The current calendar year, 2024, marks the 175^th anniversary of the consecration of Jerusalem’s Anglican ‘Christ Church’, originally named ‘St. James Cathedral’. Today, this spacious building serves as a meeting place of several congregations, including a Hebrew-speaking Messianic assembly, and an international English-speaking community. Both these groups sing hymns and choruses in Hebrew. The surrounding compound includes a guest-house, a museum and a cafeteria.

The Church’s official foundation stone was laid on November 1^st, 1842 (All Saints Day) by the Hebrew Christian Anglican Bishop Michael Solomon Alexander and his wife. The plot was facing David’s Citadel near the Jaffa Gate, where about 2,000 years ago there had been the garden and palace of King Herod, so-called ‘the Great’.

However, Alexander, the Jewish Bishop, soon died in 1845 on his way to Egypt. Eventually, when the building was completed, it was consecrated by someone else and under another name. The dedication ceremony of ‘Christ Church’ was performed on January 21, 1849, by Alexander’s successor, the French-speaking Swiss Bishop Samuel Gobat.

  The initial name