Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 1998, Pages 120-122

Christianity and the Middle East

Bethlehem's New Interreligious Academy to Add Momentum to 2000 A.D. Celebrations

By Rev. L. Humphrey Walz

Despite evidence of Israeli intent to "Judaize" the still basically Christian little town of Bethlehem, a new Lutheran-sponsored academy for interreligious and intercultural studies has been launched there to promote mutually enriching relationships between Christians and Muslims. The academy, to be known as Dar Al-Kalami (House of the Word), will serve Christians and churches in the mainly Muslim countries of Asia and Africa, and will research the theology and church practices of Christian communities there. It will also provide information about the Palestinian people in an attempt to break their relative isolation, says Ecumenical News International (ENI) correspondent J. Martin Bailey, who lives in Bethlehem.

The academy will be the only institute of its kind in the emerging state of Palestine.

The academy, he reports, is opening in temporary premises in Bethlehem but is to have specially designed new quarters by Christmas 1999, when world Christian leaders are expected to visit the town, as did other Wise Men long ago. The buildings, which will also accommodate creative programs in music and the arts, are designed to promote the vast renewal of the town projected for the year 2000.

The academy's broadly ecumenical program is being launched by Bethlehem's Christmas Evangelical Lutheran Church and by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Palestine and Jordan. Its concept conference in October drew scholars from Asia, Africa, Europe and North America. The keynote address was by Bishop Kamal Bathish, a Palestinian Catholic who serves on the Vatican's planning committee for the year 2000 and on ecumenical committees in Jerusalem and Bethlehem which are planning celebrations. He said the Roman Catholic Church wanted the year 2000 to be a time for increased ecumenical efforts, and he emphasized that the churches of the Holy Land need to offer direction to the plans for celebration of the new millennium.

The president of the Palestine National Authority, Yasser Arafat, has taken a personal interest in the development of the academy "which will play a great role in the cultural, scientific and intellectual life not only of Bethlehem, but also of all of Palestine," he asserts. The academy would, he said in a message read by a deputy, provide "cultural interchange and links among peoples and civilizations." His message also acknowledged that the Concept Conference was being held at a time when the peace process was passing through a "very critical and dangerous stage."

According to Dr. Mitri Raheb, pastor of the Christmas Church in Bethlehem, the academy will be the only institute of its kind in the emerging state of Palestine. He promised that it would relate closely to scholarly programs in Jerusalem and elsewhere, and would bring grassroots Palestinians into contact with educators, musicians and artists from all over the world.

Lebanon-Based Catholicos Urges Israeli Troop Withdrawal

In the course of his 40-day October-November visit to constituent congregations in the U.S. and Canada, Catholicos Aram I of Cilicia, global head of the Lebanon-based Armenian Apostolic (Oriental Orthodox) Church, called on United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan to renew efforts to achieve Middle East peace. Essential first steps would require, he insisted, the full withdrawal of Israeli troops from south Lebanon "immediately" and, "without conditions," to enable Lebanon to regain its "full independence, territorial integrity and sovereignty" in accordance with U.N. Security Council Resolution 425.

Reminded by elements of the press that Lebanon's sovereignty was also limited by the Syrian military presence there, he commented that the Syrians had been "invited by Lebanon to come and maintain peace and security," whereas "the Israelis are occupying forces that have invaded an important part of south Lebanon." Lebanese guerrilla attacks on Israel from Lebanese territory, he averred, will end as soon as these circumstances are remedied by withdrawal of Israeli troops.

The secretary-general "understood our concerns," Aram told Ecumenical News International's U.N. reporter Tracy Early, and indicated he had seen good signs that the Middle East peace process could soon get the "new push and new dynamism" both leaders consistently plead for.

On a more geographically inclusive scale, Aram, who is also moderator of the World Council Central Committee, added, "I introduced him to the new program of the World Council to combat all violence and talked about how we could work together to take societies away from the culture of violence and death to a culture of peace."

