Christians in the Holy Land; A Small, Faithful Remnant
Episcopal News Service. May 25, 2000 [2000-113]
Nan Cobbey , Features Editor of Episcopal Life, the national newspaper of the Episcopal Church
(Episcopal Life) "A church that is isolated is a church that is dying."
The Rev. Jane Butterfield, mission personnel officer for the Episcopal Church, was looking down over the city of Nazareth spread across the hills below her.
Her view was south over the troubled land that Palestinian Christians are leaving in greater numbers every year, where one people prospers and another declines.
She was talking of the Diocese of Jerusalem, where Anglican institutions founded by missionaries generations ago are now falling into disrepair and disuse and where young people are emigrating in search of better opportunities. Yet her focus actually was broader: If the Anglican Church is to continue to be a presence in the land of Jesus' birth, the diocese will need the support, financial and spiritual, of the whole communion.
Butterfield came to the Holy Land with two other women who can help build that support: Phoebe Griswold, wife of Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold, and Sandra Swan, director of the Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief.
Together, the women traveled across the much-contested land, where Arab Christians now make up only 2 percent of the population, down from 13 percent a century ago. Everywhere they went they listened to heart-breaking stories of loss, humiliation and frustration from their sister and brother Anglicans, but they also saw church-supported projects so innovative and strong that the visitors marveled at the commitment and drive that kept them going. They met dedicated, enthusiastic young priests full of hope and confidence. At each stop they heard how outside support is needed because the communities of Anglicans once present in the Holy Land have dwindled so drastically.
Griswold, who had visited the diocese two years earlier, wanted most to reconnect with the Anglican women of Palestine she'd met and hear an update of their lives and struggles.
Swan wanted to hear dollars-and-sense answers to her questions about the building and development projects proposed for "Jerusalem 2000," a possible joint capital campaign with the Church of England.
Butterfield was eager to ease the way for several new missionaries she'd signed on to work in development and communications with the diocese and to identify additional opportunities for "mission companions."
For six sunny April days, the women traveled from Gaza on the Mediterranean to the West Bank, over the Jordan River to Amman, Jordan, then north through the Yizre'el Valley with its brilliantly colored blanket of wildflowers -- "these are the lilies of the field Jesus spoke of," the bishop told them more than once -- to Nazareth and Nablus and back to the coast, to Haifa and Acco. Their schedule kept them moving from early morning until 9 or 10 each evening, as they, the two new mission companions and, frequently, Bishop Riah Abu El-Assal of Jerusalem visited a half-dozen schools and an equal number of churches, three hospitals, several church-sponsored development projects, institutions supported by the diocese and sites of biblical interest. At each stop the group listened for themes. It was the women's voices that moved them most.
"You ask 'Has it been better?' It hasn't been better," said Betty Majaj, head of the Jerusalem Princess Basma Centre for Disabled Children, a school supported by the diocese.
Majaj, whose center trains mothers with their disabled children, making them community advocates for better care, acceptance and integration, related the story of one of those mothers from the West Bank. The woman had been trying desperately to get permission to enter Jerusalem and get to the center. She wanted to order a brace made at its prosthetics workshop.
"When finally she was able to come, she cried, 'Three years, three years I have been trying,'" said Majaj.
Checkpoints, well-guarded, barbed-wired border crossings and the ever-visible Israeli military enforce strict travel restrictions against Palestinians, the women were told. Obtaining passes is time-consuming and often impossible. One woman after another told the same story. Majaj's own daughter, married to a German and now living in Germany, has repeatedly been refused entry "and without any reason given."
In Jordan, home to 2 million Palestinian refugees, according to Riah, the group was delighted to hear a success story. Graduates of the church-supported Ahliyyah School for Girls in Amman are among the most successful and respected citizens of the country. "One hundred percent of our students go to universities inside and outside Jordan," Director Haifa Majjar said proudly. They serve in the country's ministries of planning and economy, as directors of institutions, in Parliament. "We think our students are going to be a major factor in the future of the country," said Majjar.
The school, founded by missionaries in 1926 and one of the first schools for girls in Jordan, was turned over to the Episcopal Church in 1957. Today it trains 1,100 students and has a waiting list of 380.
In Gaza, the news was less good.
Samira Farah, administrative director of the Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, another diocesan-supported operation, told the American guests that the hospital, the only private Christian hospital in Gaza, had to turn patients away every day because it couldn't afford sufficient staff. The Ahli (it means "Ours") hospital, with its 80 subsidized beds, provides about 10 percent of all hospital beds available in the Gaza Strip. Its 866 beds must serve a population of more than 1 million.
