PASTOR JULE'S CHURCH is new and not easy to find. For more than a decade after selling his business, he devoted his life to preaching about Jesus Christ, but not in public in overwhelmingly Islamic Iraq. In 1999, he started an underground Pentecostal Christian church in his home. And when Saddam Hussein was toppled a year ago, he opened an above-ground church in Karrada, a residential and retail district across the Tigris River from the heavily guarded 'green zone' of the Coalition Provisional Authority.

The surfacing of his church may not seem like much of a breakthrough. Iraq is 3 percent Christian at most, and Saddam used to brag about his tolerance of Christian churches. But they were mostly churches where tributes to Saddam crept into sermons; they were no threat to his regime. Pastor Jule's church is different. It elevates faith in Christ as one's personal savior over any worldly obligations to the state. The church has ties to the Assemblies of God in America.