Pakistani Visitors Surprised by Poverty in Scotland

Tuesday February 14 2017

Jackie Macadam meets a group of Pakistani visitors to Glasgow Presbytery

^{The Pakistani visitors and Glaswegian hosts with staff of the World Mission Council in Edinburgh. Left to right: Waris Emmanuel, Stephanie Thomson, Narseen Rebecca Wilson-John, Eleri Birkhead, the Rev Fiona Gardner, Rt Rev Kaleem John, Farooq Maseh, Carol Finlay, Bill Gray.}

A four-strong Christian delegation from Pakistan are visiting the Presbytery of Glasgow this week to explore the possibility of a twinning with the Church of Pakistan's Diocese of Hyderabad.

“We felt that there were similarities in the make-up of the Presbytery of Glasgow and the Diocese of Hyderabad,” said Bill Gray, the Presbytery World Mission Convener.

“We thought it might be useful for the Presbytery to twin as a way of encouraging the different congregations to get involved as well.

“The bombing of All Saints Church in Peshawar was the reason we started the twinning process with Pakistan. We hadn’t been sure where to look, but when the Rev Aftab Gohar [minister of Grangemouth: Abbotsgrange] spoke to us of his personal family members involved in it, we just felt then that it was Pakistan we needed to explore.”

The delegation from Pakistan - the Rt Rev Arshed Kaleem John, Bishop of Hyderabad, the Rev Waris Emmanuel, Ashley Farooq Maseh and Narseen Rebecca Wilson-John - have been impressed with Scotland, though it is not entirely as they had imagined.

“We felt that with a wealthy, well-developed country like this that we would not find poverty, but we found people not just living in poverty but who were living with a very different kind of poverty from that which we know,” said Bishop John.

“In Pakistan, even the poor have a family around them – a community – who looks out for them, talks to them and is friendly with them – but here there is so much isolation, so many lonely people. The poor there seem to have no dreams of anything better, as if they have just accepted their life.

“On the other hand, here there are so many organisations that are trying to help these people, like the Lodging House Mission, where we visited. In Pakistan there just isn’t the infrastructure and we are getting ideas of things we might be able to do when we get home.”

“It’s that sharing of relationships and learning from each other that makes twinning so important,” says Carol Finlay, Twinning and Local Development Secretary with the World Mission Council. “Getting to know each other, to visit each other and develop real relationships, even online, helps us to get to know each other and our issues better. From the outside, it appeared there would be no real problems in Scotland, yet the visit here and being shown round the area with the people from the Presbytery of Glasgow, has opened the delegation’s eyes in ways that they wouldn’t have imagined.”

Christians in Pakistan are a minority – around 2.5% of the population - and face serious persecution, even though they are allowed to practice their religion by law.

“The Christian communities, especially rural ones, can be easy targets of fundamentalist Islam. “We are a peaceful religion,” said Mr Maseh, administrator to the Diocese. “Often though, we are seen as being complicit with places such as America and minds are full of prejudice and hatred towards us.”

The Rev Fiona Gardner, minister of Temple Anniesland Church, said that hearing the stories from the delegation as they’ve gone round with them has left her very moved.

“The courage of the Christians there is incredible,” she says. “To me, twinning is about listening and suffering alongside them and sharing their faith.”

More on the visit on the Church of Scotland website

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