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  • Lost in America

    Christianity Today
    March 26 2004

    Lost in America
    Arab Christians in the U.S. have a rich heritage and a shaky future.
    by Elesha Coffman |


    The very Rev. Mouris Amsih spent more than 300 hours flying on
    Continental Airlines last year, traveling between Syriac Orthodox
    churches in Villa Park, Illinois; Indianapolis; and Corpus Christi,
    Texas. Airline personnel came to recognize him, but they never quite
    figured him out. "They would say to me, Shalom!" Mouris says. "They
    think I am a rabbi. Usually, I just say Shalom back to them. I do
    speak the language of Jesus, Aramaic."

    Continental employees are not the only people to mistake the Syrian
    native's identity. He was studying at a Catholic college in the
    United States during the 9/11 terrorist strikes. "The next day," he
    recalls, "students started asking me, 'Father, are you Muslim?' They
    called me father and asked if I was Muslim! I wear a big cross every
    day. I told them, 'Muslims don't believe in the Cross. If I am
    Muslim, I don't wear a cross.' Students don't have a big vision of
    the differences between Christianity and Islam."

    As the differences between these two religions grow sharper in many
    Americans' minds, the existence of Christians with Arab faces remains
    mysterious. Yet 70 percent of Arab immigrants to the United States
    are Christians. Even those of us who have heard this statistic once,
    twice, or 10 times struggle to comprehend it. Arab American
    Christians never appear on the news, have no voice in the academy,
    never figure in the plotlines of The West Wing or Law & Order. Who
    are these Christians, why have they come here, and how do they
    experience America?

    How many?
    Identifying and counting Arab Christians is difficult. The religions
    of immigrants to this country, even those who cite persecution as a
    reason for their immigration, have not been recorded consistently or
    reliably. The U.S. Bureau of the Census only collected information on
    religion from 1900 to 1936, and it relied on information from
    religious bodies themselves.

    It is difficult to find even ballpark estimates of Arabs in America.
    Recent estimates range from 2 to 3 million, of whom 1.4 to 2.1
    million would be Christians. In lieu of hard immigration or census
    data, membership statistics for the American branches of Middle
    Eastern churches seem to be the next best option. But these numbers
    are tricky as well, for three reasons.

    First, not all Arab Christian immigrants hail from historically
    Middle Eastern churches. Naim S. Aweida of Boulder, Colorado,
    exemplifies this complication. When he was born, in Haifa in 1928,
    his family had been Anglican for two generations, converted by
    19th-century missionaries. When he married Aida, a Greek Orthodox
    girl from Nablus, she became Anglican, too. The couple has lived in
    the United States since 1967.

    Second, many Arab Christians switch churches when they come to
    America. For example, when several hundred Lebanese Maronite
    Christians settled in North Carolina in the early 20th century, they
    found no Maronite church to attend. Instead, because the Maronite
    Church is in communion with the Roman Catholic Church, the immigrants
    joined Catholic congregations. Now there are two Maronite churches in
    North Carolina, but many Lebanese believers choose to remain
    Catholic - to the chagrin of others in their ethnic community.

    Third, Middle Eastern churches that establish themselves in the
    United States attract non-Arab members. The Antiochian Orthodox
    Church leads this trend. Says Father Bill Caldaroni, pastor of Holy
    Trinity Antiochian Orthodox Church in Warrenville, Illinois, "My
    parish is made up almost entirely of converts to Orthodoxy with names
    like Caldaroni, Adams, Morrison, Jager, Thiel. We have only one Arab
    in our midst." Ethnic shifts have affected other churches, too,
    though not so dramatically.

    Despite these complications, looking at Middle Eastern churches in
    the United States is a good way to begin to understand Arab American
    Christians. The investigation also opens many forgotten chapters in
    church history.

    Foreign names, forgotten roots
    Antiochian Orthodox, Assyrian, Chaldean, Coptic, Maronite, Melkite,
    Syriac Orthodox - these names sound foreign and ancient. They are.
    These Middle Eastern churches all trace their origins to the earliest
    years of Christianity. Copts claim that the Apostle Mark began their
    church in Egypt, while Syriac Orthodox believe they possess records
    of correspondence between King Abgar of Edessa and Jesus himself.
    Though these traditions may sound exaggerated to Protestants, they
    convey the deep sense of rootedness at the heart of Arab
    Christianity.

    Strong roots have enabled Arab Christians to hold fast through a
    remarkably turbulent history. First came persecution under the Roman
    Empire. Then came major church councils, at which some Middle Eastern
    churches (notably the Assyrian, Coptic, and Syriac Orthodox) broke
    with what would become the Roman and Eastern Orthodox mainstream.
    Believers whose representatives sparred over doctrine at councils
    sometimes fought each other afterward, usually with economic and
    social pressure but sometimes with weapons.

    In the seventh and eighth centuries, Islam swept across two-thirds of
    what had been the Christian world. Initially, some Christians were
    not concerned. Being treated like second-class citizens in Muslim
    society had advantages over being treated like heretics by mainstream
    overlords. Churches generally stood unmolested, and select Christians
    gained prestige as physicians, scholars, and government ministers.

    Eventually, though, Islam exacted a steep toll. Middle Eastern
    churches grew more isolated from the Christian mainstream and from
    each other. Their worship languages, mainly Coptic and Syriac, were
    smothered by Arabic. Christians were not allowed to evangelize, and
    their numbers dropped through conversion, attrition, and sporadic
    persecution.

    The 20th century, though, probably saw more disruption of the
    religious balance in the Middle East than any preceding century.
    Persistent violence, among Arab nations as well as between them and
    Israel, has destabilized the region politically, socially,
    economically, and religiously. Destabilization has hit those in the
    most precarious position - Christians - hardest.

