KIM LAWTON, correspondent: It’s Sunday morning in the West Bank town of Bethlehem. Christians have gathered for worship at the ancient Church of the Nativity, which marks the traditional birthplace of Jesus. Local Christians like John Tawil say they feel a special tie to their faith.

JOHN TAWIL: Being a Christian in Bethlehem is something wonderful because it’s the place where Jesus was born.

LAWTON: But the 2,000-year-old Christian community here has been diminishing at an alarming rate, and some question whether Christianity can ultimately survive in the land where it began.

PROFESSOR BERNARD SABELLA (Al-Quds University): The places are important, but you need to make these places to come alive, and you cannot do that without indigenous Palestinian Christians in the Holy Land.

LAWTON: The overwhelming majority of Christians here are Arabs. They were among the hundreds of thousands displaced in 1948, when the State of Israel was established and in the wars that followed. For decades now, Palestinian Christians have continued to emigrate at disproportionately high rates, and their birth rates are much lower than those of Muslims. Roughly 150,000 Christians live in Israel proper—about two percent of the population. In the Palestinian Territories, it’s estimated that Christians make up just over one percent of the population. There are also small Christian minorities in disputed East Jerusalem. The circumstances for Christians vary in each of those places and, like most things here, a lot of it is shaped by the ongoing conflict.

SABELLA: The challenge, I think, to Palestinian Christians, in my view, and to Christian communities in Israel and the Middle East, is really to stay put.

LAWTON: Bernard Sabella is a sociologist in Jerusalem who has studied the emigration patterns of his fellow Christians, especially younger Christians, in Israel and the Palestinian Territories.

SABELLA: The political situation and the economic situation together make it very hard for young people. Even when they are earning good money, and they have a secure job, relatively secure job, they feel that the prospects for the future are very dim.

LAWTON: That’s the case for John Tawil and his friend, Mary Abu-Ghattas, who are students at the Roman Catholic-run Bethlehem University. Both are 20 years old and both were born under Israeli occupation. They say Israel’s strict security policies toward all Palestinians make West Bank life untenable.

MARY ABU-GHATTAS: First of all, challenges in moving, which is like a basic human right, to be able to move from one point to another. Challenges in Israel controlling the water supply, Israel controlling basically any supply that comes into Palestine.

LAWTON: Mary’s Greek Orthodox family has lived for centuries in the Christian town of Beit Jala, just outside Bethlehem. She’s close to them, but also dreams of traveling to faraway places.

ABU-GHATTAS: Even though if I don’t care, like, if I have a lot of money. I just care to really be able to see the world, so, yes, that is definitely my dream, but it’s not going to—it’s not that easy to make come true considering our situation in Palestine. It’s very tempting to leave. Do we try? Yes, of course we try, like basically, obviously no one wants to leave their country, but it is hard. It’s a challenge.

LAWTON: John is part of the tiny Syriac Orthodox community. Several of his extended family members live in France and Britain. He’s a chemistry major who wants to study medicine, and he’s planning to do so abroad.

TAWIL: I would like to stay here, but I see that the peace, the peace process that they are moving in, will not achieve itself within the coming few years or within the coming 200 years. So why to suffer and struggle? Living under the occupation is not a normal life. It’s a stressed life, and we have to get out of this.

LAWTON: Bethlehem University was founded in 1973, and today about 30 percent of the students are Christians, 70 percent Muslim. University administrators are aware of the challenge they face.

BROTHER VINCENT NEIL KIEFFE (Bethlehem University): The difficulty with education is once you’ve educated someone they become mobile, and so they have opportunities elsewhere. Our goal is to try and encourage people to stay in the Holy Land. That’s why we’re here to start with.

LAWTON: Leaders of the Holy Land’s historic churches have been trying to encourage their flock to stay. For example, while the Anglican Church provides social services for all people, it’s also been developing scholarship and employment programs specifically aimed at Christians.

BISHOP SUHEIL DAWANI (Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem): We encourage them, and we do whatever we can within our capacity to keep them here in the land.

