Copts in Modernity

Remember those happy days when we could travel to international conferences? Remember how long the flight to Australia was? I do, but the older I get the less I like being shoe-horned onto an airplane with other hacking and sneezing people for any length of time, least of all for a long overseas flight. 

Nevertheless, a good conference at the other end is worth it, and this Melbourne conference from 2018 sounds like it had some of the leading Coptologists at it, whose papers are now gathered together in Copts in Modernity:Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium of Coptic Studies, Melbourne, 13-16 July 2018, eds., Elizabeth Agaiby, Mark N. Swanson, and Nelly van Doorn-Harder (Brill, 2021), 456pp. 

Part of their long-running series, Texts and Studies in Eastern Christianity, this volume from Brill, they tell us, is 

a collection of essays – many of which contain unpublished archival material – showcasing historical and contemporary aspects pertaining to the Coptic Orthodox Church. The volume covers three main themes: The first theme, History, gathers studies that look back to the nineteenth and late eighteenth centuries to understand the realities of the twentieth and twenty-first; the second theme, Education, Leadership and Service, explores the role of religious education in the revival of the Church and how Coptic religious principles influenced the ideas of leadership and service that resulted in the Church’s spiritual revival; and the third theme, Identity and Material Culture, draws upon a broad range of material and visual culture to exemplify the role they play in creating and recreating identities. This volume brings together the work of senior and early career scholars from Australia, Europe, Egypt, and the United States.

Christianizing Egypt

In February it will, impossibly, be 30 years (!) since I went to the World Council of Churches seventh general assembly in Canberra, Australia. It was there, as an impressionable 18-year-old finishing high-school, that I learned a big new word: syncretism. Many people were up in arms at an apparent outbreak of the same during the assembly, and there was even a contingent of tiresome whackos from (where else?) the American Bible belt protesting outside our worship tent most days, saying syncretists were going to go to hell. We found these people vaguely amusing.

But to grow up and out of such lurid fantasies is to realize that people are constantly borrowing from other cultures and traditions, no matter how much the fundamentalist freaks and the purity fetishists scream and whinge about it. As the late great Robert Taft said of liturgical history, "we're all mongrels" so, a fortiori, is this true for "religious" traditions more broadly still--and the histories of ethnic and nationalist groups as well. This is a lesson amply illustrated by histories of almost every time and place. One of my most favored examples comes from Juliet du Boulay's haunting book (discussed here), Cosmos, Life, and Liturgy in a Greek Orthodox Village.

Soon we will have an affordable version of another such book about another ancient Eastern Christian country: Egypt. First released in hardback in 2017, this book is set for paperback release in the middle of 2021: Christianizing Egypt: Syncretism and Local Worlds in Late Antiquity by David Frankfurter (Princeton University Press, June 2021), 336pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us this:

How does a culture become Christian, especially one that is heir to such ancient traditions and spectacular monuments as Egypt? This book offers a new model for envisioning the process of Christianization by looking at the construction of Christianity in the various social and creative worlds active in Egyptian culture during late antiquity.

As David Frankfurter shows, members of these different social and creative worlds came to create different forms of Christianity according to their specific interests, their traditional idioms, and their sense of what the religion could offer. Reintroducing the term “syncretism” for the inevitable and continuous process by which a religion is acculturated, the book addresses the various formations of Egyptian Christianity that developed in the domestic sphere, the worlds of holy men and saints’ shrines, the work of craftsmen and artisans, the culture of monastic scribes, and the reimagination of the landscape itself, through processions, architecture, and the potent remains of the past.

Drawing on sermons and magical texts, saints’ lives and figurines, letters and amulets, and comparisons with Christianization elsewhere in the Roman empire and beyond, Christianizing Egypt reconceives religious change—from the “conversion” of hearts and minds to the selective incorporation and application of strategies for protection, authority, and efficacy, and for imagining the environment.

Preserving Coptic Heritage

The precarious plight of Coptic Christians in their homeland seems to be one of those depressing constants of Egypt today, as it has been for some time. Among the many worries about attacks on Copts and their churches are also questions of preserving Coptic heritage, treated in a new book: Egypt's Christian Heritage: Cultural Heritage Management and Egypt's Coptic Monuments by  Dan Heale (BAR Press, 2020), 184pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

The Christian cultural heritage of north Africa is ancient and rich, but at risk after recent political events. The Christian, Coptic heritage of Egypt remains poorly studied from the perspective of heritage management and is also at risk from a number of factors. Using first-hand study and analysis based upon original fieldwork, Egypt's Christian Heritage offers an assessment to the risks facing Coptic monuments in Egypt today. It does this by situating Egyptian heritage policy within the English framework, and it establishes theoretical approaches to value, significance, meaning, and interpretation in Egyptian heritage within a wider global framework. The research is based on the analysis of three markedly different Egyptian Christian Coptic sites, each with their own unique management issues. This book offers a series of solutions and ideas to preserve, manage and interpret this unique material culture and to emphasise community solutions as being the most viable and sustainable approaches, whilst taking into account the varied levels of significance of these monuments.

