In Ramallah, diocesan institutions bring hope to Palestinians
Episcopal News Service, Ramallah. March 18, 2008 [031808-02]
Matthew Davies
The Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem's commitment to the welfare and education of Palestinians was highlighted March 18 as Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori learned about some of the important work of the diocesan institutions as she toured the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Jefferts Schori, whose March 16-24 visit to the Holy Land comes at the invitation of Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem Suheil Dawani, is accompanied by her husband, Richard Schori; Bishop Christopher Epting, the Episcopal Church's ecumenical and interfaith officer; and Maureen Shea, director of government relations.
During the morning, the delegation visited the Temple Mount and Wailing Wall in Jerusalem's Old City, but the group was diverted from one of the checkpoints after learning that an Israeli man had been stabbed and wounded near the Damascus gate.
Meeting with Bishop Munib Younan of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, the Presiding Bishop learned that -- like the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem -- the Lutheran Church has been committed to building viable institutions that provide education, healthcare and other services to Palestinians in the West Bank.
The Episcopal diocese's 35 institutions throughout the Holy Land include hospitals, clinics, kindergartens and schools, vocational training programs, and provide services for the deaf, the disabled and the elderly.
In Ramallah, a city six miles north of Jerusalem, the delegation visited a diocesan housing project that serves to encourage Palestinian Christians to remain in the country. In recent years, the population of Christians in the Holy Land has declined considerably and only 5,000 Anglicans remain in the diocese.
The housing project, the first of its kind in Ramallah, has been 13 years in the making and includes 33 apartments that are set for completion in June this year.
An olive tree planted in the courtyard outside provided a reminder of Massachusetts Suffragan Bishop Gayle Harris' visit in April 2007.
At the Evangelical Home and School, a diocesan institution that serves 700 students -- about 35 percent Muslim and 65 percent Christian -- Jefferts Schori planted an olive tree alongside existing plots that included one from Los Angeles Bishop Jon Bruno. The Diocese of Los Angeles and the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem have shared a companion relationship since 2004.
Even before that companionship was established, Episcopalians from the L.A. diocese had been committed to building partnerships and expressing solidarity with Christians and others in the Holy Land.
"The educational aspect of the ministry of the church here is so important in development and in the new life of the Palestinian people," said Epting. "I am so amazed at the resilience of the Palestinian Christians here and the kind of work they have been able to exercise in the name of Christ."
St. Andrew's Church in Ramallah is the parish where Dawani served as priest for 18 years before being consecrated Anglican bishop in Jerusalem. An adjacent building currently under construction will provide a daycare clinic to the community with an emphasis on deaf ministries. Dawani said the project will require an additional $100,000 to complete. He announced that part of the Episcopal Church's Good Friday Offering, which the Presiding Bishop had presented to Dawani earlier in the day, would be designated for this purpose.
The Episcopal Technological and Vocational Training Center, established in 2001, welcomes students from five schools throughout Ramallah for various programs that include an evangelical school, music school, cooking classes, a dancing program and summer camps. In the future, the center hopes to offer a certificate for hotel management and music tuition for the blind.
At the final stop in Ramallah, parishioners at St. Peter's Church were waiting to greet the Presiding Bishop and her delegation and offer a tour of the nearby community center that is currently under construction and funded by the Diocese of Los Angeles.
The Presiding Bishop offered a blessing for the people of the Holy Land and prayers for peace with justice.
Common Mission
Earlier in the day, at the Evangelical Lutheran Church's offices in Jerusalem, Younan and Dawani, who once served as priests together in Ramallah, agreed that Lutherans and Anglicans must explore new strategies for working together and developing an official statement for common mission.
However, Suheil noted, "we are very much in partnership. We started the implementation before the theory."
Younan expressed his appreciation to Jefferts Schori for her pastoral visit and asked how the Anglican and Lutheran churches in the Holy Land could develop future partnerships with the U.S.-based Episcopal Church. "We are passionately interested in development work here," said the Presiding Bishop, promising to explore ways the Episcopal Church could be further involved in Holy Land.
Education is critical for the future of Palestine, Younan insisted. "A liberal Christianity that is open to the other -- that is what education can do."
Younan registered his concern that the moderate voice is becoming a minority in the Holy Land. "The more the peace process does not find its way, the more extremism is growing and the more Palestinians are immigrating," he said.
A second uprising, or intifada, against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza began in 2000 and negotiations to identify a permanent border between Palestinian and Israeli land have since proved unsuccessful.
Speaking about the earlier stabbing incident in the Old City, Younan bemoaned what he called a "vicious cycle of bloodshed" caused by "revenge and counter-revenge."
On March 17, the Presiding Bishop met with Younan's colleague, the Rev. Mitri Raheb, a Lutheran pastor and general director of the International Center of Bethlehem. The center is an ecumenically oriented institution that runs a youth program, art gallery, auditorium, and artistic and music workshops.
Raheb said he believes that the Holy Land is "heading toward a fully developed apartheid system that will be much worse than South Africa," and bemoaned the separation wall that has divided Palestinian families throughout the West Bank. The wall is being built by the Israelis to heighten security but is believed by Palestinians to be an intentional appropriation of land.
"The wall has been built in such a way that most of the resources and natural minerals have been appropriated by the Israelis," Raheb said, describing the situation as being like Swiss cheese, "where the Israelis get the cheese and the Palestinians get pushed into the holes."
Raheb said that the Holy Land has reached a point where there is too much religion and not enough spirituality.
The Presiding Bishop agreed. "We need hearts of flesh, not hearts of stone," she said.
Acknowledging that there is too much humanitarian need and too little development in the West Bank, Raheb said that "no country right now is courageous enough to tell Israel to end the Occupation."
"The biggest temptation is to be sucked into a liturgy of death," he said. "We need a liturgy of hope and a liturgy of life. Most young Palestinian Christians believe in life after death but they do not believe in life before death."
The Lutheran Church, he said, "offers a vision that gives people hope…to transform society."
The Presiding Bishop will join Eastertide services, observances and celebrations, including the traditional Maundy Thursday Foot Washing, Stations of the Cross on Good Friday, and Holy Saturday's Easter Vigil. On Easter Sunday, she will offer greetings at the morning Eucharist at St. George's Cathedral.