LAWTON: Christians outside the region are also trying to help. The Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation [HCEF] is a US-based group with the mission of “preserving the Christian presence in the Holy Land.” HCEF runs several investment and social service projects, such as this senior citizens day-care center in the West Bank town of Birzeit. Here, they try to celebrate traditional Palestinian culture and heritage. HCEF has also renovated or built more than 300 homes for low-income Palestinian Christians. This family of six was living in one rundown room. Now they have a brand-new three-bedroom home.

Church leaders worry that without a living Christian presence, the Holy Land could become like a museum or a theme park. The region’s Roman Catholic leader is Fouad Twal, who has the ancient title of Latin Patriarch. He wants pilgrims to visit not only the holy sites, but also the local Christians, whom he calls the Holy Land’s “living stones.”

PATRIARCH FOUAD TWAL (Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem): Only with the living stones, with people, with community, it has a meaning of holy. It is not a question of building and archaeology; it is a question of life.

LAWTON: Top Western Anglican and Roman Catholic leaders have just launched a new campaign to help Christians in the Holy Land. But that can be a complicated and sometimes controversial endeavor. Many Christians, especially in American and European evangelical communities, are strongly pro-Israel. When the US and other countries moved their embassies from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv for political reasons, one group of Christians founded their own institution to support Israel. They called it the Christian Embassy.

DAVID PARSONS (International Christian Embassy Jerusalem): We were founded in 1980 as an expression of comfort and solidarity with the Jewish people and their 3,000-year-old attachment to Jerusalem, and we’ve been standing on the principle of a united Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty for 30 years now.

LAWTON: David Parsons says people in his community worry that some efforts to support Christians in the Holy Land can be “anti-Israel.”

PARSONS: There is this temptation when you have this sympathy for the plight of Palestinian Christians that, you know, in order to help them you have to start bashing Israel. It is a divisive issue.

LAWTON: Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams contends that his campaign is actually very pro-Israel.

ARCHBISHOP ROWAN WILLIAMS (Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury): To put difficult questions to the government of Israel is a sign that we take the government of Israel seriously. It’s quite the opposite of delegitimation or whatever. It’s saying we expect the government of Israel to have a response. We expect for them to be able to bear criticism and to engage with it.

LAWTON: Parsons asserts that Christians are treated better by Israel than by other Middle Eastern nations, and he raises another controversial question: the role rising Islamic fundamentalism may play in the Christian exodus.

PARSONS: A lot of people look at the conflict, they look at the plight of Palestinian Christians, they look at so many of them leaving, and they want to understand why, and most of them know that the main culprit in this is Islamic militancy, both towards Jews and towards Christians.

LAWTON: Palestinian Christian leaders acknowledge there are some tensions with Muslims but say overall the two communities have lived together peacefully for centuries.

SABELLA: Our relations have been really normal relations, like neighbors. There are sensitivities in the sense that sometimes Palestinian Christians would like less of religion in the public sphere, yes. But that is not the cause for leaving.

LAWTON: Sabella says many Christians here see themselves as bridge-builders for peace and democracy.

SABELLA: If you lose the Palestinian Christians, then you lose, in a sense, the promise of a multireligious and open and democratic and pluralist society, and I’m saying that not simply to the Palestinian Territories; also to Israel.

TWAL: I consider all the inhabitants—Jews, Muslims, Christians—as my faithful, my people, my children, and I must take care of them. My dream is to see our children playing together in a normal life, a normal way in this holy, holy land. Until now, this dream, my dream, is only a dream.

LAWTON: And as peace remains elusive, many church leaders say their biggest challenge may be keeping their flock from despair.

DAWANI: Jerusalem for us Christians is a city of hope, because it is the city of the resurrection, and it is the city of hope, and hope is a very important concept in our lives. If we lose hope, we lose everything. But we still have hope.

LAWTON: The leaders believe that is the ultimate message of their faith, which was formed in this land.

I’m Kim Lawton in Israel and the West Bank.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Top Roman Catholic and Anglican leaders from around the world this week launched a new effort to support Christians in the Holy Land who are caught in the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. They also called on politicians to jump-start the stalled Middle East peace process. The new campaign got underway at a high-level meeting in London. Kim Lawton was there.

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: Christian leaders from Europe, North America, and the Middle East gathered at the historic Lambeth Palace, residence of the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. The meeting was co-hosted by Williams and the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols.

