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Liberation theology has complex origins which include the tradition of the church’s thinking on politics and economics, going all the way back to the Church Fathers; more immediately Catholic Social Teaching and Catholic Action, which followed from that, with its motto of “See, Judge, Act;” Vatican II and the ferment which followed from it; European political theology; the educational philosophy of Paulo Freire; and the “Christian-Marxist dialogue” of the 1960 s (Dawson 1998 ).

Catholic Social Teaching and the long tradition on which it draws such as Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum , promulgated in 1891 , condemned the bad living conditions of the urban poor of Europe. Since then, successive Popes have taken it upon themselves to condemn European liberal capitalism while taking a stand in favor of the poor and the down-trodden. Pius XI in 1931 issued Quadragesimo Anno which affirmed certain Christian attributes in socialism such as the sharing of property for the common good, something long advocated by Christian reformers over the ages. All Popes since Leo XIII, while staunchly conservative and fiercely anti-Communist, were still sympathetic to moderate versions of socialist endeavor.

Vatican II, called by Pope John XXIII in 1962 , took the concern with peace and justice further. Paul VI’s Encyclical Populorum Progressio was concerned with the question of worldwide poverty and development, particularly in the two-thirds world. It traced “Third World” poverty to the impact and continuing end-results of colonialism, neo-colonialism, unfair trade practices and the great inequality in power among the nations. It was critical of laissez-faire capitalism that was responsible for ensuring the wealth and prosperity of Western elite societies at the expense of deprivation and poverty in much of the rest of the world. However, it spoke of “development,” which still entailed capitalism, as a “new name for peace” (Dawson 1998 , 126 ).

When the Vatican II Conference was over, two conferences in Latin America, one in Medellin in Colombia and the other in Puebla, Mexico, took these ideas further and first came up with the phrase, “theology of liberation” (Boff 1987 , 9 ). For theologians like Gustavo Gutiérrez, the term “development” could not fully embrace the needs of the people and especially the poor of Latin America, who were being sidelined in the lop-sided development that takes place in most third world countries. On the Protestant side, an organization known as “Church and Society in Latin America” (popularly known by its Spanish acronym of ISAL- Iglesia y Sociedad en America Latina- Church and Society in Latin America), had been founded by Richard Shaull and supported by the World Council of Churches-WCC (Smith 1991 , 17 ). This organization was involved in developing what they termed a theology of revolution, as opposed to a theology of development. As a Protestant theological cum social action movement, ISAL, in its early days, was convinced that a gradualist approach to social transformation in Latin America was quite inadequate, given the entrenched and exploitative nature of the rule of dominant groups in these countries.

Shaull and his organization were interested in trying to develop a Christian basis for revolutionary socio-political transformation, one that would not necessarily involve the need for violence (Rider 1998 , 61 ). The theology of revolution certainly made its mark on Latin American Catholic theologians who were already becoming more and more ecumenically-oriented as a result of the post-World War II changes and the Second Vatican council. In the late 1960 s, ISAL itself began to feel that the terminology of a so-called theology of revolution was not particularly appropriate to the Latin American situation and then the term liberation began to be spoken of.

The works of European political theologians, in particular Jürgen Moltmann and Johann Baptist Metz, were also important. They regarded Christianity as a “critical witness in society” (Gutierrez 2001 , 208 ). European political theology was very evident in the writings of all the main liberation theologians, especially those trained in Europe in the 1950 s and 1960 s. Both Moltmann and Metz sought to make theology responsive to its socio-political situation.

Liberation theologians have always insisted that their interpretation of theology was not just a “re-interpretation of what is generally known as Western theology,” but an “irruption” of God active and living among the poor (Chopp and Regan 2005 , 469 ). Liberation theology, at least in the way it was practiced in Latin America, claimed to be a new method of developing a theology that would seek to address the “seemingly hopeless” situation of the poor people of Latin America.

I shall seek to highlight four key themes of liberation theology in this essay. The first was the priority of praxis. For Gutiérrez, theology was a “second step,” reflection on action. However for Gutierrez, this “reflection on action” should also be based on the “indisputable” Word of God, the Holy Scriptures of the Christian faith. In this context, the Brazilian Catholic theologian Hugo Assman argued that, “ . . . the Bible, tradition, the magisterium or teaching authority of the Church, history of dogma, and so on . . . even though they need to be worked out in contemporary practice, do not constitute a primary source of ‘truth-in-itself’” (Assman 1975 , 104–5 ).

