Arab Christians

Arab Christians are people who are ethnically Arab or culturally and linguistically Arabized and who follow the religion of Christianity. There are believed to be nearly 11 million Arab Christians in the Arab world and 15-25 million worldwide.

The majority of Christian Arabs live in the Middle East where, although Islam is undoubtedly the preponderant religion, significant religious minorities exist in a number of countries. The largest number of Arab Christians, whether in real numbers or in proportion to a country's population, are to be found in Egypt, Israel/Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. Emigrant Arab communities throughout the Americas, especially among the Arab populations of Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and the United States, are overwhelmingly Christian. In Brazil alone, Arabs number over 12 million and are mostly Christian.

History

Throughout many eras of history, Arab Christians have co-existed fairly peacefully with followers of the other religions of the Middle East (principally Islam and Judaism). Even after the rapid expansion of Islam from the 7th century AD onwards, many Christians chose not to convert to Islam and instead maintain their pre-existing beliefs. As "People of the Book", Christians in the region are accorded certain rights by theoretical Islamic law (Shari`ah) to practice their religion free from interference or persecution (within certain restrictions on the public nature of non-Muslim worship).

Arab Christians predate Arab Muslims, as there were many Arab tribes which adhered to Christianity since the first century, including the Nabateans (whose language was Semitic but not Arab) and later, the Ghassanids, who protected the south-eastern frontiers of the Byzantine Empire in north Arabia. Arab Christians made significant contributions to the Arab civilization and still do. Some of the top poets at certain times were Arab Christians, and many Arab Christians were physicians, writers, government officials, and people of literature.

Arab Christians today

The largest population of Arab speaking Christians is found in Egypt, where they number over 7 million people, or 10% of the population. The vast majority of Christians in Egypt are followers of the Coptic Church, a rite that is in itself mainly confined to Egypt. Few Coptic Egyptians identify themselves as "Arabs"; most prefer "Arabic speakers". They have their own language (which died out as a vernacular some 300 years ago) and have their own rites of Orthodox Christianity. This church has historically been seen by Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches as heretical (Monophysite, the correct term is miaphysite), although in recent years there have been considerable strides to reconciliation with the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox communions including common understandings of the nature of Christ.

Lebanon contains the largest number of Christians in proportion to its total population; it was believed to be around 45% Christian before the Lebanese civil war. They were mainly Maronite, with sizable numbers of Greek Orthodox, Syriac Catholic and other churches. Since then, the percentage of Christians has decreased, although there is uncertainty about the numbers as there has not been a census since 1932.

In Syria, Christians formed just under 15% of the population - about 2.7 million people, in the 1960 census, but no newer census has been taken. Latest estimates put them at about 10% of the population. About 1.6% or 100,000 of all Palestinians are Christian http://www.palestinecenter.org/cpap/pubs/20020312ib.html, while four times as many Palestinian Christians, 400,000, live in the diaspora. Some of the Palestinian Christians were converted by American or European missionaries during the colonial period. (see Palestinian Christians). There are tiny communities of Roman Catholics in Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. Most of the members in North Africa, however, are foreign missionaries or workers or converted Arabs.

Millions of Arab Christians also live in a diaspora elsewhere in the world. These include such countries as Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada and the United States. Despite the common belief in the United States that Arab equals Muslim, the majority of self-identifying Arabs in the United States are Roman Catholic or Orthodox, according to the Arab American Institute. On the other hand, most American Muslims are black or of South Asian (Indian or Pakistani) origin. There are also many Arab Christians in Europe, especially France.

The traditionally Roman Catholic inhabitants of Malta speak Maltese, which is often considered an Arabic dialect, and are closely related to the Lebanese and Tunisians. However, they are not generally considered Arab Christians due to strong European influences over the centuries. For example, the Maltese language is written in Latin, not Arabic, script and has many Italian words, and most Maltese have European names.

Identity

Historically, a number of minority Christian sects that were persecuted as heretical under Byzantine rule (such as Monophysites) actually began to enjoy more religious freedom under Muslim rule than they had under Byzantine rule.

Not all Christians in the Middle East consider themselves as Arab, although they may admit the word Arab differently, depending on which aspect of their identity they wish to emphasize (political, linguistic, ethnic). Some Lebanese for example, especially Maronites though even some Muslims, go so far as to emphasize Lebanon's link to the ancient Phoenicians or Mardaites and to limit the label Arab to people living in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. On the other hand some of the most influential Arab nationalists were Orthodox Christian like Michel Aflaq, founder of the Baath Party, George Habash, founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Constantin Zureiq.

Doctrine

Like Arab Muslims and Arab Jews, Arab Christians refer to God as Allah, since this is the word in Arabic for "God". The use of the term Allah in Arab Christian churches predates its use in Islam by several centuries. In more recent times (especially since the mid 1800s), some Arabs from the Levant region have been converted from these churches to Protestant ones, most notably Baptist and Methodist churches. This is mostly due to an influx of Western, predominantly American, missionaries.

References

External links

Arab groups | Christian people | Christianity by country

Arabes chrétiens | Arabscy chrześcijanie | Арабы-христиане