Mandaeans find safety but fear losing faith

“Now I can breathe,’’ says Abdula, 36. “It’s so peaceful.’’

Yet in her freedom comes a newfound fear: If no cares we’re here, who will care if we disappear?

That is the struggle across the globe for Mandaeans, whose ranks are fading quickly. Away from the land they had called home for more than two millennia, and without a permanent priest or proper place of worship for the next generation, the refugees worry their tiny, ancient religion is facing extinction.

“We’re saving the people but killing the faith,’’ said Wisam Breegi, a Mandaean doctor and US citizen who has helped bring dozens of Mandaean refugees to Massachusetts. “But right now we’re in survival mode.’’

Since 2007, about 1,200 Iraqi Mandaean refugees have been resettled in the United States, according to the US State Department.

The groups are scattered - mostly in Massachusetts, Michigan, Texas, Colorado, and California - and that is a problem when it comes to sustaining the faith, said Suhaib Nashi, president of the Mandaean Associations Union based in Morristown, N.J.

Mandaeanism does not allow conversion and some believe intermarriage means expulsion from the faith. Mandaeans also need a body of running water for their ritual baptisms and guidance from one of the world’s two dozen remaining Mandaean priests.

“We are in a dilemma and need to come together,’’ Nashi said. “If not, we will fade away.’’

Traced to the period of the Roman Empire, specialists say Mandaeanism is a branch of the Gnostic movement that doesn’t view Jesus as a Messiah, but contains Judeo-Christian elements. For years, the Tigris River was the setting of the religion’s all-important regular baptisms.

In the 1990s about 70,000 Mandaeans lived in Iraq. Today, only around 3,000 or so remain.

Nathaniel Deutsch, codirector of the Center for Jewish Studies at University of California Santa Cruz, said the mass Mandaean exodus was an unintended consequence of the Iraq war.