Hope Is a Verb: Why I Stand with Bright Stars of Bethlehem

by Nick Mumejian

I spend a good portion of my life at the intersection of Christianity and Islam —as a pastor, as an academic, as someone who has given years to the conviction that these two traditions have more to say to each other than the world often allows them to. That work has taken me deep into questions about what it means to see the full humanity of people whose faith, culture, and story differ from your own. It has made me a better Christian. And it has made me a fierce advocate for organizations like Bright Stars of Bethlehem.

Bright Stars is an Active Hope Partner of the Alliance of Baptists, and I want to express to you why that partnership matters to me personally.

There is a university in Bethlehem where students study film and music, design and architecture, tourism and the performing arts. It sits on a hillside in the occupied West Bank, surrounded by solar panels and stone, and it is called Dar al-Kalima — “The Word” — a name drawn from the Gospel of John. More than 500 students are enrolled there today. Its student body is 76% Muslim and 26% Christian, 63% female. All of its vice presidents are women. Its first graduating class, in 2008, numbered 22. That university exists because someone dared to say, in the middle of conflict and collapse: culture keeps you sane. Culture keeps going. That someone is the Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb, pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, the visionary behind Bright Stars of Bethlehem and one of the keynote speakers at the 2024 Alliance Annual Gathering. 

As the editor of The Muslim World journal, I think a great deal about how Muslim and Christian communities understand — and misunderstand — one another, about the narratives that humanize and the narratives that erase. One of the things that strikes me most about Dar al-Kalima University is that it refuses erasure on every front. Its student body is majority Muslim and minority Christian, reflecting the actual demographic reality of Palestinian society. Its curriculum insists that Palestinian identity — in all its religious complexity, its artistic richness, its ancient and living culture — cannot be reduced to the conditions of occupation. When I read that DAK has an Art Therapy master’s program designed specifically to meet the needs of Palestinian society, I think of everything that means in a context where trauma is not an abstraction but a daily reality. When I read that it has a film program whose graduates are screening work at festivals around the world, I think of what it means for a people to tell their own stories rather than have their stories told for them.

This is where the Alliance’s commitment to antiracism meets the ground. Racism is not only explicit hatred — it is also the erasure of culture, the denial of a people’s creative humanity, the systematic refusal to recognize that every community has the right to make art, to build institutions, to imagine a future. For Palestinians, that erasure has taken material form: land confiscated, movement restricted, educational opportunity curtailed. When we ask what antiracism demands of us globally, part of the answer is this: standing with the people and organizations who insist on Palestinian flourishing even when the world makes it extraordinarily difficult. Dar al-Kalima is an act of cultural resistance, and Bright Stars is how people of faith in the United States get to be part of it. As a board member of the Alliance, I can tell you that this partnership reflects something core to who we are — not charity, but solidarity; not a transaction, but a covenant.

The students at Dar al-Kalima are making things. Films, paintings, performances, buildings — and through them, telling the world what it means to be human under occupation. Films like The Deer’s Tooth, following a young man from a refugee camp who risks everything to fulfill his little brother’s wish to throw his milk tooth into the sea; In the Waiting Room, in which a Palestinian Arab with Israeli citizenship navigates languages and grief in a hospital waiting room; Mar Mama, in which a girl haunted by her mother’s death finds that imagination may be the only escape from reality. These are not films of despair. They are films of dignity — and they are being made in Bethlehem, in a university born from faith, stubbornness, love, or as a former professor of mine would say, “holy mischief.” 

I want to encourage you to get involved. My friend Dr. Tala alRaheb and the Bright Stars team have built real, accessible on ramps for congregations and individuals who want to participate in this work. You can give — every dollar directly funds scholarships and facilities for students who depend on outside support to complete their education. Donate at brightstarsbethlehem.org. You can invite a speaker to your congregation — Bright Stars will send someone to preach, teach, or lead an educational session, and I cannot overstate how valuable that kind of direct encounter is for building genuine understanding. Request a speaker at brightstarsbethlehem.org/speaker-request. You can host a DAK student film screening in your sanctuary or fellowship hall — reach out to Tala directly at tala@brightstarsbethlehem.org to browse the selection. You can host the Lilies of Gaza Exhibition. You can travel to Palestine through Bright Stars’ authentic pilgrimage program, which will take you off the typical tourist circuit and into real encounter with the people whose land you are visiting — learn more at brightstarsbethlehem.org/travel-to-palestine. And you can support the Women in Courage Scholarship, which has centered women’s leadership and education in the arts since DAK’s founding — donate at brightstarsbethlehem.org/women-in-courage.

The name of our partnership program carries a theological claim I believe with everything I have: hope is not a feeling we wait for. Hope is something we do — active, a verb — together, with our partners, in the places where God’s justice is being worked out on the ground. Rev. Dr. Raheb put it best: “Our aim is that our people, who admire stars, will dare to look up and dream, to believe in goals to strive for, and develop a new sense of hope, community, beauty, and faith.” The stars above Bethlehem are still shining. There are students beneath them waiting to learn what they can make. I hope you will stand with them.

Learn more and give at brightstarsbethlehem.org. To connect your congregation, email admin@brightstarsbethlehem.org or call 815-315-0682. To learn more about the Alliance of Baptists’ Active Hope Partners, visit allianceofbaptists.org/partners.