The Body and the Blood

Retracing Jesus' steps in the land where he lived and preached, Charles M. Sennott takes a pilgrimage through the vanishing Christian communities of the Holy Land from Nazareth to Bethlehem to Egypt and Lebanon and finally Jerusalem to ask why Christianity is disappearing in its birthplace.

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This journalistic pilgrimage seeks out the forgotten people of the Holy Land - its Christians - and shows how their dwindling numbers offer a sober lesson in understanding the modern Middle East. Retracing Jesus' steps in the land where he lived and preached, award-winning journalist Charles M. Sennott finds similar themes resonating today as they did two thousand years ago: economic injustice, military occupation, religious extremism, apocalyptic prophecies and the quest for Jerusalem. "The Body and the Blood" is Sennott's journalistic pilgrimage through the vanishing Christian communities of the Holy Land from Nazareth and Bethlehem to Egypt and Lebanon and finally Jerusalem itself, during a gripping year that was also a critical turning point in the future of the region. In the course of his journey, Sennott seeks to understand why Christianity is disappearing in the land where the faith began. Historians and demographers fear that within two more generations, native Christianity could virtually disappear in the Holy Land.
Timely, provocative and moving, firmly grounded in the troubled history of the region, "The Body and the Blood" dares to ask questions of the spirit as well as of politics. Two thousand years after Jesus' birth, is there a place for his followers in the land he called home? And could the teachings of Jesus, a rabbi who lived under occupation and preached non-violent resistance, hold some answers to the riddle of peace in the region?