Growing up Christian in Bethlehem, Palestinian theologian and Dar al-Kalima University president Mitri Raheb recalls, “I had a lot of questions, many of them about faith and science. But my pastors didn’t have any answers. I guess God said, If you are not happy with the pastors, be one and see if you can do better.”
So, Raheb, who is now 63, went off to earn his doctorate in theology in Germany, where his Evangelical Lutheran denomination was founded. Returning in 1987 to be a youth pastor at his church in Bethlehem, he says, “I thought, I’m coming back with all the answers.”
But “all the questions” changed that year as the West Bank and Gaza were engulfed in the First Intifada, a Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation. Raheb says young people were asking “existential questions, close to their life, their heart. I had to pastor to a community that was longing for freedom, for justice, for peace.”
For the past few decades, Raheb has been deeply involved in the life of the city where any year there might be Christmastime tourists or protesters facing Israeli tanks in the narrow streets. During much of his time back home, he’s been writing and editing—50 books and counting. They include 2004’s Bethlehem Besieged: Stories of Hope in Times of Trouble and Decolonizing Palestine: The Land, The People, The Bible (2023). This fall, he added Tear Down These Walls: Decolonial Approaches to Barriers and Liberation, published by Orbis and co-edited with international scholar Miguel De La Torre.
Orbis publisher Robert Ellsberg calls Raheb “a brave and courageous voice,” adding, “He sees a Bible that challenges power and shows God hearing the voices of the oppressed and caring for all people.”
Through war and chaos, Rahab has lived: pastoring his church, serving on the municipal council, creating a family (he has a wife and two daughters), founding Dar al-Kalima University, and, as a scholar, developing a hermeneutic—a biblical viewpoint—that addresses a life under occupation. “I had found myself struggling with the Bible, until I read it in context,” he says. “I realized the Bible is actually written in Palestine, under occupation—Persians, Greeks, Romans, one after another. I could connect the dots and realize the text speaks directly to people in this context. I came to a hermeneutic of contextual theology.”
In addition to his scholarship and writing work, Raheb says he considers himself “a social entrepreneur.” To that end, he led a group that opened an arts and culture center in Bethlehem in 2006 that became the foundation for the university. “We don’t just need contextual theology,” he says. “We need contextual art.”
His rare moments of free time at home are devoted to reading. He can only indulge in another love, swimming, when he travels beyond Bethlehem. Perhaps there will be a pool at his Boston hotel—if he gets there. “It depends entirely on Netanyahu,” he says. Israel’s leader determines if passageways out of the West Bank are open or shut. Even so, his Palestinian perspective on biblical scholarship and his ideas go worldwide.
Raheb’s panels include “Scripture, Hermeneutics, and the Middle East: Contemporary Palestinian Christian Theologies,” Saturday, 9–11 a.m., Westin Copley Place, Essex North (third floor), and “Theology After Gaza,” Sunday, 9–11 a.m., HCC 108 (plaza level).
