Religion or Culture?

Coptic Americans are constantly struggling between their culture and their Orthodoxy. Egyptians have infused their faith with cultural traditions that have been passed on from generation to generation, making it difficult to sort out which ideologies are truly based on orthodoxy.

In an effort to preserve their culture, Coptic Americans are often raised by their parents in a way that makes it difficult to differentiate cultural traditions from religious traditions. Sometimes, this can lead the children of immigrants to rebel against their parents’ culture and leave Christianity completely; other times, they learn to embrace their family’s culture and Orthodoxy and learn to distinguish the differences in order to reconcile the two worlds in which they are raised.

One of the issues that many Coptic Americans, including myself, struggle with is our attitude towards homosexuality and the LGBTQ community.

In Egypt, being queer is a crime punishable by death, and is not practiced publicly and openly the way it is in the United States. This, in combination with biblical reproach of homosexuality, resulted in a very hateful and judgmental outlook held by many Copts towards the LGBTQ community.

However, for those of us living in the United States, where freedom in every sense of the word is encouraged, the Coptic American generation is exposed to new ideas and new conflicts, leading us to question the attitudes we were brought up with.

Growing up, it was common to hear phrases like “They are all going to hell” or “They do not know God” and many more like this directed at people who identified as LGBTQ. Furthermore, the attitudes of those of us who are loving towards the LGBTQ community are seen as unacceptable and anti-Christian.

Hearing those words upset me because the people saying such words were using God and Orthodoxy as a justification for their hatred, which is not accurate. Our God is a God of love and mercy. No matter the sin, it is not our place to judge those He loves and considers to be His children as well.

It upsets me because I can see the hypocrisy and contradiction from their words, and yet it confounds me how the people saying such statements can’t see the same. They claim they are good and faithful Coptic Orthodox Christians, and yet they are judgmental and hateful.

Judge not, that you be not judged. 2 For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. 3 And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? 4 Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye’; and look, a plank is in your own eye? 5 Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye- Matthew 7:1–5

The question that I present then is this: how would the God that you claim to love and obey so much respond to your behavior? To say that you are a faithful Christian and to speak in such a way towards His creation is simply a contradiction.

You do not have to accept American LGBTQ political trends. You do not even have to pretend to be on board with it because that is what society says. Everyone is given free will to live their lives, and no one should have to live in fear of being judged or shunned by those around them.

I do not let the lifestyle of a person influence how I interact with them. I do not let our differences get in the way of treating them like human beings.

The bottom line is that Coptic Orthodoxy does not support or uphold hate towards the LGBTQ community nor any other group of people for that matter; however, Egyptian culture, which has been influenced by a variety of factors, does.

Coptic Orthodoxy may not agree with the lifestyle, but it should be neither aggressive nor judgmental. The misunderstanding that the Egyptian culture and Coptic Orthodoxy’s treatment of the LGBTQ community are intertwined is simply just that; a misunderstanding.