Assman has also been critical of the hermeneutical approach of many so-called liberation theologians, critiquing the relevance and necessity of a biblical hermeneutics, which did not take into consideration the masses of new techniques and data offered by secular and social sciences as well as the need to think practically about the situation at hand. He was equally critical of the “biblicists” as well as those Marxist historians and analysts who sought in his view to impose a “fundamentalism of the Left” by attempting to transplant biblical paradigms and situations into this world without understanding their historical context and situation. He saw the theology of liberation as a critical reflection on the present historical situation “in all its intensity and complexity.” Instead of the Bible, the “text” of current reality should be the situational précis point that requires analysis and theologizing. As a result, the main issue for Assman was one of hermeneutical criteria. He had little use for those who claim that the best sets of hermeneutics available to Christians are located in the “sacred text,” arguing instead for an analysis of reality based on the circumstances of “today” (Assman 1975 , 104–5 ).

Rather, it was liberative action which was the indispensable basis for reflection. Early on, the Exodus paradigm was normative: the poor were seen as engaged on a journey from slavery to freedom, escaping the bondage of class and debt. The theme of the kingdom of God was also prominent. All liberation theologians make a link between liberation and God’s justice as the primal theme in Christian theology. Gutiérrez denied wanting to fashion a theology from which political action was “deduced” (Gutierrez 1974 , intro-ix). What he wanted, rather, was to let ourselves be judged by the word of the Lord, to think through our faith, to strengthen our love, and to give reason for our hope from within a commitment which seeks to become more radical, total, and efficacious. It is to reconsider the great themes of the Christian life within this radically changed perspective and with regard to the new questions posed by this commitment. This is the goal of the so-called theology of liberation (Gutierrez 1974 , ix).

The insistence on beginning with praxis led to a new hermeneutic. Juan Luis Segundo defined the hermeneutical circle as “the continuing change in our interpretation of the Bible which is dictated by the continuing changes in our present-day reality, both individual and societal” (Hennelly 1979 , 109 ). Segundo’s method was made up of four steps that correspond to a kind of theological circle. The first step requires recognition of reality on our part that automatically leads to ideological suspicion of that reality. Secondly, the application of “ideological suspicion” entails its application to the whole theological superstructure in general. Thirdly Segundo calls for a new way of experiencing and living theological reality, which would in turn lead us to a kind of exegetical suspicion (that would mean a suspicion that current biblical interpretation did not take into account important data). Fourthly he recommended the development of a new hermeneutic that would provide a new way of interpreting “our faith,” based on Scripture, with many of the new academic as well as critical-analytic techniques at our disposal (Hennelly 1979 , 109 ). Bible reading began with the experience of oppression, which led to suspicion of current Biblical interpretation, which led to new readings of Scripture, which led to new views of society.

Second, liberation theology sought to establish itself not in relation to the institutional church or the academy, but in relation to the communidades di base (in Spanish, the base communities) of peasants and workers who constituted the church. These communities form the root from which pastoral workers, priests and theologians sought to develop their theologies of liberation (Witvliet 1985 , 138–39 ).

Base communities have been described as “grassroots communities” where Christians seek to form and live out their Christian witness in their historical situation (Chopp and Regan 2005 , 471 ). While present in all Latin American states, base communities became most popular in Brazil, where they at one time numbered in the hundreds of thousands. It was in recognition of this fact that the EATWOT Congress in Sao Paulo, Brazil in 1980 was focused on the ecclesiology of Basic Christian Communities (BCC’s). BCC provide the basis for a historical praxis of liberation that comes before theological manifestation. They also act as a source of ecclesiology as well as a place where the “poor and the oppressed” manage to get a place of their own in the historical process. The BCC were always firmly located within the entrenched feudal and semi-feudal forces of bourgeois control in the Latin American nations.

