In the first week of September, more than one hundred evangelical Christians from Israel, the Palestinian territory of the West Bank, Lebanon and Jordan came together for three days in Amman under the theme “That They May Be One”. Hosted by the Alliance of Evangelical Councils in Jordan and the Holy Land, the extraordinary meeting was overshadowed by the ongoing war in Gaza, the mourning for fellow Christians killed in the conflict and the struggle with the reality that many in the global Church seem ignorant or indifferent to the suffering of their brothers and sisters in Christ in the region.
Palestinian journalist Daoud Kuttab, who reported for Word&Way about the “rare” gathering of Christians from the four countries, writes that the war in Gaza and the international response over the past year “has alienated and angered many Palestinian Christians, who feel their co-religionists around the globe are oblivious to the suffering the war has brought.”
Hamas' attack on Israel on October 7 left some 1,200 people dead, and of the more than 250 hostages taken to Gaza, almost one hundred remain unaccounted for. Israel's response over the past eleven months has resulted in widespread devastation and reportedly cost more than 40,000 lives. Hamas has been accused of embedding itself in civilian infrastructure like schools and hospitals, hiding in underground tunnels, and using the Palestinian population as human shields, while Israel has been accused of violating international law by indiscriminate bombing and using Palestinian civilians as human shields to scout dangerous places.
While Gaza is overwhelmingly Muslim, the small Christian community has been caught in the crossfire as well. A fact that some Christians in the Middle East feel is not understood or recognized by fellow believers in other parts of the world.
“Churches and a Christian-run hospital have been hit by Israeli shells with hardly a word from Christian leaders,” they lament, amid reports that at least 23 Christians were among those who died in Gaza.
Especially painful are news headlines of “politicians who publicly flaunt their Christianity” like last January when former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence “approvingly signed his name on Israeli bombs destined for Palestinian and Lebanese communities.”
The worldwide polarization surrounding the war is also reflected in the global Church. While some Christians are calling for an immediate ceasefire and emphasize the need to prevent more loss of life and negotiate the release of the hostages, others support Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s stance that there cannot be peace unless Hamas is defeated. After all, Hamas pledged to eradicate Israel at all costs and promised to repeat the October 7 attacks “again and again”.
Adding to the complexity of the situation, Hezbollah's continuous rocket fire from Lebanon into northern Israel forced people in the region to flee their homes and has raised the specter of a wider war with the Iran-back group.
(An op-ed published on Christian Daily International last February captured some of the dilemmas of the different views, their reasonings as well as their limitations.)
Yet what Christians in the Middle East bemoan is that fellow believers in many parts of the world seem to forget that they even exist, let alone that they understand their daily reality.
Simply for believers in the region to meet poses a challenge, Kuttab writes. “While, technically, Arab Christians in Israel can visit Jordan and Palestine, the opposite is not true — especially since Oct. 7. The Israeli embassy that would normally issue visas to Jordanians has been closed since Hamas’ attack on southern Israel. Palestinians from the West Bank need Israeli army-issued permits to travel to nearby Nazareth or even East Jerusalem, but no such permits have been issued since the war on Gaza.”
Kuttab goes on to write that during the gathering in Amman “difficult stories were told about the war in Gaza and the dislocations caused by the Israeli occupation in the West Bank.” He describes how participants shed tears as they looked at photos of Palestinian Christian families who died in Gaza and listened to stories of the difficult life in the West Bank. Then they prayed for a ceasefire in Gaza and for the conflict and suffering to come to an end.
There was also a strong sense among participants that evangelicals in the region must become more united despite the tense situation that can strain relationships among Christians. The theme itself was inspired by Jesus’ last prayer as recorded in the gospel of John 17:20-23, where he prayed for unity among his disciples.
Kuttab reports that Lebanese pastor and director of the Living Word Ministry in Beirut, Rev. Charlie Costa, encouraged participants to seek unity despite differences. Although there may be disagreements on matters of faith among Christians, “[they] should look to biblical teaching in resolving disputes, while avoiding public criticism and defamation,” Costa emphasized.
“We need to keep these differences in confidence, communicating calmly with the offender in the presence of brothers in adhering to the biblical mechanism of resolving disputes while maintaining unity,” he said, as he referred to a recent argument between Palestinian Christians and an Arab Christian TV anchor, Kuttab writes.
Another speaker, Matt Nance, who heads up the Indiana-based Christian Holy Land Foundation and attended the gathering in Amman, addressed the participants on the last day emphasizing how much Christians in the Middle East matter for the global body of Christ. Meetings like the one in Amman are not only relevant for the churches locally but are important for believers around the world, he said.
“We think that the issues the Church and the Holy Land are facing are critically important to the Holy Land, it’s critically important that Christ’s followers are at the center of peacebuilding and unity building in this place,” Nance said. “But we also think that the struggles that the Holy Land Church is facing are a microcosm of the struggles that the Church in the entire world is facing.”
Referring to politics, marginalization and justice, he said that Christians in his own country struggle with some of the same issues. And he added that he believes “the voices of the Christian leaders who have been stewarding our faith for 2,000 years is a very important and necessary voice as we are trying to understand the world we are living in.”
Although the meeting ended on a high note, Kuttab describes how participants were promptly reminded of the current reality as Israel blocked all border crossings following a violent incident in which three Israeli soldiers were killed.
After a three-hour delay, Palestinian citizens of Israel could cross the border, but Palestinians from the West Bank were not allowed passage for two days. “Jordanian families took care of their Palestinian brothers and sisters until they were able to return home.”
Concluding his report, Kuttab writes that as Christians in the Middle East continue to plea “for the global Church to understand and empathize with them”, the conference participants agreed that “Arab evangelicals must search for the common ground between themselves and the global Church for this dialogue to unify all Christians behind the calls of Jesus to all his followers to be peacemakers.”
Update Sept 16: more context was added regarding Hamas and Israel.