African Theology

With some attention to Coptic realities, and a chapter on the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, this new Routledge Handbook of African Theology, ed. Elias Kifon Bongmba (Routledge, 2020, 554pp.) ranges over a very wide terrain.

About this collection, released just six weeks ago, the publisher tells us this:

Theology has a rich tradition across the African continent, and has taken myriad directions since Christianity first arrived on its shores. This handbook charts both historical developments and contemporary issues in the formation and application of theologies across the member countries of the African Union. Written by a panel of expert international contributors, chapters firstly cover the various methodologies needed to carry out such a survey. Various theological movements and themes are then discussed, as well as biblical and doctrinal issues pertinent to African theology. Subjects addressed include:

• Orality and theology

• Indigenous religions and theology

• Patristics

• Pentecostalism

• Liberation theology

• Black theology

• Social justice

• Sexuality and theology

• Environmental theology

• Christology

• Eschatology

• The Hebrew Bible and the New Testament

The Routledge Handbook of African Theology is an authoritative and comprehensive survey of the theological landscape of Africa. As such, it will be a hugely useful volume to any scholar interested in African religious dynamics, as well as academics of Theology or Biblical Studies in an African context.

Coptic Archaelogy

I find there are many things to admire about the Copts, beginning with their steadfastness over many centuries in the face of changing political fortunes in Egypt under various imperial powers. They are also admirably concerned with the safeguarding of their patrimony, as well as its study and ongoing renewal. Too many Eastern Christians are often not good at telling their history in all its forms. Not so the Copts, as we see in another recent book focusing on Marcus Simaika Pasha: Father of Coptic Archaeology by Samir Simaika (American University of Cairo Press, 2017), 240pp.

About this book we are told:

Marcus Pasha Simaika (1864-1944) was born to a prominent Coptic family on the eve of the inauguration of the Suez Canal and the British occupation of Egypt. From a young age, he developed a passion for Coptic heritage and devoted his life to shedding light on centuries of Christian Egyptian history that had been neglected by ignorance or otherwise belittled and despised.

He was not a professional archaeologist, an excavator, or a specialist scholar of Coptic language and literature. Rather, his achievement lies in his role as a visionary administrator who used his status to pursue relentlessly his dream of founding a Coptic Museum and preserving endangered monuments. During his lengthy career, first as a civil servant, then as a legislator and member of the Coptic community council, he maneuvered endlessly between the patriarch and the church hierarchy, the Coptic community council, the British authorities, and the government to bring them together in his fight to save Coptic heritage.

This fascinating biography draws upon Simaika's unpublished memoirs as well as on other documents and photographs from the Simaika family archive to deepen our understanding of several important themes of modern Egyptian history: the development of Coptic archaeology and heritage studies, Egyptian-British interactions during the colonial and semi-colonial eras, shifting balances in the interaction of clergymen and the lay Coptic community, and the ever-sensitive evolution of relations between Copts and their Muslim countrymen.

Copts in Context

Nelly van Doorn-Harder's work on the Copts of Egypt is something I have been following for some time after having asked her to write a review for Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies several years ago. So I sit up and pay attention when she publishes a new book, as she did in September in hardcover and October of last year on Kindle: Copts in Context: Negotiating Identity, Tradition, and Modernity (University of South Carolina Press, 2017), 296pp.
 
About this collection, of which she is editor, the publisher tells us the following:

Though the Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt is among the oldest Christian communities in the world, it remained relatively unknown outside of Egypt for most of its existence. In the wake of the Arab Spring, however, this community was caught up in regional violence, and its predicament became a cause for concern around the world. Copts in Context examines the situation of the Copts as a minority faith in a volatile region and as a community confronting modernity while steeped in tradition.

