During the 2019 Christmas season, about 165,000 Christian pilgrims visited Israel. The Ministry of Tourism even provided free buses to shuttle visitors between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. The Jerusalem Post reported that overall during 2019, 4.55 million tourists visited the country, which was an 11% increase over 2018 and a record-breaking number of tourist arrivals. Just over half of those were Christians. Here’s the breakdown, as reported in the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv in December:
- 55% of tourists arriving in Israel in 2019 were Christians
- 43% of these were Catholics
- 31% were Protestants
- 24% were Eastern Orthodox
Of Protestant visitors,
- 83% were evangelicals (which is 28% of all Christian tourists and 13% of all tourists)
- 15% came from African American churches
Of Orthodox tourists,
- 74% were Russian Orthodox
- 26% were Greek Orthodox
Of course, some of these religious statistics involve a degree of estimation and depend somewhat on how the categories are defined. In terms of nationality, the countries sending the most tourists (of any or no religion) through November 2019 were the United States (890,000), France (338,200), Russia (296,000), Germany (268,900), and Britain (218,700).
The sites most frequently visited by Christians in 2019 were: the Western Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Via Dolorosa, and the Mount of Olives. We will feature each of these sites and many others here on the blog during 2020!
Sources: The Jerusalem Post, December 29, 2019; Ma’ariv Online, December 15, 2019.
