Christianity in Peril in Middle East

The worlds’ oldest community of Christians is quickly dying off in the Middle East, and that is making it harder to build a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

This is one of the observations contained in the just-released report of a study team that visited the region last summer.

The 16-member team, which consisted of members of the Christian Reformed Church as well as some agency and ministry staff, recently presented its report to the CRC’s Board of Trustees.

The board referred the report to staff, expressing support for appropriate actions that build relationships and understanding between the CRC and churches and Christians in the Middle East, with the goal of contributing to peace, justice and reconciliation.

The report comes out of the team’s experience and reflections during a visit to Israel and the West Bank. Portions of the report, including stories of people that the team met, are available on-line at http://www.crcna.org/pages/middleeast.cfm

“We were very disturbed by some of the things we found,” says Peter Vander Meulen, director of the CRC’s Office of Justice. “… Millions of Christians in the last few decades have fled the Middle East to escape the continual conflict and violence.”

Sixty years ago when Britain gave up control of the area, it is estimated that as much as 15 percent of the population of Palestine was Christian, mainly members of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Today, less than two percent of the people are Christians.

“We are quickly losing the Christian narrative in that part of the world,” says Vander Meulen.

In 2006, the CRC synod instructed denominational staff and agencies “to develop more resources and act to raise CRC awareness of our peace-building calling.” The formation of the CRC Middle East study team came from that recommendation.

The study team sought to assess the health of the Christian community in Palestine, as well as to understand the problems facing it. In addition, it tried to determine if there are Christian groups in that area with whom the CRC might work in partnership.

On their trip, several team members stayed in the homes of Palestinian Christians. They also spoke to Christians at a Bible school and in local churches.  They toured the city, went through checkpoints, and saw the wall that Israel has built to restrict movement of Palestinians in the West Bank.

“We had a chance to walk in their shoes, to get a sense of what it really means to be living in an ‘occupied territory,’” says Vander Meulen.

Team members said they were surprised by the kinship they felt with Palestinian Christians.

“Many of us had no any idea that Christianity in Palestine was as rich and deep and resonant with our own Christian traditions as it is,” says Vander Meulen, who helped to lead the trip. “We met Christians who can trace their roots back to Bethlehem.”

He says they also learned about the effects of end-of-the-world-focused, dispensationalist theology that certain largely right-wing Christian groups have applied to that area. These groups teach that the end of the world will come to that part of the world and that it is the job of Christians to help bring about the end-times.

“This teaching has caused many Palestinian Christians to think that the bulk of evangelical Christians in North America and elsewhere believe that,” says Vander Meulen.

He says the study group concluded that a Reformed theological perspective is needed in that part of the world to counter the claims of dispensationalists.

Vander Meulen notes that a Reformed Church in America worker whom they met on their journey said an end-time theology can get in the way of the core message of the gospel, and that Reformed Christians need to pay more attention to their brothers and sisters in Palestine.

“We agree with RCA missionary Marlin Vis that the integrity of the Gospel, the core message of love and grace, needs urgently to be reclaimed – and to be reclaimed publically in words and deeds, by us, in the Holy Lands,” the report says.