To walk Jerusalem’s Old City with Albert Aghazarian, a Jerusalemite and Armenian Orthodox Christian, is to come face to face with 3,000 years of human history and conflict. On a brisk Monday morning, Aghazarian, a history lecturer at Birzeit University on the West Bank, takes a group of visitors away from the tourist-congested holy places to a rooftop near Jaffa Gate.
“In the one-square kilometer of the Old City, there are 400 holy sites,” he says. From the rooftop’s height, the Old City and the surrounding hillsides seem at peace. Aghazarian, however, is not about to permit the city’s sunny beauty to lull anyone into thinking that modern-day Jerusalem is, in the words of Psalm 122, “at unity with itself.” The Old City should not be seen as neatly compartmentalized into its Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and Armenian quarters, he says. There is a climate of hostility and suspicion. Each quarter has subsections. And there are many disputes among residents over who has the legal right to live in certain buildings or areas. He concludes, “The city is more divided than ever. The target should be to unify the city.”
A few blocks away, Ibrahim Bader, a schoolteacher and jeweler, is at work in his 87-year-old grandfather’s shop in the Christian Quarter. Bader, whose mother is Christian and father Muslim, says, “Everyone is fighting for Jerusalem because Jerusalem is a pearl.” Bader has made personal peace with his family by observing the holy days of both Islam and Christianity, yet he recognizes the need for Israelis and Palestinians to continue in the peace process. “We are tired of war, killing, and problems. We want to live like [other] nations.”
In the bloody and chaotic politics of the Middle East, the region’s divisions are often seen through a governmental and societal lens, leading to political solutions such as the Oslo peace accords between the Israeli government and the Palestine Liberation Organization. However, religion scholars, ministry leaders, and clergy view the Middle East through a theological lens as well, permitting a sharper and clearer focus on both the core problems and the potential for lasting peace.
For evangelical Christians, a theological perspective of Jerusalem has been complicated by four factors, according to Gary Burge, author of Who Are God’s People in the Middle East? These factors are the collective feelings of guilt from the Holocaust and anti-Semitism, the Christian sense of “shared spiritual destiny” with Judaism, the conclusion that the modern State of Israel is “God’s doing,” and interpretations of end-times biblical prophecy that “demand…a firm commitment to Israel.”
These elements present Christians with a dilemma: How can biblical prophecy be fulfilled through many acts of grave injustice against the Palestinian people, including Palestinian Christians? Burge concludes, “If Israel makes a biblical claim to the land, then Israel must adhere to biblical standards of righteousness.”
DWINDLING IMPACT: But can Christians like Aghazarian make their plea for justice heard? Because Christians make up only about 2.3 percent of the 5.6 million people in Israel and the 2.4 million in the West Bank and Gaza, the Christian voice has limited influence. Indeed, writes Patrick Johnstone, author of the global missions guide Operation World: “The home of the early church is now the most needy mission field in the world.”
Here are some of the obstacles both to ministry and nurture the Christian minority faces:
- Separatism: Since the terrorist bombings, which took some 58 lives earlier this year, Israeli government policy has delayed the “land for peace” process and moved toward an apartheidlike separation of Jews and Arabs, including the possible construction of a security fence. (See “Security Versus Equality,” this page.) Such a separation would pose grave obstacles for local Christians who already face many difficulties in operating ministries of outreach, education, and care for the poor. Whether the Jerusalem church can survive and thrive in this new move toward separatism remains an intense concern for Christian leaders. With tighter control over access to occupied West Bank towns and Jerusalem, Christian pastors have been unable to attend clergy meetings, and schools have been closed and medical care curtailed. Last month, on Easter Sunday, many Christians were unable to clear Israeli security checkpoints from their villages outside Jerusalem to worship in the Old City. Michel Sabbah, Jerusalem’s Latin patriarch, preaching in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, said, “We say to [Israeli security] today what Moses said to the Pharaoh on Passover day, ‘Let my people go.’ God is the source of all liberty.” (See “You Can’t Get There from Here,” in this issue.)
