Radical Christianity in Palestine and Israel

Liberation and Theology in the Middle East

Samuel J. Kuruvilla

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780857736673
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Christianity arose from the lands of biblical Palestine and, regardless of its twentieth century associations with the Arab-Israeli conflict, to Christians around the world it remains first and foremost the birthplace of Christianity. Nevertheless the size of the Christian population among Palestinians today living in Israel and the Palestinian territories is now relatively insignificant. In Radical Christianity in the Middle East, Samuel J. Kuruvilla argues that Christian Palestinians often emply politically astute as well as theologically radical means in their efforts to prove relevant as a minority community within Israeli and Palestinian societies. Examining the political background of the gradual collapse of secular Arab Nationalism, to be replaced by Islamic liberation movements, he reveals a trend within the Christian Palestinian Church which saw increasing politicisation in the 1980s and 1990s. In the face of often-restrictive Israeli policies, such as land confiscation, along with the First Intifada, there was a drive towards setting up inter-Church and faith activism with the goal of Palestinian liberation.
Kuruvilla charts the development of a theology of Christian liberation, in particular through the work of Palestinian Anglican cleric Naim Stifan Ateek and Palestinian Lutheran Pastor Mitri Raheb. From its roots in 1960s Latin America, liberation theology has been adapted and contextualised within the specific situation within Israel and Palestine to produce a framework that emphasises peace and reconciliation, while recognising the importance of resistance and national unity. Theology has impacted Christian perceptions of Palestinians' struggle with Israel; the idea of a land promised to the sons of Abraham and the moral responsibilities that come with this are pitted against Israeli oppression of both Christian and Muslim inhabitants of the Holy Land and their desire for independence and justice. Through this comprehensive study of the, often overlooked, theological, political and practical position of Christians in Palestine, Kuruvilla provides a new and insightful perspective on one of the most written-about conflicts.

CHAPTER 1

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

This book has been a study of liberation and contextual theology in Israel-Palestine, seeking to understand this phenomenon in its historical, political, theological, ideological and internationalist context. The two main organizations concerned within this study are the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Centre in Jerusalem, headed by the Palestinian Anglican Naim Stifan Ateek, and the ICB (Dar Annadwa Addawliyya), led by the Palestinian Lutheran Mitri Raheb.¹ Sabeel had sought to develop a critical Christian response to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict using liberation theology, albeit with a strong Western ecumenical focus. The ICB had an ecumenical Lutheran perspective, with a strong tendency towards politico-cultural and theological contextualization. Raheb had tried to develop a contextual theology that sought to root the political and cultural development of the Palestinian people within their own Eastern Christian context and in light of the effects of the Israeli occupation.

Sabeel and the ICB had sought to transplant politico-theological doctrines developed in other nations of the ‘South’ to the conflict in Israel-Palestine. The phenomenon of Christian Zionism had contributed to the development of ‘liberation theological’ approaches in Israel-Palestine. Christian Zionists refused to acknowledge or deal with Christian Arabs and offered outright support to the Israelis. This had generated a reaction both within Palestine and in the West.

The first chapter deals with the historical background of the Palestinian people, which was considered essential to understand the present. The second chapter seeks to trace the ideological framework adopted by the two main subjects of this study, namely liberation theology as well as to a certain extent, contextual theology. Chapters three and four examine Sabeel in detail looking at theology and praxis (chapter three) and the role of Sabeel as a political and advocacy organization for Palestinian rights (chapter four). The next chapter examines the work of Mitri Raheb looking at his theology and his praxis (chapter five). The concluding chapter attempts evaluation in the light of all that has been discussed so far on Palestinian liberation/contextual theology. In the best of interest, this has been the first attempt by a researcher, to critically analyse the work of these two Palestinian theologians in comparison with each other and others, and in the light of the individual and respective theological, political and socio-economic approaches that both of them rely on.

