Christianity in Its Birthplace

by Hannah Breckbill

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash

I arrived home two weeks ago from over a month in Palestine, and I told the Israeli authorities upon entry and exit that I was there to experience holy places, a pilgrimage of sorts. That wasn’t a lie, though I can’t say that I was referring to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher or the Church of the Nativity. “Holy place” is a broad term.

I gave my presence to Tent of Nations, a Palestinian Christian farm near Bethlehem, for nearly four weeks, and followed that up with a ten-day tour around Palestine/Israel organized by the German Mennonite Peace Committee. We traveled to Nazareth (Jesus’s hometown), Haifa (at the base of Mount Carmel, where Elijah lived), Bethlehem (Jesus’s birthplace), and Jerusalem (Jesus’s deathplace, among many other things). While we acknowledged those biblical stories, the content of our trip was focused on the current situation: Nazareth is an Arab city within Israel, 30% Christian, intensely surveilled; Haifa is a multicultural city, rare within Israel, a place where our Jewish tour guide lives in an apartment with Arab neighbors; Bethlehem is in Area A of the West Bank, Palestinian controlled, with an apartheid wall built through it; Jerusalem is an amalgamation of peoples, of privilege on top of deprivation, of varied histories and presents.

There’s so much to say about all of these places, but what I remember today is the way it felt to be among Christians who were indigenous to the birthplace of Christianity. Some of their families have been Christian since before there was a word for it.

In my progressive Mennonite upbringing, I learned to view Jesus as a political figure, a visionary who demonstrated a nonviolent way for Palestinian Jews to resist the Roman empire. I was also taught that Christianity lost itself as early as the 300s CE, when it was co-opted and spiritualized/depoliticized by the Roman empire. It has been wielded as a tool of empire ever since. Early Anabaptists in 1500s Europe (where Mennonites come from) became convinced that states should not dictate religion and lived a separation of church and state by refusing to go to war and refusing to baptize their children—and they were punished for it. For me, growing up a citizen of an imperial nation while endeavoring to practice an anti-imperial, anti-nationalist religion made for interesting cognitive dissonance that probably makes me who I am.

Meanwhile, in Palestine, the people have been under occupation since Roman times. In Palestine, Jesus’s message has been relevant to the context since the beginning! At Tent of Nations, I marveled at the way the Nassar family expressed their faith, so humbly, so matter-of-fact. “We refuse to be victims. We refuse to hate.” It is a deeply Christian orientation and is profoundly meaningful in the context of the ever-escalating oppression and appropriation enacted by the Israeli occupation.

Refusal to participate in empire, whether materially by refusing to participate in war, or spiritually by refusing to allow empire to dictate how you understand yourself, is a risky, consequential act. It’s powerful, and it’s frightening to the powers that be when they realize they aren’t in control of people’s spirits. And the thing that I like best about refusal is that it opens up space for us to create, to affirm, and to hold.

Early Christians refused empire by practicing hospitality and mutual aid, building egalitarian communities that cared for widows and prisoners. Modern Palestinians are refusing to be victims of occupation by continuing to live in their homeland, maintain their culture, care for neighbors, and stand up for justice despite immense repression and violence. What can these examples teach those of us who live with relative privilege within empire? What can we refuse, and what can we build in its place?

These are big thoughts for a Tuesday afternoon. The last thing I’ll share is that I got to take communion one week at Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem. The service was in Arabic, which I know well enough to pick up words (maHubba means love!) but not well enough to comprehend a sermon. As we lined up to share in bread and wine I started weeping, overwhelmed with the bigness of it all. The Nassar family, holding steady and steadfast, was there along with a number of international accompaniment workers whom I had gotten to know. Each of us in that line held a vision for a future “on earth as it is in heaven,” and a capacity for beginning to live as if that future is here now. I am so grateful to have spent time in such a holy place.

Bio: Hannah Breckbill has been a frequent contributor to Mary Swander’s Emerging Voices. She has now joined the Iowa Writers Collabortive with her own column called a “Humble Hands Harvest: a Queer Mennonite Farmer’s Musings and Adventures.” Breckbill farms on a worker-owned co-op near Decorah, Iowa.

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Swander Woman Productions is now booking a fall tour of Squatters on Red Earth, a play about the positive relationship between the Amana Colonies and the Meskwaki Indigenous people. The drama brings this historical material to life through unique acting (by Rip Russell), set design, costuming, music, visual art and puppetry. Interested in sponsoring a performance? Email the SWP touring director Janine Calsbeek: janinecalsbeek@gmail.com

More information about Squatters on Red Earth, inluding a video of the show on Mary Swander’s website: