Church leaders, activists, and Palestinian media keep sounding the alarm: Palestinian Christians are leaving the Holy Land. We need an institutional and economic strategy that makes staying a viable choice, not just a moral one.
The church’s action follows resolutions by two other religious bodies at their summer meetings — the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the American Academy of Religion — both of which named Israel’s war on Gaza a genocide.
Israel is seizing church and Palestinian land in Jerusalem’s Silwan neighborhood under the pretext of creating “green spaces.” A Muslim caretaker of the church property has made it his daily mission to guard what’s left.
We spoke to the founder of Palestinian Christian theology. He says Tucker Carlson can’t support Christians in the Holy Land if he doesn’t support Palestinian freedom.
The Vatican flatly rejected a U.S. invitation to join the Trump-led “Board of Peace” for Gaza. The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem previously described the project as “a colonialist operation” focused on “others deciding for the Palestinians.”
A recent statement by Church Patriarchs in Jerusalem rejecting Zionism was historic, and the response it provoked from U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee shows the steps Christian Zionists are taking to silence Palestinian Christians.
“What is happening [in Palestine] today is the true face of Zionist ideology . . . turning Palestinian existence into an unbearable hell,” declares the recently released Kairos Palestine document, “A Moment of Truth: Faith in a Time of Genocide.”
Israeli settler groups have begun bulldozing Palestinian lands in the town of Beit Sahour to make way for a new settler outpost. The settlement threatens the existence of the largest remaining Christian community in the West Bank, residents say.
“The fact that churches have not sufficiently taken up this moral responsibility is a damning indictment. To brazenly prefer their comfort, interests, connections, and desire to avoid embarrassment is moral bankruptcy,” says Jonathan Kuttab.
In a landmark announcement, the WCC’s Central Committee calls for targeted sanctions, divestment, and arms embargoes on Israel. Palestinian Christians are calling it “a turning point in the moral and theological witness of the global church.”