Dr. Mitri Raheb
Orbis, 2014, 168 pages, $20.00

When I first learned that another book had come from Dr. Mitri Raheb, I was delighted on a number of levels. For one, Dr. Raheb is among the most compelling writers I know who are giving voice to Palestinian Christian concerns in their country. His scholarship is impeccable, and it is widely acknowledged far beyond the Middle East. But second, Dr. Raheb is simply a great writer. Faith in the Face of Empire is an eminently readable book that should be enjoyed widely.

Dr. Raheb admits that for much of his career, he was “dancing to the rhythms of European organ music” - in many cases unconsciously. But now, he writes, he is composing notes from the beat of drums, which “constitute the main musical instrument of the Middle East.” He writes, “After a long journey in and through Anglo-Saxon theology, I sense that I have finally landed in the Middle East where I belong.” And with this he invites us to join him.

Faith in the Face of Empire illustrates how history and memory are deeply ideological. Israel/Palestine is a superb example of mythologies that have been used as tools to legitimate conquest and colonialism. We learn about the many empires that have dominated this land, how they subjugated its people, and how they constructed their ideologies for being here. We learn about what happened to the ordinary peasant-farmer who watched these empires come and go. But above all, Dr. Raheb writes about the current imperial configuration and how its mythologies have surrounded its arrival, legitimacy, and religious claims. Dr. Raheb tries to overturn these mythologies and recover a Palestinian narrative and theology that weaves the indigenous Palestinian story into the fabric of the Biblical story we know so well.

What Dr. Raheb is doing is actually wedding what we call “empire studies” to the Palestinian narrative. For about ten years, scholars have studied how the New Testament in particular is actually presenting theology in the context of empire - the Roman Empire to be exact. Here, Dr. Raheb pulls from these studies patterns that help explain his own Palestinian narrative. Empires, we learn, are committed to the control of movement, control of resources, colonisation, the use of terror to pacify their subjects, the co-opting of religious symbols and places, and exile for those who do not submit. Woven together, this makes an imperial theology. It is here where the Palestinian experience is found. Palestinians live under an empire that is no different than so many others.

This is a splendid book. It is a courageous historical and theological exploration that will certainly get us talking. We will come away from this book sobered about how history works and how at least one story, the Palestinian story, has been abandoned in the margins. This is where Dr. Raheb finds it, and carefully, delicately, brings it back to the centre.

Review by Prof. Gary Burge.

See PDF www.thisweekinpalestine.com/i193/pdfs/article/botm.pdf