The sanctuary was filled with the sound of Arabic worship. I sat in a folding chair in a brightly-lit second story room in Nazareth as a translator quietly interpreted the sermon. Around me, men and women lifted their voices in songs I did not know, yet somehow recognized. Though the language was unfamiliar, the rhythm of the service felt deeply familiar—Scripture read aloud, prayers offered, the Lord’s Supper shared, and the good news of Jesus preached with conviction and clarity.
For years, I had wanted to visit the land of the Bible, to see the places where Jesus lived and taught. But sitting there among Palestinian believers on my first Sunday in the country, I realized something: the most important thing I would encounter in the Holy Land was not ancient stones, but the living, breathing church. This pilgrimage I was on would introduce me to a community of believers whose faith has endured in the land for 2,000 years and whose witness would challenge and deepen my understanding of the global church.
While much of Western Christianity’s attention to the Holy Land focuses on biblical sites and modern geopolitics, far less is given to the vibrant, faithful, and often overlooked church that has existed there continuously since the time of Christ. Yes, we were there to see the traditional holy sites, but we were also there to meet and connect with our brothers and sisters in Christ who have called this land home for the past 2,000 years.
This pilgrimage was not something I undertook alone. I traveled with my mom, Becky, and my twin brother, Ben, who guided our trip. For nearly a year and a half beforehand, we had been preparing together. Ben walked us through a journey of learning as we read books and articles, watched films, and met weekly over Zoom to talk through what we were learning.
Through visits to Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Nazareth, Jaffa, and Ramallah, and through conversations with local believers, pastors, and educators, I encountered a Christian community that is not a relic of history but a living body — worshiping, creating, suffering, and persevering in hope. These are our brothers and sisters in Christ who worship and witness in the land where the gospel first took root.
Enjoying Hospitality
One of the first things I experienced among Palestinian Christians was their deep and generous hospitality.
While in Nazareth, we stayed at a guest house run by a Palestinian Christian couple whose family has lived in Nazareth for generations. Each morning they set out mountains of food, displaying a generosity that reflects the deep hospitality of Palestinian culture. The couple retired from careers in education and tourism to run the guesthouse. With COVID and then the war in Gaza, tourism has almost entirely dried up. We were the only guests in the whole house. Despite the challenges, they went out of their way to ensure we were well taken care of.
In Ramallah, we were hosted by a Palestinian Christian couple and their sweet (and precocious) 2-year-old daughter who immediately adopted us as honorary family members. They shared their house, their food, and their lives with us for a few days.
When we arrived, we were greeted with a traditional meal called maqluba (“upside-down” in Arabic), a one pot dish featuring rice, veggies and chicken. The pot is then turned over onto a serving platter, and the bottom of the pot is drummed on by the family and guests and then lifted away leaving a cake shaped presentation of the dish.
On other occasions, we enjoyed Palestinian barbecue, fresh hummus and pita roasted over open fires, freshly pressed olive oil, Palestinian coffee (Arabic coffee with cardamom), and a traditional dessert called kanafeh. We were treated with warmth, openness, and unaffected generosity everywhere we went. In these and many more ordinary acts of welcome, I experienced something humbling: These brothers and sisters were pouring out their time and resources in spite of the conspicuous difficulties and challenges they face every day.
Yet alongside this hospitality was a clear and sobering reality: life for many Palestinians is marked by severe limitations on movement, free speech, and resources.
Visiting Bethlehem
Bethlehem is south of Jerusalem by half an hour and was where we saw most clearly the frustration and suffering of our brothers and sisters. We stayed at the guest house of a local Christian seminary called Bethlehem Bible College. BBC was founded in 1979 by Bishara Awad, a school principal who saw promising young Palestinian Christians going abroad for their seminary training and never returning. Since 1980, the college has educated native Palestinian pastors and Christian leaders, many of whom have stayed in the Holy Land in spite of the fact that life in Palestine is not easy.
The Christian population in Bethlehem has declined significantly over the past 80 years, from 86% in the late 1940s to around 10% today. And this is not isolated to Bethlehem. The number of Christians in the West Bank is also shrinking. In 1948, 10% of Palestine’s population was Christian, compared to only 1%- 2% Christian today. Many factors contribute to that trend, but the difficulty of life in the West Bank is a primary reason.
