Monday, November 26, 2018
628 - 'Are You a Minister?'
Spirituality Column #628
November 27, 2018
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
‘Are You a Minister?’
By Bob Walters
“Are you a minister?”
“No, I’m not,” I replied, having
only recently been baptized a few months earlier. So I
was surprised when the very quiet, “older” gentleman I didn’t know with the
foreign accent posed that question to me back in May of 2002. The occasion was a small cookout in
Indianapolis mostly among some of my old high school friends from Kokomo.
That was how and when I met George
Bebawi, who has been the most profound theological, biblical, and intellectual
influence in my Christian life. He turns
80-years-old today, Tuesday, Nov. 27, and there are hundreds of us in central
Indiana and thousands more all over the world who would like to stop and take a
moment to tell George “Happy birthday” while adding our sincere thanks for his
unwavering, deeply loving, and freedom-cherishing Christian ministry and
academic career. He is one of a kind.
Born in 1938
to a Jewish mother and Christian father, a physician, George was reared in a
Muslim neighborhood in Cairo, Egypt.
George’s Jewish grandmother who wound up raising him escaped the Nazis
in 1930s Hungary by going to Egypt. He
was raised as a Jew but was also encouraged by his father to “get along” with
the other neighborhood boys by studying the Qur’an. George knows Judaism and
Islam very well.
To make a very long story very
short, George and his grandmother converted to Christianity together when George
was 18. He then studied at Coptic
Orthodox Theological College in Cairo becoming a Coptic priest, earned a PhD at
Cambridge in Sacramental Theology (1970), returned to Cairo to teach and
minister, nearly became a Coptic monk but instead rose through the Coptic clerical
and administrative ranks in Cairo, served as a Coptic counsel to several
international theological committees including at the Vatican, was a missionary
in Sub-Saharan Africa, taught at several Middle Eastern and European
universities, and studied psychotherapy with Frank Lake.
Though he eventually left the
Coptic priesthood, George is a renowned expert in Church History, Patristics
(the church fathers), Systematic Theology, Judaism, Islam, and Egyptian
Christianity. George’s CV lists proficiency
in 10 languages (English, Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Syriac, Coptic, Persian,
French, Latin), not including German into which he translated the Coptic Bible as
a PhD candidate at Cambridge.
George, who married May Rifka at
Northview Church in Carmel, Ind., in 2004, first met her in Beirut, Lebanon, in
the mid-1970s; May managed a bookstore George frequented while teaching there. George also served as a medic with the Red
Cross during that era’s Lebanese civil war which forced May’s family to flee to
the United States. Once here, May became
a lead project manager with EDS (Ross Perot’s computer systems company) and was
posted in Indianapolis in the early 1980s.
She returned to the area permanently in 1998, settling in Carmel.
I have to explain May, because
without her none of us around here would know George. I met her in 1983 at dinner a couple of times
with some of those same high school friends who again gathered at that spring
cookout in 2002. May, in the 1980s, had
connected with them at Carmel’s College Park Church, and though I was still a
couple decades away from the Christian scene myself, May exudes the type of
kindness that is unforgettable … and I never forgot her. She moved away and I didn’t see her again
until spring 2002 at a funeral at East 91st St. Christian Church for
the husband of our high school friend Joyce.
A month after the funeral our gang met for the cookout at Joyce’s home
as an encouragement for her but also because May had a friend visiting from England
– George – but I didn’t know who he was.
So … there we are at the 2002 cookout,
the gals gabbing in the kitchen and the guys gabbing on the patio … with this older,
Middle Eastern fellow who seemed entirely pleasant, politely listening to us
“experts” opine on what Islam might do to America and the world. This was, you’ll recall, about nine months
after 9/11. I had read Princeton
professor Bernard Lewis’s authoritative book “What Went Wrong” about Islam, and
also had read online what I didn’t realize was a bunch of nonsense and
misinformation about Islam. All of us
guys – long-time friends, college grads, Christians, up on the news – were all in
the same boat regarding Islam: newly but barely informed about a complex topic
and briskly discussing something about which we had little understanding.
And here’s George – a Cambridge
University PhD and lecturer in divinity and a world-renowned scholar on Islam (who
actually knows Bernard Lewis) – politely, silently, looking at us. It was when I tossed into the conversation
something I’d read – online – about “Allah” being a “Moon God” that “had been
randomly picked off an image on the Kaaba at Mecca because Mohammad needed a
God for his new religion” At that,
George leaned forward. The mere force of his authoritative posture shut all of
us up and he said, with stern surety, “No! That is Christian propaganda.” And I gulped.
At that moment, I was not entirely
sure who I had offended. But George was
gracious and neither angry nor arrogantly moved to present a showy academic
criticism of my error. He simply knew
what Muslims know: that within Islam, Allah is neither an afterthought nor a
figment of Muhammad’s imagination. We
talked a while longer – I was fascinated – and George asked, “Are you a
minister?” He sounded sincere; not as
though he hoped I was not. I said “No,” but
took it as an encouraging compliment.
George and I became fast
friends. He returned to Cambridge, I
emailed him, and he sent back a nice note along with a master’s thesis he had
written long ago titled “St. Paul and Original Sin.” It was deep stuff I barely understood but desperately
wanted to. We stayed in touch from then
on, which opened up a new world of study for me. When he visited again in September we got together
with Russ Blowers and discovered George was familiar with Russ’s son Paul’s
work in Patristic theology. At Christmas
we all were able to get together – Russ, Paul, George, May, and me. In 2004 George retired, married May, and moved
to Carmel. Russ and I convinced E91 to
hire George as a Wednesday night Bible Study instructor, a class he taught
through 2017. I helped coordinate with
the church and formatted George’s class handouts each week. He has written dozens of books – most in
Arabic – but my 14 years of class handouts, lectures, and notes has been a theology
education for the ages. I know Jesus and
do not doubt.
The past year George has battled
numerous health problems but every time I’ve seen him – and according to May
just a couple days ago – his mind is sharp as ever. I’d love to see him continue teaching, but
I’ve got column material for the rest of my life.
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is 64 years old; same age George was when
they met. May’s hospitality at their
home in Carmel, by the way, is as legendary as is George’s generosity with his
considerable knowledge and ministerial acumen.