Promised Land or Land of Promise? • Part 2

Where are the Christians of the Holy Land?

by Mary Pneuman

On a flight home after a recent visit to the Holy Land, I listened as a fellow passenger enthusiastically described her pilgrimage. After hearing what she had seen, I asked if she had met some of the Christians who live there. “Christians?” she asked in disbelief, “No, we didn’t see any Christians… we saw the places you read about in the Bible.” Although she had visited Bethlehem, she had been on an Israeli tour of the Holy Land and was only vaguely aware of the Christian presence.

Today, most Christians think of the Holy Land as the strip of land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea that, in 1948, was divided by the United Nations into the State of Israel and the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza. Historically, the “Holy Land“ covered a much larger part of the modern Middle East and included regions now situated in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Egypt, all of them appearing in the Bible, only with different names and geographical boundaries.

Many Christians, Jews and Muslims of the Middle East share a common ethnic heritage and include the modern descendants of Christians, Jews and other earlier inhabitants of ancient Palestine, where, in a quest for control of fertile land and lucrative trade routes, successive invasions by Egyptians, Canaanites, Israelites, Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, and Ottoman Turks created a melting pot of many origins. Today, ongoing settlement of Jews from Europe, the old Soviet Union, and Ethiopia continues to create a very diverse ethnic mix.

More than 2,000 years after the birth of Jesus, current estimates place the number of Christians still living in the Middle East at about 14 million, some 10 million of these, Egyptian Coptic Christians. An estimated 170,000 Christians reside in Israel and the Palestinian territories. Episcopalians in the Diocese of Jerusalem, which includes Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria as well as Israel/Palestine, now number only about 6,000. Their numbers continue to dwindle, as is true for all other Christian denominations in Israel/Palestine (Greek, Armenian, Syrian, and Ethiopian Orthodox, Latin and Greek Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran, and other Protestant denominations). Today, Christians make up less than 2% of the population, thought to be nearly 20% in 1948, when fifty to sixty thousand became refugees.

Palestinian Christians in the Holy Land have deep roots. They have lived in historic Palestine since the time of Jesus and consider it a sacred place. Many resident Christians, when asked when they converted to Christianity, will say, “My ancestors have been here since the Pentecost—they never left.” Susan Barhoum, wife and daughter of Episcopal priests, has records of her own Christian family dating back to the 4^th century. (Susan, along with her mother and daughter, visited St. Thomas in 2012.)

Do terms such as “Israeli,” “Jewish,” “Christian,” “Arab,” and “Palestinian” refer to ethnicity, culture, religion, nationality, or geopolitics? Can a Palestinian or an Arab be an Israeli? Can someone who is Jewish be Palestinian? Can Christians be both Palestinian and Israeli? Terms are often commingled and confused.

Normally, “Jewish” refers to adherents of Judaism or someone born of a Jewish mother, but recently the term is taking on the mantle of race. “Israel” is the name of an ancient people, a community of faith, and a modern nation. “Palestine” refers to the West Bank and Gaza.

“Israeli” refers to citizens living in Israel, along with all Jewish settlers living in the Palestinian West Bank. About 20% of Israeli citizens are resident Christian or Muslim Palestinians, but Christian and Muslim Palestinians living in the West Bank or Gaza are not Israeli citizens.  “Palestinian” means anyone who is not Jewish and has come to refer to all non-Jewish residents of both Israel and Palestine.

“Arab” refers to people whose ancestors hailed from the Arabian Peninsula. Now, because of their common Arabic culture and language, all Palestinians are described on their identity cards as Arab. Not all Palestinians trace their ethnic ancestry to Arab lands, and there are Arab Jews who descend from Arab countries such as Iraq or Yemen.

In the Diocese of Jerusalem, an Episcopalian citizen of Israel would be described as an Arab Palestinian Christian Israeli, while an Episcopalian living in the West Bank or Gaza would be called an Arab Christian Palestinian.

In Part 3, learn more about the lives and ministries of Palestinian Episcopalians.