- Status talks: Another potential threat to the Jerusalem church is posed by the forthcoming “final status” talks, scheduled for this month, between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority on who has sovereignty over Jerusalem’s municipal government, its land, and its people. If discussion of such issues as land development, Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, and water rights do not take into consideration the needs of Christian communities, their viability will be in jeopardy.
- Demographic dilution: The Christian presence in Jerusalem has been highly diluted because of the huge increases in its Jewish population and continued growth among Muslims in the city. Although there is a widespread impression that Christians are a declining presence in Jerusalem and the Holy Land, official population statistics present a more nuanced picture: dilution, not decline. There were 25,000 Christians in Jerusalem in 1948, the high point in modern times. That number fell to 10,800 in 1967. Since then, Jerusalem’s Christian population has grown slowly to about 16,000. However, the Christian influence in Jerusalem, with a total population of 584,500, has been greatly diffused by the explosive growth since 1967 of the Jewish population, increasing 200 percent, and the Muslim population, up 40 percent. The Christian Palestinian presence also has been limited by decades of high emigration.
In the face of all these hardships, says Harry Hagopian, Jerusalem liaison for the Middle East Council of Churches and an international affairs lawyer, the Jerusalem church faces the near-impossible task of maintaining not only its holy places for pilgrims and tourists, but also “the living stones,” who are the local members of the ancient Christian community in Jerusalem. If they fail, he says the 2,000-year-old witness of the Jerusalem church may be lost permanently.
GETTING THE GOALS STRAIGHT: The Jerusalem church was established at Pentecost, and it commissioned the first Christian missionaries, Paul and Barnabas. But from early days, it was subject to the hardships of both famine and persecution. By the time he wrote his Letter to the Romans, Paul was collecting money from other churches for “the poor among the saints in Jerusalem.” Perhaps it is time for Christians abroad to aid the Jerusalem church once again. But what, specifically, should be their goals?
Christian ministry in the Holy Land has had four concentrations: evangelistic outreach, social justice concerns, end-times prophetic fulfillment, and holy places pilgrimages. Yet, few believers have found a way to integrate all four efforts, thereby effectively confronting the swiftly changing circumstances and shifting tensions in the Holy Land.
With growing intensity, a small group of Christian scholars, leaders, and pastors is pressing for a re-examination of Christian relationships and commitments in the Middle East by local churches as well as by the hundreds of overseas religious organizations that minister in the Holy Land.
These Christian leaders have a new vision for peace in Jerusalem, focused at the grassroots level and centered in the gospel message. “We are not meant to be peace negotiators, or peacekeepers, but peacemakers,” says Samir Kafity, Anglican bishop of Jerusalem. “There must be no victor, nor victim, triumphant or defeated, but all must feel justly treated. This is the dream of Jerusalem.” The way to survive and grow is by reinvigorating the Jerusalem church through refocusing on the Christian message and mission–a mission being carried out not only by Kafity’s Palestinian congregations, but by Jewish believers as well.
LISTENING TO ‘LIVING STONES’: One of the newest and most vibrant elements in the country has been the growing, Israeli-born Jewish Christian community in Jerusalem and throughout Israel. These believers have faced open hostility from Orthodox Jews and discrimination from Israeli officials. Jewish believers in Y’shua (the Hebrew name for Jesus), if their faith is known to the authorities, are not allowed to immigrate to Israel under the Right of Return law.
“We should pray that the peace process should continue,” says Aryeh Bar David, a lay Messianic Jewish leader. Bar David was born in 1947, into the thick of the Jerusalem problem, at Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus on the front lines of the fighting between Arabs and Jews leading up to the establishment of the State of Israel. Bar David’s family have been believers in Jesus, and his father pioneered a messianic Jewish fellowship. Bar David served as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces. In 1981 he joined a small community outside Jerusalem called Yad HaShmonah, which is made up of messianic Jewish and Finnish believers. He is the director of their furniture-making factory and leads a community Bible study.
“We believers should not enter into politics, but prepare ourselves,” says Bar David. “God gives us light to see two steps forward. Terrible war is coming, and we should prepare for this.”