The BCC owe their origin to a wide nature of factors, including the great shortage of priests in Latin America, the desire of the laity to be an active part of the church in the region and the natural desire on the part of the masses for a Latin American church that was responsive to their wishes and aspirations. In short, BCC were a manifestation of the contextualization of Latin America’s hitherto heavily Euro-centric church and religio-cultural sphere. As stated earlier, the necessity for social resistance could also give rise to a group of people meeting to coordinate various policies of community action in the light of Gospel teachings. There have been frequent periods and places in the modern history of Latin American states when and where it was extremely dangerous for anybody to be part of a BCC, inviting almost certain incarceration and death, if detected (Witvliet 1985 , 138–39 ).

Thirdly, Liberation theology espoused the “option for the poor.” Liberation theologians took as their starting point, the reality of social oppression and misery around them and as their end-goal, the elimination of this kind of misery and “the liberation of the oppressed” (Smith 1991 , 27 ). Christian Smith ( 1991 ) summarized liberation theology as an attempt to “reconceptualize the Christian faith from the perspective of the poor and the oppressed.” For Jon Sobrino (Chopp and Regan 2005 , 475 ), the poor were a privileged channel of God’s grace (Chopp and Regan 2005 , 475 ). According to Phillip Berryman, liberation theology was, “an interpretation of Christian faith through the poor’s suffering, their struggle and hope, and a critique of society and the Catholic faith and Christianity through the eyes of the poor” (Berryman 1987 , 4 ).

Liberation theology is a critique of the structures and institutions that create the poor, including the primary identification of modern Christianity with the rich. In order to do this, liberation theology engages in dialogue not only with philosophy but also with the social sciences. As a theological discourse of critique and transformation in solidarity with the poor, liberation theology offers a theological anthropology that is political, an interpretation of Christianity that may be characterized through the term “liberation,” and a vision of Christianity as praxis of love and solidarity with the oppressed (Chopp and Regan 2005 , 471 ).

Again it has been postulated that it might be best to think of liberation theology as an entirely new genre of theology based on a specific faith-praxis. Liberation theology was specifically focused on Christian praxis amidst the poor, the oppressed and the deprived of this world (Chopp and Regan 2005 , 473 ). In its emphasis on analysis, liberation theology was a “contextual” theology, albeit mainly in relation to the social, political and economic context. Eventually, the option for the poor led to an awareness of the importance of native forms of spirituality in liberation theology (Hawley 1995 ).

Liberation theology was often criticized for being overly political, but for Gutiérrez, liberation in its full form denoted salvation in Jesus Christ. In Gutiérrez’s view, liberation in Jesus can be denoted as a single salvation process, which concerns the very identity of Christianity and the mission of the church (Gutierrez 1974 , 11 ). Gutiérrez constantly reminded First World Christians that the subject and ultimate goal of liberation theology was not “theology,” but “liberation.” The ultimate call of every “servant of Christ” was to the task of liberation, and not to the task of theology, “unless that theology is a servant of liberation” (Ruether 1992 , 27 ). This was a point frequently emphasized by Gustavo Gutierrez in the discussions leading up to the Third Latin American Bishops Conference (CELAM-III), as well as in his talk during the press conference after the Conference at Puebla, Mexico, February 1979 (Gutierrez 1974 , 11 ).

The American Feminist Catholic theologian Rosemary R. Ruether meanwhile emphasized that there could be no neutral theology, anymore than there could be neutral sociology or psychology. “Theology” could be used either as a good and positive tool on the side of all of humanity, by being on the side of the oppressed, or else it could be used “as a tool of alienation and oppression,” by being on the side of the oppressors (Ruether 1992 , 27 ).

Most Palestinian theologians own their debt to the Latin American liberation theologians (Lende 2003 , 51 ). The Palestinian Anglican theologian Naim Ateek (1989 ) always used the term “Palestinian Liberation Theology” to refer to his work (Ateek 1989 , 51 ). The Sabeel (river or stream of life in Arabic) Centre that he helped to found in East Jerusalem has modeled itself in its activities as an interdenominational ecumenical centre/institute for the development of a Palestinian Christian theology of liberation in the “Holy Land.” At the same time, there are crucial differences between the Latin American and the Palestinian context. In the first place, Latin America was a continent where the vast majority of the poor are Christian. In Palestine, Christians are only a tiny minority. This means liberation theology cannot simply be transposed from one situation to another.

