Groups Urge Christians to Light Red Candle During Advent for Palestine – Word&Way

A coalition of Catholic, mainline Protestant, historic peace church, and advocacy groups wants Christians in the U.S. to remember Palestinian Christians this Advent by lighting a red candle. The “Red Candle” initiative comes after two years of genocide in Gaza and generations of violence in the West Bank and across the Middle East.

“For Palestinian Christians the color red symbolizes the blood of Christ and themes of life, rebirth, and resurrection,” the initiative’s site explains. “Red also signifies the Palestinian people, features heavily in traditional dress elements, and is the color of the unofficial national flower, the poppy.”
In addition to lighting a red candle as part of holiday displays and letting that serve as a reminder to pray, the effort encourages Christians to sign a pledge committing to justice and peace. The groups supporting the initiative include Churches for Middle East Peace, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Pax Christi USA, Red Letter Christians, and the United Methodist Church’s General Board of Church and Society. The effort grew out of work organized by the Telos Group to bring together American Christians and Palestinian Christians to work for peace.
The initiative’s site notes that while “Christians turn their gaze to Bethlehem each Christmas, many overlook or even condone the ongoing suffering in the very land of Jesus’s birth — including that of Palestinian Christians, whose communities and traditions trace back to the earliest church.” Instead of merely singing about the “little town of Bethlehem” and attending church pageants depicting the holy land of 2,000 years ago, the groups behind the red candle effort want more to commit to “rejecting apathy and theological distortions like Christian Zionism that sanctify violence.”
“We imagine Christians prayerfully turning to Bethlehem and Jerusalem during the holidays as a way of recentering on Jesus’s radical call to peacemaking, asking Jesus to fuel our advocacy for peace and justice — particularly for our Palestinian siblings in Christ,” the initiative’s site adds. “We envision the Church united around a peaceful and flourishing Holy Land where all people — Israeli, Palestinian, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, believer and non-believer — live together in equality, dignity, and freedom.”

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