Kristen Burckhartt felt overwhelmed. She needed time to reflect, to let it sink in that she had just briefly soaked her feet in the water where Jesus is said to have been baptized, in the Jordan River. 

“It’s very profound,” said the 53-year-old visitor from Indiana. “I have not ever walked where Jesus walked, for one thing.”

Tourists and pilgrims come to the site from near and far, many driven by faith, to follow in Christ’s footsteps, to touch the river’s water, to connect with biblical events. 

Symbolically and spiritually, the river is of mighty significance to many. Physically, the Lower Jordan River of today is a lot more meagre than mighty.

By the time it reaches the baptismal site, its dwindling water looks sluggish, a dull brownish green shade.

Its decline, due to a confluence of factors, is intertwined with the entanglements of the decades-old Arab-Israeli conflict and rivalry over precious water in a valley where so much is contested. Championing the transboundary Jordan’s revival without wading into the thicket of the disputes that have fueled its deterioration can be a challenge.

A stretch of the river, for instance, was a hostile frontier between once-warring Israel and Jordan; river water also separates Jordan on its eastern bank from the Israeli-occupied West Bank, seized by Israel in a 1967 war and sought by the Palestinians for a state. 

“It’s a victim of the conflict, definitely. It’s a victim of people because it’s what we did as people to the river, basically, and now adding to all this it’s a victim of climate change,” said Yana Abu Taleb, the Jordanian director of EcoPeace Middle East, which brings together Jordanian, Palestinian and Israeli environmentalists and lobbies for regional collaboration on saving the river. “So it’s a victim in every way.”

The Jordan River

EcoPeace has said for years that the Lower Jordan River, which runs south from the Sea of Galilee, is particularly threatened by decades of water diversions for agriculture and domestic use and by pollution. Only a tiny fraction of its historical water flow now reaches its terminus in the Dead Sea, not far south from the baptismal site that Burckhartt visited.

That’s one reason the Dead Sea has been shrinking.

Standing at the Jordanian baptismal site Bethany Beyond the Jordan, Burckhartt, a Presbyterian, said the river’s water felt cold on her skin, offering a respite from the sweltering heat around her. In the jumble of emotions, she grappled with, she could also feel sadness for the river’s dwindling.

“I am sure God above is also sad.”

The Bible says Jesus was baptised in the Jordan River. 

The river’s eastern bank, modern-day Jordan, and its western one both house baptismal sites, where rituals of faith unfold, a reflection of the river’s enduring religious, historical and cultural allure. 

The river holds further significance as the scene of miracles in the Old Testament; after years of wandering the desert, the ancient Israelites are said to have crossed the Jordan on dry ground after the water was stopped for them to pass.

At the Jordanian baptismal site on the eastern bank recently, a woman dipped her feet in the waters and then cupped some with her hands, rubbing it on her face and over her head. Others touched the river and crossed themselves or bent over to fill empty bottles.

Charlie Watts, a tourist from England, submerged a wooden cross -- a gift and a blessing for his Christian mother back home. “I took a video ... so I can show her that it was true,” Watts said.

While he is not as religious as his mother, the 24-year-old still considered his visit to the Jordanian site special: “What made it surreal is to think that this is what started the world movement of Christianity.” 

In an interview, Rustom Mkhjian, director general of the Baptism Site Commission in Jordan, spoke passionately about the Jordanian site’s claim to authenticity and its preservation as it was in the time of Christ and John the Baptist. UNESCO has declared it a World Heritage Site “of immense religious significance to the majority of denominations of Christian faith, who have accepted this site as the location where Jesus” was baptized.

“Every year we celebrate interfaith harmony, and among my happiest days in my life is days when I see Jews, Christians and Muslims visit the site and the three of them cry,” Mkhjian said. “The present spot where we are is a site with a great message needed: Let us build human bridges of love and peace.”

The Jordanian and West Bank sites both give visitors access to the river, where they come face to face, a narrow stretch of the waterbody between them. An Israel flag at the West Bank’s Qasr al-Yahud serves as a reminder to those in Jordan that the river is a frontier separating the two worlds. 

That site is also billed as where, according to tradition, Jesus was baptized. Jordan and Israel compete for these people’s tourism dollars. 

Several people in flowing white robes waded in from the West Bank recently, posing in a semicircle for photos. Visitors in another group stood on riverbank steps or in the water itself as two men in black, apparently clerical attire poured river water over their heads. 

In the background some sang, their voices heard back on the Jordanian side: 

“Oh, Brothers, let’s go down. ... Down in the river to pray.”

Such serene moments contrast with the military hostilities that have played out on the river’s banks as part of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The river’s history and its water have been as politically fraught as holy, and for decades land mines have lurked menacingly on banks that were once a war zone. 

On the eastern bank, demining of the area where the Jordanian baptismal site now sits began after a 1994 peace treaty between Jordan and Israel.

On the West Bank, a team from The HALO Trust, a British-American charity, has cleared mines from areas housing churches in the vicinity of the Qasr al-Yahud site as recently as 2020. The site itself had opened for the public years earlier after Israel cleared a narrow road to the river, while the churches area remained off-limits and frozen in time for decades. 

Work began to clear those mines in 2018, but only after three years of building trust and getting onboard all involved, from Israeli and Palestinian authorities to several Christian denominations that own the churches and lands, said Ronen Shimoni, who was part of the HALO effort.

“Nothing is simple here in the West Bank,” Shimoni said.