Secondly, the option for the poor in Latin America was about class. In Palestine, all Palestinians are oppressed. Class in Palestine was largely focused on the difference between town and village dwellers in the Palestinian Territories and socio-religious differences between Arab Muslims, Muslim Bedouins, Druze, Arab Christians and other non-Arab Muslim groups dwelling in the territory of Palestine-Israel. What was being dealt with here was a perverse form of racism where Semites are discriminating against Semites.

Finally, Palestinian theologians do not have the background in Marxism which many Latin American theologians had. To them, it was an alien form of analysis and they sought to turn elsewhere for understanding society. All Palestinian liberation/contextual theology practitioners tend to interact and relate (intellectually, culturally, and politically) more with the (formerly colonial) West, than with their fellow (formerly colonized and oppressed) global Easterners or Southerners (Christians of South Asia, the Far East, and Western or sub-Saharan Africa, for instance). This is partly about where wealth, power and global political control was centered in today’s world, but it may also reflect a kind of “elitist” or “superior” Arab understanding of the so-called “two-thirds” world. The Arab psyche, and in this context, the Arab Christian psyche, demands recognition from Western Christians as one of the most western-oriented of Christian minority groups in the Eastern Mediterranean region. They see this as a reflection of the historic ties that Arab Christians have had with Christians in the European West during the long centuries of Islamic rule in this region. Ties between Western and Eastern Christians were particularly cemented during the period of the Crusades, which saw a sustained Western intrusion into the region, both from a military, colonial and religio-cultural point of view.

The Ottoman territories of the “Near East” or “Middle East” were also one of the first regions outside Europe penetrated and influenced by Western Christian missionaries and administrators, thereby having a considerable cultural impact on the life and prospects of Arabic-speaking Christians in the area. Many Arab Christians migrated and settled in parts of Latin America, North America, parts of Europe and Australasia, thereby fuelling ties between these largely “developed” regions of the world and the Arab Christian homeland of Syria, Palestine, Lebanon and Egypt-Jordan .

The Bethlehem-based organization known as Al-Liqa (in Arabic, Encounter) was set up in 1982 with the aim of creating dialogue and understanding between Christians and Muslims. Initially, the organization formed part of the Tantur Ecumenical Institute for Theological Studies, Jerusalem, and was actually part of one of their ecumenical outreach programs. Tantur was set up in 1971 after the Vatican bought and then subsequently leased the hill-top land between Bethlehem and Jerusalem on the old Jerusalem-Hebron road to the University of Notre Dame (USA) for 50 years to build and operate an ecumenical research institute in an internationalist, albeit Catholic ambience. The inspiration to form Tantur evolved from the Second Vatican Council where some of the Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant participants from the Holy Land asked Pope Paul VI to start an ecumenical research institute in Jerusalem.

Tantur’s mainly international focus, in keeping with its use as an overseas research institute of the University of Notre Dame in the United States, meant that local Palestinians felt increasingly ill-at-ease there. Tantur’s programs were mainly focused on Jewish-Christian dialogue, emphasizing the priorities of the American sponsors of this organization. Palestinians were looking for a centre that would address specifically the issue of Muslim-Christian dialogue and Al-Liqa separated from Tantur and established itself as a separate centre in 1987 . Al-Liqa was first set up in the mid- 1980 s in Beit Sahour, a suburban town close to Jerusalem and one of the Christian triangles in the West Bank comprising Beit Lahem-Bethlehem, Beit Sahour and Beit Jala.

Al-Liqa’s success at that time (a tradition that it continues even now), was that it was able to bring together Christian and Muslim leaders and theologians in the land to explore issues of contention as well as agreement between them. This itself was crucial as it occurred during a period when there was a general tendency among people of all faiths in Palestine-Israel to look abroad for help towards other foreigners of similar faith, rather than spend time dialoguing with their own brothers and sisters of different religions at home. It was not to expected that major issues (political and theological) of difference between the two faiths’ approaches could be solved easily, but the dialogue set up helped to ease built-up misunderstandings as well as even certain theological misapprehensions and tensions, thereby creating channels for further communication and vital personal networks of communication that could always be activated at will and when there was a crisis in inter-faith and inter-communal relations. Al-Liqa, in this sense, had an important niche in the Palestinian faith landscape (Dumper 2002 , 132–33 ).

