05/11/1999
Official Release - St. John's Assyrian Presbyterian Church


Mr. John F. Long
Chief, Population Division, Bureau of Census
United States Department of Commerce

May 11, 1999

We, the Assyrian subjects of St. John Assyrian Presbyterian Church residing in the cities of Turlock, Ceres and Modesto in California, have been cautiously following up on the very disturbing news regarding the attempts being pursued to change our ethnic name, Assyrian, in the year 2000 census to a composite of national, religious and at other times linguistic name.

It is a very well proven historic fact that the Chaldean name is a religious denomination of the Assyrian Church, and that Syrians was the Greek word for identifying all the Christians living in the regions of the Near East and Asia Minor and that the word Syriac is the language of this nation, mixing all these terminology's in order to identify the Assyrian nation by is of great grievance and unforgiving distortion to our identity.

We are proud Assyrians of the Presbyterian rite of the Assyrian Church and we refuse to be categorized under any other ethnic group except Assyrian, our rightful ethnic name.

We feel too that any attempt for such an important change need to be approved by the majority of the Assyrians through their respective organizations.

Dr. Rev. George Shahbaz, Pastor
St. John's Assyrian Presbyterian Church
450 S. Palm St. Turlock, California U.S.A. 95380

Cc:  Mr. Manoel de la Puente