Palestinian Kairos Document — “The Tail Wagging the Dog”

As reported previously, a group of Palestinian Christians recently issued a document calling on churches in the United States to support the ongoing effort to isolate Israel from the community of nations by assisting in the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign. Some church leaders in the U.S. have endorsed the so-called “Kairos Document.” One of CAMERA’s correspondents in the Middle East — a particularly close observer of the Palestinian Christian community — warns Christians in the U.S. not to be hoodwinked by the statement, which sullys “the reputation of local Christianity.”

Here is the full text of what our correspondent (who has requested anonymity) had to say:

On December 11, 2009 began the distribution of the so-called Palestinian Kairos Document, entitled “A word of faith, hope and love from the heart of Palestinian suffering.” This document has falsely been promoted in several countries as a statement by “leaders of the region’s Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Lutheran, Anglican and Baptist traditions.” This is a deliberate misrepresentation, albeit one that has hoodwinked many unsuspecting Christian readers worldwide.

The only current church leader to sign the document was Munib Younan, bishop of a minuscule Protestant church. That other church leaders did not sign it, not even the current Latin Patriarch or the Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem, who are themselves Palestinian Arabs, speaks for itself. This initiative was cooked up without the participation of almost all local church leaders.

The following were the signatories to the document:

· Patriarch Michel Sabbah
· Bishop Dr. Munib Younan
· Archbischop Theodosios Atallah Hanna
· Pastor Dr. Jamal Khader
· Pastor Dr. Rafiq Khoury
· Pastor Dr. Mitri Raheb
· Pastor Dr. Naim Ateek
· Pastor Dr. Yohana Katanacho
· Fr. Fadi Diab
· Dr. Jiries Khoury
· Mrs. Sider Daibes
· Mrs. Nora Kort
· Mrs. Lucy Thaljieh
· Mr. Nidal Abu Zulof
· Mr. Yusef Daher
· Mr. Rifat Kassis – Coordinator of the Initiative

This is an unimpressive list of marginal figures, mostly parish pastors and lay people. Michel Sabbah is no longer Latin Patriarch; he retired in March 2008 and his successor did not sign the document. He speaks merely for himself. Attallah Hanna does not represent the Greek Patriarchate. On the contrary, he is well known for his opposition to the current Greek Patriarch. In 2007, his salary was suspended for several months after he called for withdrawal of recognition of the Patriarch.

So the only “Christian leader” to have signed it is Munib Younan, the head of the grandly styled “Evangelical Lutheran Church of Jordan and the Holy Land.” Unlike the Orthodox and Catholic churches that have existed in the Holy Land for nearly two millennia, this church was created only in 1959 as an outgrowth of the work of German Lutherans in the nineteenth century. It has a few hundred members, out of around four hundred thousand Christians in Jordan and the Holy Land. So Younan speaks for almost nobody in terms of the Christianity in the region. He would be a figure of little importance were it not that his church is massively funded by Lutheran churches elsewhere, which naturally need to promote him as a deserving recipient of so much money.

Currently, Younan’s sponsors are seeking to have him elected President of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF). That is, nearly seventy million Lutherans worldwide should be led by a bishop whose entire church is smaller than the average Lutheran parish elsewhere. Maybe the eager distribution of the Kairos Document is also aimed to boost that election campaign.

By contrast, there are over seventeen million Lutherans in Africa. In 2008 numbers there grew by 158,047, more than a hundred times the whole size of Younan’s church, according to the LWF’s own website . But the idea of a black President of the LWF has not found a welcome among Lutheran leaders elsewhere. They rate Palestinian political ambitions above the church’s mission in Africa.

Younan and the local representative of the World Council of Churches, Yusef Daher, are to be seen as the chief initiators of this document. They are entitled to express their own opinions, of course, such as their ludicrous pretense, dressed up in flowery theological rhetoric, that Israel is solely responsible for the problems of the region. But to suggest that their way of doings things is representative of the Christian leadership of the region is to sully the reputation of local Christianity.

Rather, this was an attempt of a little tail to wag the dog. Ten days after the document was received with fanfares in Protestant churches around the world, the real heads of the churches in Jerusalem reacted with a brief statement asserting that they had “heard the cry of their children” and asking others to listen as well. It can be seen as a damage-control exercise, which makes a general call for “peace, justice and reconciliation,” but abstains from the extreme language of the earlier document.