The Religious Importance of Jerusalem

Jerusalem (al-Quds), ‘the City of God,’ as it was known in the terminology of the religious, was an important centre since David’s capture of it from the Jebusites in approximately 1000 BCE.² It was the symbol of Jewish hopes for a homeland since the dispersion and a great pilgrimage centre for both Christians and Muslims. Since the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians in 587 BCE, the city was ruled by countless non-Jewish regimes right up to 1948. Its importance as a Christian pilgrimage centre began with the almost mythical journey of the mother of Emperor Constantine, Queen Helena, from the imperial capital of Byzantium towards Jerusalem to identify the important sites of the crucifixion and resurrection.

It was as a result of this journey that Constantine authorised the building of the most famous Church in Jerusalem, namely the Anastasis (also known as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to Westerners or the Church of the Resurrection to local Arabs) in 335 CE.³ Christian shrines and institutions multiplied during the roughly three hundred years of Byzantine Christian rule in the Holy City, so that by the time of the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem, the city had been transformed into a Christian city with representation from almost all parts of the Romano-Christian world. Palestinian Aramaic and Byzantine Greek were the predominant languages in use in the Holy Land during the early Byzantine era. It was interesting to note, in this context, that for the present-day ‘Greek’ Orthodox clerical hierarchy of the Holy Land, the local ‘Arab’ Orthodox laity were often referred to and considered as Arabic-speaking Greeks. The implication was therefore that the local population of Palestinian Christians were Greek in origin and could legitimately be ruled over by an ecclesiastical hierarchy, comprised almost exclusively of Greek priests, monks and bishops from Cyprus, Greece and the Aegean islands.⁴

Islamic Jerusalem or al-Quds derived its legitimacy from its identification with al-Masjid al-Aqsa (The Further Mosque), considered to be the place where the Prophet Mohammed was carried on his night journey from Mecca.⁵ Muslim conceptions about the holiness of Jerusalem resulted in the building of impressive Mosques and the endowments of Waqfs (Muslim religious trusts) all over the city, and particularly on the elevated platform that had once held the Jewish Temples. This building project would prove fatal for the later peace of the Holy City as an area that had been historically avoided by Christians as undeserving of any sanctity was henceforth pushed into the focal point of conflict among all the three main Abrahamic faiths. Many of the greatest works of Islamic architecture surviving from the early Islamic Umayyad period, such as the Dome of the Rock (al-Haram al-Sharif) on the Temple Mount could not had been built without the expertise and help of Byzantine-Christian craftsmen, some possibly attracted to come from the Byzantine capital Constantinople (present day Istanbul) itself.⁶

The arrival of Islam in the Levant resulted in a radical change for the Christian communities of Palestine as they lost legal ownership over all the religious buildings and institutions that they had accumulated during the previous three centuries. Islam, as the second ‘hegemonic’ monotheistic faith to emerge in the Middle East after Byzantine-Roman oriented Christianity, held that legal and jurisdictionary ownership over all religious buildings and institutions – Waqf of all faiths within the territories under the banner of the crescent belonged to the state.

As a result, the Islamic state possessed the ‘sovereign’ and indisputable right to close, allocate or confiscate religious buildings within their own dominions at will. Obviously such buildings could not be repaired and rebuilt without prior permission. The building of entirely new Churches within the province of Islam was very difficult to achieve indeed. It was in pursuit of this policy that Saladin closed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (Church of the Resurrection) in 1187 till he could decide to which Christian faction he could present the keys of the Church to. Much of the struggles between the various Christian factions over status, position and ownership in the Holy Places can be traced, not only as a result of the basic rivalry between the different Christian groupings, but also to the apprehensions about the legal status of their positions and properties under Islam.⁷

The Crusader rule of Jerusalem saw the widespread rebuilding and beautification of the city of Jerusalem, with a great increase in properties owned by the Latin (Roman) Catholic Church.⁸ The Crusader era also saw the displacement of the Byzantine Greek Patriarch in favour of the Rome supported Latin Patriarch in 1099.⁹ The former returned with the re-conquest of Saladin. Saladin (Salah-al-Din), the great Kurdish-Egyptian warrior was the nemesis of the Western Crusaders for many years and the person who ultimately and decisively defeated the Frankish armies of the Crusaders at the Horns of Hattin in 1187 CE. This was also the year when Saladin captured Jerusalem from the Crusaders. History records that Saladin did not repeat the mistake of the Crusaders in committing mass slaughter in the city of Jerusalem. He instead provided the option for the defeated Crusader knights and their followers as well as the clerical, monastical and lay representatives of the Roman church to leave the city in peace, after paying the necessary tribute and ransoms.

