When I told my in-laws that their daughter and I were moving to the Middle East, it was exactly what they had feared. My blonde bride and I were lost on dark streets in Arabia just after Friday prayers - and looking for a church. Wandering through Abu Dhabi, my wife and I found few people we felt comfortable enough to ask for directions.
Just when we had decided to give up, a well built-Middle Eastern man in Western clothing approached us. "Lost?" he asked.
"We are looking for a Church," I told him.
"Charge?" the man responded.
"No, Church", I repeated as I blessed myself.
"Oh,'Kinesa'" he responded enthusiastically in Arabic. "Yes. Nearby. Come, I will take you."
Only after we got into his car did we discover that he was a Syrian Muslim from Damascus.
Judging from the saber rattling of our respective leaders, we had much to fear from one another. Driving to St. Joseph's Church that evening, the only danger we faced we shared — Abu Dhabi's erratic drivers. When I asked to pay the good Samaritan for the ride, he would accept only thanks.
We arrived ten minutes late for Mass expecting there would be plenty of room for us. In the United States we would have had our pick of seats. Instead, we shared standing room outside the doors as parishioners packed the aisles and spilled out of the entrances. In the church courtyard families sold raffle tickets for a Charity auction and a handful of women prayed silently in front of a make shift grotto.
This vibrant Christian community in the United Arab Emirates is no mirage. Flanked on its western and southern borders by Saudi Arabia, and separated from Iran only by the Persian Gulf, the UAE is an unlikely bulwark for Christianity. As Abu Dhabi and its neighboring Emirate, Dubai, have become cathedrals to capitalism, they have also become a testament to the importance of the Church in the developing world and the possibility of dialogue with Islam.
The UAE is a nation of superlatives: its skyscrapers, man-made islands, and ‘seven-star’ hotels have become international icons of excess. Yet, in a country so focused on projecting wealth and glamour, its Christian communities provide a gritty counterbalance. And without the parishioners of St. Joseph's, mostly expatriate laborers from India and the Philippines, little of the UAE's oil wealth could be invested in the infrastructure and industry that will allow the country to thrive beyond the oil boom.
As the parishioners at St. Joseph’s literally build a nation in the UAE, they also build a bridge between the church and its Pentecostal foundations. Mass at St. Joseph’s is said regularly in Arabic, English, Urdu, Hindi, Tagalong, and Italian. Even though the parish may be far from Western cathedrals and their splendor, St. Joseph’s appears quite close to the faith’s pilgrim roots.
Still, the state of the church in Arabia is not without major problems. In Saudi Arabia, even the construction of Catholic churches serving expatriate workers is the subject of prolonged negotiations between Pope Benedict and King Abdullah. At St. Mary's Church in progressive Dubai, parishioners were individually screened before entering Mass on Easter Sunday. The unprecedented security was a response to anti-Christian screeds in Internet chat rooms responding to the construction of another Catholic church on the Arabian Peninsula, this time in Doha, Qatar.
Workers in the UAE are prohibited from going on strike even as the conditions they endure, many working through 120-degree summer heat, are horrendous. There are no labor unions. Yet, for those at St. Joseph's and dozens of other churches like it across the Emirates, there is at least communion.
It's fitting that the Catholic Church in Abu Dhabi bears St. Joseph's name. He too, worked with his hands and was unsure of how his humble labors fit with God's greater plan. He traveled far to provide comfort and safety for his family, and faced uncertainly at every turn.
Yet, his efforts, like those of the parishioners at St. Joseph's helped proclaim a message of hope and transformation for the world.
Hopefully this coming together of cultures and believers in the Middle East, like the original Pentecost, is just a beginning.
There are no rose windows or gilded gates at St. Joseph’s. Still, the church reminds me of John's description of the City of God: "Behold, a great multitude… from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb."
Our Syrian friend became an unlikely guide for my wife and I to church in Abu Dhabi. Perhaps the Catholic community here may also provide unexpected direction: both for the Church's future, and for the complicated world the Church is called to serve.
Patrick Granfield is the Frontiers Editor at The National, an English language newspaper in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. He worked previously as a history teacher at St. Anselm's Abbey School in Washington, D.C. and as a writer/ producer for the McLaughlin Group.
