It has been slightly more than 70 years since we had to leave our home, our Palestine, and our Palestinian community of family, friends, and neighbors.  It was a traumatic event in our lives, which we relive year after year.

Imagine how you would feel if when you visit the country of your birth, you are treated as an enemy alien and if allowed to enter you would only be able to stay at most three months. You find your home confiscated and occupied by people who were encouraged to come because they were persecuted elsewhere.  As you move around you become aware that your community has been erased.  Your roots have been cut. Nothing is recognizable - villages have been destroyed, churches, mosques, schools and cemeteries and other infrastructure have been replaced.  Palestinian street names are replaced by Israeli names. Olive trees and farmland that have been terraced for generations are being replaced by…

The Hosanna Preaching Seminars

The purpose of the seminars is to struggle with and to address the serious theological problems which arise when the traditions of a religious community and its way of reading the scriptures assert that its members are somehow chosen, set apart, called or covenanted to be in a unique and specially privileged relationship with God to the exclusion of all others. These assertions have profoundly affected the self understanding, the relationships to those outside the religious community and the attitudes and values of many within the Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions across the centuries. And, secular nation-states, like the USA, Israel, and others sometimes make similar claims of divine election.  

It is one thing to affirm that every man, woman and child on earth is created in the image and likeness of God, is infinitely loved by God and therefore is of infinite value. It is quite another to claim that belonging to one or another of these…