Saladin’s rule was again beneficial to the Eastern Christian communities who were able to reinstate their privileges lost during the years of Western Crusader rule. The departure of the Latins was followed by the arrival of the Byzantine-sponsored Greek Patriarch to take up his old forfeited seat in Jerusalem. Saladin was particularly generous to the Eastern Christian representatives, having long noted the emerging and deep schism between Eastern and Western Christians in the Mediterranean region.

Eastern Christians had served on both sides of the Saracen-Crusader divide, and they had fared little better, if not worse under the Western Crusaders than under the Islamic regime preceding them. The Crusaders had, after all, utterly refused to distinguish between Jew, Eastern Christian and Muslim in their initial conquest of the city of Jerusalem, massacring all indiscriminately in a bloodbath so epochal that it was still remembered with popular revulsion in the Arab Levantine consciousness and enshrined in their folklore. Eastern Christians, whether Byzantine Greeks and Arabs, Syrians, Armenians, Copts or Ethiopians found themselves sidelined under the Crusader regime. This Crusader policy was fraught from the very start as local Christians had formed a majority of the native population in Palestine as well as in neighbouring Syria, before and after their invasion of the area.

Among the Eastern Christians, the Maronites alone succeeded in establishing a lasting relationship with the Crusaders, that culminated in being formally accepted into communion with the Latin Church just before the fall of the last Crusader ‘kingdom’ of Acre, on the coast of Palestine, in 1291. While some Christians (Syrian Maronites and Armenians), particularly those situated along the mountain and coastal route which, the Crusaders had to take to reach Jerusalem from northern Syria (Antioch and Tripoli) aided the Latins in their journey to the ‘holy city,’ many became quickly disillusioned with their refusal to reinstall the traditional Byzantine clergy in the territories conquered by them from the Muslim rulers.

It was the Crusader interlude that sounded the death knell of the ‘majority’ Christian populations of the Syrian Levant and of Palestine. Native Syrian Christians never recovered their ‘loyalty’ in the eyes of their fellow Muslim brethren and rulers, thereby exposing them to intense pressure to convert to Islam, after the final departure of the Latin Crusaders from Palestinian and Syrian soil. The Christian proportion of the population of these regions started to fall drastically after the Crusader era.¹⁰ The loss of Jerusalem by the Crusaders in 1187 resulted in the gradual restriction of European Christian possessions in Palestine to the coastal strip, ultimately culminating in the successful Arab and Muslim siege of the last Crusader stronghold of Acre in 1270.¹¹

The Third Crusade failed to recover Jerusalem and Pope Innocent III authorised the Fourth Crusade that instead of attacking Palestine and Jerusalem, besieged and occupied Constantinople, thereby inaugurating Latin rule there from 1204 to 1261. No other Crusade succeeded in capturing or retaining Jerusalem for the Western Latins, thereby leaving it to St. Francis of Assisi to cement a bond of trust with Saladin’s successors (such as his nephew, al-Malik al-Kamil in July 1219), that would ensure the insertion of his Franciscan friars into the pilgrim towns of Palestine to safeguard Western Latin interests.¹²

From 1250 till about 1675, the Orthodox Patriarch was back in Jerusalem before departing again for Istanbul until the middle of the nineteenth century.¹³ In contrast, the so-called Latin Patriarchate was based in Rome from the fall of the Crusader kingdoms till about 1847 when it was re-established in Jerusalem.¹⁴ This period also coincided with the start of the Protestant mission to the Holy Land and the inauguration of the short-lived Anglo-Prussian Bishopric as a result of the early pioneering work of the joint Church Missionary Society (CMS) and Lutheran mission in Palestine. It was the Anglicans who showed the first expression of interest in establishing a Protestant mission in Palestine. The CMS had plans to establish a permanent mission post in the city of Jerusalem as early as 1821.