One prime example of the factors that make life difficult sits a few blocks down the street from our guest house: the 30-foot high separation wall that cuts through large swaths of the West Bank, shaving off northern Bethlehem and effectively cutting off Palestinians from their farmland and the larger Jerusalem metropolis. Constructed in the early 2000s, the wall is imposing—covered in graffiti and punctuated by sniper towers. In Bethlehem, it cuts through what was once a thriving business district. The border wall and its system of checkpoints mean that freedom of movement is severely restricted.
What would normally be a half-hour drive often takes four hours or more; sometimes the drive is not possible at all. A minister I met who lives north of Jerusalem has regular pastoral duties that bring him south of the city. He plans a 3-to-4-hour buffer to get to his destination because he just doesn’t know which checkpoints will be open or if the lines will be moving slowly. Sometimes he is turned away and can’t make it to this destination at all.
One afternoon, I shared a meal with a young art student who had just been released after six months of administrative detention — the equivalent of being sent to prison without charges. He spoke candidly about his experience, yet with a quiet resilience that surfaced again in his artwork, which celebrated Palestinian land, agriculture, and identity.
Not long after, I met a Palestinian Christian woman whose family land had been seized by extremist settlers, and despite a favorable court ruling, the family has not yet reoccupied their homes due to continuing military and settler intervention. Still, she and her family continue pursuing justice while holding fast to their faith.
These stories, though only a glimpse, gave personal weight to the broader realities we had been hearing about, revealing both the vulnerability and perseverance of the Palestinian communities in the West Bank.
In Scripture, Bethlehem was often depicted as a place of joy and tragedy. It is a place of joy, the house of bread where Ruth experiences God’s goodness in surprising ways. And of course, it was the birth place of Jesus Christ. But it’s also a place of tragedy, as families suffered at the hands of Herod who ordered the slaughter of children. The joy of the incarnation is interwoven with grief. Bethlehem, in Scripture as it does now, holds both light and darkness together. These modern brothers and sisters in Christ embody that same tension of sorrow and hope.
An Enduring Faith
Despite these and other pressures, the Palestinian church is not merely surviving; it is actively proclaiming the good news of Jesus and reminding the rest of the global church what faithfulness to Christ looks like.
On our second Sunday, we worshiped in Ramallah at a church led by Munther Isaac, a pastor educated at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. He is the director of the Bethlehem Institute for Peace and Justice, a Palestinian Christian institute seeking to help the global church recover a more faithful reading of Scripture amid violence and injustice. Through theological scholarship, leadership formation, and public engagement, it amplifies the voices of Palestinian Christians—voices often absent from Western conversations about the Holy Land.
BIPJ hosts a biennial conference called Christ at the Checkpoint that is held in Bethlehem in the West Bank and brings Christian leaders from around the world into direct engagement with Palestinian Christian theology and experience. Through biblical reflection, theological dialogue, and firsthand testimony, the gathering invites the global church to wrestle more faithfully with the relationship between the gospel, justice, and the realities facing Palestinians and Israelis today.
The Palestinian brothers and sisters that I met along the way in Israel and the West Bank reminded me that God’s vision for the church has always been global. Bound by modern borders and countless pressures — economic hardships, political uncertainty, and social constraints — their lives nonetheless tell the story of a faith that is ancient, expansive, and hopeful.
I saw it in the warmth of their hospitality, the steadfast rhythm of their worship, and the courage with which they nurture their families and broader communities despite overwhelming obstacles. Their stories revealed a resilience rooted not in human wisdom, but in a trust that God’s promises extend far beyond the walls we build and that the gospel continues to thrive even in places disfigured by oppression.
In conversations with Palestinian Christians, worshiping with them, and breaking bread in their homes, I witnessed a faithful remnant rooted in the very soil of Scripture, carrying forward a 2,000-year Christian presence in the land of Christ’s birth. The Palestinian believers embody those ancient paths of the early church not as nostalgia or a tourist curiosity but as a costly, present-tense discipleship, reminding the church in the West that it is not prestige, power, or prominence that define a healthy church, but faithfulness and perseverance.
Andy Norquist serves as a ruling elder at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Providence, Rhode Island.