    Ten to twelve million Copts remain in Egypt, where they have some
    political power and legal protection. In all other Arab nations (and
    the area of Palestine), far more Christians have left than have
    stayed. Lebanon, for example, has retained 1.5 million of its
    Christians, while 6 million Christians of Lebanese descent live
    elsewhere. Even 1.5 million Christians is a larger population than
    can be found in the rest of the Arab world. Of course, as late as the
    1960s, Lebanon had a Christian majority.

    The first wave of Arab emigration occured from 1880 to 1920. Most of
    these people left their homes to find better educational or economic
    opportunities. Others sought religious freedom, or to escape
    persecution.

    During World War I, Arab Christians in what was then known as Syria
    were attacked on all sides as the Ottoman Empire crumbled. Nearby,
    millions of Armenians, mostly Christians, perished in the century's
    first genocide.

    Extra Scrutiny
    More recently, persecution has again become the main reason for
    leaving the Middle East.

    Arab Christians undoubtedly enjoy more freedom and economic
    opportunity in America than in the Middle East. But just as the
    situation back home is not as unremittingly bad as one might expect,
    the situation here is not as overwhelmingly good.

    Like all immigrants, Arab Christians struggle to get all of their
    paperwork in order, to find jobs and housing, to communicate in a
    second language, and to establish social connections. They face extra
    scrutiny because they are Arab, which for some Americans means Muslim
    and potential terrorist. Yet in another sense they are invisible,
    because they are not Muslim. The American Arab Anti-Defamation League
    does not speak for them, and neither, it seems, does anyone else.

    Occasionally Arab American churches try to speak for themselves. One
    of the more vocal is the Assyrian Church of the East, which can
    afford to make pronouncements because its patriarch, Mar Dinkha IV,
    resides far outside the reach of Muslim authorities - in Morton Grove,
    Illinois. He temporarily moved his headquarters there, from the
    ancient Persian capital of Ctesiphon, in 1980.

    The Assyrian Church would like to play an active role in
    reconstructing its homeland, Iraq, and instituting protections for
    ethnic and religious minorities. To this end, Dinkha called a meeting
    of Chicago-area Assyrians on May 15, 2003. The meeting included
    delegates from the Assyrian National Congress, the Assyrian
    Democratic Party, the Assyrian American League, and many other
    organizations, but its press release prompted no reporting.

    At the opposite end of the outspokenness spectrum are American Copts.
    Their leader, Pope Shenouda III, resides in Cairo, and he strongly
    discourages members of his flock in the "lands of migration" from
    making political statements. If Copts abroad disparage Egypt's
    Muslim-dominated government, the Copts back home might pay.

    The government has cracked down before. Egyptian president Anwar
    Sadat placed Shenouda under house arrest for four years in the 1980s
    to quell local hostilities between Muslims and Christians. Westerners
    scarcely noticed the incarceration. Shenouda has cultivated stronger
    ties outside Egypt since then, but he remains anxious about conflict
    with authorities.

    Separation from the homeland is spiritually wrenching. The Maronites,
    who are among the most acculturated Arab American Christians, feel
    this tension acutely. Many Maronites today are second-, third-, or
    even fourth-generation Americans. Maronite churches have been
    established here long enough to develop an identity separate from the
    church in Lebanon.

    Rosanne Solomon, who attended the summer 2003 Maronite Patriarchal
    Synod in Lebanon as a lay delegate, likens the American Maronite
    church to a time capsule. She feels that Americans have kept beliefs
    and practices that Christians in Lebanon have abandoned. "We're more
    Maronite than they are," she told a November 2003 meeting of the
    National Apostolate of Maronites in Durham, North Carolina.

    America: Two Views
    How Maronite, or Coptic, or Chaldean, or otherwise traditional Arab
    American Christians remain is one question. How American they become
    is another. Father Mouris raves about "this blessed country." He
    extols the freedom for Christians, clergy and lay, to participate in
    government and influence society. He likewise appreciates America's
    technological and educational resources, as well as the people who
    have made them possible.

    Such blessings "came from the hard-working of the people," he says.
    "All of them, they work like the bees, working hard to make honey.
    Now we see America is good honey."

    Father Joseph Thomas, an American-born priest of the Basilian
    Salvatorian Order who is working to establish a Maronite parish in
    Raleigh, North Carolina, sees America differently. He worries that
    the country's reaction to the 9/11 attacks is eroding democracy and
    taking an unseen toll on Arab Americans.

    "A lot of people just go along with whatever developments take place
    in our legal system, but meanwhile, people who don't look right are
    really suffering from a very truncated vision of democracy," he says.
    "My [Lebanese] grandfather owned a restaurant in Richmond, Virginia.
    If he were living today, he might be very much fearful of what might
    be done to him or said to him. But in World War II, he used to feed
    any serviceman who came in with his army uniform on the house.

    "People don't realize that when Muslims or Arabic Christians - just on
    the basis of ethnicity, name, or looks - are being tagged by government
    officials, even though we ourselves don't experience it, our American
    identity, everything we knew to be American, is poisoned."

    Arab Christians remain a small minority in America, but their numbers
    continue to rise. The Antiochian Orthodox, Assyrian, Chaldean,
    Coptic, Maronite, Melkite, and Syriac Orthodox traditions already
    encompass more than 400 churches in America, spread across nearly
    every state. Penetrating the American state of mind regarding all
    matters Middle Eastern will take considerably more time.

    Elesha Coffman is the former managing editor of Christian History and
    a doctoral student at Duke University.
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