Episcopal Press and News
Bishop to the Forgotten Faithful
Episcopal News Service. October 26, 1989 [89213]
Jay Cormier
Most Americans see the conflict in the Middle East as a conflict between the Jews who founded the State of Israel shortly after World War II and the nations of Islam that surrounds them, with roots of antagonism and hatred dating back centuries.
But there is a third party involved in the struggle whose presence is nearly invisible to the outside world -- that of the Christians of Arab descent. Although small in number compared to their Jewish and Islamic neighbors, the Palestinian Christian community is both a significant and ancient presence in the region.
"The Western world thinks of Christianity as a Western religion, but such is not the case," explained the Rt. Rev. Samir Kafity, the Anglican bishop of Jerusalem, on the day of Pentecost. "It grew first in the East before its establishment in the West. During the Crusades of the twelfth century, Europe did not install Christianity in the Eastern world -- rather, it met Eastern Christianity."
Of the 6,500,000 residents of Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip -- no more than 6 percent are Christian. Most are Greek Orthodox, Melkites, Maronites, and Roman Catholics. "Protestants are the minority of minorities," Bishop Kafity pointed out.
But the ministry of Bishop Kafity's diocese is a central focus of the Christian presence in the Holy Land. As part of a month-long visit to the United States, Bishop Kafity met with Massachusetts Episcopalians in the Boston area on October 15 and 16 to speak of his diocese's many ministries to the regions non-Christians, as well as Christians.
"The ministry of the Anglican diocese is totally out of proportion to its size," Bishop Kafity explained. "For example, of the 900 students at St. George's Anglican Boys' School, only four are Anglican; the vast majority are Muslim. The Anglican hospital in Gaza serves a population in which no Christians live."
Bishop Kafity's diocese includes fewer than 8,000 communicants and 27 parishes -- but stretches over four countries: Israel (including the Gaza Strip and the West Bank), Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. "While my entire diocese is smaller than some large American parishes, it covers more than 121,000 square miles," he stated. Twenty-seven of the diocese's 35 clergy are indigenous Arab priests.
Called the "barbed-wire bishop" by some of colleagues, Bishop Kafity also ministers to the 700,000 Palestinian refugees confined to camps.
The diocese makes its greatest impact in the region through its 32 service institutions and agencies. The diocese sponsors and supports 13 schools, a college, a seminary, five hostels, two orphanages, three institutions for the deaf, two major hospitals and a school of practical nursing, a vocational school, a youth ministry center, a home for the elderly, and a residence for mentally retarded children. But the cost of these services has reached crisis proportions for the small diocese.
Since the State of Israel was created in 1948, the number of Christians in the Holy Land has steadily decreased. With the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza by the Israelis after the 1967 Six-Day War, Arab Christian ministries have had an even more difficult time.
The plight of Arab Christians reached the breaking point in December 1987. The killing of three Palestinians in Gaza marked the beginning of intifada, the Arab "uprisings" in the occupied territories. While the school closings and labor strikes have created considerable financial hardships for the diocese and great difficulties in carrying out its ministries, Bishop Kafity is nonetheless supportive of his people's cry.
"The intifada is a spontaneous, popular movement of saying peacefully that we do not want occupation," Bishop Kafity emphasized. "It is a new phenomenon led by the younger generation, who grew up in camps, deprived of their basic rights."
"The world has for far too long turned a deaf ear to the cry of the Palestinian people," Bishop Kafity continued.
Born in Haifa, the 57-year-old Bishop Kafity, a third-generation Anglican, attended Anglican-sponsored schools. Ordained a priest in 1958, he served in parishes throughout Jerusalem, Lebanon and the Middle East. In 1974, he was named archdeacon of the diocese of Jerusalem. Consecrated bishop coadjutor in 1982, he was installed as the twelfth Anglican bishop of Jerusalem in St. George's Anglican Cathedral in January 1984. The Anglican Church was established in the holy city in 1841, when the English and German's established a joint Protestant presence in the Holy Land, which eventually divided into separate Lutheran and Anglican judicatories.
Bishop Kafity also serves as President-Bishop (or Primate) of the Synod of the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East, an autonomous province,of the Anglican Communion which includes the dioceses of Jerusalem, Egypt, Cyprus and the Gulf, and Iran. In his dual episcopal roles Bishop Kafity has been a major force in ecumenical and international affairs.
"The Middle East is the first place in the world where all Christian churches -- Orthodox, Protestant, and Roman Catholic -- belong to the Middle East Council of Churches as equal partners. Rabbis and Muslim and Christian clergy have come together to form Clergy for Peace, to work to end the bloodshed. The media should change their spectacles to see the three Abrahamic religions working together, not in competition or divisiveness, but in a common ministry of reconciliation."
In interviews and public presentations, Bishop Kafity spoke with the carefully crafted simplicity of one crying our for reconciliation in the midst of war raging all round him. Dependent on good relations with the government of the four nations his diocese comprise, Bishop Kafity was very careful of his criticism of the governments of the Middle East. He did voice concern that "the state of belligerency" between Israel and the Arab Christians in the territories makes it difficult for Jerusalem to be a truly "open city." He expressed his "vision for Jerusalem as a shared city," but offered no formula, saying, "I'm a churchman, not a politician."
Regarding Lebanon, Bishop Kafity said that he believes that the country is being victimized "by wars of proxy," that "no country is innocent in the conflict." He was quick to point out that "Judaism as a faith must be seen as distinct from Zionism," and that the "missionary faith of Islam" must not be equated with "fanaticism." In his severest criticism of Israel, the bishop, a Jordanian citizen, cautioned, "Security cannot be guaranteed by ever-expanding boundaries. Security can only be obtained through neighborly relations."
Bishop Kafity applauded the positions taken by the bishops of the Anglican Communion meeting in Lambeth in 1988 and the 1988 General Convention of the American Church, calling for both the security of the State of Israel and statehood for the Palestinian people. A problem he has experienced on the part of American Christians is not a lack of support for his people but a lack understanding of their plight.
"Jerusalem is as much yours as it is mine -- both as a place and as a symbol. It is the mother of the three great Abrahamic faiths, loving all equally," Bishop Kafity asserted.
The Christian churches in the Middle East -- the church "families" as Bishop Kafity called them -- must work together to "build bridges" in the war-torn region, according to the bishop.
"The church cannot be a spectator," Bishop Kaifty insisted.
"We do not live in a vacuum. Can you draw a line of demarcation between the spiritual and the temporal? The peace of God is given by God to all -- Jew and Christian and Moslem alike -- because all carry the same image of God. I know of only one image of God, not two. I don't know about a gospel of war. I only know of a gospel of peace."