Decline of the Christian Presence in the Holy Land

International Review of Mission, 2000

At the close of the second millennium since the birth of our Lord, much attention around the world is focussed on the Middle East, and particularly on the historic land of Jesus Christ's life and resurrection, the land of Palestine and Israel. Pilgrims have for centuries come to the so-called "Holy Land" to visit the places where the events of the scriptures took place. The biblical lands are indeed special. They offer the Christian visitor a spiritual journey endowed with many meanings and a sense of immediate connectivity with our faith history. It is to this context that so many have come and this that so many have sought.

Dialog-a Journal of Theology, 2002

For many people the names "Arab Christians" and "Palestinian Christians" seem to be oxymoronic. Christianity was, however, born in the Middle East, in a little town called Bethlehem. This article explores the ways in which Palestinian Christians, a minority group in both Palestine and Israel, relate to both Jews and Muslims in Palestine and Israel. Though there is no covert persecution of Palestinian Christians, they face the same trials as other Arabs and Muslims in Palestine, due to the current policies and actions of the Israeli government and to the current "war on terrorism." In fact, Christians in Palestine become easy targets for both those enraged by and supportive of the US declaration of war. At the same time, they offer the world an example of healthy Christian-Muslim relations. Perhaps too, Palestinian Christians can be the bridge between the Jewish and Muslim communities in the Holy Land.

The Catholic Historical Review, 2006

The paper intends to explore some insufficiently studied but increasingly important patterns of the interaction between traditional Palestinian Christian identities and new local religious and religio-poltical developments, ranging from the impact of Russian Christian immigration in Israel to recently ideologized sacral heritage policies and politics and archaeological and pseudo-archaeological ventures in the Holy Land. While mostly under the radar of current scholarly and theological exploration, these interactions betray some novel types of religious dynamics on both elite and popular levels which deserve closer attention. The fluctuating and sometimes unpredictable outcomes of these processes have a direct impact on Palestinian Christian educational concepts and practices and new initiatives in this sphere such as those introduced through Russian ecclesiastical channels. These processes also affect a variety of Palestinian Christian attitudes (general, idiosyncratic and reformist-leaning) to ancient and medieval Christian heritage and continuities in the Holy Land against the background of latest shifts on the religious arena in Israel, Palestine and the Middle East.

Christianity in the Middle East , 2021

The aim of the CME report is to present and address the main features related to Christians living in the Middle East in regard to religious plularism and peaceful coexistence. The region of focus includes Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Palestine, Iran, Iraq and Turkey. Moreover, emphasis is attributed to the relationship between the state and its institutions with the Christian communities, as well as in pinpoiting the factors and effects related to the Christian exodus from the Middle East. The documentation of the report reflects the research openly available on the CME website and serves as a database for the living conditions of the Christians in the Middle East. The CME reports are an ongoing endeavour, aiming at providing continuous updates on the state of religious pluralism for the Christians of the Middle East. The findings presented, therefore, are not exhaustive, but highlight main trends and continuities.

Religions 2022, 13(12), 1199, 2022

The Levant has diachronically been a highly contested region in terms of rights and entitlement, and, ultimately, in terms of sovereignty over territory. This is not a new phenomenon, particularly in a region that is laden with history. Religion has been, and still is, central in the demarcation and distinction of territorial custodianship, administration, and ownership, as it codetermines the terms and limits of boundaries by way of materiality in the public sphere. Antitheses and frictions are frequent over disputed territories and spatialities, where religioscapes overlap or intersect in a non-harmonious fashion. Especially at times of political unrest, religion, as a value system, as cultural heritage and as a collective identifier of self-perception, has a central role in the signification of (pre)dominance over territory. This holds true particularly for the Christian minorities in the Levant, with immediate consequences on their religious sites and their overall religiocultural heritage. In this light, I argue that this issue deserves extensive further study, to better understand and explain the complex georeligious landscape in the region, and specifically the place of Christianity therein by way of its materiality, given that the latter is mutatis mutandis under threat.

PhD Thesis, the University of Edinburgh, 2022

This thesis offers an ethnography of local Christianity and its relation to the changing social, cultural, and political context of contemporary West Bank Palestine. This study argues that the changes over the course of recent history in the Middle East brought about a renewal of ancient Palestinian Christian religious expressions through which the community reinvented itself and adapted its theologies and practices to the changing socio-political circumstances. In order to build up this argument, this thesis draws on a theoretically innovative framework, developed in conversation with recent scholarship across several disciplines, and ethnographically embeds this question in the mixed Orthodox and Catholic Christian village of Taybeh. The thesis builds on existing research relating to theology and contextualisation, but explores these dynamics differently by combining the three dynamically growing research fields of World Christianity, Middle Eastern Christianity studies and the research that has grown out of the rapprochement between theology and anthropology. Working at the intersection of these three fields, this thesis produces a theologically-informed ethnography of Palestinian Christianity. What is particularly innovative about this approach is that the thesis does not only examine theologies as produced by Palestinian theologians and church leaders, but explores theological reflection and engagement among the laity as mediated through societal involvement, biblical associations, and ritual behaviour. The ethnography is based on a total of 16 months of fieldwork that has been conducted during multiple visits in the period between 2016 and 2019, particularly in Taybeh, as well as in the greater Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Ramallah regions. With its emphasis on the village of Taybeh, this thesis is also the first in-depth study on a Christian community in contemporary rural Palestine. Accordingly, chapter 1 provides an extensive introduction to the social, cultural, political, and religious dynamics in Taybeh, with special emphasis on the missionary interventions in its history. On the basis of this portrait it is argued that Palestinian Christian identity should be understood in an organic way in which religious and national identities are intertwined. Chapter 2 deals with the implication of this identity and explores how Palestinian Christians relate to the broader society. The chapter shows that Palestinian Christians have emerged as a socially and politically engaged community, thereby re-integrating the study of Palestinian Christianity with the wider context of the Middle East. Chapter 3 provides a grassroots theology that forms the basis of everyday religious practices that relate to theologies of the land and, ultimately, to a deep sense of belonging. The chapter particularly focuses on how Palestinian Christians have constructed and reimagined their identity as essentially biblical. Chapter 4 shifts the attention to the Palestinian veneration of Saint George and the Virgin Mary and argues that these ancient practices focused on human flourishing have transformed into another platform for grassroots theological ideas. In this last chapter it is argued that theologies of martyrdom, liberation, and belonging are rooted in the Arabic notions of baraka (‘blessing’) and ṣumūd (‘steadfastness’). Ultimately, the study finds Palestinian Christian vitality in common faith and everyday religious identity, thereby counteracting popular rhetoric of extinction and persecution.

a Historian about the Palestinian Christians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem after 1948

Contesting the sacred: the anthropology of …, 1991