History of St. George's Church

Christianity arrived in Iraq hundreds of years before it came to the West, in fact Christian roots in Iraq are two thousand years old. There has been an Anglican Church of St George in Baghdad since 1864 and it is the only active Anglican Church in Iraq. The present church was built in 1936 as a memorial to the many soldiers of the British Empire who lost their lives in Mesopotamia in the First World War. Its official title is: The Memorial Church of St George of Mesopotamia. Memorials to the dead from the various regiments used to be found in most of the windows, but all except for one of these have been blown out. The main memorial is the pictures around the church and the Embassy and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission are going to carry out some restoration to commemorate the 2003 war. There is also a Danish memorial which is a fountain inscribed with the names of their 9 dead, but they also built a children’s playground which serves as a memorial to past and future.

For part of its history, St. George’s functioned as a church for expatriates, yet at present the congregation is entirely Iraqi. The Church stopped functioning after the first Gulf War but Canon Andrew White was allowed to take services after beginning work in Iraq from 1998 onwards. As it had not been a functioning church for about 14 years, the building had been totally looted - not a pew remained. Many of the windows had been broken, the organ was removed, and the only church fixture that remained was the solid marble font.

Following the 2003 invasion, the church was mainly used for services by diplomats and the military. However, following the outbreak of the insurgency, the situation soon became too dangerous and military and political figures could no longer leave the Green Zone to enter the church. Meanwhile, the decrease in Coalition presence was supplemented by an increasing number of Iraqis who started coming to the church chiefly because it became too dangerous for them to travel to their own services.

Within a matter of weeks, St. George’s had a congregation which was all Iraqi. By the following Christmas there were regularly over a hundred children and two hundred adults in attendance.  With funding from the British Office in Baghdad and the Diocese of Cyprus and the Gulf, a basic restoration took place. Glass and doors were put in place, plastic chairs in situ and a carpet was laid. The whole church was painted and the bricks cleaned inside and outside.

An electric piano was provided and hymns and liturgy were projected onto a screen at the front of the church. For the first few months at the church when Canon Andrew was not in Iraq, services were led by Frank Wismer, a wonderful U.S. Army chaplain. After a few months it became too dangerous for Frank to leave the ‘Green Zone’ so Canon Andrew would try and take the Sunday services at least twice a month and the other services of the Word were led by Maher, a wonderful Iraqi man who is a convert from Sabbism (the followers of John the Baptist). 

Canon Andrew now tries to spend three out of every four weekends in Baghdad and, despite all the difficulties coming from violence towards minority groups in Iraq, the church continues to expand and grow and is now a most wonderful gathering of people from many different backgrounds. The church members keep in good heart and continue to develop as a church body, proving that persecution and violence can never stop the spread of the good news of Christ.