Book excerpt: This book presents the various Churches and ecclesial communities in the Middle East, focusing on the Assyrian Church of the East, the Oriental Orthodox and the Oriental Catholic Churches, the spiritual heritage of the Coptic, Syriac and Armenian traditions. The Christians in the Middle East can be called a Church of martyrs. Listening to witnesses of faith in the first centuries, as well as to the martyrs of our time, this book reveals the cruel reality of the ‘forgotten genocides’ at the beginning of the twentieth century. The author discusses the role of Christians in the Middle East as bridge builders, and emphasizes the importance of a historical perspective in order to understand better the crisis in the Middle East, the search for the underlying cause of terrorist attacks, a plea for a spirituality of encounter: a growth in openness and a deepening of Christian identity. Finally, he reflects on the responsibility of the West and expresses the firm hope and expectation that there is still a future for the Christians in the Middle East, a new dawn.