Suffer the Children

This book offers a fresh and distinctive perspective on the impact of conflict and violence on children who are caught up in it, written by someone uniquely placed to witness to it. How does Andrew White, the ‘Vicar of Baghdad’ keep going? Suffering from multiple sclerosis himself, he sustains a tireless, often sleepless ministry running the only surviving Anglican church in Iraq, with a congregation so large that he has to hold services on Saturdays as well as Sundays to accommodate them all. Individual stories are brought together from Bethlehem (known throughout the world as the birthplace of a child). Further stories from Jerusalem, Iraq and North Carolina, from one of Andrew’s own sons in England and from his adopted son in Iraq, give us a child’s eye view of war and its aftermath. This is not only a sobering witness to the effect of war on the innocents caught up in it (and the implications of that for any ‘Just War’ strategy): it is also a powerful testimony to what sustains Andrew White in work that is both difficult and dangerous.

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