Draft:Botrus Mansour

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Botrus Mansour
Born	(1965-10-06) October 6, 1965 Nazareth, Israel
Education	Hebrew University of Jerusalem (LLB, 1991) University of Haifa (MBA, 2009)
Occupations	Secretary General and CEO, World Evangelical Alliance; ordained minister
Known for	First Arab Christian Secretary General of the World Evangelical Alliance
Spouse	Abir Oudeh ​ (m. 1992)​
Children	3

Botrus Mansour (born 6 October 1965) is an Israeli evangelical Christian leader, lawyer, and educator who has served as Secretary General and Chief Executive Officer of the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) since October 2025. His appointment in August 2025 made him the first Arab Christian to lead the organisation in its 179-year history.

A native of Nazareth, in northern Israel, Mansour trained as a lawyer before spending more than two decades as director of Nazareth Baptist School, the only state-recognised K–12 evangelical school in Israel. He has held senior leadership roles in regional evangelical bodies, including as chairman of the Convention of Evangelical Churches in Israel, and co-chaired the Lausanne Initiative for Reconciliation in Israel-Palestine from 2014 to 2019. During the 2015 nationwide strike by Christian schools in Israel over state funding, Mansour served as a lead spokesperson and negotiator.

Mansour has described his background as being "a minority in a minority in a minority" — an evangelical within the Arab Christian community, an Arab Christian within the broader Arab population, and an Arab citizen within Israel — and has spoken and written widely on questions of faith and reconciliation in the Middle East.

Early life and education

Botrus Mansour was born on 6 October 1965 in Nazareth, Israel. His father, Atallah Mansour, became the first Arab Palestinian to work as a journalist at a major Hebrew-language Israeli newspaper, serving first at HaOlam HaZeh and then for thirty years at Haaretz. His mother, Evelyn Ghrayeb Mansour, was from Kafr Kanna, the biblical Cana of Galilee.

Following the Six-Day War of 1967, the family relocated to East Jerusalem to support his father's journalistic work. They subsequently moved to Oxford, England, where his father studied at Ruskin College on a scholarship, and Mansour attended primary school. The family returned to Nazareth in 1973.

Mansour attended Nazareth Baptist School, graduating in 1983. He studied law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, graduating in 1991, and was admitted to the Israel Bar Association in 1993. He later completed a Master of Business Administration specialising in non-profit management at the University of Haifa (2009) and a teaching certificate in civics from the Open University of Israel (2018).

During his student years at the Hebrew University, Mansour became active in the Fellowship of Christian Students in Israel, the local affiliate of IFES, serving as chairman of its student council from 1990.

Career

Nazareth Baptist School

After practising law in Haifa and Nazareth from 1993 to 2003, Mansour was appointed General Director of Nazareth Baptist School in 2003, a title later adjusted to Operational Director in 2020. He served in the role until October 2025. During his tenure, he led the transfer of the school's facilities and its official registration from the International Mission Board to a locally governed non-profit body, the Nazareth Baptist School Association. He also helped establish Nazareth Educational Ministries Association — operating under the name Friends of Nazareth — to coordinate support from donors in the United States.

Advocacy for Christian schools in Israel

In September 2015, Mansour served as a lead spokesperson and negotiator during a nationwide strike by Arab Christian schools in Israel. Approximately 33,000 students at 47 privately run Christian schools refused to attend classes from the first day of the academic year, in protest at state funding that administrators said had been cut to approximately 29 per cent from a previous level of around 75 per cent. The dispute attracted broad international coverage. Mansour described the impact on schools as reaching a "dead end" through years of funding reductions combined with restrictions on schools' ability to raise tuition fees.

After 27 days of strike action, Mansour served as one of six school representatives who reached a negotiated agreement with the Israeli Ministry of Education in late September 2015. He subsequently participated in the Shoshani Committee, a follow-up body established to implement the agreed reforms to school funding.

