Untitled - St.Francis Magazine

St Francis Magazine Vol 8, No 2 | April 2012 bishop – which he became on his consecration as a short-­‐lived Bishop of Sierra Leone in Sept. 1857). As part of the “Documents of the Jerusalem Bishopric”, published in 1883, there is an interesting reflection by Klein (who had memorably discovered the Moabite stone in 1868 during one of his journeys to the east of the Jordan) which echoes much of what we have already seen in Bishop Gobat’s early annual reports. When in the year 1851, I arrived in Palestine, I found at Jerusalem a small number of natives, partly enquirers, who used to come together on the Lord’s Day for prayer and reading of the Scriptures. At Nablous, there was another little band of enquirers and at Nazareth, a larger number had expressed a desire to place themselves under our instruction. At Salt, also, on the other side of the Jordan, there were some people willing to be instructed in the Word of God. (Jerusalem Bishopric Documents 73) And although the company of Western missionaries in Palestine soon decreased to just the two locations of Jerusalem and Nazareth, this date of 1851 marks the beginning of continuous involvement by CMS personnel in the life of what is now the Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem covering the peoples of Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and the Occupied Territories. 4. Arab Christian pioneers If 1854 sees the establishing of a number of Western missionaries in different locations across Palestine, it also marks the year when the first so-­‐far named Arab Christian is appointed as a catechist to work among the newly forming Protestant communities. His name is Michael Kawar 161 . As has been 161 Whose name is spelled in various different ways using the Latin alphabet; the precise Arabic spelling is ‏.ققععوواارر293