Like many Jewish believers, Bar David relates current events to the end times, and he believes both the peace process and the coming battles are foretold in Ezekiel. He sees the ingathering, or aliyah, of Jews to Israel, described in chapter 37, as taking place now and looks ahead to the time of peace and prosperity foretold in chapter 38, which will precede a climactic battle with an enemy from the north. In this light, he sees the peace process as an instrument God is using to bring temporary peace and prosperity.
Bar David, who has seen combat in four wars, favors the current peace process and does not resist the land-for-peace approach. “In 1967, my best friends were killed on Ammunition Hill [taking east Jerusalem in the Six-Day War]. I can tell you that all the people who say we have no permission to give this land back because God gave it–I don’t believe this. The only territory we shouldn’t give back is our heart. The land is just sand.” The Messianic Jewish community has become a strong force among Jews and expatriates for evangelism and church growth within Israel. In 1965, there were an estimated 300 Jewish believers. Today, there are 3,000 to 5,000 in about 40 Messianic assemblies, 10 of which are in Jerusalem.
Michael Tupper, a chaplain at Jerusalem’s Garden Tomb, says Messianic believers have developed a distinctive presence within Israel. He says Christians have wrongfully “expected Jewish people to become good Gentiles if they are going to believe in Jesus,” and he affirms their ongoing commitment to Jewish culture in the context of Christian belief.
CHRIST AS THE CENTER: If Aryeh Bar David lives in the shadow of the violence of 1947 and 1967, so do many Arab Christians. Their memories do not fade.
In 1948, then 10-year-old Naim Ateek, his parents, and nine siblings lived in Bet She’an in Galilee when the Israeli army occupied their town. The military issued an order for the town to be evacuated in two hours. He recalls, “My father pleaded, ‘I cannot leave. I have a large family, ten children.’ They said, ‘If you don’t leave, we will kill you.’ ” Then, Christians and Muslims were separated; Muslims were deported to Jordan and Christians taken elsewhere. Eventually, the family resettled near Nazareth, but they have received no compensation for their seized property, which is now the site of an office building.
Some 38 years later, Naim Ateek is pastor to the Palestinian Christian congregation at Saint George’s Anglican Cathedral in East Jerusalem. Concerning the issue of land and God’s promises, Ateek says he begins, as an Arab Christian, with a Christ-centered theology. “The promises to Abraham are very insignificant looking at it from the perspective of Christ,” he says. “In Romans 4, Paul is saying that God’s purpose is really to bring salvation to the whole world, fulfilled in the coming of Christ.”
Ateek says such a viewpoint does not square with some theological views. “Fundamentalists always tell you, look at Israel; Israel is the center; you can really judge history in what’s happening to Israel,” Ateek says. “I say that’s unacceptable. Christ is the center. It is really a different approach to the land.”
In considering Jerusalem, Ateek believes that the city should be held as a religious trust, and that political sovereignty should be shared by Israelis and Palestinians.
Ateek has resisted efforts at reconciliation with Jews. “Begin with justice, and then you will see me running for reconciliation,” he says. “Israel has been trying to legitimize the injustice. You have to begin by confessing that injustice has been done and beginning with a gesture of justice.” He believes that gesture would be the establishment of a Palestinian state.
POLITICS, PROPHECY, AND JUSTICE: One of the most consistent critics of Israel giving up any land in the current peace process has been the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ).
Since 1980, it has been on the leading edge of Christian Zionism, which views the modern State of Israel as a fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. Well-financed and politically savvy, the ICEJ has a worldwide network of fundamentalist and charismatic Christians in addition to a strong alliance with Israel’s conservative political leaders.
The strategies of the ICEJ in recent years have been to promote its interpretations of biblical prophecy concerning the ingathering of Jews into Israel, to host international conferences and local rallies strengthening an alliance between like-minded conservative Christians and Jews, and to point at radical Islam as a mutual threat worldwide for Christianity and Judaism. Some Arab Christians, however, doubted the ICEJ’s concern last December when it called for a boycott of Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem, which had just come under Palestinian rule.
The ICEJ’s Third International Christian Zionist Congress, with 1,500 participants from 40 countries, opened February 25, the date of the first of the fatal bombing attacks this year. Much of the congress focused on the threat posed by Muslim extremists. The gathering expressed their concern with “the increasing threat posed by radical Islam to Israel, to Christian minorities in the Middle East and to the world.” Also, they offered “compassionate prayer for those millions of people now in the Islamic faith.”