The London Jewish Society (LJS), the fore-runner of the later CMJ-Church Mission to the Jews, also had an early interest in the Holy Land from the point of view of converting Palestinian Jewry to Protestant Christianity. The Western Protestant organizations had to wait till the capture of Jerusalem by Mohammad Ali of Egypt in 1831 before they were allowed to enter and establish a permanent mission in 1833. The first British Consul took residence in Jerusalem in 1838 and the first Protestant bishopric was established in Jerusalem under joint British and Prussian supervision in 1841.

Given the fact that the Church of England was Episcopal and the established Lutheran Church in Prussia was not, it was mutually agreed between these Churches that the bishop in Jerusalem would be an Anglican chosen by rotation from the Anglican and Prussian side. It was not until 1845 that the first Anglican Church in the city, Christ Church on Jaffa Road was dedicated.¹⁵ These two nationally supported mission organizations later agreed to mutually split their work in the Holy Land, thereby giving rise to the two separate Anglican and Lutheran dioceses currently present in Israel-Palestine.

The CMS and the Berlin Missionary Association were supported by Great Britain and Prussia (later the Bismarck-unified Germany) respectively as the respective national and established Church missionary organizations of each major European state. The so-called dual bishopric split in 1881. It was estimated that by the 1880s, there were over a hundred schools and educational institutions belonging to various mission organizations in the Holy Land. These schools were attended by pupils belonging to all the communities in Palestine.

As it was often a part of the role of teachers in these mission schools which were run by the missionaries themselves, to engage in proselytisation, the school and orphanage movement directly resulted in the growth of various Protestant congregations in the Holy Land. This ensured that the mission organizations and by implication, schools and charitable institutions would run foul of the predominant GOC in Palestine and the Levant.¹⁶ Again, so as not to run foul of the feelings of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch and Bishops resident in the Holy Land, it had been earlier decided that the Anglican bishop in Jerusalem would be known under the title of the ‘Bishop in Jerusalem,’ instead of the usual ‘Bishop of Jerusalem,’ so as not to clash with the recognized Ottoman-era supreme bishopric of the GOC in Jerusalem.¹⁷

In spite of centuries of Islamic rule, Jerusalem, unlike contemporary early Christian cities like Antioch (in today’s Turkey, Antakya) and Constantinople ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• About the author
• Title Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Glossary and List of Abbreviations
• 1 The Historical Background
• 2 Political and Liberation Theologies: Implications for Israel-Palestine (The Theo-Political Context of Ateek and Raheb’s work)
• 3 The ‘Sabeel’ Ecumenical Liberation Theology Centre in Jerusalem: A Study of the Theology and Praxis of Naim Ateek
• 4 The Politics and Praxis of Naim Ateek and Sabeel
• 5 Contextual Theology in Palestine: The Theological and Political-Cultural Practise of Mitri Raheb
• 6 Palestinian Theological Praxis in Context: An Analysis of the Approaches of Ateek and Raheb from a Comparative Perspective
• Appendix A: Palestinian Loss of Land 1946–2000
• Appendix B: The Old City of Jerusalem
• Appendix C: Palestine Under the British Mandate, 1923–1948
• Appendix D: Palestinian Villages Depopulated in 1948 and Razed by Israel
• Appendix E: Population Movements 1948–51
• Appendix F: Palestinian Refugees, 2001
• Appendix G: The Near East After the 1967 June War
• Appendix H: The Allon Plan, July 1967
• Appendix I: Israeli and Palestinian Security-Controlled Areas
• Appendix J: Projection of the West Bank Final Status Map Presented by Israel, Camp David, July 2000
• Appendix K: Final Status Map Presented by Israel–Taba, January 2001
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• eCopyright