Bethlehem, West Bank —
Father Munter Isaac draws on 2,000 years of history of Christian faith and practice to study and spread the teachings of Jesus Christ.
But he worries that the place where Christ was born and killed faces an even more difficult future, not only because of the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, but also because of the actions of some fellow Christians.
Although Christians in Jerusalem face near-daily verbal and physical attacks, Isaac argues that the presence and experiences of Palestinian believers are largely invisible to American evangelicals who support the return of the holy sites to Jews.
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“Come and see,” was the call from Isaac, director of the Bethlehem Institute for Peace and Justice, Father Bashar Fawadleh of the last fully Christian town in the occupied West Bank, and other clergy.
“In our experience, when pastors and congregations come to Palestine and see the wall and the settlements and meet families struggling to survive on their land, that’s when their eyes are opened,” Isaac said.
Isaac and Fawadre hope to reach out to evangelicals who follow a broad movement known as Christian Zionism, which sees the modern state of Israel as the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy.
But they say it ignores the Palestinian Christian community and goes against the Christian spirit of loving one’s neighbor.
“Theology has been weaponized,” Isaac said. “These are Christians who are funding and supporting a major threat to our existence in this land today.”
Isaac, 47, was born in Beit Sahour, a Christian town near Bethlehem. Jewish settlements have spread across much of the land he played as a child, and he can no longer walk several miles from his home in Bethlehem to Jerusalem’s ancient churches, temples, and mosques. The West Bank town is surrounded by a 26-foot-tall Israeli separation wall, introduced during the Second Intifada to prevent suicide bombers from easily reaching Jerusalem.
Israel has stepped up its support for construction on Palestinian land over the last year. This forced many Muslims to emigrate and further divided the approximately 50,000 Christians living in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Fawadre said more than 90 people have left Taybeh, known as Ephraim in the Gospel of John, in the past three years. Currently, the last fully Christian town in the West Bank has about 1,200 residents, and that number is at risk of declining further.
Mr. Fawadre said his parishioners were afraid to harvest their olive groves, and Roland Bashir said his cement factory outside Taybeh was under attack by settlers almost daily. “If I had the chance to leave here, I would not stay here, I would leave because there is no future for me and my children,” he said.
What is troubling for Christian leaders is that the moral and financial support for settlement expansion comes from many people loyal to “Christian Zionism.” In January, the Patriarch and Head of the Church of Jerusalem issued a statement calling it a “harmful” ideology.
Christian Zionists see the Bible as telling them to assist Jews living beyond the Holy Land in order to hasten Christ’s return and the end of the world and allow Christians to transition into an eternal afterlife.
The most prominent faith-based organizations supporting Israeli settlements include the U.S.-based evangelical groups United Christians for Israel (CUFI) and Christian Friends of the Community of Israel (CFOIC), both of which emphasize Bible verses in their missions.
CFOIC says it supports 80 Israeli “communities” in the occupied West Bank, which it calls by the biblical names of Judea and Samaria. On its website, the group urges supporters to “give generously to help the community of Biblical Israel thrive.”
Kimberly Troup, director of the CFOIC’s U.S. office, told CNN that she is friends with the Bethlehem pastor and understands that Palestinian Christians left Bethlehem because of Muslim persecution, not Israeli actions.
“Christian Zionism is a true expression of the Biblical faith, grounded in the Bible, and we Christians believe that the Bible is the Word of God. Being a Christian Zionist means following the Word of God as recorded in the Bible, where God gave the land of Israel to the Jewish people.”
Isaac argues that this does not take into account the realities of life on the ground, and that the land in question is already inhabited by Christians and Muslims.
“When you think about the settler threat to our way of life these days, the real threat to our way of life as Palestinian Christians, these are the Christians who are funding and supporting the great threat to our existence in this land today,” Isaac said. “What this shows, again, is that we are not in their plans. They don’t think about us. They don’t see us.”
CUFI said in an emailed statement that it supports the Israeli government and declined to respond to Isaac.
Isaac jokes that evangelicals, including U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, himself a Baptist minister, seem to be living in the 7th century B.C.
In a statement to CNN, Huckabee rejected Isaac’s criticism and said he personally knows Palestinian Christians who are also Christian Zionists.
“No one misses the experience of Palestinian Christians in the Holy Land. But evangelicals believe in the Bible, all of it,” Huckabee continued. “This is not a cafeteria where we choose what suits our prejudices and desires. There is no ‘racism’ in believing what the Bible clearly says about God’s promises to the Jewish people. The Jewish faith is the foundation of the Christian faith. I hope Pastor Isaac will join evangelicals in calling for obedience to the authority of the Bible.”
Isaac converts through social media and challenges people to learn about the Palestinian Christian presence by giving interviews and traveling to the United States for conferences.
“I think a lot of evangelicals are starting to identify with our perspective,” he says.
“We’re not coming into this discussion saying, ‘Forget the Bible, let’s talk politics.’ That’s not our approach. Our approach is, ‘Let’s read the Bible together,’ but let’s read the Bible together with Palestinian Christians and connect it with the reality on the ground.”
Last year, while touring his book, “Christ in the Rubble,” Isaac gave a lecture at Wheaton College, one of the most prominent evangelical institutions in the United States. To him, the invitation from traditionally conservative evangelical groups suggests that young Christians are beginning to question long-held assumptions.
Opinion polls appear to reflect that shift. A 2025 University of Maryland study found that 51% of older evangelical Americans were more sympathetic to Israelis than Palestinians, compared to 24% of younger evangelicals.
Isaac is now supported by some converts, including Ben Norquist, who says that when he was growing up in Minnesota, he accepted Christian Zionism as a legitimate narrative and never thought about who would be negatively affected.
“Palestinians were invisible to me,” he recalled to CNN, adding that his perspective changed in his 20s when he began engaging with Palestinian stories and eventually traveled to the Holy Land for his doctorate, focusing on higher education in the Palestinian territories.
“What’s important about what happened to me is that the process didn’t make me less of a Christian, so to speak. I never questioned the foundations of my faith. I felt like I was actually discovering a truer version of what Jesus was calling us to all along. That’s how I still feel.”
Both Isaac and Fawadre believe they have a special role as Christians in the Holy Land.
Fawadre welcomes your visit. He said, “Jesus invited two disciples of John the Baptist to come and see. Hear what we have to say.”
Isaac echoed his call for peace. “We feel the weight of history to continue the Christian presence and message from where it all began. That message must be about love of neighbor, justice and peacebuilding.”