Al-Liqa was not only dedicated to theological studies, but to research into all aspects of life, religious, cultural and secular, of the indigenous people of the Holy Land region. It sought to develop a contextualized theology that took into consideration the existence, needs and cultural aspirations of the Muslim and Christian communities of Israel-Palestine-Jordan. While Sabeel’s main focus was on advocacy work in the West, seeking to make Western Christians understand the situation of Palestinian Christians, Al-Liqa focused on developing a sense of unity and purpose among Palestinians of all religious persuasions and inculcating in them a sense of purpose about their shared culture and socio-religious heritage. The document “Theology and the Local Church in the Holy Land: Palestinian Contextualized Theology,” published by the Al-Liqa centre stated that:

Our contextualized Palestinian theology does not mean isolating ourselves, withdrawing within ourselves or writing a new theology developed outside the general trend of Christian thought or in contradiction to it. What we mean is a theology which can live and interact with events so as to interpret them and assist the Palestinian church in discovering her identity and real mission at this stage of her earthly life. (Al-Liqa Journal 1987 )

Dr. Geries Sa‘id Khoury was the founding director of the Al-Liqa Centre for Religious and Heritage Studies in the Holy Land. For him, Palestinian contextual theology should inculcate a spirit of national awareness among Palestinian Christians. It should be a means by which the Palestinian national struggle becomes a common struggle of all Palestinian people for a free, secular and democratic homeland. A common understanding and request of Palestinian Contextual Theology in this context has been the demand for achieving a secularized and nationally responsible education system in the Palestinian territories that reflects the sensitivities and aspirations of the Christian community within Palestine. In short, Palestinian Contextual Theology, as propagated by the Al-Liqa centre in Bethlehem, has sought to develop a sense of awareness about the Christian Arab heritage of the Holy Land and its myriad facets, including theological, philosophical, historical and political factors that have contributed to the development of the unique identity and psyche of the Christian Arabs since the early Middle Ages of the European era.

The Al-Liqa centre sought to temper the overtly Islamic attitude of the Palestinian educational system, so as to create an awareness of the contributions made by Christian Arabs to the development of Arab civilization. Geries Khoury himself has stated how there were literally hundreds of thousands of Arabic language Christian manuscripts stored in the libraries of various museums and patriarchates (various monastic as well as patriarchate libraries), awaiting detailed study and translation as well as an adequate importing of this concealed knowledge into various publications, books, journals and otherwise, so that the scholarly world might be aware of the great contributions made by the Christian Arab sphere to the development of interreligious and other dialogue in the greater Middle Eastern region. He lamented the fact that this knowledge has been so far, over the last thousand years or more, concealed from the popular eyes of both the East as well as understandably the West.

Medieval Christian theologians in the Arab world generally wrote their theology in the vernacular Arabic language, though other Semitic and Greek languages were used in church and seminary services. Indeed, the Arabic language was a major factor fostering the unity of various theologians belonging to various competing Middle Eastern churches of different shades and variations of theological leanings. Khoury himself, in the course of his extensive research into medieval Arabic Christian literature (he has two PhD degrees, both from Italian universities in medieval Arabic philology), has discovered that the Arabic church theologians often acknowledged that the divisions among them were more due to linguistic differences, perpetuated among Christians from different “national” church and sectarian traditions within the Middle Eastern region, than due to theology as is usually thought. Palestinian Contextual Theology sought to highlight the contributions made by the Arab Christians to the development of an Arab Christian-Muslim dialogue during the time of the Islamic Caliphate in the Middle East and its potential lessons for the present period in the field of Islamic-Christian dialogue.

After the arrival of Islam, it was a necessity for Levantine Christians to enunciate a theology that would be contextual, indigenous, and would appeal to the new Muslim rulers in the language of their choice, namely Arabic. Non-Greek, non-Byzantine Christians of the territories conquered by the Muslim armies saw their arrival as a form of salvation against the totalitarian theocracy of the Byzantine Greeks. It could be argued that the Oriental church survived because it bothered to enter into a dialogue with the Arabs. Arabic was not the first language of choice for Christians when the Muslims arrived in the Levant in the 7 th century AD. However, it rapidly became the lingua franca as communication between the conquerors and the conquered was a must for both mutual as well as national survival. The Oriental church found better cause for survival under the Arabs that under the Byzantines, who tended to be contemptuous of those Christians unwilling to accept the Greek language and Orthodoxy in all its totality.

