La Lucha por Palestina: Lived Religion in the Palestinian Christian Diaspora of Chile

Today, millions of Christians of Middle Eastern descent reside in Latin America—a primary destination for Arab immigrants since the late nineteenth century. Notably, more Palestinians now live in Chile than in any other country outside of the Middle East. The majority of these 500,000 Chilean-Palestinians are Eastern Orthodox, a population that far outnumbers the small Palestinian Christian community remaining in the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel. Calling for more scholarship on the flourishing Middle Eastern Christian communities of Latin America and their lived religion, this paper focuses on the unique role of Chile as a place of refuge and spiritual development for Christian Palestinians. Based on ethnographic interviews it seeks to answer the following questions: What does it mean to be Palestinian Christian in the Chilean diaspora? How do Chilean Christians of Palestinian descent speak about and enact ideas of freedom and Palestinian nationhood in religious and secular spaces?