Church and community leadership

In 1996, Mansour co-founded the Local Baptist Church of Nazareth, which meets on the premises of Nazareth Baptist School. He was ordained as an elder of the church on 11 November 2001, serving in that role until 2011.

Also in 1996, Mansour was a founding member of the steering committee that established Nazareth Village, an open-air living history site recreating daily life in first-century Galilee on land in Nazareth owned by the Edinburgh Medical Mission Society. He later served as vice-president of its governing association until 2003.

From 2007 to 2022, Mansour served on the advisory and governing boards of Musalaha, a Jerusalem-based ministry working for reconciliation between Palestinian and Israeli evangelical believers.

From 2011 to 2014, he served as the Middle East representative on the Global Council of Advocates International, a professional body of lawyers and judges engaged with issues of religious liberty and reconciliation.

From 2014 to 2019, Mansour co-chaired the Lausanne Initiative for Reconciliation in Israel-Palestine alongside Lisa Loden, organising annual conferences bringing Arab evangelical Christians and Messianic Jews into dialogue. In 2016, conference participants meeting in Larnaca, Cyprus, produced the Larnaca Statement, a joint declaration affirming shared evangelical faith across ethnic and national divisions.

In February 2018, Mansour was elected Chairman of the Convention of Evangelical Churches in Israel, a position he held until 2024. In March 2022, he was elected Chairman of the Alliance of Evangelical Conventions in Jordan and the Holy Land, serving for approximately eighteen months.

Secretary General of the World Evangelical Alliance

Following a six-month international search in which 25 candidates were considered and three shortlisted, the International Council of the World Evangelical Alliance appointed Botrus Mansour as Secretary General and Chief Executive Officer by a majority vote. The appointment was announced on 17 August 2025.

The appointment marked a historic first: Mansour became the first Arab Christian to lead the WEA since the organisation's founding in 1846. The WEA had been without a permanent Secretary General since March 2023, when Thomas Schirrmacher resigned citing health reasons. The International Council chair, Dr Goodwill Shana, described the selection process as "a journey marked by diligence, transparency, and prayer."

Mansour was formally installed as Secretary General at the WEA's 14th General Assembly in Seoul, South Korea, on 31 October 2025. The assembly gathered 850 participants from 124 nations under the theme "The Gospel for Everyone by 2033." In his inaugural address, Mansour stated: "It means something profound that, in this moment, a Palestinian Christian from Israel has been asked to serve as Secretary General."

At the time of his installation, Mansour was ordained as a minister, having previously served as a lay elder within the Local Baptist Church of Nazareth.

Writing

Mansour writes in Arabic, English, and Hebrew. His articles have appeared in Christianity Today, the Israeli national newspaper Haaretz, and other publications.

His published books include:

• When Your Neighbor Is the Savior (Hope Publishing House, Pasadena, California, 2011), translated into Romanian in 2023
• Looking from the Precipice: Reflections from Nazareth of a Palestinian Christian Evangelical (Paraclete Press, 2021)
• Where Does He Lay His Head? (self-published, 2014, in Arabic)
• Who Are the Arab Evangelicals in Israel? (Convention of Evangelical Churches in Israel, 2009, in Arabic)

In 2021, Mansour co-edited Towards a Renewed Mind: Palestinian Evangelical Contributions in the Palestinian Context alongside the Revd Dr Munther Isaac, published jointly by Bethlehem Bible College and Nazareth Evangelical College.

Personal life

Mansour married Abir Oudeh, an educational counsellor from Kafr Yasif, in 1992. They have three adult children and live in Nazareth, Israel.

External links

• Botrus Mansour at the World Evangelical Alliance website
• The Larnaca Statement at The Lausanne Movement

Category:1965 births Category:Living people Category:Israeli Christians Category:Arab Christians Category:Palestinian Christians Category:Baptists Category:Israeli lawyers Category:Hebrew University of Jerusalem alumni Category:University of Haifa alumni Category:People from Nazareth Category:20th-century lawyers Category:21st-century lawyers