Research on Palestinian Christians
Strengthening identity, activating potential, and grounding development in reliable data — the most comprehensive body of research on Palestinian Christians in historic Palestine and across the diaspora.
Palestinian Christians: Strengthening Identity, Activating Potential
One year after its accreditation as a community college in 2006, Dar al-Kalima launched the program “Palestinian Christians: Strengthening Identity, Activating Potential.” The initiative sought to encourage and empower Palestinian Christians to engage more fully in the life of Palestinian society — strengthening the broader social fabric, sustaining a vibrant Christian presence in Palestine, and helping counter the ongoing emigration from ancestral lands.
A central component of the program was a comprehensive research effort, including a mapping exercise to identify and study Palestinian Christian churches, church-related organizations (CROs), and Christian communities and individuals, along with their needs and resources. The guiding conviction was clear: meaningful and sustainable development must be grounded in reliable data.
Between 2007 and 2021, Dar al-Kalima University Press published nine volumes emerging from this research — the most comprehensive body of data on the situation of Palestinian Christians, both in historic Palestine and across the diaspora.
Middle Eastern Christianity & Equal Citizenship
As part of the research project “Religion & State in the Middle East,” Dar al-Kalima University convened a diverse group of academics, church leaders, and political scholars — both Christian and Muslim — to reflect on the challenges shaping the region during the Arab Spring. In a context increasingly marked by religious extremism, the relationship between religion and state emerged as a critical concern. This initiative gave rise to the Christian Academic Forum for Citizenship in the Arab World (CAFCAW).
Following a series of consultations, CAFCAW produced a landmark document — the first of its kind — entitled “From the Nile to the Euphrates: The Call of Faith and Citizenship,” released in Beirut in the summer of 2014. Building on this foundation, the university initiated a range of interdisciplinary research projects, resulting in one of the most comprehensive bodies of publications addressing Christianity in the Middle East — among them the 2021 document “We Choose Abundant Life: Christians in the Middle East,” in whose launch the university played a leading role.
On Identity
In Palestine and across the Middle East, questions of identity are not merely abstract concepts; they are lived realities shaped by history, faith, displacement, and the ongoing struggle for dignity, belonging, and equal citizenship. In response, Dar al-Kalima University has organized a series of interdisciplinary conferences addressing these critical issues. From these gatherings, three key publications have emerged.