Good evening. From where I'm standing right now, I can see all around me in a ring seven Christian churches.

We're not going to pan to see them. You can see one behind me, but they're all on the ridges of this valley around me.

We are about 100 yards from the River Jordan and about 150 yards from the spot where Jesus, the Christian Savior, God on Earth,

was baptized by John the Baptist, famously the beginning of his ministry and the beginning,

really, of the gospel. John the Baptist lived famously in the wilderness, eating locusts and honey.

That was right here. We are in the Holy Land,

but on the political map, we're in an overwhelmingly Muslim country, a monarchy called Jordan.

And that's significant, particularly now, because the question of how Christians are treated

in the Holy Land is a political question.

And it is because much of what happens in this region is funded by the United States, by its

taxpayers, military action, but also the cultural and religious life of the region is funded

to a great extent by American Christian churches.

And so the question that we've asked for some time now is what's the outcome?

How are Christians in the Holy Land doing?

Are they thriving or are they suffering?

And the truth has become pretty obvious over the past couple of years which is in Israel they are not thriving

their numbers are not growing they are shrinking and there's a huge debate about why but the bottom line

is there are fewer Christians now far fewer in absolute numbers and particularly as percentage of

population than there were when the state was

founded in 1948 and there's a lot of evidence in the last couple of years particularly since the

Gaza war started and the whole tone of the conversation in this area has changed quite a bit and the

rise of extremism very noticeable that those numbers have gotten even smaller. And in Jerusalem, if you follow

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