Congress Eyes Religious Persecution

Republican leaders of the U.S. Congress have promised to vote on a bill designed to increase pressure on the Clinton administration to take stronger action against religious persecution everywhere, not excluding Israel or the Arab East. The bill—The Freedom from Religious Persecution Act—was introduced in May by Representative Frank Wolf, a Presbyterian from Virginia, and Senator Arlen Specter, a Jew from Pennsylvania, both Republicans. As originally introduced by its sponsors, both strong supporters of Israel, the bill seemed aimed solely at Muslim countries. With amendments added by other members of Congress, it now could also be used to punish Israeli persecution of Christians and Muslims.

If approved, the bill will call for establishment of a White House Office of Religious Persecution Monitoring, a step Clinton refused to take last year. The office would be responsible for determining when governments were inflicting or ignoring persecution within their countries, says Ecumenical News International correspondent Tracy Early, who adds, "The bill would also prohibit exports to government agencies engaged in religious persecution and forbid sales of items such as surveillance equipment used in carrying out persecution. There would also be limitations on aid." Past records suggest, however, that some members of Congress would resist such limitations in the case of Israel.

Delegation to Study Effects of Sanctions on Iraq

The World Council of Churches (WCC) will send an ecumenical delegation to Iraq early in 1998 to investigate the effects of economic sanctions imposed on it by the U.N. Security Council in 1990 and kept in force ever since. The WCC Central Committee also authorized its international affairs staff to research those effects.

Leading officials of the WCC have expressed concern for the health problems faced by Iraq's citizens, especially children. According to Clement John of the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs, the WCC is currently in dialogue with the Middle East Council of Churches and with churches in Iraq to determine the members of the delegation. John has told Ecumenical News International reporter Julian Shipp that he hoped the delegation would travel to Iraq as early as January. The results of the delegates' study and the report of the visit could then be discussed by the WCC Executive Committee in February.

Shipp adds that the "Oil for Food" Resolution adopted by the U.N. Security Council in 1995 allows Iraq to sell limited quantities of oil to provide humanitarian relief for its people. However, he notes that, according to Dr. Aaron Tolen, the moderator of the WCC's public issues committee and one of its seven presidents, revenue from crude oil being sold by Iraq was in fact being used largely to defray costs of the Gulf war and for the maintenance of U.N. observers in the northern part of the country. Only a fraction of the needs of the Iraqi people were being met through the funds, he says.

Shipp further comments that recent on-site investigations by U.N. special agencies and non-governmental organizations had warned of the consequences, especially for children, of allowing the humanitarian situation of most of the Iraqi population to deteriorate further. The WCC has remained informed of the situation in Iraq not only through media and U.N. reports, but also through information provided by its member churches in Iraq.

WCC Pushes Action to End Killing in Sudan

Julian Shipp of ENI also reports from Geneva that the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches is urging its member churches, particularly those with direct links with the Sudan, "to continue and intensify their efforts to encourage and support the unified peace initiatives" by church organizations in the north and south which are seeking to bring peace to that bitterly divided northeast African country.

More than three million people have been killed in its civil war, says the Middle East Council of Churches. Five million have been displaced inside the country and another 500,000 forced to seek refuge in neighboring countries, especially Kenya and Uganda. The war, in which the predominantly Christian and animist southern Sudanese have been struggling for autonomy from the mainly Islamic north, has divided churches in the north and south.

However, leaders of the Sudan Council of Churches (SCC), based in Khartoum and representing churches in the north, and the New Sudan Council of Churches (NSCC), representing churches in the south, last year signed a common position paper entitled "United we stand in action for peace." The paper was issued following a meeting in Morges, Switzerland, in September 1996, where Sudan's church leaders confessed that their divisions had weakened their ability to serve as agents of peace and reconciliation, and expressed a new determination to stop the war, according to Dr. Aaron Tolen, one of WCC's seven presidents and moderator of the WCC's committee on public issues. (The paper, which WCC officials said constituted a solid basis for broad ecumenical action, has since been presented by church delegations to the faction leaders in the south and to the government of Sudan in the north.)

The WCC has had a long-standing concern for Sudan. In 1972, together with the All Africa Conference of Churches, it brokered a peace accord between the Khartoum government and the Sudan People's Liberation Army in the south. The accord led to peace in the country until the early 1980s when the conflict revived. It has continued into the present.

In its new statement, the central committee gave its backing to the common position paper by the SCC and NSCC and highlighted the "principles elaborated by the Sudanese church leaders upon which a just and meaningful peace in Sudan must be built." These included "freedom of religious expression, worship and witness" and the "acceptance of cultural, linguistic and social diversity."

