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My Land Acknowledgment

Christian Century Magazine

My family owns a residential plot in suburban Chicago. I decided to find out what used to be there.

A Website To...

  • Find Ben's recent and past articles

  • Follow my emerging research projects

  • Pray with Ben for peace and justice in the Middle East

  • Connect with Ben

Ben Norquist, Ph.D.

I am a researcher and writer, working on questions of religion, land, and justice. As a Christian, I want my religious convictions and my scholarship to speak deeply to each other. Read more of my bio below.

Active Projects

A Christian Ethic for Our Landscapes

Pilgrimage in Place

Christians in the U.S. have a fraught relationship to land and places, but we can learn again.

Running for Peace

Gaza Virtual

My community knows little to nothing about Gaza. I'm running as a way to learn about its places and people.

A Collaborated Liturgy

Gaza Ceacefire Pilgrimage

A collaboration between Chicagoan Christians, Jews, and Muslims created this immersive liturgy for Gaza.

What the Hell?

Israel's Military AIs

Israel is using AIs to generate kill lists in Gaza. We need to know more.

A Holy Unhappiness

Listen in as Ben talks about peacemaking with Amanda Held Opelt, author of A Holy Unhappiness: God, Goodness, and the Myth of the Blessed Life.

Latest Writing

Religion News Service

Jesus’ comfort is for all who suffer: A response to Mike Cosper and Christianity Today

Religion News Service

MLK summit for Gaza highlighted historic ties between civil rights and Palestinian liberation

Christian Century

In Gaza, Water is Life: Fresh water was scarce even before the war. Now the situation is dire.

The Dispatch

A Different Kind of Christmas for Palestinian Christians

About Ben

Ben Norquist

Researcher | Writer

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Meet Ben

I am a researcher and writer with heartfelt questions about the ways Christians in the United States relate to the rest of the world.

My PhD (higher education, Azusa Pacific University) provided an opportunity to explore how people learn and grow and how educational sectors become ideological battlegrounds. My dissertation is a regional study of Palestinian colleges and universities in the occupied West Bank. In short, I found that Palestinian educators and learners navigate features of the Israeli occupation--physical, bureacratic, psychological, and epistemological features--as they pursue an education that seeks to nurish Palestinian roots in the land.

In my work with Churches for Middle East Peace (Director of Academics and Grants) and with the Network of Evangelicals for the Middle East (Director), I daily observe problematic ways that religous beliefs interact with contemporary politics. These organizations seek to offer education and advocacy to help Christian communities see and pursue Jesus' ethics of peace, justice, and nonviolence for the Middle East.

I am working on a book about the ways American Christians perceive and conceive of places around them, the cultural myths about land that they adopt and adapt, and the ways that Christians can recover a more faithful, historic relationship to the physical world. The book, tentatively titled Pilgrimage in Place: Every Somewhere Sacred, is due out with InterVarsity Press in 2025.

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