Here in the United States, we tend to think of countries in the "Middle East" as exclusively Islamic, and when we hear of differences in religion there, it is usually only in reference to conflicts within Islam (e.g., Sunni, Shi'a, etc.). What is almost always ignored is that followers of Christ Jesus have been painstakingly guarding the Christian faith in that region since the religion was in its infancy. St. Mark the Evangelist carried the Gospel to the Egyptian people and served as Bishop of Alexandria beginning about a decade after the Ascension of Christ. Since that time, Christians there have continued to preserve their Tradition in the face of much persecution.
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| Coptic Icon of St. Mark the Evangelist |
I don't remember hearing anything about it here, but the BBC covered another wave of protests in Cairo and Alexandria at the beginning of January. Protesters were seeking better protection for Egyptian Christians, whose Churches are being targeted for bombing by groups associated with al-Qaeda. Surely, though, this Christian minority in Egypt must be extraordinarily small and insignificant, considering how little we hear about them. Exactly how many Christians are there in Egypt, anyway?
The answer might surprise you. Demographics I have found put Egypt's Muslim population at around 90%. The remaining 10% are predominantly Christian, with Coptic Orthodox Christians making up the overwhelming majority of those. To put this in perspective, here in the United States, only about 0.6% of our population identifies as Muslim. That would mean that if each country had a population of 1,000 people, 100 Egyptians would be Christian, while only 6 Americans would be Muslim! Even if we could account for differences in survey method or sample size, the data still seems to show that there are drastically more Christians per capita in Egypt than there are Muslims in the United States. (In case you were wondering, all non-Christian religions in the U.S. together still make up only around 4-5% of the population, while those with no religion at all account for roughly 15%.)
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| Sinai icon of St. Catherine from St. Isaac of Syria Skete |
My patron saint, Catherine the Great Martyr, was from Alexandria, and recently I have thought a lot about the monks who labor in prayer and asceticism in her monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai. I'm pretty sure the prayers of the monastics sustain the whole world. As we watch with anticipation to see how things unfold in the land that sheltered our Lord and Master in the early years of His life, let us join with the monastics in commending our brothers and sisters there to His care and protection, asking for the intercessions of the many Egyptian saints .
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| Coptic Icon of the Holy Family's Flight Into Egypt |
P.S. Almost as soon as I published this, my friend shared this timely article . Thanks, A.K.!