In contrast, today, after centuries of living under Islamic and proto-Islamic rule, Levantine Christians are largely united among themselves and with other fellow non-Christians by virtue of their common culture and the Arabic language. The centre sought to make dialogue between Christians and Muslims in Palestine the centre-piece of their efforts in favor of developing an all-encompassing national consensus on the Palestine problem (Khoury 2006 , 95 ). Palestinian Christian theology must be concerned with a dialogue with Islam as well as with Judaism. Khoury related how Palestinians were a victim of an “ideologized” reading of scripture that is used to argue that the land of Palestine is actually the “Promised Land” of the Jewish people. He referred to Leviticus 25 : 47 with its theology of the “resident aliens,” and stated that it would be impossible from a theological as well as political perspective, for the Palestinian people to accept such a claim to their land. Khoury makes the specific claim that the Palestinian Christian claim to interpreting the Old Testament and the whole question of the “holy” land must be done in a way that goes much deeper than contemporary Zionist Jewish political interpretations and definitions (Khoury 2006 , 99 ).

A Palestinian contextualized theology was “a meeting place for East and West, for Christian and Muslim, for Christian and Jew, for Palestinian and non-Palestinian. It was the promise of a nation in the Holy Land. It was a theology of communication between peoples, cultures and religion.” Geries Khoury’s preferred term for any nascent endeavor to develop a Palestinian theology of liberation was simply just “Palestinian theology.” He was not against the term “liberation theology” but would prefer to call any theology that sought to root the local Palestinian church within its own local context and setting, by the seemingly nationalist term of a Palestinian theology. For Khoury, liberation theology or Palestinian theology did not start yesterday or today. Christianity was born in Palestine and Jesus Christ himself, born under the Roman occupation of the region, was in many respects the first preacher to speak and teach a Palestinian theology of liberation.

This again was a point repeatedly made by Naim Ateek and other Palestinian theologians and clerics interested in contextualizing theological practice in Palestine-Israel. Geries Khoury emphasized that Palestinian Contextual Theology was not a theology in any way against or in opposition to Islam. He quoted the historic experience of the Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, Sophronius, who sought the middle path of coexistence and collaboration between the historic Christian community of Jerusalem and the Holy Land and the new Islamic conquerors of the region. The contextualization of the Christian faith in the new Islamic settings in the Holy Land involved a theology of dialogue with Islam, through which Sophronius managed to save the mother church of Jerusalem by a mixture of compromise, collaboration and astute diplomacy (Khoury 2006 , 102 ).

For Khoury, the indigenous Christian church in Palestine would not be able to survive unless it could consider itself an integral part of the Palestinian people in the Israel-Palestine region in general. Khoury, as a member of the old Palestinian community within the state of Israel that was born within the British Mandate of Palestine (similar to Naim Ateek, Michel Sabbah, and others, with the possible exception of Mitri Raheb), gave a call in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the Israelis to leave the occupied territories. He exhorted Palestinian Christians to consider the Israeli occupation of their territory as a real “sin,” the only solution to which would be for the Israelis to vacate the “occupation” (Khoury 1992 , 75 ).

There is not a separate Orthodox, Catholic, Lutheran, or Anglican need for justice, or work, or land or identity. Different traditions should bring their riches not their arguments or anything which undermines the strength of our unity. For the contextualized theology is in the message of all the church together . . . It is in an ecumenical theology through which we seek to encourage church unity of word and action (Khoury 2006 , 96 ) .

Khoury was insistent that Palestinian Contextual Theology should seriously consider more cooperation between the nations of the south, especially in the field of ecumenical exchange. He was certain that Palestinian Contextual Theology was and has to be a theology of the Third World. In this context, he saw many similarities between the situation of the Palestinian people and that of the black South Africans under the Apartheid regime. For Khoury, the need of the hour was for the Palestinian Christians, whatever their denominational affiliation, to develop an “ecclesiology of the local church” that would serve to overcome the historic fragmentation and divisions that the church had been exposed to over the ages, thereby enabling the Christian inhabitants of Palestine to speak with one voice. He felt that only in this context could the survival of the Palestinian Christian community as a coherent, sustainable and self-reliant Arab group in the region be ensured.

