LOUISVILLE — It will be business as usual in Baghdad’s Christian churches this Sunday, Elder Ayad Al Saka says.

             “Yes, yes, people will be coming to church on Sunday,” he tells an interviewer by telephone. “There will be an ordinary service. This morning, I was in the church. There was Bible study; there were the children for Sunday school. I was there with the church council. We stayed for more than two hours.”

             Got through the whole agenda, Al Saka adds, including the planning of a celebration marking the 50th anniversary of the construction of the sanctuary of the Assyrian Evangelical Presbyterian Church (AEPC), a congregation that has worshipped in central Baghdad for 120 years.

             Al Saka says he thinks the program may be held this coming Sunday, and he’s expecting normal attendance, despite a series of bombs that exploded during worship last Sunday outside four churches in Baghdad and one in Mosul.

             He asks a Presbyterian News Service reporter to tell his pastor, the Rev. Younan Shiba, not to worry. Shiba, a guest at the recent 216th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA), is visiting churches in the United States.

             Yes, Al Saka says, police are outside the church building, fulfilling promises of protection offered before the smoke cleared last Sunday evening, killing 11 people and injuring dozens — mostly Christians, but also some Muslims who were hit by flying glass and shrapnel and dangling power lines.

             What Iraqis are saying is that it isn’t Iraqis who master-minded the attacks, but outsiders, extremists opposed to the U.S. occupation and determined to show that it cannot stop lawlessness, looting, raping and robbery — and now, terror. They apparently mean to drive a wedge between the Muslim and Christian communities, to plunge the country further into anarchy.

             Shiba, the itinerating pastor, isn’t so easily calmed. He says he is worried — worried enough to move his wife and two daughters into a different apartment after their home was burglarized twice in two months. He says he has been worried about chaos at home, and now he’s worried about terror.

             “Fear is a constant, an ever-present factor in this kind of attack,” he says. “There’s fear that there is more to come.”

             Shiba offered to return home more than two weeks ago, when an elder called to tell him that a rocket had hit a 70-member, AEPC-launched new-church development in the Baghdad area, causing minor damage but no injuries.

             Last Sunday’s phone call was more devastating; this time, there was a body count. The elder who called said he’d lost two members of his family, young newlywed cousins.

             Shiba was told to stay put, to let the U.S. church know about the Iraqi church.

             “There’s been a generalized fear of going out in the streets, to the markets,” he says. “Now the thresholds of sacred spaces have been trespassed. I’m afraid … it will be more difficult to keep people coming to worship.”

             A Presbyterian in Mosul who asked that he not be identified by name said attendance was normal when his congregation met last Sunday evening and again on Wednesday. “Some people were afraid, but considered coming to worship an act of faith,” he said.

             “No church here has asked for extra security,” he added. “Some of the youth have volunteered to stand watch outside, but they won’t be armed.”

             Iraqis say the Christian community has been comforted by loud condemnations of the attacks by Muslim clerics.

             “We’ve lived together for thousands of years,” one man said, referring to Iraqi Christians and Muslims, “so there is no need to begin dialogue. ... I don’t even think there are two communities. ... There is an Iraqi community … and we will continue dialoguing to solve the Iraqi problem.”

             He said he does worry that extremist groups may attack a mosque and blame it on Christians.

             Greg Rollins, of Vancouver, Canada, a member of the Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) in Baghdad, said its members aren’t sure what strategy they will use Sunday in accompanying Iraqi Christians.

             CPT is global organization that tries to stop violence by getting in the way of it in hot spots like Colombia, Palestine and Iraq. It also documents human-rights violations. The Baghdad group was the first to report inhumane treatment of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. troops.

             “We’re not sure whether to go to the churches that have not been bombed, since they are more likely targets than those that were,” he said, “or whether it is best to go to the ones who’ve been bombed and express solidarity. Those are the options on the table.”

             Rollins and fellow CPTer Sheila Provencher were worshipping at St. Raphael’s Catholic Church when the first bomb exploded last Sunday at 6:25 p.m. at an Armenian church about a quarter-mile away. Peggy Gish and Doug Pritchard were at St. Yousef’s  Chaldean church in the same neighborhood.

             That bomb destroyed three cars and shattered windows for 500 yards around, including the church’s stained-glass windows.

             Pritchard, CPT’s Toronto director, said he and the others will be in church again this Sunday.

           “We’ll go as we always do,” he said.