Christians in Bethlehem 1922-2025 1922-1945 The earliest data point is taken directly the British Mandate census from ‘22 for the town, which shows 6,658 residents with 5,838 Christians, 818 Muslims, so 87.7% Christian (1). By ‘45 the same Mandate census show a drop to 73% with 8,820 inhabitants: 6,430 Christians and 2,370 Muslims (2). 1967-1995 Immediately after the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel conducted a full census with the ICBS supervising and publishing this as “Census of Population 1967: West Bank of Jordan, Gaza Strip, North Sinai and Golan Heights”, in several volumes, with detailed tabulations by locality, religion, sex, and other variables. The Levy Economics Institute digitized these volumes which constitute the first modern census reports, (4). For an easily accessible summation for Bethlehem, the The Jewish Virtual Library’s Bethlehem page states: “In the 1967 census taken by Israel authorities, the town of Bethlehem proper numbered 14,439 inhabitants, its 7,790 Muslim inhabitants represented 53.9% of the population, while the Christians of various denominations numbered 6,231 or 46.1%.” (4,5) The number of Christians in Bethlehem enjoyed a period of relative stability between ‘67 and ‘95, when under Oslo II, against local Christian pleas to Rabin’s government opposing the move, the area was handed over to Palestinian Authority control. PCBS 1997 census gives Bethlehem city between 21.7–21.9k people but no religion based breakdown; PCPSR/Philos and church sources converge on “about 40% Christian in 1998” (6,7). This implies c. 8.5–9k Christians, i.e. low-40s percent. For 1995 I would put the number at closer to the 45% mark on overall trend, but this is not a precise figure and I have to dig further to see if this portion of my graph and claim can be better anchored. What is repeatedly cited is 40% by 1997-8 across multiple Christian and Palestinian sources. Still, even at 40% the number of Christians translates to about 8,800, an increase from 1967’s 6,231. Note that PCBS uses “urban Bethlehem” for the tri-cluster of Bethlehem, Beit Jala and Beit Sahour plus their municipal boundaries but disaggregates from rural villages and the three refugee camps, Aida, Azza, and Dheisheh. Later ARIJ work cites the 1997 census, giving the “urban Bethlehem” population as 44,880, which is just the sum of those three municipalities in the 1997 tables. But in the Bethlehem-row of that locality table PCBS records a population of just under 22,000 as cited above. 2007-2025 The 2007 data point rests primarily on the PCPSR/Philos reconstruction of Christian demography in the occupied Palestinian territories. Using PCBS census data and its own fieldwork with local councils and churches, PCPSR notes that Bethlehem’s Christian share fell to 28% by 2007, with Christians declining to only 1.2% of the total Palestinian population but remaining concentrated in Bethlehem and a few other towns. The National Catholic Reporter piece from December 2016 quotes mayor Vera Baboun that “by 2016, the Christian population dipped to just 12 percent” in Bethlehem and its surrounding villages and that “today there are just 11,000 Christians” in Bethlehem. Friends of the Holy Land’s 2018 gathering report states 18% for Bethlehem’s Christian share. Lee’s AIJAC article in early 2019 uses a comparable framing, noting that since the PA took over the city in 1995 “the Christian percentage of the city’s population has plummeted from 40 per cent to 12 per cent,” and that the city’s population of c. 27,000 in 2017 was 23% higher than in 1998. A Reuters 2024 Christmas piece about Bethlehem picks up those same threads, stating that “as of a 2017 census, the overall population of Bethlehem was 215,514 with only 23,000 Christians among them,” and infers a Christian share “around 10%” in Bethlehem city. PCBS’s 2021 projected mid-year population tables by locality have Bethlehem total city pop’n rising from 28,343 in 2017 to c. 33k by 2025.