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At the height of the conflict with Iraq this spring, Riah Abu Al-Assal, an Anglican bishop in Jerusalem spoke ominously about the future of Christians in the Holy Land. "Speaking of Islam and Muslims as a bunch of terrorists," he said, "will cause the greatest harm to the Christian presence in the birthplace of our faith. I fear for what remains in this land of the Holy One."

The bishop spoke for many Arab Christians dreading Muslims might interpret the Anglo-American invasion as one more Christian attack on the Islamic world. Statistics in Israel/Palestine seem to bear out the bishop's fears—according to Betty Jane & J. Martin Bailey's Who Are the Christians in the Middle East?, Palestinian Christians are leaving their homeland in droves. At least 250,000 now live outside the country, more than 60 percent of all Palestinian Christians worldwide.

Many western Christians still aren't aware of the Christian presence in Israel/Palestine. I wasn't until my freshman year at Wheaton College, when I asked for a missionary kid as a roommate and the college matched me up with a Palestinian Christian. My new friend soon informed me that Palestinian Christians had lived in the Holy Land since the time of Jesus, and that Christians in the West needed to know that Israel was discriminating against fellow believers, depriving them of their land and opportunity. Years later, I traveled to Ramallah in the West Bank to visit the Christian orphanage his father ran. My former roommate's descriptions matched the mood I felt there—hopelessness over a dwindling Christian population and deteriorating economic conditions.

I left Ramallah with many questions. How did the Palestinian Christians come to such straits? Why is Israel oppressing them? Who exactly are the Palestinian Christians, and where did they come from?

The Early Years
The Acts of the Apostles states that the first Christians in Jerusalem were Jews, and historians believe that even after the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, Christianity in the Holy Land kept its Jewish flavor. But the Jewish revolt of Bar-Kokhba in 135 changed all this; Rome showed no mercy to the Jews and obliterated Jerusalem, renaming the city "Aelia Capitolina" and the country of Israel "Palestine." With this blow, the Christian Jewish community effectively disappeared.

The conversion of Constantine in 313 gave rise to a new Christian presence in the Holy Land. Constantine's mother, Helena, helped populate the land with churches and monasteries, and over the next three centuries, the Holy Land witnessed an influx of Christians from various parts of the Roman empire, including Greeks, Armenians, Georgians, Egyptians, and Syrians. The Byzantine emperor, meanwhile, governed the land.

This period of Byzantine rule entrenched Christianity in the Holy Land, and Christians became the majority. Famous theologians made the Holy Land their home, including St. Jerome, who translated the Bible into Latin. But the heresy wars of the fourth and fifth centuries took their toll, as Christians from the Eastern churches increasingly resented Byzantine intervention in their affairs. When Muslim Arabs invaded the Holy Land and took Jerusalem in 640, these Christians viewed the newcomers as "liberators," joined their cause, and helped them expel the Byzantine armies.

Demoted to Dhimmis
It was a tragic miscalculation. What followed was the gradual decline of the church in the Holy Land, as Muslim overlords reduced Christians to servitude (dhimmis) and prohibited Christians from proselytizing Muslims. Still, the various Christian sects survived (Greek Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox, Nestorians, Syrian Orthodox, Armenians, Copts), and many of their people adopted Arabic as their primary language—with the exception of the Syrians who kept their liturgical language.

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August (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47