Israel’s Growing Christian Community
Israeli Christian women have some of the highest education rates in the country, and the vast majority of Israeli Christians say they are satisfied with life in the country.
Please consider supporting our mission to help everyone better understand and become smarter about the Jewish world. A gift of any amount helps keep our platform free and zero-advertising for all.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify.
As Israeli Christians celebrate Christmas, the country’s Central Bureau of Statistics just released data on its Christian community: Around 187,900 Christians live in Israel, comprising 1.9 percent of the population and representing a 1.3-percent growth from the year before.
This contrasts with most countries in the Middle East, where Christian populations are declining and there is “horrifying growth” of Christian persecution, according to the organization Open Doors.
“The world often forgets that there is an ancient and vibrant Christian community in modern-day Israel, the only country in the Middle East where the Christian community is actually growing, albeit slowly,” wrote journalist Michele Chabin. “A common misconception is that Christians in Israel face the same challenges as in the rest of the Middle East. In reality, Christians in Israel have freedom of worship, the freedom to build churches and other religious institutions, and to gather as a faith community.”1
Just over 80 percent of Christians are Arabs, while the majority of the remaining are immigrants from the former Soviet Union who immigrated with a Jewish relative. They predominantly live in Israel’s Northern District in and around Nazareth, as well as in Haifa.
Education is a core value within Israeli Christian society, and students who graduate from Christian schools consistently score highest on the state’s matriculation exams. In 2022, an impressive 84 percent of Christian 12th-grade students were eligible for university admissions, a higher percentage than the rest of Israel’s population.
In fact, Israeli Christians attain bachelor’s and academic degrees at higher rates than Jews, Druze, or Muslims in Israel — and Israeli Christian women have some of the highest education rates across the country.
Christians are not required to serve in the IDF, but some volunteer. (The obligation to serve in the Israeli army applies only to Jews, Druze, and Circassians.) In 2019, one soldier was appointed a lieutenant colonel, making him the first soldier of his faith to achieve this rank.
Israeli Christians tend to be less religious than Israeli Muslims, but more religious than Israeli Jews on key measures of religious commitment. More than one-third of Israeli Christians pray daily and attend religious services at least weekly.
Ten different types of churches are officially recognized under Israel’s confessional system, which provides for the self-regulation of status issues, such as marriage and divorce, including the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church (particularly the Greek Orthodox Church), the Syriac Orthodox Church, and Anglicans.
Of course, Jesus lived in the Land of Israel, and died and was buried on the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, making the land a Holy Land for Christianity. However, Islam went on to displace Christianity throughout much of the Middle East.
In 1889, the Ottoman Empire allowed the Catholic Church to reestablish its hierarchy in Palestine. Then, in 1917, British general Edmund Allenby defeated the Ottomans in Beersheva and conquered Jerusalem. Before entering the latter city, he dismounted his horse in front of Jaffa Gate, and walked in on foot as a sign of respect. Allenby received Christian, Jewish, and Muslim community leaders in Jerusalem and worked with them to ensure that religious sites of all three faiths were respected.
Christianity reveres Jerusalem not only for its role in the Old Testament but also for its significance in the life of Jesus. The land currently occupied by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is considered one of the top candidates for Golgotha (where Jesus was crucified) and thus has been a Christian pilgrimage site for the last 2,000 years.
There is also the Christian Zionism movement, defined as Christian support for the Jewish People’s return to their biblical homeland in Israel. It is a belief among some Christians that the return of Jews to Israel is in line with a biblical prophecy, and is necessary for Jesus to return to Earth as its king.
Christian support for the State of Israel has its roots in the 1880s, when William Hechler formed a committee of Christian Zionists to help move Russian Jewish refugees to Palestine after a series of pogroms. In 1884, Hechler wrote a pamphlet called “The Restoration of Jews to Palestine According to the Prophets.” A few years later, he befriended Theodor Herzl after reading Herzl’s book, “The Jewish State,” and joined Herzl to drum up support for Zionism.