ARCHBISHOP ROWAN WILLIAMS, Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury: We cannot wait for the politicians to sort it out before we as civil society, as active agents, as people of faith, get on with making the differences we can make.

LAWTON: A main focus was how to shore up the minority Christian community in Israel and the Palestinian territories. Because of emigration and low birth rates, Christians now make up less than two percent of the population there.

WILLIAMS: That’s the very specific and the very practical challenge: Have these people a future in their ancestral home? We hope and pray that they do.

ARCHBISHOP VINCENT NICHOLS, Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales: The Holy Land and the holy sites could become something like the Colosseum, you know, the remnants of something that is of great historical interest and maybe of cultural interest, but not lived in, not living and breathing centers of life and prayer.

LAWTON: The leaders discussed concrete ways to help the predominantly Palestinian Christian community, such as financial support, building more relationships between congregations, and increasing public policy advocacy. As part of that, the group specifically called for an end to security restrictions that prevent local people of faith from visiting their holy sites. Conference organizers denied criticism from some quarters that supporting Palestinian Christians makes one “anti-Israel.”

NICHOLS: What we want to be in being pro-Christian is also being pro-Israeli and pro-peace.

LAWTON: The group heard from a variety of voices, including Jews and Muslims. Participants all agreed that working for an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be the biggest help of all.

BISHOP GERALD KICANAS, Catholic Diocese of Tucson: Ultimately, what we need is a two-state solution where these two peoples can live together in peace, each in their own sovereign states, respecting the boundaries and respecting the rights of those states. But we’re not there yet.

LAWTON: The leaders said the conversation was valuable. But, as always, the big challenge will be turning talk into action.

I’m Kim Lawton at Lambeth Palace in London.

ABERNETHY: Kim will have a special report from the Holy Land next week.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO, correspondent: Tourism is big business in the Holy Land. Millions of Christians comes here for the chance to retrace the footsteps of Christ. Among their most sacred rituals is to be baptized in the Jordan River.

BRUCE STIBINSKI: Being baptized for the first time in the Jordan River, which is where Jesus was baptized, was just awesome. Words cannot explain how I felt.

SARA AUTUNES: I feel very freed. I feel at peace. My heart feels like it’s been opened up. I can’t put it into words.

GIFTY QUAINOO: No words to express why I feel very—I feel very happy and free, free.

DE SAM LAZARO: What few of these tourists know is that unlike their faith, the river itself is in very poor shape. The immersions take place in a two-mile stretch of the Jordan, about the only place now considered safe enough for human contact. For much of the rest of its 140-mile journey, the Jordan has been reduced to a trickle as it meanders through a region riven by war and tension. Gidon Bromberg is with the environmental group Friends of the Earth Middle East.

GIDON BROMBERG (Friends of the Earth Middle East): Due to the conflict, due to the competition between the parties, between Israel, Jordan, Syria, Israel grabs half the water and a little more than a quarter is grabbed by Syria. A a little bit under a quarter is taken by Jordan and the demise is that 98 percent of the historical flow of the Jordan today no longer flows. We’re left with something around 2 percent, and this is not fresh water. This is a mixture of sewerage water, agricultural runoff, saline water. What’s left is this very, very sad sight of a river that is holy to half of humanity.

DE SAM LAZARO:And one that no longer flows into another fabled body of water.

BROMBERG: The Dead Sea is dropping by three feet every year. That’s from my hip down.

DE SAM LAZARO: Only the ruins are left of a hotel veranda from where tourists use to stick their toes into the Dead Sea. Today the shoreline has receded more than a half s mile away. From their respective sides, Jordan and Israel further drain the Dead Sea as they mine it for potash, a valuable fertilizer.

BROMBERG: At the moment our governments are trying to do absolutely everything. We’re trying to maximize agriculture, we’re trying to maximize mineral extraction, and we’re trying to attract as many tourists as we can. Well, the two don’t—the three do not always correspond, do not neatly benefit each other.