Nelly van Doorn-Harder opens Coptic identity and tradition to a broad range of perspectives: historical, political, sociological, anthropological, and ethnomusicological. Starting with contemporary issues such as recent conflicts in Egypt, the volume works back to topics—among them the Coptic language, the ideals and tradition of monasticism, and church historiography—that while rooted in the ancient past, nevertheless remain vital in Coptic memory and understanding of culture and tradition. Contributors examine developments in the Coptic diaspora, in religious education and the role of children, and in Coptic media, as well as considering the varied nature of Coptic participation in Egyptian society and politics over millennia.

With many Copts leaving the homeland, preservation of Coptic history, memory, and culture has become a vital concern to the Coptic Church. These essays by both Coptic and non-Coptic scholars offer insights into present-day issues confronting the community and their connections to relevant themes from the past, demonstrating reexamination of that past helps strengthen modern-day Coptic life and culture.

The People You Run into in the Desert

There's no telling whom you'll run into while on a stroll through the Egyptian deserts of the mid-fourth century. A recently translated book about the monk Palladius tells us that he was not lolling about his cell but instead lead a very peripatetic life: John Wortley, ed. and trans., Palladius of Aspuna: the Lausiac History (Cistercian, 2015), 176pp.

About this book the publisher tell us:

Born in Galatia in the 360s, Palladius enrolled as a monk on the Mount of Olives in his early twenties. As a monk, he traveled to Alexandria, the desert of Nitria, the Cells, Palestine, Rome, and the Thebaid. During his travels he encountered Rufinus of Aquileia, Melania the Elder, the hermit Dorotheos, Macarius of Alexandria, Evagrius of Pontus, Jerome of Bethlehem, and John Chrysostom. He wrote this elegant account of his visits to various monastic sites in Egypt toward the end of the fourth century AD for the imperial chamberlain Lausus. It is both the most sophisticated and the most informative of the few documents illustrating the earliest chapter in the history of Christian monasticism. Palladius’s work is the only one of the major monastic writings not written for fellow monks to inspire them with models for their emulation but rather for a man very much of the world, with the explicit intention of exerting not only religious but also political influence.

A Coptic Biography

As an inveterate reader of biographies, as well as a scholar of Eastern Christianity with a special fondness for the Coptic Church, I am doubly looking forward to the release of this new study at the end of June: Youssef Boutros Ghali, A Coptic Narrative in Egypt: A Biography of the Boutros-Ghali Family (I.B. Tauris Press, 2016), 256pp.

About this book we are told:

A short walk from the glistening Nile nestled in a dusty Cairo street lies the Coptic Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, known locally as the Boutrosiya. If one were to enter through one of the seven doors, walk down the columned central aisle past Venetian mosaics and silk curtains, they would find the tomb of Boutros Pasha Ghali. Resting on two steps of black marble, decorated with colourful crosses, are written his last words: 'God knows that I never did anything that harmed my country'. The first Copt to be awarded the title of Pasha, the career of Boutros Pasha Ghali inextricably linked his family's fate to that of Egypt. From early whispers of independence to the last Mubarak government and the United Nations, the Boutros-Ghali's have not only been a force in the political, cultural and religious life of Egypt, but internationally. This book traces the illustrious history of this family from 1864 to the present day. Through assassinations, wars and elections, it illuminates the events that have shaped Egyptian and Coptic life, revealing the family's crucial role in the creation of modern Egypt and what their legacy may mean for the future of their country.

Coptic Christianity

Set for release at the end of December is another book introducing Coptic Christianity. We have seen a number of such introductions released over the last decade, but one more will not hurt if it aids even a little bit in continuing to draw attention to one of the oldest aboriginal Christian groups in the Middle East which has suffered so much at the hands of Islam, and continues to do so today: Jill Kamil, Christianity in the Land of the Pharaohs: The Coptic Orthodox Church (Routledge, 2015), 336pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

The Copts - the indigenous Christians of Egypt - declared their independence from Byzantine Christianity when they appointed their own patriarchs in the sixth century. Jill Kamil has written an angaging and accessible survey of the history of Christianity on Egypt, through its development under Rome, Byzantium and Islam, to modern times.

Drawing on personal travel to all the Christian sites of Egypt, and conversations with scholars, monks, museum directors, and scores of lay Egyptians both Copt and Muslim, the author tells us about the fundamental importance of Coptic religion and culture in Egypt. Weaving together historical research with absorbing stories, she explores questions as:

* How did Christianity suceed in an Egypt that already had an established religion which had lasted for more than 300 years?
* What part did Egypt play in the evolvement of the early Christian movement?
* Why were there so many Egyptian martyrs?