Yet the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 posed a “complex theological challenge” to churches and the Christian world: How should they refer to the Jewish People’s success in establishing a sustainable Jewish state in the Holy Land, in light of the traditional Christian conception according to which the Jewish People were sentenced to punishment by exile and constant humiliation?2
Israel’s surprising victory in the 1967 Six-Day War and its subsequent takeover of Bethlehem and East Jerusalem, home to most of Christianity’s holy places and the centers of the different churches in the Holy Land, served to further heighten the anxieties of the local Christian communities and churches, as well as international Christian elements.
For the first time ever, the holy places of Christianity were under the control of a Jewish state and thus Judaism, “the defeated religion that birthed Christianity, which was the victorious religion and the spiritual heir of Israel in the flesh,” according to Dr. Amnon Ramon, an Israeli historian.3
The fact that most of the Christians in the country were Arabs, regarding whose loyalty to the state the Israeli leadership had some doubts, increased the problematic nature of the ties between Israel and the local Christian communities.
But during the years following the Six-Day War, Israel adopted a generally favorable approach towards the church institutions in East Jerusalem. The government sought to have the Christian entities — both local and international — serve as a moderating force in the face of nationalist Palestinian Muslims.
Israel also promised to preserve peace in the holy places, to ensure their accessibility, to prevent offending the feelings of the faithful, and to reimburse the churches in Jerusalem for damages inflicted during the wars of 1948 and 1967, while rescinding the restrictions that had been placed on churches and church bodies under Jordanian rule.
But a real transformation of relations between Israel and the church institutions only occurred with the outbreak of the first intifada in late 1987. Most local Christians increasingly identified with Palestinian nationalism and shared in the aspirations to dismantle the Israeli “occupation.” The process of “Palestinization” and “Arabization” of Christian church leaders resulted in their first-ever public statements expressing opposition to the occupation and even supporting non-violent resistance to it.
Officially, Israel continued to abide by the principles established in 1967: freedom of access and worship in the holy places for all religions and nationalities (more than any other entity that had governed Jerusalem). The Israeli government called on religious leaders not to engage in politics but, rather, to focus on their religious roles.
The Oslo process and the signing of the first tentative peace accords between Israel and the Palestinians, from 1993 to 1995, made the Christian issue a bargaining chip of sorts between the negotiating parties. During talks with Israel, the Palestinians insisted that the new Palestinian Authority be the custodian of the Christian communities and holy places, viewing it as a mechanism for reinforcing solidarity between Christians and Muslims, and as a tool to strengthen the standing of the Palestinian Authority in global public opinion.
Concerned that the Christian issue would be marginalized in light of the rapid pace of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, the heads of the Christian communities published a memorandum in 1994 in which they expressed their opposition to the exclusive rule by a single entity over Jerusalem. They called for a guarantee of the universal character of the city, including the status of holy places and the legitimate rights of Christians, by means of a special statute to be formulated by representations of the three religions and the various political bodies within the city.
While the Oslo Accords ultimately didn’t amount to much, today 84 percent of Israeli Christians say they are satisfied with life in the country. As for their future in the Jewish state, the remarks of Rabbi David Rosen sum it up best:
“Indeed it is a Jewish responsibility to ensure that Christian communities flourish in our midst, respecting the very fact that the Holy Land is the land of Christianity’s birth and holy places.”
“Yet even beyond our particular relationship, Christians as a minority in both Jewish and Muslim contexts play a very special role for our societies at large. The situation of minorities is always a profound reflection of the social and moral condition of a society as a whole. The wellbeing of Christian communities in the Middle East is nothing less than a kind of barometer of the moral condition of our countries.”4
“Telling the Story of Christians in Israel.” CNEWA.
“Christians and Christianity in Jerusalem and the State of Israel.” Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research.
“Christians and Christianity in Jerusalem and the State of Israel.” Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research.
“Address by Rabbi Rosen.” Israeli Missions Around the World.