DE SAM LAZARO: Israel is a mostly urban nation, but it also has developed a thriving farm sector, and even though it is efficient and recycles 70 percent of its water, agriculture is a huge consumer of water in one of the world’s driest places—one made even more so by several recent years of drought. Nowhere is that more apparent than in Lake Kinneret, the biblical Sea of Galilee, says environmentalist Bromberg.

BROMBERG: I should be completely under water. The Sea of Galilee behind us here should be five meters higher in depth.

DE SAM LAZARO: Even though it is much lower, the lake remains a major source of fresh water for Israel and also to preserve a pristine stretch of the lower river Jordan for the Christian pilgrims.

BROMBERG: In order to keep just a small stretch of some 3 kilometers of the Jordan healthy because of baptism that takes place here and because of needs of agriculture, the water authority has built a dam wall here, and it’s pumping water from the mouth of the river just for a few kilometers.

DE SAM LAZARO: Near the baptismal site, Bromberg’s group recently organized what it calls a “big jump” with Israeli, Jordanian, and Palestinian mayors and other officials, hoping to draw attention to the stresses on the historic river, a cause that they say transcends regional boundaries, even if those boundaries are at the heart of so much conflict.

NADER AL KHATEEB (Friends of the Earth Middle East): We know the Jordan River means a lot, not only for the region. It is for the whole world, for humanity. The Jordan is very important for the three religions. We know what does it mean for the Christianity, the baptism site, and it is a dream of every Christian to be baptized in healthy water, not in polluted water like its nowadays.

Officials standing in Jordan River: One, two, three—jump!

DE SAM LAZARO: Even as the big media splash brought hordes of reporters and cameras, the baptisms and the prayers of pilgrims went on undisturbed. Pastor Daniel Santos, who organizes regular trips for congregants of his church outside London, had not heard about the river’s pollution problems, and since this part is not affected he was unconcerned.

PASTOR DANIEL SANTOS: We’re not much in it and now because we came here for a spiritual purpose.

DE SAM LAZARO: So it doesn’t particularly bother you.

SANTOS: Yeah, because we also don’t take much time here.

DE SAM LAZARO: That comes as a relief to tourist operators here, worried that the publicity might drive away business. They point out that Israeli authorities regularly test the water to ensure it’s healthy. Gidon Bromberg says the publicity has led to the construction of sewage treatment plants in Israel and Jordan and greater awareness of the Jordan in parts of the river away from the tourist sites.

BROMBERG: We need to be striking a balance, a fair balance of sharing water amongst people—Israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians—and a fairer balance of sharing waters between people and nature. And we’re going in that direction, but we’ve still got a long way to go.

DE SAM LAZARO: For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Fred de Sam Lazaro.

Rabbi RON KRONISH (Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel): Every step that the pope takes in every place he goes, including the Temple Mount or the Western Wall, is a gesture of reconciliation to both sides, and he’s tried during the week he’s here to play a balancing act, and it never quite works out perfect for everybody.

LAWTON: Pilgrims came from around the world to be part of the pope’s visit here, but his main focus was on the local Christians, Jews, and Muslims. The visit certainly encouraged the region’s shrinking Christian population. In 1948, Christians made up about 20 percent of the population here. Today, because of emigration and declining birth rates, they represent less than two percent.

Reverend IBRAHIM FALTAS (Latin Parish of Jerusalem): We are worried about the Christians here in Jerusalem and all the Holy Land. To be here is our mission, to be here, to continue to be here in this land.

LAWTON: Benedict urged the Christian population, predominantly Palestinian, to persevere. His support meant a lot to local Christians.

HANAN NASRALLAH: He is the big man, the holy — well, you consider the holy man and representing the Catholic Church over the world, so for him to come in an area where there is a conflict — a very small country, but it’s a big issue here, I think it’s very important for his visit.

KHALIL ANSARA: The talk is always about the relationship with the Muslims and the Jews, but it’s very important for the pope to come here too with the relations with the Christians.

LAWTON: Meanwhile, many Jewish leaders had high expectations that this visit would be a visual demonstration that their community still has strong relations with the Vatican, despite recent tensions after Benedict lifted the excommunication of a traditionalist bishop who denies the Holocaust.

Rabbi DAVID ROSEN (American Jewish Committee in Israel): Most people don’t know about statements and declarations. Most people don’t read properly, but nevertheless people do view the visual images.

