A Historical and Rhetorical Response to “The Global Copt:” In Celebration of the Local Copt

As a Middle Eastern Studies major and now master’s student, my world has been constructed around vacuums—that is to say, Islam exists only as Islam, Coptic Orthodoxy exists only as Coptic Orthodoxy, or nations like Egypt exist without a full appreciation of its connections. It’s quite common because, in all honesty, it’s easier to view cultures, religions, histories as pillars–as singular or monolithic, rather than looking at the whole building and how each pillar is dependent and influenced by the uniqueness of the other pillars.

It’s then no surprise that there are many Copts in diaspora—particularly the Western diasporas—who construct a history of Coptic Orthodoxy as weak, as isolated and non-assimilated, and then, suddenly, upon migration from Egypt, the Church becomes opened and assimilated. This then is characterized as “renaissance” in and of the Coptic diaspora. Most importantly, the geography of this “renaissance” is the West.

This narrative, though, while common, is entirely inaccurate of Coptic Orthodox histories. What’s more, its inaccuracies parallel another dangerous phenomenon: colonialism. First, this narrative ignores historical exchanges and interactions between Copts and other peoples and traditions. Secondly, this narrative carries colonial “white savior” undertones. Lastly, this narrative clearly, in its grandiose, ignores realities of life-on-the-ground for many Copts who defy singularizing Coptic identity. Ultimately, the construction of a “global Copt” overlooks our true histories, the individual experiences, our diversity, and our differing realities.  

Contradictions: Copts as Isolationists Yet Also Arabized

There is an essentialist claim that is often made by many Copts in diaspora, and, as with many essentialist claims, it presents itself in contradiction. Often, diasporic Copts claim that Copts in Egypt have lived in isolation from “the world” (which is a very common, old claim made by colonizers upon visiting Coptic communities and churches). They then contradict this claim by stating that Copts in Egypt have been Arabized—that is, “they” have not lived in isolation, but rather participated in other cultures, languages, and traditions.

This contradiction is not only highly inaccurate of Coptic existences in Egypt, but is also a problematic narrative that inferiorizes other peoples, identities, and cultures in order to make one’s own existence superior or cultured as a global citizen. What’s more, it’s particularly upsetting to watch Copts in diaspora make such arguments that ring similarly to colonizing powers.¹ Within our own church, if one isn’t a historian, there are even signs to an Orthodox Church that is actually quite the opposite of these narratives: she is alive, she breathes, she lives. In reality, then, she has always been global.

For example, during the Commemoration of the Saints in the Liturgy, many of the saints mentioned are neither Egyptian, nor spoke Coptic, such as Saint Gregory the Armenian or Saints Maximus and Domatius. The Liturgies themselves—two out of the three—were written in Greek by non-Egyptians. Even our Saint Mark was not Egyptian, but rather an African Jew from Tripoli (modern-day Libya). Besides the Liturgies, the Coptic Orthodox Church itself has physical markers of communication, sharing, and exchange between various peoples. The famous Deir al-Surian in Wadi al-Natrun carries a beautiful story. On its walls, poetry in Syriac, a Semitic language, is etched to another patriarch. Because the Syrian monks saw Egypt as home and the Copts as brothers, the abbot, a Syrian, traveled to Mesopotamia to bring back Syriac books and start a library there. This monastery isn’t a solitary example; Deir Anba Antonious in the Red Sea, hundreds of miles away, bears Latin script present from thousands of years before.² For centuries, the line between Egypt and the Nile countries of Africa has been strong because of the Coptic Church’s political influence and presence in the Sudan, Ethiopia, and Eritrea. While it took centuries for the Coptic patriarch to visit a European nation after the Schism in the 5th century, the Coptic Church’s relations with other African Christians has been pivotal and mutually nourishing.³

The Orthodox Church of Egypt has not only been at the intersection with southwest Asian communities and African communities, but also non-Christian communities. My mother, who grew up in Alexandria, Egypt in a working class neighborhood in the 1960s and 70s, recalls her Jewish and Muslim neighbors and friends (in addition to her Italian, Armenian, and Greek ones). Northern Egypt in particular, on a social level, has rarely seen Copts live in isolation. Two fundamental works explore this. In her recently published first book entitled The Political Lives of Saints: Christian-Muslim Meditation in Egypt, Professor Angie Heo explores Orthodox Churches as inclusive spaces for Muslims through her ethnographic research in the early 2000s. She charts how Muslims fast Virgin Mary’s fast in August, how many Muslims seek healing from Coptic priests, as well as seek baraka, or blessings, from Coptic relics.⁴ Similary, Professor F. Rofail Farag work looks at an older time, in which Coptic theologians wrote in Arabic and wrote theology with Islamized terms.⁵ All of these examples—a mere surface exploration of the depth of diversity in the Coptic Orthodox Church—are not merely symbols, but rather histories of remembrance that direct us to an Orthodox Church and Community that is more than a monolith.

