Between ruins and remnants: religious reinvention and renewal among Christians in West Bank Palestine
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Date
07/06/2022Author
Marteijn, Elizabeth Sulammith
Metadata
Abstract
This thesis offers an ethnography of local Christianity and its relation to the changing
social, cultural, and political context of contemporary West Bank Palestine. This
study argues that the changes over the course of recent history in the Middle East
brought about a renewal of ancient Palestinian Christian religious expressions
through which the community reinvented itself and adapted its theologies and
practices to the changing socio-political circumstances. In order to build up this
argument, this thesis draws on a theoretically innovative framework, developed in
conversation with recent scholarship across several disciplines, and ethnographically
embeds this question in the mixed Orthodox and Catholic Christian village of
Taybeh.
The thesis builds on existing research relating to theology and
contextualisation, but explores these dynamics differently by combining the three
dynamically growing research fields of World Christianity, Middle Eastern Christianity
studies and the research that has grown out of the rapprochement between theology
and anthropology. Working at the intersection of these three fields, this thesis
produces a theologically-informed ethnography of Palestinian Christianity. What is
particularly innovative about this approach is that the thesis does not only examine
theologies as produced by Palestinian theologians and church leaders, but explores
theological reflection and engagement among the laity as mediated through societal
involvement, biblical associations, and ritual behaviour. The ethnography is based on
a total of 16 months of fieldwork that has been conducted during multiple visits in the
period between 2016 and 2019, particularly in Taybeh, as well as in the greater
Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Ramallah regions. With its emphasis on the village of
Taybeh, this thesis is also the first in-depth study on a Christian community in
contemporary rural Palestine.
Accordingly, chapter 1 provides an extensive introduction to the social,
cultural, political, and religious dynamics in Taybeh, with special emphasis on the
missionary interventions in its history. On the basis of this portrait it is argued that
Palestinian Christian identity should be understood in an organic way in which
religious and national identities are intertwined. Chapter 2 deals with the implication
of this identity and explores how Palestinian Christians relate to the broader society.
The chapter shows that Palestinian Christians have emerged as a socially and
politically engaged community, thereby re-integrating the study of Palestinian
Christianity with the wider context of the Middle East. Chapter 3 provides a
grassroots theology that forms the basis of everyday religious practices that relate to
theologies of the land and, ultimately, to a deep sense of belonging. The chapter
particularly focuses on how Palestinian Christians have constructed and reimagined
their identity as essentially biblical. Chapter 4 shifts the attention to the Palestinian
veneration of Saint George and the Virgin Mary and argues that these ancient
practices focused on human flourishing have transformed into another platform for
grassroots theological ideas. In this last chapter it is argued that theologies of
martyrdom, liberation, and belonging are rooted in the Arabic notions of baraka
(‘blessing’) and ṣumūd (‘steadfastness’). Ultimately, the study finds Palestinian
Christian vitality in common faith and everyday religious identity, thereby
counteracting popular rhetoric of extinction and persecution.