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[PCUSANEWS] 'Suffering Christ tells best the story'


From PCUSA NEWS <PCUSA.NEWS@ecunet.org>
Date 20 May 2003 11:20:15 -0400

Note #7694 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

'Suffering Christ tells best the story'
03238
May 19, 2003
	
'Suffering Christ tells best the story'

PC(USA) is playing host to peacemaking pastor from Palestine

by John Filiatreau

LOUISVILLE - Sometimes people don't know what to make of Mitri Raheb. 
	
He's an Arab Palestinian Lutheran Christian pacifist pastor and educator from
Bethlehem with a German education and a Vatican passport and an office in the
River City headquarters building of the Presbyterian Church (USA).
	
"Whenever I introduce myself, people are shocked, or confused, to meet at
Arab Palestinian Christian ... who is not a recent convert, but a person
whose roots go back to the first missionary, Jesus Christ himself," Raheb
said recently. "In fact, our (Palestinian) forefathers were the ones to
export the gospel so successfully. ...
	
"For many people, this is a view of history they are not used to, because
they think Arab is only a Muslim. But I always tell them: The gospel was
already proclaimed in the Arabic language at Pentecost."
	As an unofficial ambassador of a tiny Christian minority in the very
cradle of Christianity, Raheb speaks with a tongue of flame, and serves as a
beacon of hope.
	
He dreams of peace - and works for peace. For 15 years he has embraced and
promoted a distinctly Christian vision of a non-violent rapprochement between
warring parties in his despairing, peace-deprived homeland, which he calls "a
country where there is no light at the end of the tunnel."
	
Raheb, 40, clings to a faith that Israelis and Palestinians will one day turn
away from violence, having realized that it is destroying both their
societies. The current situation, he said, is "basically an apartheid
system."
	
He said he envisions "something like a two-state solution where two states,
Israel and Palestine, live side-by-side, taking the 1967 border as the
border." He added, characteristically, that he also can imagine a one-state
solution, in which Jews, Christians and Muslims live together in
"Israel/Palestine."
	
He is hopeful that U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's "road map" will
actually show the way to peace between Israel and Palestine, but isn't sure
Powell and other American officials are sincere.
	
"They proved to be very serious about war," he said. "I hope they will be as
serious about peace."
	
Raheb believes education - training in art, music, journalism, critical
thinking and Christian principles - can redeem "the children on the street
who are throwing stones" and prepare a new generation of Palestinians to
imagine, then build, a peaceful society.
	
Raheb, the pastor since 1988 of Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in
Jesus' hometown, is a visiting professor at Louisville Presbyterian
Theological Seminary and has served since the first of the year as a
mission-partner-in-residence at the Presbyterian Center here. He has made
dozens of appearances around the country, speaking about war and peace in the
Middle East and about the plight of his ancient, uprooted people. 
	
He also has done his best to banish stereotypes. 
	
In America, he says, "Palestinians are only seen, unfortunately, as violent
people, or as victims. I am trying to challenge these two perceptions -
because part of them may be violent, but the majority are not; and while they
are victims of Israeli occupation, the Palestinians have so many people with
faith and creativity, visions, ambitions, goals, which is the side I would
like to highlight, so there is hope."
	
Raheb also has spoken to many Presbyterian groups about how their mission
funds are used by one of the PC(USA)'s partners in Palestine, the Evangelical
Lutheran Church in Jerusalem.
	
In addition to his 220-member church (the oldest Lutheran church in
Palestine, founded in 1854), Raheb also is the founder of Dar al-Kalima
("House of the Word") Model School, a Christian school attended by more than
200 children ranging in age from 3 to 14, and as general director of the Dar
al-Nadwa ("House of Worldwide Encounter") International Center, a Palestinian
arts-and-culture institution in Bethlehem.
	
After three months in the United States, Raheb admitted during an interview
in March to being a little homesick.
	
"My heart is there," he said of Bethlehem, "but I am always a person who,
wherever he is, likes to be there 100 percent. If I am here, I don't want to
do like the old Israelite, to sit here on the Ohio River and think of
Bethlehem and weep."
	
Glancing from his downtown office window at a bridge over the broad river, he
added: "I see my time here exactly as this bridge. ... I'm trying to be a
bridge between two regions which a war maybe is threatening to tear apart."
	
The war Raheb so dreaded soon came to pass. He said in a later conversation
that he'd found it "very interesting" to watch events in Iraq unfold on TV.
	
"I saw the American media and some of the Arab media," he said. "Same war,
two very different explanations, very different understandings, of this war.
I'm not a fan of Al Jazeera (the Arabic-language satellite news channel
funded by the Emir of Qatar), because I think it is very emotional, tries to
play on the feelings of the people, and is not helpful. ...
	
"But the American media, for example Fox News, was even more emotional. The
mainline American media didn't really have any critical things to say about
the war." (Raheb said he depended on National Public Radio and the British
Broadcasting Company for more objective coverage.)
	
Even before the war, Raheb was no fan of the American media. He believes U.S.
coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is wildly unbalanced in Israel's
favor. He blames, in part, "ignorance on the part of many journalists, who
have never visited the land and stayed to see the whole truth." (Most U.S.
journalists who visit Israel, he said, do so as guests of the Israeli
government and stay for only a few days.) 
	
