Bishop Dr. Munib A. Younan

Jerusalem—The only Arabic-speaking Lutheran denomination in the world has changed its name to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan & the Holy Land to reflect the fact that five out of its six congregations are clustered around Jerusalem and Bethlehem. 

Officials said March 1 that the church’s 35-member synod voted in Bethlehem in mid-January to change the name to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan & the Holy Land from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan.

“We had to adapt with the situation because our church is serving in Jordan, Palestine and Israel,” the head of the church, Bishop Munib Younan, told Ecumenical News International. 

The previous name derived from the period when Jordan ruled the West Bank, where most of the church’s congregations are located, until Israel occupied the territory in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

But since then Jordan has relinquished any claim on the West Bank and the reality is that most of the church’s 3,000 members live and worship in the West Bank. 

“The synod decided to make it clear so that people will understand that we are not only in Jordan but also in the Holy Land,” Bishop Younan said. He said the synod voted unanimously for the name change.

Bishop Younan, 54, a Jerusalem-born cleric, said the Palestinian people were “cautiously hopeful” since the election of Mahmoud Abbas as president of the Palestinian Authority and the renewal of a dialogue on peace with Israel. 

The Lutheran church in recent years has begun some work in Israel and there is one congregation in the Jordanian capital of Amman.

It traces its origins to the 19th century when German Protestants began mission work in the Holy Land by establishing hospitals and schools. Many of the Arab students later became active members of the Lutheran Evangelical Church, turning it into a small but thriving community. 

Today the church educates some 3,000 Palestinian children at schools in Jerusalem and around the West Bank cities of Ramallah and Bethlehem to the north and south. Many of the church’s members are Palestinian refugees and their descendants.