Seventy years ago, a significant number of Christians also called Bethlehem their permanent home, with the population of the West Bank city and surrounding villages nearly 90 percent Christian. In 2016, the then-Mayor of Bethlehem Vera Baboun warned that figure had dropped to 12 percent, or a mere 11,000 people.
British Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby jointly penned an opinion piece with Palestinian Anglican Bishop Hosam Naoum in which they lamented the decline of Christians in the birthplace of the religion, arguing that the actions of “radical groups” were responsible.
Archbishop Welby and Bishop Naoum preferred to ignore the stark reality on the ground and blamed the precipitous decline of Christians to mysterious “fringe radical groups” and growing “settler communities.”
Such linguistic inexactitude masks the real reason Christians are disappearing in the Holy Land, which, according to global Christian charity Open Doors, is actually the result of “Islamic oppression.”