Lavishly illustrated with more than 120 photographs, drawings and maps, Christianity in the Land of the Pharaohs offers a captivating insight into a side if Egypt that will be new to many readers. It is ideal not only for students of Egyptian history and Christianity, as well as those with a more general interst in Egypt's past and present.

Christian-Muslim Relations in Egypt

2015 is shaping up to be a record year for the number of books published on Eastern Christian-Muslim relations. I've noted a few on here, and will note still others, and one of these days hope that my administrative-academic burdens--and other publishing commitments--let up later this fall so that I can review some of them on here.

One that came out in late spring is Henrik Lindberg Hansen, Christian-Muslim Relations in Egypt: Politics, Society and Interfaith Encounters (I.B. Tauris, 2015), 304pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

The subject of Christian-Muslim relations in the Middle East—and indeed in the West—attracts much academic and media attention. Nowhere is this more the case than in Egypt, which has the largest Christian community in the Middle East, estimated at 6-10 per cent of the national population. Henrik Lindberg Hansen analyzes this relationship, offering an examination of the nature and role of religious dialogue in Egyptian society. Taking three main religious organizations and institutions in Egypt (namely the Azhar University, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Coptic Orthodox Church), Hansen argues that religious dialogue involves a close examination of societal relations, and how these are understood and approached. Including analysis of the occasions of violence against Christian communities in 2011 and the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood from power in 2013, Hansen provides a wide-ranging exploration of the importance of religion in Egyptian society and everyday encounters with a religious ‘other’. This makes his book vital for researchers of both religious minorities in the Middle East and interfaith dialogue in a wider context.

Copts and Ottomans

Global attention has not been as riveted on Egypt and her Coptic Christians in the past many months as it had been from early 2011, but that does not mean they do not continue to suffer and are not worthy of our sustained attention. A book published in June will help to maintain that scholarly focus: Febe Armanios, Coptic Christianity in Ottoman Egypt (Oxford UP, 2015), 272pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

In this book, Febe Armanios explores Coptic religious life in Ottoman Egypt (1517-1798), focusing closely on manuscripts housed in Coptic archives. Ottoman Copts frequently turned to religious discourses, practices, and rituals as they dealt with various transformations in the first centuries of Ottoman rule. These included the establishment of a new political regime, changes within communal leadership structures (favoring lay leaders over clergy), the economic ascent of the archons (lay elites), and developments in the Copts' relationship with other religious communities, particularly with Catholics.

Coptic Christianity in Ottoman Egypt highlights how Copts, as a minority living in a dominant Islamic culture, identified and distinguished themselves from other groups by turning to an impressive array of religious traditions, such as the visitation of saints' shrines, the relocation of major festivals to remote destinations, the development of new pilgrimage practices, as well as the writing of sermons that articulated a Coptic religious ethos in reaction to Catholic missionary discourses. Within this discussion of religious life, the Copts' relationship to local political rulers, military elites, the Muslim religious establishment, and to other non-Muslim communities are also elucidated. In all, the book aims to document the Coptic experience within the Ottoman Egyptian context while focusing on new documentary sources and on an historical era that has been long neglected.

The Church in the Square

Though the Coptic Church is of course the indigenous church of Egypt, there are other Christian traditions extant in the country, not least Roman Catholics and evangelicals. What was striking to me in visiting Coptic churches the first few times now twenty years ago was the evidence of clear borrowing of certain practices from North American evangelicals. One such evangelical church in Cairo is the object of a book set for release later this spring. 

The American University of Cairo Press just sent me their latest catalogue, and included a book set for release in May of this year: Anna Jeanine Dowell, The Church in the Square: Negotiations of Religion and Revolution at an Evangelical Church in Cairo (Cairo Papers in Social Science) (AUC Press, 2015), 112pp.

About this book we are told:

In the wake of the January 25, 2011 popular uprisings, youth and leaders from the Kasr el Dobara Evangelical Church, the largest Protestant congregation in the Middle East, situated just behind Tahrir Square embarked on new, unpredictable political projects. This ethnography seeks to elucidate the ways that youth and leaders utilized religious imagery and discourse and relational networks in order to carve out a place in the Egyptian public sphere regarding public religion, national belonging, and the ideal citizen. Evangelical Egyptians at KDEC navigated the implications of their colonial heritage and transnational character even as their leadership sought to ground the congregation in the Egyptian national imagery and emerging revolutionary political scene. The author argues that these negotiations were built upon powerful paradoxes concerning liberal politics, secularism, and private versus public religion, which often implicated Evangelicals in the same questions being raised in public discourse concerning Islamist politics and religious minorities.