The Rev. Benjamin M. Weir

By Andrew I. Killgore

Until May 7, 1984, the Rev. Benjamin Weir was little known outside Presbyterian Church circles and Lebanon, where he had served 30 years as a missionary. On that day he was seized near his apartment in Beirut by Shiite Muslim extremists. It was the beginning of 16 months spent as a hostage, 14 of them in solitary confinement. It was also the beginning of a time of acute agony for the Rev. Weir's wife and four children, who knew—as did he—that he might be killed at any time.

It was particularly ironic that Benjamin Weir, and others like him who had chosen careers of service, were slated for kidnapping. He was as well loved as any American remaining in shattered Lebanon, a reminder of an earlier age when selfless American men and women traveled halfway around the world to teach and heal in the Middle East. Such efforts, over a period of 150 years, had created the greatest American cultural legacy in the Arab world, the American University of Beirut (AUB).

The kidnappers seemed to take pains to single out Americans connected with that venerable institution, or the Presbyterian mission from which it had originally stemmed, to convey their own message: the West, symbolized by its teachers, doctors, and missionaries, had betrayed the East, symbolized by the people whom they had come to help. Now the Ayatollah Khomeini and his armed disciples in Beirut had determined that the westerners and all their works would go. If Benjamin Weir and his family, guilty only of loving and serving the people of Lebanon, were not safe there, no American would be until Shiite friends and relatives of the kidnappers, jailed in Kuwait for fatal bombing attacks on Western embassies and residential areas, were freed.

Born in Utah in 1925, Reverend Weir graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and the Princeton Theological Seminary. After military service in France as a US Army platoon leader and later company commander, and in the United States as an Army Chaplain, the Rev. Weir worked the next 30 years, from 1953 to 1983, in Lebanon. He was first a Presbyterian evangelist in the Lebanese towns of Nabatiyeh and Tripoli, and then a church administrator in Beirut. His ever-increasing responsibilities encompassed at different times Presbyterian missionary programs in Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran, as well as in Lebanon.

One of his old friends has said that if only one word could be used to describe the Rev. Weir, it would be "conciliator". Fluent in Arabic, his Middle East experience instilled in him a deep sympathy for the poor, the dispossessed, and the afflicted. He points out that his Shiite captors stem from the most deprived and neglected element in Lebanese society. As a result, he says, he prays for his captors, just as he prays they will release the remaining American hostages. He met four of those hostages during the last weeks of his captivity. They were the Rev. Lawrence Martin Jenco, a Catholic priest, and AUB Hospital Administrator David Jacobsen, both of whom have since been released, and Associated Press correspondent Terry Anderson and Thomas Sutherland, AUB Acting Dean of Agriculture.

In his first interview in Washington, just after his release, the Rev. Weir touched on his belief that a one-sided American policy in the Middle East that ignores the dispossessed Palestinians is a factor in the troubles now faced by Americans in that part of the world.

In private conversation, he makes this case eloquently. Reverend Weir is deeply committed to reconciliation among all groups in Lebanon. His passion is devoid of anger, however, against those at whose hands he suffered in the Middle East, and those in the US who may disagree with his assessments. This conciliatory outlook, his gentle personality, self-discipline, and obvious strength of character explain why he is not only the newly-elected Moderator of the Presbyterian Church, USA, but also a religious leader who has caught the imagination of all Americans who have seen or heard him.

The Rev. Weir and his wife, the former Carol Virginia Swain, now live in Berkeley, California. Two daughters and a son also live in California. Another daughter, Ann Louise Weir, died tragically in a bus-train accident in November, 1985, in Egypt.

Had he not been kidnapped, Benjamin Weir might still be living in Lebanon, a symbol for those who know him there of the relationship that once brought so much good to both Americans and Middle Easterners. Now, propelled by forces over which he had little control, the Rev. Weir leads one of America's greatest religious bodies. As he takes it down the path of international forgiveness and reconciliation, he may become a symbol of the qualities which once made Americans loved and respected the world over. More important, he may show us, by example, how we can be so again.

Andrew I. Killgore, former US Ambassador to Qatar, retired after 32 years in the Foreign Service. He is now a political and economic consultant in Washington, DC and the president of the American Educational Trust.