The central committee also called on warring factions in the south of the country and the government of Sudan to issue an immediate cease-fire. Only a cease-fire could ensure a climate "conducive to serious discussions" among the Sudanese and lead to a peaceful end to the conflict, it said.

The WCC continues to provide humanitarian relief to victims, and has remained in contact with all the parties in the conflict.

German Evangelicals Visit Syrian and Lebanese Religious Leaders

A delegation from the Evangelical Middle East Committee of Germany's Protestant churches visited Syria and Lebanon Sept. 17-24. It was headed by Bishop Hirshler, president of the Lutheran Churches in Germany, and included six other members, including representatives of Lutheran World Federation, according to Newsreport, issued by the Middle East Council of Churches.

Delegation members started their visit in Damascus, where they met with several church leaders as well as the Grand Mufti. On Sept. 19th and 20th they had what they described as "wonderful encounters" with village leaders in the Qalama area and then in the city of Homs in central Syria, where they met with Evangelical church congregations. Their time in Syria concluded with a unique visit at St. George Monastery, where they had a "fruitful" discussion with the bishop and several Orthodox monks.

In Lebanon delegation members visited Schneller School and the Near East School of Theology, institutions some of them have helped to support. While in Beirut, the group also met with the Christian-Muslim committee for dialogue and was given a briefing about the present political situation and the challenges facing Christians in Lebanon. A final and influential experience was a visit to the south, where meetings with women at Ain-Hilwa refugee camp helped the delegation understand the situation of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.

MECC and Red Crescent Train Nurses in Iraq

The sudden departure of foreign nurses from Iraq just before the Gulf war left a health-care vacuum that has been difficult to fill. For its part, the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC) began training indigenous nurses promptly to replace those who had left. After years of isolation from modern techniques and methods, the nursing remnant in Iraq had fallen behind and current medical books and journals were unavailable, MECC News reports.

This year, from April 29 to May 18, MECC held consultations on "Training for Nursing" in Baghdad and Mosul. Team members came from Lebanon to help follow up recommendations made in the 1995 consultation which was attended by 70 to 75 nurses and officials from Iraq.

Since then over 70 students from graduating classes in both centers have spent four days with Rene Boulos in the Baghdad schools of nursing and five days at the Mosul school with RN Antoinette Nihneh under the sponsorship of MECC's Emergency Relief Services and the Iraqi (Muslim) Red Crescent Society.

The latest information on primary health care, psychiatry in nursing and mother-child care was covered, and recent nursing books, videos, pamphlets and posters were distributed in both schools. The team, accompanied by the director of the Nursing School in Baghdad, met for over an hour with the Iraqi minister of health who, they report, was keen to see that the program had had a positive impact on both schools. The linking of local schools with outside expertise and concerned agencies is important, the director said.

"The Challenge of Jubilee: What Does God Require?"

Leviticus 25 called for the celebration every half-century of a Year of Jubilee when all Hebrews held in slavery for debt to fellow Hebrews were to be set free and their debts cancelled. Though observing it rather differently from the Levitical pattern, the state of Israel is celebrating 1998 as the 50th anniversary of its self-proclamation as a state in 1948.

Against this background, Sabeel's Third International Conference will be held alternatingly on the Bethlehem University campus and in Sabeel's East Jerusalem quarters Feb. 10 to 15. Headed with the title noted above, the announcement reads:

"Fifty years is an historical benchmark to remember the past, assess the present and prepare for the future. In our Biblical heritage, the Jubilee vision calls for the re-establishing of God's holy order of justice, compassion, mercy and forgiveness. '...good news to the poor...release of the captives...recovery of the blind...let the oppressed go free...proclaim the year of God's favor.' (Luke 4:18-19 NRSV).

"Throughout the year of 1998 the State of Israel will celebrate 50 years of statehood while the Palestinian people will remember 50 years of dispossession and tragedy. The Sabeel Center believes that it is timely for faith communities whose roots are in the Jubilee vision to discover anew what God requires of us as we prepare for the 21st century."

The program promises three days of exploration of the present-day applicability of the pertinence of Micah 6:8—to serve God by obeying His call to mercy, justice and humility in all circumstances of corporate human life.

