Bethlehem's Present Travail

A first visit to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem is usually overwhelming: sacred traditions beckon while harried groups jostle for position, guides and liturgists shout at one another, hawkers intrude winsomely and menacingly, and beggars implore constantly. Nevertheless, for most people who enter the sanctuary as pilgrims and not just as tourists, God still draws near, as unexpectedly and surprisingly as he did somewhere close by two thousand years ago.

During the Palestinians' recent takeover of the church, a takeover which barely avoided desecration, I began wondering whether God might give up on the place altogether, maybe to wait things out in caves with the few shepherds left in the surrounding hills and valleys. But things are no better out there either. Instead of angelic voices singing about a coming peace on earth, gunfire tolls a future of implacable hatred and violence.

Certainly the Palestinians and the Israelis have enough on their hands, in Bethlehem and everywhere else in the West Bank, not to fret overly that a place in their country sacred to Christians, hallowed since the fourth century as the birthplace of Christ, could have been treated so cavalierly. After all, when there is war on, places as well as people sometimes suffer collateral damage, right? And this particular place? The Palestinians are gone; the clean-up is over; and everything is back to normal (except for the absence of tourists.) Why belabor things? Well, though belaboring will not help anyone, reflection just might. In specific: that endangered Palestinian fighters could regard the Church of the Nativity as merely there for the conscripting reveals something of major importance about Christian presence in our Lord's homeland, and about whether Christians any longer have anything to say about what should go on there.

Viewed from a little larger perspective, a temporary occupation of the Church of the Nativity is merely one more in a series of recent events around Bethlehem which, together, point to the steadily declining influence of Christians in the area. Escalating violence between Muslims and Israelis in and around Bethlehem has made commerce all but impossible, to the detriment especially of Christians who have constituted the larger portion of the area's middle class. Most of these Christians have already left or are in the process of leaving.

If the inability to make a living were not enough, Christians have also been affected by the conflict even closer to home, literally. Frequently, Palestinian youth have used the rooftops of Christian families to fire upon Israeli troops, and, as is easily understandable, the troops have fired back --- on the homes from which they were threatened. On both sides of the conflict, the plight of the Christian population in Bethlehem has been of diminishing concern for some time now. But for me, a frequent visitor to the Church of the Nativity, it is the discourtesy of its recent uninvited guests that symbolizes especially powerfully how small a role Christians now play at the axis of Christian history

In the years immediately following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, it was commonplace for otherwise knowledgeable Americans to look askance at the continuing skirmishes between native Palestinians and newly arrived Jews, and to wonder why the two groups couldn't simply settle their differences in a Christian manner. Now, our country, puffed up with Christian pride, can think of little more to do but hurl broadsides at both sides to settle things --- or else. There is a good reason for both Palestinians and Israelis to respond with the kind of impudent question every child learns at recess on school playgrounds: "or else what?"

Certainly, it is naïve to suppose that Palestinian-Israeli conflicts in Bethlehem, and anywhere else in the Holy Land, are readily amenable to Christian wisdom. Actually, it is little short of preposterous to think so. We Christians, whose example Muslims and Jews now are somehow supposed to follow, stand in a tradition that includes taking back the Holy Land from Muslims by force, in the name of a Christian Jihad, and leaving a whole generation of Jews to an evil regime bent on nothing less than their total extermination. In the light of what we have ourselves stood for in the past, our present protests against Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and against Palestinian suicide bombers in Jewish cities, are significantly lacking in moral force.

Whatever moral force we Christians can ever hope to regain with Palestinians and Jews can be regained only if we become more willing --- much more willing than we have so far showed ourselves to be --- to insist on less and listen to more from those struggling to live together in almost impossible circumstances. Perhaps the single most important thing that happened in the Church of the Nativity during its recent captivity was the hospitality shown more often than less by Christians caught on the church grounds and unable to escape. My guess is that God approved their kneeling before wounded Palestinians to offer food even more than he did their kneeling before his son's birthplace.