LAWTON: Benedict met with Israel’s chief rabbis and visited the Western Wall, where he left a prayer for peace in the Middle East. He also visited Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial. But his speech there generated controversy. Some Israelis were upset that he did not acknowledge the role Christian anti-Semitism played in the Holocaust, and he did not refer to his own background as a German growing up in the Nazi era.

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said the pope had addressed those points before and didn’t feel the need to repeat them.

Reverend FEDERICO LOMBARDI (Vatican Spokesman): He had already spoken many times about these problems.

LAWTON: Rabbi Ron Kronish of the Interreligious Coordinating Council of Israel said he believes, overall, the visit was a positive thing for the Jewish community.

Rabbi KRONISH: It strengthens Israel’s place in the family of nations and in the world community. So I think that people are going to be happy about it when they look back. He went to Yad Vashem; he went to the Western Wall; he went to all the right places. He’s made all the right gestures that count for both peoples, and I think we ought to not focus on all the things he could have said or not said.

LAWTON: Benedict also did some fence-mending with the Muslim community, where tensions linger after his controversial speech in 2006 where he quoted a Byzantine emperor who linked the Prophet Muhammad and violence. Benedict was the first pope to visit the compound of Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, one of the holiest sites in Islam and a place of deep contention between Muslims and Jews.

Muslim leader Issa Jaber is an Israeli Arab who helps coordinate interfaith dialogue.

ISSA JABER (Association for Jewish-Arab Coexistence in the Judean Hills): We believe that His Holiness’ visit to the Mosque of Al Aqsa and the Dome Rock was very important and may open new dimensions of dialogue — a new dialogue between the different religions, especially Islam and Christianity.

LAWTON: But the complexities of interreligious dialogue here were also evident. At an interfaith gathering, Sheikh Taysir al-Tamimi, an Islamic court judge in the Palestinian Authority, made an impromptu 10-minute-long diatribe against Israeli occupation, prompting some of the Jewish representatives to walk out of the meeting.

Mr. JABER: Maybe it was not exactly on the agenda of the program, but for Sheik Tamimi it was very important to show the pope and to let him understand the painful — the pains of the Palestinian people in Jerusalem and outside of Jerusalem.

ELANA ROZENMAN (Trust-Emun Group): It demonstrated our reality here, and if things were simple and the religions could easily get together and meet together without any problems we would already have peace.

LAWTON: Elana Rozenman is part of an interfaith movement called the Abrahamic Renunion, which seeks to build personal relationships and trust among people of the three major religions.

Ms. ROZENMAN: Yes, the reality of conflict and war and killing exists daily. Right now people are being victims of violent acts here. We know that, but also there is another level of reality that exists of peaceful, harmonious, loving relationships between Muslims, Christians, and Jews.

LAWTON: She works closely with her friends, Eliyahu McLean, a fellow Jew, and Ibrahim Ahmad Abu El-Hawa, a Muslim.

IBRAHIM AMAD ABU EL-WAWA: We are stubborn people. We are the children of Abraham. We are from the same seed. Okay?

ELIYAHU MCLEAN (Jerusalem Peacemakers): This is a point that Ibrahaim always makes, that God chose two of the most stubborn people in the world, the Arabs and the Jews, to live in this land, and it is actually God’s decision, and this is why it’s also so difficult to make peace, because we’re both very stubborn. But at the same time we need to be stubborn to be peacemakers.

LAWTON: The three say the pope’s visit encouraged them in their work.

Mr. MCLEAN: I really felt personally empowered when the pope gave a specific blessing to the peacemakers, to the Jews and Arabs, Israelis and the Palestinians who are working to make a better future for the children of Abraham in the land of the prophets, in the Holy Land.

LAWTON: The pope may have urged the religious community to be a force for peace, but many leaders in the movement for interfaith dialogue acknowledge that politics can’t be separated out.

Rabbi KRONISH: The road ahead is bumpy. It’s not a smooth road, because we are linked to the political processes. We try to keep a flicker of hope alive in a sometimes desperate situation, and we believe that when the peace process moves forward, we will be able to move, in cooperation with governments, in bigger and more systematic ways in the future.