Fr. Rafiq Khoury, who also wrote frequently in the Al-Liqa journal, argued that Middle Eastern Christians have a special vocation for Islam and the Islamic world. Their relation with Islam and the Islamic world was what makes Middle Eastern Christians “unique” in the Christian world. Middle Eastern Christians have a long history under Islam, for approximately three centuries as a majority in the region and later as a minority, though a relatively large one for centuries, until the turn of the twentieth century. The Constantinian “acceptance” of Christianity as the official faith of the Roman Empire meant that Palestine became a “Christian” land for roughly three centuries until the arrival of, first, the Sassanid Persians and then shortly after that, the forces of the Islamic Caliphate. There were however two Christian Empires, one in East and the other in the West and as a result two “versions” of the “one and only” Catholic Christian faith developed.

One point made repeatedly by Khoury in his analysis of the role and history of Middle Eastern Christian churches was the fact that these churches and the groups represented by them have never known the “privilege” of having an ethno-political entity that corresponds to their wishes ruling over them. Native Arab as well as Palestinian historians and theologians, whether Christian or Muslim have never viewed the Byzantine Empire, while solidly Greek and Christian, as a “localized” entity, preferring to see it as a foreign group. This was despite the fact that the predominant language of the Levant till well into the Arab Era was either Greek or Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus Christ Himself (Khoury 2007a , 108 ) .

Khoury warned that Christians in the Middle East should not seek to create an ethnically homogeneous and politically independent entity of their own in the region, as any attempt in the past to do so has only resulted in catastrophe. He referred to the Christian political experience in Iraq under the immediate post-Mandate phase in the 1920 s and Lebanese Christians’ fateful dalliance with a controlling stake in political sovereignty in Lebanon.

The Christian condition as a minority in the Middle East has seriously affected the social and psychological condition of Levantine Christians. Khoury quoted from various pastoral letters of the Council of Catholic Patriarchs in the Middle East to show how the status of a minority in the Middle East has negatively affected Christians to the extent that they are being increasingly forced to migrate in large numbers, due to a crisis of confidence in their continued residence in the region (Khoury 2007a , 108 ). The Islamic experience remained “a decisive and rich experience” in the eyes of Middle Eastern Christians (Ruether 1992 , 9 ).

This (Islamic) history left an indelible imprint on the Christian Churches which makes of them not only Churches within Islam but also Churches for Islam. When we want to determine our vocation and mission, Islam is an obligatory path (Khoury 2007a , 109 ).

At the same time the millet system under the Ottoman Empire served to solidify the differences between the people. In Rafiq Khoury’s opinion, only the establishment of a truly ecumenical framework in the Middle East would ensure Christian survival (Khoury 2007b , 17 ). He quotes from the statement of the Catholic Patriarchs of the East in their first common message in 1991 , which maintained, “In the East, we will be Christians together or we will not exist” (www.opuslibani.org).

Rafiq Khoury maintained that the process of “inculturation” in the Middle East was always an unfinished process. The Middle East today was characterized by the tendency towards Westernization and globalization on the part of an elite as well as a largely secularized middle class, while at the same time, there was a deep appreciation and understanding of indigenous culture and religious identity on the part of a large mass of the population. Because Christians are identified with the West, their Muslim neighbors sometimes distrust them. Rafiq Khoury wished to address this suspicion .

“Contextual theology” can be said to have three meanings. In the first place it can simply be a synonym for liberation theology. Thus the Indian theologian K. C. Abraham wrote: “The aim of contextual theology is not only to understand and interpret God’s act, or to give reason for their faith, but to help suffering people in their struggle to change their situation in accordance with the vision of the gospel. Liberative praxis is the methodology for contextual theologies” (Abraham 1992 , 8 ). Occasionally, Raheb used the phrase like this. Secondly, the term was used to signify the recognition, originating in the sociology of knowledge, that all discourse is placed. There was “no view from nowhere.” As Abraham, again, put it:

Creative moments in theology have arisen out of the church’s response to new challenges in a given historical context. They bear the cultural and social imprints of the time . . . Theologians of every age are committed to interpreting the Gospel of Jesus in a way (that is) relevant and meaningful to the realities around them (Abraham 1992 , 5 ).

a way of doing theology in which one takes into account the spirit and message of the gospel; the tradition of the church; the culture in which one is theologizing; and social change within that culture, whether brought about by western technological process or the grass-roots struggle for equality, justice and liberation (Bevans 1992 , 1 ).

