Christianity in Egypt

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Interior of Saint Mark's Cathedral in Alexandria

The Christianity exists in Egypt since the first century.

The Christian churches in Egypt are thus one of the oldest Christian churches in the world. Today only a minority of the Egyptian population belongs to Christian churches, most of them the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria .

history

Catherine's Monastery on Sinai

Christianity was the dominant religion in what is now Egypt before Islamization in the 7th century. The evangelist Mark is said to have proselytized within the population of Egypt as early as 50. The majority of Egyptian Christians, however, did not support the resolutions of the Council of Chalcedon in 451, and the Coptic Orthodox Church was finally formed .

Especially the Greek Orthodox upper class in Egypt followed the decisions of the Council of Chalcedon. After the Islamic conquest , however, the number of Coptic Christians, which is by far the largest Christian church in Egypt, sank rapidly.

The Christians were given the status of dhimmis , which imposed tax penalties on them and excluded them from numerous professions, but on the other hand were also spared from military service.

The head of the Coptic Church, Schenuda III, who died in March 2012 . , Patriarch of Alexandria and Pope of the See of Saint Mark (2009)

Todays situation

President Nasser Welcomes a Delegation of Coptic Bishops (1965)

While the fundamentalist Muslim Brothers enjoy a good reputation within the Muslim part of society, Christians are also confronted with prejudice and discrimination within the world of work from the Muslim population and the Sharia courts , just as the Muslim Brothers meet with rejection within a large proportion of Christian communities. Church building is only possible to a limited extent, and Muslim clergy repeatedly call for the murder of converts to Christianity. There are often violent incidents between Christians and Muslims that claim deaths on both sides and that also destroy Coptic cultural property.

In Nasser's time , Egypt was defined not as a religious but as an Arab socialist nation-state. However, especially since the 1980s and 1990s, when numerous Egyptians emigrated to oil-rich Saudi Arabia as job seekers and brought Islamic-Wahhabi ideas to Egypt, Egyptian Christians have been marginalized in society. So in the media, where all non-Muslims are referred to as “ kuffar ” (unbelievers). In politics, important strategic key positions are reserved exclusively for Muslims. In the educational system, Christian Egyptians are sometimes discriminated against as early as childhood. In the police academy or in the public prosecutor's office it is said that no more than 1% of Copts are accepted.

Since domestic pigs are not allowed to be kept by Muslims (since they are viewed as unclean), they are mainly bred by Christians in Egypt. When the swine fever broke out in many parts of the world in spring 2009 , the animal breeders were asked to slaughter their pigs in an emergency , although the epidemic had not yet been proven in Egypt, the disease is usually not transmitted to humans and this measure safeguards the economic existence of the Christians at risk.

Share of Christians in the population

Estimates of the proportion of the population of Christians in Egypt vary widely between 6 percent (state statistics and information from most international sources) and 15 percent. Christian sources also assume a maximum of 12 percent Christians, figures from the Coptic Church vary between 8.57 percent (7 million) and up to 20 percent.

About a quarter of all Copts live in Egypt's capital Cairo (or two to three million in the Schubra district). Copts are also above average in the central Nile governorates of al-Asiut, al-Minya and Qina, but the Cairo proportion cannot be extrapolated to the whole country.

According to critical information, only two of the six million Copts would actively profess the Christian faith.

Denominations

Among the Christian groups are the Coptic Orthodox Church , Roman Catholics (less than 1% of the population), Protestants (100,000), Syriac Orthodox , Armenian Orthodox , Jehovah's Witnesses and the Seventh-day Adventists .

Churches with Patriarchate Alexandria

  1. The Greek Orthodox Church of Alexandria ,
  2. The Coptic Catholic Church of Alexandria as well as the
  3. The Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarchate of Antioch, Alexandria and Jerusalem

Coptic Orthodox Church

The Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria is headed by the Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of the See of St. Mark, currently Pope Tawadros II . She currently has:

  • 11 metropolitan areas with 10 metropolitan areas (1 vacant metropolitan area).
  • 54 dioceses in Egypt and outside Egypt with 51 suffragan bishops plus 2 bishops serving a specific congregation {the Eritreans} in the United States of America and the United Kingdom . 3 dioceses are vacant.
  • 9 auxiliary bishops (1 in a diocese in France , 2 in dioceses in Egypt and 6 assistants to the Pope in the Archdiocese of Cairo , which reports directly to the Pope.)
  • 5 exarchs (2 in the Archdiocese of North America, 1 in the United Kingdom and 2 in East and South Africa)
  • 9 episcopal abbots from patriarchal monasteries, plus 2 monasteries awaiting the appointment of an abbishop.
  • 7 general bishops including 3 bishops running patriarchal institutions, 2 secretary bishops to the Pope and 2 bishops without portfolios.
  • 1 choir bishop .

Broadcast reports

literature

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ portesouvertes.fr ( Memento of January 10, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ diepresse.com
  3. ^ Foreign in their own country . In: the daily newspaper
  4. ^ Anti-pig campaign - Islamists use swine flu from FAZ from April 29, 2009 (accessed online on May 9, 2011)
  5. ↑ Harenberg Aktuell (edited by Meyers and Brockhaus), page 532: 94% Muslims versus 6% Christians in total (most of them Copts) / Spiegel-dtv-Jahrbuch 2004, page 54: 90% Muslims versus 9% Copts / country information from foreigners Office : 90% Muslims versus 6% Copts / CIA World Fact Book: 10% Christians
  6. ↑ Only the Fischer Weltalmanach 2011, page 48, counts 80% Muslims compared to 6-15% Copts, but in 2006 still listed 85% Muslims compared to 12% Copts and in 2003 still 90% Muslims compared to 9-10% Copts (6 million from 64 million) without providing an explanation for this significant shift within just five years. Just as inexplicably, the number of Copts in Egypt tripled (from 2 million to 6 million) within just two years (see Fischer WA 1996, p. 59, and Fischer WA 1998, p. 58) and their share thus increased from 4.1% to 10.4% ... within only ten years (see Fischer WA 1996, p. 59, and Fischer WA 2006, p. 50) even quadrupled (from 2 million to 8.1 million .)!
  7. ↑ Evangelical Religious Freedom Report of the US State Department: 8–12% Christians / Ecumenical Lexicon of Saints : 10% Copts
  8. ^ Egypt in: Microsoft Encarta
  9. ↑ The Coptic-born Prof. Fouad Ibrahim (Univ. Bayreuth) estimated the proportion in 2002 at 13 percent
  10. ↑ a b Encyclopedia Britannica
  11. ↑ a b according to Fouad Ibrahim
  12. ↑ z. B. the historian Isabella Ackerl : The States of the Earth - Africa, America and Australia , page 8. Marix Verlag, Wiesbaden 2007