LAWTON: Benedict prayed for peace at every stop in this week-long Holy Land pilgrimage, and in spite of everything else, Christians, Muslims, and Jews alike said they hope that message of peace is the ultimate legacy of this trip.

I’m Kim Lawton in Jerusalem.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: There’s a little-known multifaith initiative also working for Middle East peace, with support from the U.S. government and visiting delegations of American Christians, Muslims and Jews. They say there can never be peace in the Holy Land without strong relationships between religious leaders. Kim Lawton is in Jerusalem.

KIM LAWTON: Just outside of Bethlehem, an American group is touring the Aida Palestinian refugee camp. These are not typical Holy Land pilgrims. It’s is a delegation of Christian, Muslim and Jewish leaders who are part of an American faith-based initiative to bolster peace in this land of conflict. Former U.S. Ambassador Tony Hall is heading the initiative, along with Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

Bishop Munib Younan

Ambassador TONY HALL: I don’t think any of us are under any illusions that we’re going to solve the peace problem, but we also realize that you can’t have peace without religious leaders, and that’s why we come here and try to build these relationships.

LAWTON: This is Hall’s thirteenth trip to the region in the last 24 months. He says as a former Democratic congressman and ambassador he’s seen the limits of politics and diplomacy.

Amb. HALL: I have, you know, voted for war, I’ve voted against war. I’ve voted for this program or that program. I have spoken against treaties. As an ambassador I signed treaties. About the only thing I know that works: building relationships, praying together, and let the faith aspect take over. It’s strong. It’s powerful. We never do it.

LAWTON: For more than two years, the U.S government has supported a dual-pronged approach: bringing interfaith groups of Americans to meet with their counterparts here in the Holy Land, and supporting a coalition of top religious leaders here who are trying to create an environment where peace can take hold.

Amb. HALL (at press conference, from file footage): What you have before you is a council not of religious leaders, but of the religious leaders.

LAWTON: The Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land was first announced at a Washington news conference in November 2007. Its members include Israel’s chief rabbis, the Supreme Judge of the Palestinian Islamic Courts, and the heads of the major Christian denominations. Rabbi David Rosen, of the American Jewish Committee in Israel, is also part of the council of the Holy Land

Rabbi DAVID ROSEN (American Jewish Committee, Israel): Never in the history of the Holy Land did there ever exist a body of the leadership of the three faiths of this land. I suppose it’s both wonderful and pathetic.  It’s pathetic that this has never happened before. It’s wonderful that, despite everything, we’ve managed to keep it going.

LAWTON: The council has established a rapid communication hotline to address protection of holy sites and to respond to derogatory portrayals of other faiths in the media or within religious communities. Now, the council is launching a project to monitor school textbooks. According to council member and Lutheran Bishop Munib Younan, that project is much needed.

Bishop MUNIB YOUNAN (Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land): We are working now on monitoring the textbooks both in Israel and Palestine, and to see, you see, what we teach about the other, because usually what we teach about the other is very shameful.

LAWTON: Still, politics all too often interferes. Tensions have been particularly high since the recent conflict between Israel and Gaza.

Rabbi Steve Gutow

Rabbi ROSEN: While most Christian denominations can be said to be independent, Jewish and Muslim religious representatives are subject to, if not subjugated by, the political authorities. So when things are tough politically, it tends to be much more difficult for them to be at the table. And yet, not withstanding all those pressures, we still manage to weather the storms.

Bishop YOUNAN: We have the suffering of our people under our skin. So when we sit we speak on reality. So this is the reason sometimes it’s difficult.

LAWTON: Hall brings interfaith delegations from the U.S. to encourage council members and to meet with local Muslim, Christian and Jewish groups across the spectrum. The deliberately interfaith nature of the group can be challenging, especially when people confront viewpoints different from their own. Suhail Khan is an American Muslim with the Institute for Global Engagement.

SUHAIL KHAN (Senior Fellow for Christian-Muslim Understanding , Institute for Global Engagement): You definitely feel that there are different narratives. and you feel different people within the group sometimes bristling at what they’re hearing, sometimes not willing to accept whatever narrative they might be hearing at the time, and so that has been a challenge but, again, I’m finding that it’s helping us really come together.

