The Vicar of Baghdad: Fighting for peace in the Middle East - Softcover

White, Reverend Andrew

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9781854248763: The Vicar of Baghdad: Fighting for peace in the Middle East

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1854248766 ISBN 13: 9781854248763

Publisher: Monarch Books, 2009

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""I live with a price on my head ...The kind of people that I spend my time engaging with are not usually very nice. On the whole nice people do not cause wars ." Andrew White is one of a tiny handful of people trusted by virtually every side in the complex Middle East. Political and military solutions are constantly put forward, and constantly fail. Andrew offers a different approach, speaking as a man of faith to men of faith. Compassionate and shrewd, gifted in human relationships, he has been deeply involved in the rebuilding of Iraq. His first-hand connections and profound insights make this a fascinating document.

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From the Author:

Canon Andrew White is something of a legend: a man of great charm and energy, whose personal suffering has not deflected him from his role as one of the world's most trusted mediators and reconcilers. As a child and young man growing up in London Andrew was frequently ill. He set his heart on working in the field of anaesthetics, an ambition he achieved, but found himself called into Anglican ministry. He has since had a considerable role in the work of reconciliation, both between Christian and Jew and between Shi'ite and Sunni Muslim. As Vicar of St George's Baghdad, the only Anglican church in Iraq, he lead a team providing food, health care, and education on a major scale and often in dire circumstances. Despite the pain from multiple sclerosis, he is frequently involved in hostage negotiations, and played a key role in ending the siege at the Church of the Nativity in Jerusalem. His personal friendships have included Yasser Arafat and Pope John Paul II. He has been kidnapped, and lives in constant danger. He is trusted by those who trust very few.

From Publishers Weekly:

As head of a foundation for relief and peacemaking and vicar of an Anglican church in Baghdad, White has gained the ear of major power brokers, negotiated hostage releases and coordinated interreligious dialogue in the Middle East. Yet his memoir does not fit neatly into the canon of peacemaking literature, in part because he sees no problem with aligning closely with the U.S. military and accepting Pentagon funds for his interfaith peace summits. Peacemaking of the old woolly-liberal kind no longer works, if it ever did, he writes, and criticizes bottom-up approaches to reconciliation as ineffective in the Middle East. White's most controversial claim—that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction—goes unsupported, and some will find his support for the U.S. invasion ironic, inasmuch as it exists alongside interreligious statements that he helped to broker proclaiming a total rejection of all violence. White's stories of finding common ground between enemies and his commitment to finding out how religion can advise, rather than supervise, politics are truly admirable, however, and not lost entirely amid the book's other, more self-serving assertions. (May)
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