Palestinian Christian Dr Salim Munayer has zoomed into a conversation with Archbishop Justin Duckworth this week, to help Aotearoa New Zealanders see and hear one Palestinian Christian long-term response to the violence in Israel and Palestine, through the practice of reconciliation and peace. 

Dr Munayer begins with the story of his own origins in Palestine, and his discovery that Christian faith spoke into the injustices he experienced as a Palestinian growing up in a city occupied by the state of Israel. Salim remembered his emerging awareness during Bible studies as a young adult. 

"I found Jesus talking about occupation, about racism and discrimination, about the hypocrisy of religious leaders...and the economic gap – and all of that – so the Jesus of the second temple, who was dealing with empire, dealing with occupation, spoke to me quite a bit." 

Salim Munayer could see that political and social injustices had to be overturned at their foundations, so he decided to bring together Messianic Jews and Palestinian Christians to work together out of their common ground of belief in Christ.

"So we tried to bring these two groups of Jews and Palestinian Christians together ...but it was a catastrophe." 

"That's when I realised that reconciliation was something that really required study, in-depth understanding, and that this area of reconciliation – even around the world – was weak, it was not a well developed area."

So Salim undertook study in both theology and reconciliation overseas and returned to the Holy Land determined to make a difference. That's when he founded Masulaha, an organisation dedicated to facilitating reconciliation between the peoples of the Holy Land.

"At Musalaha we have not only developed a theology of reconciliation, out of our context, but we have also figured out how to practice reconciliaton, how to do it, how to live it. And that led us to discovering that reconciliation goes through six stages:

For example he said the first stage of working together across difference is excitement, "We call it the "Hallelujah stage" or the "Kumbayah stage".

Salim explained that in the second stage the groups get to talking, and often will immediately withdraw from one another as difference becomes clear.

So Musalaha had to develop ways to break through to the third stage and beyond...

To find out more, go to the first video: available to view here.

The Diocese of Wellington has created a resource to accompany the videos with questions for small groups, Sunday gatherings or personal reflection.

You can download the Diocese of Wellington resource here