Negating “Renaissance,” Negating Orientalism

Our terminology in describing what’s happening in diaspora—or what we wish to happen in diaspora—is critical. “Renaissance” is an inappropriate term to ascribe to our realities in diaspora, in the West. First and foremost, the idea that the Church is “in need of renaissance” or “needs to be modern” or “must come out of isolation” or “should adopt Western practices” reeks eerily of older fantasies.

In his article examining Protestant missionary history and descriptions of Orthodox institutions in Syria, Egypt and Ethiopia, Professor Christopher Johnson shows how white Protestant missionary descriptions of a “dead relic” of a Church went hand-in-hand with Orientalism. Johnson based his argument on Edward Said’s Orientalism, published in the 1978, in which Said defines Orientalism as cultural and political hegemony (of Western colonizers) to articulate, to imagine and then to dominate the Orient/East. Imaginative rhetoric is powerful, and in much the same as Said analyzes literary pieces, Johnson looks at the rhetoric of colonizers concerning Christians in places their governments wish to colonize.

To dominate Coptic spaces and identities, Orientalist Protestant missionaries had to imagine Copts as inferior, and so inferiorized Coptic histories, Coptic ritual, and Coptic communities (as well as Arab). They did so by viewing these aspects as isolated and, therefore, backward. Renaissance, then, is strongly linked in Orientalist writings to their mission. It’s tied to their reasoning of colonizing Egypt: the dead bones of the Eastern Churches need to be made alive. Seeing Copts use the same terminology and logic to describe their own global reaches and endeavors is heartbreaking and points to a loss of actualizing our own diversity and fluidity.

Celebrating the Local, the Diverse

Copts in the West are not the only ones to refashion their histories and claims according to Western perspectives of Egypt and Coptic Orthodoxy. In doing so, they reduce us to monolithic categories instead of celebrating our ingenuity and diversities. Other diasporic communities in the West do the same, like Armenian NGOs that portray Armenia as backwards and in need of help,⁶ or the Assyrian and Chaldean leadership that rallied with George Bush in the wake of 9/11 to invade Iraq. In the case of Iraq, and the Assyrians in the United States, tragedy and great loss came in the wake of their advocacy that the United States invade and “transition” Iraq’s government.

Instead, we need to reexamine not only why Copts in diaspora insist on participating in Orientalist/reductionist rhetoric, but also in displacing this rhetoric for a truer, more complicated Truth. For instance, Egypt is still leading Coptic education through Pope Shenouda III’s revitalization of the Theological Seminary in Cairo. He even hired the first woman, Dr. Inas el-Misry, to teach. Furthermore,  we still receive most of our books and scholarship from Egypt. The United States in particular continues to be a land of struggle and hardship for many Copts, particularly since the 1990’s when many came without college-education or knowledge of English, yet there is a dearth of concern of our own Copts in the United States who are struggling, or even acknowledgement that all is not well in diaspora. However, complicating the picture of Coptic narratives helps us see these gaps.

More importantly, Copts in diaspora need to refocus on the local instead of the global. While grand projects are all the rage for the recognition and wealth they receive, I challenge Copts in the diaspora to recalibrate their intentions to the local: feed and house the homeless in Coptic Churches, begin community events that aren’t centered on festivals and carnivals, educate our youth on accurate and complex histories. The local—and its celebration—prevents us from the singularization of our histories.

In doing so, we’ll realize that Egypt isn’t dead, nor is the West a site of “renaissance”—that Egypt isn’t in need of a savior, nor is the West or the Western Coptic diaspora a savior. We’ll realize that our story, indeed, is not in dust, nor misplaced on a shelf, nor in need of continuation, but rather our histories and identities are living and breathing. We’ll realize that there were Church mothers too, alongside the fathers, and Copts who lived beyond persecution had flourished. We’ll realize that history isn’t made for or from us as much as we are made from history. I salute the Copts who fangirl over Abdel Halim Hafez, the Copts who are farmers and not saints, the Copts who make a mean basboosa, the Copts who look like Pharaohs and the Copts who don’t, the Copts who eat sushi, and the Copts who paint mosques with Arabic meanings.

Let’s invest ourselves in these stories, histories, and identities; Let’s learn and discover the histories that makes us alive. The histories that do not kill us, but allow us to continue without renaissance and splendor. Let us celebrate our ordinary histories–or the local Copt.