“The [Muslim] passion for Jerusalem is historically not true,” asserts George Giacumakis, ICEJ chair and history professor at California State University in Fullerton, noting that the city is not mentioned in the Qur’an, while appearing 800 times in the Old and New Testaments. Among the “sense of the Congress” resolutions approved by the delegates: “The Islamic claim to Jerusalem, including its exclusive claim to the Temple Mount, is in direct contradiction to the clear biblical and historical significance of the city and its holiest site, and this claim is of later religio-political origin rather than arising from any Qur’anic text or early Muslim tradition.”
The speakers at the Third Congress included Whalid Phares, a Lebanese Christian who is now a professor at Florida International University and cochair of the Leadership Committee for a Free Middle East, an alliance among American Jewish leaders and heads of the Lebanese, Coptic, Assyrian, and South Sudanese Christian communities. He says that 80 to 85 percent of Middle Eastern Christians are non-Arab. “The main problem for Middle Eastern Christians is with Arab Muslim regimes, not with Israel,” he says.
The icej has become a lightning rod for criticism, primarily from Christians who reject the icej’s interpretation of biblical prophecy and the organization’s ongoing resistance to the peace process. The ICEJ supports programs to increase Jewish immigration to Israel, to expand Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the Golan Heights on the Syrian border, and to promote the views that the Jews “remain elect of God,” and that “without the Jewish nation [God’s] redemptive purposes for the world will not be completed.”
ONLY JUSTICE CAN HEAL: A new Christian organization has emerged as a counterpoint to the ICEJ. Founded by Naim Ateek and several other Palestinian Christians in 1993, Sabeel (Arabic for the Way) has attempted to refocus attention on the plight of Christians in Jerusalem, the occupied West Bank, and poverty-stricken Gaza as well as to approach political problems from an inclusive perspective with hopes for shared sovereignty.
Jean Zaru, a Sabeel member and a Quaker from Ramallah, says, “The fundamentalists in the International Christian Embassy have distorted our image. We don’t believe in their theology. [Palestinian Christians] have a role to play in this society, not exclusive, not right wing, not chauvinistic, not fundamentalist. We are the forgotten faithful.”
There is no opportunity for equality and justice for Christians and Muslims under the current structure, Zaru says. “We are not against Jews, we are not against Judaism, we are not against Israelis. We are against the structures that dispossess us of our rights as human beings. The only thing that will bring healing quickly is justice.”
In January, Sabeel hosted about 250 Christian academics and church leaders at a conference on “The Significance of Jerusalem for Christians.” The group agreed to issue a conference message, saying in part: “Palestinian Christians…stressed their unity with Palestinian Muslims in striving for peace and the establishment of a sovereign state in their homeland with Jerusalem as its capital.” For many of Sabeel’s supporters, an inclusive and just resolution for Jews, Muslims, and Christians would be the two-state solution, with West and East Jerusalem serving as capitals of Israel and an independent Palestine, and international control of the Old City.
JERUSALEM OR JESUS? Peter Walker, author of “The Holy City: New Testament Perspectives on Jerusalem,” warns against people who would place the heavy burdens from two nation-states and three major religions onto Jerusalem. “There is no other city in which God has been so supremely at work to reveal himself,” he says. “But I would warn people against wanting to overplay the importance of Jerusalem and give Jerusalem a burden, which it cannot carry.”
Walker believes if Christians are to understand the significance of Jerusalem in light of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, they must confront the question “Jerusalem or Jesus?” Walker, a research fellow at Tyndale House, Cambridge University, believes that many Christians profoundly misinterpret the Bible concerning Jerusalem and Christ’s second coming. As a result, many advocate political and policy changes counter to sound biblical reasoning.
In Luke 19, Walker notes, Jesus weeps over Jerusalem and implies the city will only find its peace in him. “I would encourage people to see the tragedy of Jerusalem, which has missed its vocation in the time of Jesus, and which perhaps has never fully discovered it.” Jerusalem, instead of pointing toward God, has pointed away from God.
