Palestinian
Contextualized Theology
The Conference of Theology
and the Local Church in the Holy Land, 1987- Present
(Better known as the Palestinian Contextual Theology
Conference)
A number of
Christian clergymen and academicians interested in theology
deemed it necessary to hold theology conferences for
Christian Palestinians with the aim of crystallizing a
Palestinian contextualized theology which can answer the
many questions put by the believers and the children of this
homeland. A committee from the editorial board of Al-Liqa’
quarterly review was formed to discuss this topic. It agreed
to begin holding such conferences beginning the summer of
1987.
Thus the
specificities characterizing the local church in the Holy
Land and the social and religious situation in which we live
encouraged a group of clergymen and seculars from the
different denominations to meet and to think together in an
ecumenical and responsible spirit to understand the message
of the local church, the meaning of its existence and the
aspect of its testimony. This group worked together to
formulate “The Basic Document” which comprised the meaning
of contextualized theology which was put for discussion at
the First Theology Conference in Summer of 1987. In it this
group defined the meaning and the concept of contextualized
theology in the following words:
“If the general Christian
theology helps us to understand the Christian creed in an
orthodox way, it cannot answer all the questions stirring in
the hearts of believers in every time and place. This is a
natural matter due to the variety of circumstances and
situations in which the believing groups live whether these
circumstances are temporal or spatial. Here the role of
contextualized theology comes. It requires the general
theological thought which is rich in potentials in the light
of the current circumstances in which the believers live, so
that believers can find in this heritage what helps them in
understanding their faith, formulating it, and living it in
a specific historical period with all the calls, challenges,
questions, hopes, difficulties and aspirations which are in
it. On the one hand, this theology does not want it to be a
parrotic repetition of the past without taking into
consideration the current circumstances. On the other hand,
it does not want to be an innovative theology which develops
in isolation from the general current of the Christian
thought throughout the ages, or to be in contradiction with
it. Contextualized theology is an extension of the general
Christian thought at a certain historical period in which a
specific Christian group lives and which has its own
circumstances, so that this thought becomes a help for this
group to live according to the requirements of the present.
The local church lives in the circumstances of the time and
the place and it derives its specificities from them.
Theology comes in this cultural and civilization space to
pick up these specificities in all their variety and
actuality. It crystallizes them, fathoms their depth and
sheds the light of the Lord’s word on them in order to
discover among their folds the vocation of God for this
church here and in this place. It ultimately helps the
church to discover its historical self and its actual
message at this stage in its earthly march.”
Thus the
theology conference began its first session in the summer of
1987 and held the nineteenth session in December 2011
entitled “An Arab Christian Vision for a Different Arab and Palestinian Future"
The conference on "Palestinian Contextual Theology" has
contributed much in focusing on the role of the local church
and raising the awareness of believers, in addition to
strengthening the relations between Christians and Muslims
in the light of theological positions which the locals
explained and called for. On the other hand, the
contextualized theology conference had a big role in
strengthening the relations between Al-Liqa’ and a number of
Western institutions and churches. This helped us to explain
our national cause and our theological position concerning
it and indicating the faulty theological positions called
for by a large number of the thinkers and theologians of the
West. The theology conference also contributed in
strengthening the ecumenical relations between the many
Christian denominations in the Holy Land because all shared
in the writing of a contextualized theology or they served
in the preparatory committee of the conference or
participated with us in the proceedings of the conference or
because of the many meetings which the theology conference
had held.