the Chaldean Church in the political developments in the period under discussion. A better insight into the specificity of the Chaldean community can only be reached by also studying the developments of the other Christian communities in Iraq, Eastern-Catholic, Latin or “Orthodox”, whose leaders had to face the same problems. In this respect, Girling’s study is a first step to a more encompassing study of present-day Iraqi Christianity, which will also allow for a better understanding of the Chaldean element.

Herman Teule University of Louvain [email protected]

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