A couple of weeks before the Thanksgiving holiday, I received a call from my cousin. Her father-in-law in Baghdad was dead. His death was not the result a car bomb or a kidnapping. No bullets or beheadings were involved. Instead, it was a kitchen fire. He was badly burnt up and down his legs. They took him to the hospital … but there were no doctors who could help or medicine they could give him. He was killed by a treatable infection.

"What is it about this month?" my cousin asked. Only an exact year ago her brother had been shot to death in front of his house in a Baghdad neighborhood, forcing a new widow and her children to flee to Jordan.

A few weeks later I shared this story with another Iraqi living in Amman. "This is the way it has been for a while," she said. "After the first war, with the embargo, things were slowly getting worse. No medicine. No services. We were losing hope. But we never saw this second war coming. This destroyed it all. Now, there is no hope."

Over the last five years, as I have shared my family's story in churches and chapel services, I get a very common response: "I never saw them as human beings. I never thought to pray for the Iraqi people." This disturbs me. Even more disturbing is that many of the people who confess this to me are pastors and missionaries. They champion the need for food, plumbing, and medicine in so many parts of the world, but seem to hit the breaks when it comes to Iraq and the Middle East. I have visited many congregations around the country – Catholic, Methodist, Baptist, Episcopal, Non-denominational – and I see a recurring pattern: nine times out of 10 the pastor will pray for the safety and success of the troops, but does not offer one prayer for the people and needs of Iraq.

While in Amman last month, I spent time with my two little cousins who now live as orphans and refugees. A family member shared that one of the girls has recurring dreams of her dead father, and is brewing with sadness and anger over his murder. A week later I sat in a church service in the States where the text in the bulletin was James 1:27: "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world" (NIV). The "pastoral prayer" turned toward the troops, gay marriage and abortion, but there was not one mention of the 2 million internally displaced Iraqis, 82 percent of whom are women and children under the age of 12 (according to the Iraqi Red Crescent report of January 27, 2008). What a sad irony that the same church that so adamantly supports the "right to life" also supported a war that has robbed so many children of their lives and innocence.

In reality, Iraq has been bleeding to death for more than 15 years. Beautiful people, made in the image of God, have lived with violence and destruction for too long. The church in the U.S has played a major role in supporting that destruction. I have very few positive answers for my Muslim family members when they ask about how Christians in the U.S. perceive Iraq. Once, when I told a family member of some Christians I had met who support and work for human rights in Iraq and equal rights for Palestinians, he responded, "Wow. … I didn't know there were any other Christians who believed that way."

In the first chapter of Nehemiah we find this prayer: "I confess that we have sinned against you. Yes, even my own family and I have sinned!" The key word here is "we." Nehemiah was not even alive when the people's sins, which led to exile, took place. Yet he took ownership of what the people of God had done wrong, and so led the way in confession, repentance, and ultimately, restoration.

How long before more pastors lead their congregations in confession, repentance, and prayers for the people and peace of Iraq? How long before more preachers preach that the life of an Iraqi is just as important to God as the life of a U.S. soldier? How long before we ask our congregations to see Iraqis as part of the human family, made in the very image of God, and in doing so broaden our definition of "family values?" How long before the church truly stands up to vote for a "right to life" for all children that goes beyond the unborn to include the children of those who we thought were our enemies?

I have been in worship services all over the country, and I still see too many churches that rallied for the call to war in Iraq failing to rally for the call of Christ in Iraq.

Rev. Omar Hamid Al-Rikabi is a campus minister at the University of Arkansas Wesley Foundation. He is the son of a Muslim father from Iraq and a Christian mother from Texas. He shares his stories on his blog at www.firstbornstories.com