Bishop YOUNAN: For me, it’s important that they see reality and see the complexity of the reality in which we are living as, in this part of the world — to hear both sides, both fears, both worries, but at the same time not to abide in the fears and the worries — to give us a sign of hope.

LAWTON: Several delegation members say they are returning to the U.S. with a new sense of responsibility for getting involved in the peace process.

Rabbi STEVE GUTOW (President, Jewish Council for Public Affairs): I mean, the power of bringing Christians and Muslims and Jews together — it’s stunning and powerful. And if we bring, you know, the real masses of our faith and the real elites of our faith and get them deeply engaged that something needs to be done here, I think we’ve done something good.

LAWTON: The initiative began under the Bush administration, but leaders on both sides of the ocean hope President Obama will continue the program, and perhaps even expand it.

Rabbi ROSEN: So I’m hoping that this new administration, especially with the contacts we have thanks to our friends in the United States who have been so supportive of the work that we do, that we can be perceived as a stakeholder and a strategic asset on the part of this administration in its new initiatives.

Suhail Khan

LAWTON: There are also questions about how supportive Israel’s new political leadership may be.

Rabbi ROSEN: I wouldn’t automatically assume that the fact that it is more right wing and less inclined to make political concessions means that it is going to be less understanding of the religious dimension.

LAWTON: Ambassador Hall admits the task can seem daunting.

Amb. HALL: It’s tough. This is a tough country. It’s a tough Holy Land. Everybody, you know, talks about peace, but it’s peace talking, not peace making. So I think it’s a matter of building relationships, it’s a matter of coming back, it’s a matter of doing it drip by drip.

LAWTON: And as people of faith they say they won’t give up.

Rabbi GUTOW: I think when one brings God into the equation, when one brings our highest selves, our spiritual selves, into the decision making, I think that hope always springs, that hope is always there.

ABERNETHY: Kim Lawton joins us now from Jerusalem. Kim, it seems from here that this is an unusually difficult time for peacemaking there. What’s your sense of what Pope Benedict can accomplish?

LAWTON: Well, certainly the tensions from the conflict over Gaza in recent months are still very much a part of the mix here. Pope Benedict has said that this is not a political mission, but a spiritual pilgrimage. But, of course, there is a strong political overtone to everything he says and does. He has spoken very frequently about his concern about the conflict here. He cares very much about Middle East peace. He will be meeting with political leaders, and people are hoping that he can use that sort of moral bully pulpit that he has to, indeed, have an influence.

ABERNETHY: In recent years the pope has said some things and done some things that have offended both Muslims and Jews, so there’s some fence-mending to be done, too, isn’t there?

LAWTON: Indeed, he really has some multifaith challenges before him. He will be visiting some mosques in Jordan and here in Israel. He’ll be the first pope to actually visit the Dome of the Rock, which is so important to Muslims—one of their holiest sites. He’s hoping that symbolism of going to those places will help counteract some of the negative publicity he got after he made a speech where he quoted a Byzantine emperor who had some not very nice things to say about the Prophet Mohammad. But he’s hoping that the visual impact of this trip will help. The same thing with the Jewish community: there have been some concerns after the pope lifted the excommunication of a bishop who denied the Holocaust and some other issues. The Vatican has been working hard behind the scenes to repair those relationships, and so now, again, they hope that there’s a really public, visual indication that the pope does care about the Muslim people and the Jewish people.

ABERNETHY: Kim, when the pope and other religious leaders speak about bringing spiritual power to bear on complex political issues, how do they think that can work?

LAWTON: Well, for them as people of faith, the most — the biggest power is indeed spiritual power, and so I think that’s what they’re hoping they can draw upon to really make a difference here. You know, when I spoke with Ambassador Tony Hall about his effort he said we’ve tried everything else and nothing else has worked, so why not do that, especially in this place which is so holy to the three major religions of the world. Religion is so tied to the politics that it’s hard to separate it out, and I think the pope and a lot of the other religious leaders that I’ve been talking to really in order for peace to firmly take hold you have to have the religious community on board and you have to harness some of that spiritual power.

ABERNETHY: Kim Lawton, many thanks.