Jordan tour: A Christian town
On Saturday I broke off from the tour group and went to Fuheis, a town of 20,000 outside Amman. Fuheis is an anomaly in Jordan: it’s almost entirely Christian, majority Orthodox with many Catholics and a smattering of evangelicals. My companions for the afternoon were from the smattering, a pair of Baptist converts.
The sustainability of Fuheis’s Christian supermajority is not due to it being some isolated, provincial town—it’s built on premium, gorgeous land that borders the capital. How does Fuheis stay so Christian? Well, partly through an unofficial agreement to sell property only to other Christians.
For students of the civil rights movement, this will bring to mind the all-white towns that are part of our history in the States. Of course, it’s not hard to see an ethical difference between a small minority protecting its enclave and a powerful majority protecting its standard-issue dominance.
