This paper examines Palestinian Orthodox Christian identity as shaped by recent historic and contemporary circumstances of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While the paper is based upon interviews with Palestinian Christians, I utilize scholarship to support the ways in which the sacred historic narrative, as revealed by the interviewees, influences their collective understanding of self. The Palestinian Orthodox relationship with Israeli Jews, Palestinian Muslims and other Palestinian Christians is taken into account in order to reveal how they use their sacred identity to construct a social role for themselves that allows them to make sense of their status as a persecuted minority.