The Christian faith can be understood and interpreted, according to Bevans, not only on the basis of “scripture and tradition,” but also on the basis of “concrete culturally conditioned human experience” (Bevans 1992 , 1 – 2 ). Contextual theology reflects on the “raw experience” of the people. It represents an amalgamation of Christian concepts, stories and symbols on the one hand, with the particular indigenous culture of the people on the other (Bevans 1992 , 1 – 2 ).

Contextuality in the field of theology denotes attentiveness, the determination to listen to the voice of the poor; and conscious and intentional rootedness in the culture, in religion, in the historical currents, in the social locations and situations of people as well as in gender. It aims to alter conditions in the Church and in society that are counter to the deep intent of the Gospel and seeks to include voices which have been excluded in the participative process of theologizing (Mesa 2003 ).K. C. Abraham likewise argues that “Theologians of every age are committed to interpreting the Gospel of Jesus in a way (that is) relevant and meaningful to the realities around them” (Abraham 1992 , 5 ). Mitri Raheb (1995 ) seeks to make the Christian faith relevant or contextual to the Palestinian faithful as part and parcel of their own culture. He has written of the necessity for the Palestinian church to be totally “Arabised,” starting from the top of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, through the clergy and right down to the base-laity. This “Arabisation” of the leadership of the church should spread to include theology as well as education. In his view, only this kind of essential “Arabisation” would bind the native Arab Christian people of Palestine to “their church, their society, and their country” (Raheb 1995 , 25 ). Naim Ateek (1989 ) too has written of the need for the (very Europeanized and Euro-centric) church in Palestine-Israel to “contextualize its faith and theology,” thereby seeking to address and answer the important issues facing native Arab Christians and society in the region (Ateek 1989 , 71 ). He writes:

. . . the contextual concerns of the Church, although predominantly political in appearance, are deeply and ultimately theological in nature. These needs are perpetually frustrated by the increasing complexity of the political conflict . . . The duty of the Church in Israel-Palestine today is to take its own concrete and local context seriously. It (the Church) needs to incarnate itself in its context so that it can be the voice of the oppressed and the dehumanized (Ateek 1989 , 72 ).Writing in 1989 , Ateek acknowledged that the church in Palestine-Israel had hardly begun to contextualize. He has since sought to do this, with an emphasis on the political context. Palestinian Christianity has long roots dating right back to the time of Christ. Even during the Byzantine era, Palestinian Christians did not have any experience of being part of the ruling group as the Byzantine church in Palestine was ruled and controlled by Greeks and Cypriots (Ruether in Raheb 1995 , 7 ). During the Islamic era, the majority of the Palestinian people slowly converted over to the ruling faith and by the eve of the Turkish conquest of Palestine in 1519 , the land had become majority Muslim (Ruether in Raheb 1995 , 8 ). Coupled with this was the almost continually disturbed nature of Palestinian society that has resulted in large-scale emigration over the last 100 years or more (Raheb 1995 , 15 –16 ). Today, native Christians in Palestine worry more about whether they can ensure adequate quorum in their churches to make them practically viable as part of the “living stones” of the Holy Land (Raheb 1995 , 8 , 24 –25 ). Palestinian Christians are small in number, but their contributions to society vastly outnumber their actual population. Their institutions, schools and hospitals dot the Holy Land and they are actively involved in rendering valuable social services to the Palestinian population at large.

This brief look at some of the main practitioners of theology in Palestine reveals the overlaps, but even more the differences with liberation theology in Latin America. These theologians begin from the same place, oppression, but the different situation means they develop in a quite different way. In Palestine, Christians and Muslims are both part of an oppressed people. Palestinian theologians must understand Islam not as a precondition for mission, but for survival. All of these theologians take the gospel seriously and, in this situation of conflict, their emphasis is on peace and reconciliation, although they recognize the importance of the struggle to be free. For them, non-violence and dialogue are the way to liberation.