In Depth:  Middle East

Luke Randall

Despite much turmoil across the Middle East, reports indicate that the gospel is advancing rapidly throughout the region, so much so that a “discipleship gap” could be looming if more church leaders are not found.

Local church leaders say that this “spiritual awakening”, which kick-started during the Covid pandemic, is growing at such a rate that positive problems are appearing, including the need for more spiritual leaders, as people increasingly search for meaning amidst the difficulties facing the region, according to the Church Mission Society (CMS).

Luke Randall

Occupation, violence, and feelings of being forgotten, reign supreme for Christians in the West Bank, according to the General Secretary of the East Jerusalem Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA).

Peter Nasir, a partner of Embrace the Middle East in his role with the East Jerusalem YMCA, lives in Jerusalem, and told en of the difficulties of life living in the West Bank, where residents are subject to occupying Israeli forces.

Nicola Laver

A planned “land-grab” of historical church assets in East Jerusalem by Israeli authorities as repayment of allegedly unpaid taxes has been described as an attack on Christianity itself.

While the Armenian Patriarch is understood to be the only Christian community targeted so far, there are fears that seizure of property could expand to other Christian churches and communities including evangelicals if it goes ahead. The Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem is challenging the planned foreclosure in court.

Luke Randall

Christians returning to their homes in Gaza have insisted they will not leave their homeland, while believers in Lebanon face an uncertain future.

There are ongoing tensions and uncertainties about the fragile pause in hostilities between Israel and Hamas. However, the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, in place since late November, seemed to be holding.

Luke Randall

UK Christians have prayed continuously for 700 hours about the crisis in the Middle East, as part of a prayer session organised by charities Tearfund and 24-7 Prayer, as conflicts continue in the region.

Tearfund asked people to pray for the situation as conflicts continue in Gaza and Lebanon, and tensions increase between Israel and Iran.

Iain Taylor

‘We are sleep deprived and anxious,’ evangelicals at the centre of the Middle East conflict have told en, ‘but we keep faith in God.’

As the conflict involving Israel, Gaza, Lebanon and Iran reached ever-higher temperatures, staff at Christian TV station SAT-7 reported how they are caught right in the heart of the terrifying situation.

Iain Taylor

Middle East Christians are expressing a mix of fear, confidence in the gospel and calls for prayer as the region approaches the anniversary of Hamas’ deadly terrorist attacks on Israel – and reels from events in Lebanon.

At Christian TV station SAT-7, audience relations manager Marianne Awaraji said: ‘Perhaps God has placed all of us at SAT-7 for such a time as this, to be a voice for those who cannot speak, to bring the hope of Christ to a region that has lost hope for a better future.’

Iain Taylor

Thirty out of the estimated 1,000 Christians still left in Gaza have been killed, according to local church sources.

And as Gaza’s Christian population continues to shrink, down from about 3,500 before the war began, commentators fear that one of the oldest Christian communities in the world may be literally dying out.

Iain Taylor

‘Jesus is in the rubble’ according to a Middle Eastern pastor, as Gaza continues to face intense Israeli military action and fears of war spreading accelerate.

Rhiannon de Laune (see photo), from Christian charity Embrace the Middle East, was quoting a Bethlehem pastor, Munther Isaac.

Iain Taylor

The appalling death and destruction inflicted by both sides during the current Israel/Hamas conflict in the Middle East has horrified the world. But even amidst the carnage and destruction so visible on our TV screens day after day, churches and Christian organisations are bringing help and hope to the region, even though they too have also become intended or accidental targets of the violence.

Christian TV station SAT-7, which broadcasts across the Middle East, reports that shelling caused severe damage to a new cancer ward at the Anglican Church-funded Al Ahli hospital in Gaza. An explosion in its courtyard, thought to have been caused by a misfired Gazan missile, killed almost 500 people sheltering there. The hospital continues to operate as best it can, however, and has been accepting patients from other besieged hospitals that have had to stop working.

Nicola Laver

Palestinian Christians have urged Western church leaders and theologians to repent of voicing ‘uncritical support for Israel’ and ‘re-examine’ their positions.

A group of Christians, including Kairos Palestine, Bethlehem Bible College, and Christ at the Checkpoint, has published an open letter saying they ‘grieve and lament the renewed cycle of violence in our land’.

Luke Randall

While world leaders have devoted a countless number of hours to finding a seemingly impossible solution to the ongoing Middle Eastern crisis, Misha Vayshengolts, who serves with International Mission to Jewish People in Israel, believes that ‘Jesus is the answer’.

In an interview with en, Misha spoke about what life is currently like in Israel, how recent events have impacted his work as a missionary, and why he thinks Jesus is the solution to the crisis.

Daryl Fenton, the leader of the Church’s Ministry among Jewish people (CMJ) for Israel, turned to me as the warning sirens went off for the third of six times and asked: ‘Could you preach at the morning Communion tomorrow at Christ Church Jerusalem?’

I informed him that I would be flying home on EasyJet and so unable. He handed me the lectionary readings and said pick a passage to preach on.

Joseph Steinberg

Isaiah 40:1 ‘Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.’

When I was eight years old, I remember sitting in front of my family’s black and white television while watching the Yom Kippur war unfolding in front of my eyes. It was exactly 50 years ago and, as a Jewish boy growing up in the USA, it was my first realisation that there was a country named Israel that Jewish people call home.

letter from the

Recently the Israeli Prime Minster announced his coalition government could not keep its majority and, in few months, on 1 November, we will have another election in Israel, the fifth election in three years.

There are many factors that have contributed to the inability of Israel to have a stable government, and many point to the nature of the election system or the presence of small political parties that are empowered beyond their political representation. Yet, in recent years, the national religious narrative has been increasingly gaining traction among the political power junction of the Israeli state. This narrative sees the state as an instrument to redeem the land from others – as it was promised to the Jews by God – and calls for Jews to create the conditions for the coming of the Messiah. It also sustains that the authority in the land needs to be Halacha, the rabbinical Jewish law.

Iain Taylor

As the war in Ukraine grinds on, many commentators are looking for historical parallels to point towards how the conflict might end, what the impact may be on those forced to endure it and what life might be like afterwards.

The experience of Aleppo, in north west Syria, may provide a few clues. Early on in the Ukrainian conflict a BBC correspondent said that, if we were unaware of what Russian battle tactics look like, ‘then we had not been paying attention’. He drew a direct line between what Putin’s military did, first in the Chechen capital Grozny during the war of 1999–2000, which resulted in the United Nations calling it ‘the most destroyed city on earth’ by 2003, and then Syria.

Cities are full of cafés and restaurants. In Ibrin, a suburb of Damascus in Syria, there wasn’t one – until a local Christian recently returned to open the town’s sole café.

The Syria conflict began in 2011. A year later Joseph Hakimeh, his wife and three children were forced to flee Irbin, just a few of the thousands of Syrian Christians then internally displaced.