Farah showed the women a bit of the scenery of Gaza, driving with them through the Jabalia Refugee Camp and past one of the Israeli "settlements." Her frustration at the life people must live poured forth as she told how a whole generation "missed receiving their education. Many, many lost their chance...and without any excuse. People are really fed up, especially the new generation who want to live like human beings."
Speaking in English, her second language, Farah described the conditions the refugees faced: "No sewage line, 20 living in two rooms," feeling "constantly insecure" for their children. "The soldier may come anytime and just take your child and just put him in the prison without any reason."
According to World Vision Jerusalem, 78 percent of the residents of Gaza are refugees, 55 percent of them live in camps like Jabalia. The infant mortality rate among refugees is 44 per 1,000. Population density, 80 people per square mile in Israel, is 9,126 in Gaza, according to World Vision.
"About two out of three households in Gaza [are] suffering from deep poverty...unable to meet the minimum required for food, clothing and housing," according to a 1998 Palestine Poverty Report. Unable to travel into Israel for work, Palestinians are left with few options.
Even in Jerusalem, and among Palestinians who are Israeli citizens, the women spoke of worries for their children, of humiliations they had to endure.
"We are a minority within a minority and under occupation," said Elian Abdalnour, wife of a priest, at the gathering called by Griswold to hear from the women.
"It is an enormous load. We feel it is a huge responsibility for us as Christians to take care of this younger generation, for us to upbring the kids under the Christian education the way we want it."
Abdalnour and several other mothers present expressed dismay at the number of young people leaving Palestine, yet many admitted that they understood only too well.
"Our children are affected by the upbringing of the other faiths. It's different and more aggressive and our children are becoming more aggressive," said Abdalnour.
"We don't have our rights. We are still not free. The identity of the Palestinian is still lost," Samira Nasser told the gathering. "The Israeli government is really humiliating us for no reason. They don't want to humble themselves amongst the facts that the Palestinians have the right to live in this land."
The emotion and anxiety of the women was particularly disturbing for Griswold.
"The first time [I came], the women were so open, so revelatory," she said. "I almost felt guilty for unleashing so much truth...about the difficulty of their lives as Palestinians...as Palestinian Christian women who are Anglican. They have just been marginalized to the very edge of society.
"The tension in their lives, I feel, has increased since last time. That was distressing to me. How is it that they are going to find the resources to stay here?
"I'd hate to see, in 20 years' time, 50 years' time," said Griswold, "that what we're doing is raising funds to pay tour guides to show us our own Christian sites."
Swan and Butterfield shared her concern and both have means to fend off such a tragedy.
"All the people we have talked to here seem to feel that the opportunities for expansion of Anglicanism are remote to nonexistent," said Swan, who oversees the distribution of millions of dollars in grants every year. "From my point of view, it seems that the preservation of the institutions of humanitarian services -- schools and hospitals -- are the one way we can continue to demonstrate our heritage, our traditions, our belief systems. If the institutions live on, then the ethos will live on."
Butterfield, who has responsibility for more than 70 paid and volunteer missionaries around the world, has a slightly different perspective.
"Relationships between people generate an enormous amount of deep respect and love. That is what the sharing of time and life through mission companions and diocesan companion relationships brings about." Those relationships then provide "opportunities for exchange as well as occasionally gifts of money and other resources."
As the women gathered with Griswold were about to disperse, there came two moments of hope. The words of frustration and anguish stilled as Samira Nasser, head of the church's Evangelical Home and School in Ramallah, encouraged the other women to "enlarge their community," to invite other denominations and Muslims into their circle for lectures, awareness programs, discussions and sharing. "Why are these differences between us?" she asked. "Our role is to go out, spread our feeling, our conviction as Anglicans as a help to the community."
A moment later, Butterfield passed Nasser the Bible opened to Psalm 37 and asked her to close their session with the first four verses:
"Fret not yourself because of the wicked,
be not envious of wrongdoers!
For they will soon fade like the grass,
And wither like the green herb.
Trust in the Lord and do good;
So you will dwell in the land, and enjoy security.
Take delight in the Lord,
And he will give you the desires of your heart."
To learn more about giving through the Presiding Bishop's Fund, contact the fund at 800-334-7626, ext. 6027. To learn more about opportunities to serve in the Diocese of Jerusalem, contact Butterfield at extension 5461.