The first day's sessions will include a tour of Jerusalem's Old City and a keynote address by the renowned Palestinian professor-in-exile, Dr. Edward Said of Columbia University. The second day, shifting from Micah's order, is built around the "love mercy" theme under the following in a framework of "Living with the Memory": with regional and denominational groupings meeting in the evening. The next day will keep "Do Justice" uppermost during its lectures on religious fundamentalism, Christian Zionism, Christian-Muslim relations, human rights and Jewish reflections on Jubilee, followed by a field trip on "Contemporary Stations of the Cross," an audio- visual presentation on "The Fragmentation of Palestine" and group meetings by region of origin or denomination.

The next day, stressing the mood of "walk humbly," will dwell successively on "Caring for the Seventh Generation," "International Models of Peacemaking," "A Vision for Peace" and "Spiritual Resources for Peace and Healing." On the final day, Sunday, there will be worship with local congregations and optional trips to Gaza and to Hebron with members of the Christian Peacemakers Team.

For registration forms or further information, contact Friends of Sabeel (Betsy Barlow, POB 4214, Ann Arbor, MI 48106 or Janet Lahr Lewis, Sabeel, P.O. Box 1248, Jerusalem; fax: 972-2-432-7137; e-mail: sabeel@planet.edu.).

Palestinian Christians "Alarmed" Over Prospects in Holy Land

A delegation of Palestinian Christian leaders has told journalists that the once substantial Christian community in the Holy Land could disappear in the next few years. According to Ecumenical News correspondent Julian Shipp, delegation members have sharply criticized the government of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and said they wanted to "sound an alarm" for churches and church organizations to put pressure on Israel to respect the timetable for the Middle East peace process due to be completed before the end of the century.

Afif Safieh, Palestinian ambassador to the United Kingdom and the Holy See, along with Bethlehem Mayor Hanna Nasser and two members of the Legislative Council of the Palestinian National Authority—Mitr Alour-Aita and Emile Jarjoui—have met leading officials of the World Council of Churches and other church organizations in Geneva, and Pope John Paul II in Italy.

"Today there are many more Christian Palestinians in Chile than in Palestine," Safieh told journalists at the Ecumenical Center in Geneva. "In Sydney, Australia, you have many more Christians from Jerusalem than you have Christians in Jerusalem. That is the very tragic situation of the local Christian community." He said that as the Christian community world-wide approached the 2000th anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ, churches should be aware that soon there could be no Christians living in the land of His birth. Safieh stressed that the violence in the region since the Arab-Israeli war of 1967 had resulted in the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fleeing Israeli persecution.

He singled out the Palestinian town of Bethlehem, Christ's birthplace, as an area particularly at risk under Israeli policies. The Israelis, he said, were illegally planning to build 6,500 housing units on Arab land near Bethlehem to house more than 30,000 settlers. They also planned to construct a network of hotels that would "totally destroy the Palestinian tourism industry in Bethlehem as such...We even sometimes hear that they are planning to build a new old Bethlehem, a Bethlehem as it used to be 2,000 years ago at the time of Christ. And we believe that many tourists from the USA will be diverted to visit that new old Bethlehem and not the genuine, authentic center."

Such action was intentionally designed to harass and undercut preparations for the 2,000th anniversary of Christ's birth, Safieh said. Five million Christians are expected to visit Bethlehem in the year 2000, the delegation said.

Safieh insisted that the Palestinian National Authority wanted a peace in which both sides—Palestinians and Israelis—were "winners." But the Israeli government seemed to want to be winners, while making the Palestinians losers. Mayor Nasser commented that without recognition of the rights of both Israelis and Palestinians and an equitable sharing of the land and its resources, there could be no lasting peace in the Middle East.

Asked for a church-wide view, Dwain Epps, WCC coordinator of international affairs, said the WCC's concern for peace in the Middle East was not just for Christians, but for all the people there. "It is a concern rooted in our belief that unless there is peace in the Middle East, there can be no peace universally. But at the same time," he said, "we have said consistently that the presence of Christians in Jerusalem and in the Middle East in general is fundamentally important for the peace process because it has been Christians from the outset who have provided the meeting places and, in many cases, the dynamic for the peace process to go ahead."