“The coming of Jesus to Jerusalem is the moment that Jerusalem was destined for all along,” Walker says. “Here is the city of God about to welcome the Son of God. What does that city of God do? It rejects him. Now that must be a missing of its true purpose and it must also have consequences for what happens to Jerusalem after that time.”
One of the great dangers, Walker warns, is when zealous believers use prophecy as the basis of ethics. “A prophetic end does not justify immoral means,” he says, noting that Yigal Amir, the convicted assassin of Prime Minister Yikzak Rabin, based such false reasoning on his prophetic views. Walker believes that God’s continuing purpose for the Jews is neither nationalistic nor the building of the third temple of Judaism. Christians properly focused on the New Testament will understand that from Jerusalem there is not an ingathering, but an “outgoing” to the nations in spreading the gospel message, and that the city’s destiny is spiritual and theological, not nationalistic or political, according to Walker.
THE MESSIANIC CONNECTION: For David Stern, translator of the Jewish New Testament and author of the Jewish New Testament Commentary, the question “Jerusalem or Jesus?” might be transformed into a declaration: Jerusalem and Jesus. Born into a Reform Jewish family in Los Angeles, Stern became an economics professor in Southern California. In 1972, he came to faith in Jesus, and he and his family moved to Israel in 1979. They now live in Jerusalem.
As a Messianic Jew, he has experienced rejection from some Jews as well as from some Christians who accuse Messianic Jews of being in bondage to Jewish practice and custom. In studying the significance of Jerusalem for Messianic Jews, Stern asks, “What can we look for that is eternal and can build the kingdom of God in relation to Israel and the Arab countries? The answer is to communicate the gospel.”
Stern says the peace process should not obscure the importance of communicating the basic truth about Y’shua as the mediator of salvation for individuals and nations. “No peace process in any context, Oslo or otherwise, is a substitute for evangelism.”
Stern says the goal of the Messianic Jewish community is “nothing less than to re-establish the first-century Jerusalem messianic Jewish community as a model, guide, and light both to the nations and to the Jewish people, so that the Torah, understood in the light of [Jesus, the Messiah] having come, will, as promised, go forth from Jerusalem.” They seek to restore the Jewish roots of Christianity as well as to “Messianize Judaism by renewing its wineskins.”
Stern believes the Messianic Jewish community is uniquely positioned to bridge the divides between evangelistic outreach, demands for social justice, and understanding biblical end-times prophecy. Bible believers must support equal rights for all loyal residents and leave no room for second-class citizenship, he says.
“One day the Messiah will fulfill the meaning of one of his titles, Sar Shalom, Prince of Peace,” Stern says. “This will satisfy everyone who trusts in him–Jewish, Christian, Muslim, or other. Meanwhile, it behooves and benefits all of us to follow God’s instruction given in Psalm 122:6, ‘Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee.’ “
As former Israel secretary of the International Messianic Jewish (Hebrew Christian) Alliance, Menahem Benhayim for many years has understood the fate of Jerusalem Christians and Jerusalem itself as not being rigidly predetermined. “We are not robots or pawns in a divine scheme,” he says. “I have no illusions of a permanent solution without a spiritual solution.” Benhayim calls on believers to find a biblical “middle way,” which seeks reconciliation with Arabs and at the same time understands God’s purpose for Israel in the land.
Increasingly, Christians, through understanding the significance of Jerusalem in God’s biblically revealed plan, are discovering that justice between peoples and fulfillment of biblical prophecy are not polar opposites. Harry Hagopian of the Middle East Council of Churches says, “God is not a God that condones injustice, oppression, discrimination, or one-sidedness.”
The proclamation of the gospel, the pursuit of justice, and prophecy all function as part of Christ’s full purpose and mission. From this perspective, evangelism and reconciliation are the work of the church, while fulfillment of prophecy is ultimately in God’s hands. As Salim Munayer, of the Musalaha reconciliation ministry between Arabs and Jews in Jerusalem, says, “I leave the end times in the hands of God. Talking about the end times is running away from the issues. Let God do it. Don’t you think he can?”
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