Church of the Redeemer, Jerusalem

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Church of the Redeemer is a Lutheran church in Jerusalem. It belongs to the Evangelical Jerusalem Foundation, part of Germany’s EKD in the Holy Land. Built from 1893 to 1898 by Paul Ferdinand Groth (with designs by Friedrich Adler), it now hosts Arabic, German, Danish, and English-speaking congregations. The church and its provost building are the seat of the Provost of the German Protestant Ministries in the Holy Land, and since 1979 they also house the headquarters of the Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land after that church became independent from the German provost.

It is the second Protestant church in Jerusalem, after Christ Church. It was built on land given to King William I of Prussia after 1870, on the site of the old St. Mary Minor church, with construction completed in 1898. Kaiser Wilhelm II personally dedicated the church in 1898, riding into the city through ceremonial arches; the dedication took place on Reformation Day. The church closed for services from 1940 to 1950, with Palestinian Lutherans first resuming worship and then the German-speaking congregation.

In the garden beside the church is a memorial to the Knights of St. John. The adjacent Church of the Holy Sepulchre marks the traditional site of Jesus’ crucifixion. An archaeological park below the church, called Durch die Zeiten (Through the Centuries), opened in 2012 and lets visitors walk through more than 2,000 years of Jerusalem’s history. Excavations by Conrad Schick and the late Ute Wagner-Lux in 1893 and Karl Vriezen in the 1970s helped create the site, and the German Protestant Institute of Archaeology helped prepare it for visitors. The vicarage cloister houses a museum about the city’s history.

German-speaking Protestant activity in Jerusalem began in 1852, with pastors serving the community; they met at Muristan Chapel before Redeemer Church opened. The provost today represents the EKD in Israel, the West Bank, and Jordan, and oversees properties of the Evangelical Jerusalem Foundation and the Kaiserin Auguste Victoria Foundation in Jerusalem, as well as the German Protestant Community Center in Amman, Jordan.

In January 2023, Sally Azar was ordained as the first Palestinian woman pastor in the Holy Land. She will lead the English-speaking congregation and is one of five ordained female leaders in the Middle East.