"The puzzling factor is that in the land where freedom of speech is
guaranteed, you have the most pro-Jewish, anti-Palestinian media," he said.
"If there is an attack on an Israeli bus, you will have it, it will run 24
hours non-stop. On the other hand, if you have Palestinian kids (killed),
they are just numbers. They will not be mentioned by name, and no pictures.
...
	
"Just yesterday six people were killed in Gaza, and four others were killed
three weeks ago, and on, and on, and on, and on ..." 
	
Raheb said he is suspicious of American motives for the war on Iraq and
doubts that U.S. officials are much "interested in the Iraqi people, or in
human rights." 
	
America, like Israel, is too quick to resort to force, he said: "I am so
fearful for America. I see the U.S. is more and more ... trying to learn from
Israel. But Israel is the worst teacher. ... I really wish the U.S. would
speak tough words to Israel, speak to Israel as a father speaks to a spoiled
son."
	
Raheb is harshly critical of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and
Gaza.
	
In a February speech in Washington, DC, he asked: "How can we speak of a
hopeful vision when (Israeli) Prime Minister (Ariel) Sharon has just been
re-elected in Israel, when settlements are expanding throughout the West Bank
like mushrooms, when an eight-meter-high wall is being built, as we speak,
around Bethlehem, transforming the little town into a big prison for 170,000
people?"
	
For Raheb, the occupation hit especially close to home in April 2002, when
Israeli armored forces tore up his Dar al-Kalima School in Bethlehem,
destroying its arts-and-crafts workshops and leaving many offices in
shambles. Raheb himself was held at gunpoint for several hours. 
	
A few days later, he wrote defiantly: "We are here and will remain here.
Nothing will be able to stop us witnessing to the Lord of life." 
	
Raheb's church has worship services in both English and Arabic. It also
conducts Bible studies and sponsors a vibrant youth program, women's groups
and a forum for students returning to Palestine from abroad - all open to
people of all religious beliefs. The school, a joint project of Christmas
Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Palestine and Jordan, is also
involved in the community through its wellness and health centers. The
International Center offers workshops in arts and crafts and trains men and
women to lead "authentic" tours of the Holy Land.
	
Raheb has complained that many visitors "come here as if they are walking
through a Christian Walt Disney land or a theme park."
	
He told the Presbyterian News Service that he believes "Palestine can never
have a future without a class of people who are educated." He believes in
what he calls "American-style" education, which values critical thinking and
creativity rather than rote learning - supplemented with energetic promotion
of Christian principles.
	
"My vision is to develop, educate, train a new generation capable of meeting
all these difficult challenges - political instability, the occupation,
unemployment, stereotyping and so on - so that the region can have a future,"
he said. "One of our biggest visions and goals for the center is that, like,
30 years down the road, we'd like to see major journalists, artists,
musicians and communicators in Palestine are graduates of our academy."
	
Raheb described a recent event in Bethlehem that he believes demonstrated the
redemptive power of art.
	
"Our center organized a competition for artists, on Jesus in the Palestinian
context," he said. "Sixteen artists submitted paintings, and we had an
international jury. ... The most impressive thing is that over half of the
artists ... were Muslims. In Islam you are not allowed to paint any of the
saints or prophets or holy people, and yet here 60 percent of the artists
were Muslims.
	
"The startling thing is that all of them except one had the crucifixion of
Christ as the center of their paintings. Although it is against their belief,
the suffering Christ tells best the story of the Palestinian people."
	
Raheb said he was heartened before the war in Iraq to see "first-hand" that
many Americans "were very vocal in opposing the war," and that "there was
very serious opposition among churches, church leaders and church
organizations." He said he was impressed "because the toughest job is always
if you oppose your government - it's always easier to oppose someone else's
government."
	
Doing exactly that, he complained that the United States has not been
consistent in its policies regarding the Middle East.
	
"I agree with ... Colin Powell where he's saying the United Nations should be
serious about their resolutions, and implement them," he said. "Amen to that;
but that is not the case when it comes to Israel. There is not any other
country where they have taken so many decisions (that) remain just ink on
paper."
	
Raheb is an advocate of what he calls "contextual theology," which he said
grows out of the question: "What does faith mean to people living in such
circumstances?"
	
"The real challenge today," he has written, "for Palestinians in general and
for Christian Palestinians in particular, is, how to hold to a hopeful vision
in a context of despair, and to peace in times of bitter conflict and war."
	Partly because of this "context of despair," he said, too many young
Palestinians are "leaving the Promised Land (Palestine) for the promised land
(the United States)."
	
He said he was shocked last month to see how little attention the media paid
to Holy Week and Easter observances, even though "Christianity here is like
the biggest religion." What little coverage there was, he said, seemed to be
about "eggs and the rabbit."
	
"Holy Week doesn't get much attention in a marketing-oriented society," he
said. "It is very difficult to market suffering." 
	
As his people have learned over many generations. 
	
Raheb's wife, Najwa, and their daughters, Dana, 12, and Tala, 8, joined him
in Louisville for his six-month stint in the United States. Raheb said his
children, who attend a local Lutheran school, "have learned so many new
things - but also they learn to value some of the things they have back
home." 

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