Americans Should Take A Lesson from the Copts
The past few weeks have brought a kind of closure to last year’s tumult. The inauguration of President Donald Trump — a definitive endmark on a hectic election cycle — coincided with a somewhat less definite ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. As the news cycle looks forward, anticipating the geopolitical moves of a new presidential administration, it’s an appropriate moment for Americans to consider what the challenges of the last year revealed about who we are becoming as a people.
One thing stands out to me: Under a Democratic administration, Americans have become attuned to identifying and affirming minority groups. Yet, our overwhelming response to the conflict between Israel and Hamas — or an entity which many have generalized as “Palestine” — revealed that, far from developing a more nuanced understanding of ethno-religious minorities and people groups, Americans have generalized race to such a degree that we can see only two groups: white people who are the oppressive majority, and colored people who are the oppressed minority. Ta-Nehsis Coates was the most prominent example of this last year with the publication of his book The Message. The result of this limited perception of minority groups is that Americans are not only ignorant of most of the minorities in the Middle East, we are still largely ignorant of those in our own backyard.
One particular minority from the Middle East is beginning to gain more acknowledgement. In November of last year, the Coptic Orthodox Diocese of Los Angeles released a statement congratulating Donald Trump on his election victory. Trump had acknowledged the Coptic Christians during his presidential campaign back in October, marking a significant move for any presidential candidate. The church also stated that they would be praying for the president in his leadership and thanked him for his acknowledgement and “shared social and family values.” The Coptic Orthodox Diocese of Los Angeles is the largest body of Coptic Churches in Southern California, and the Coptics as a whole are a growing population in the Golden State. In fact, according to the Diocese website, there are over 40 churches in the Southern California region alone. On a national level, there are roughly 500,000 Copts living in the United States.
When I lived in Santa Clarita for college, there was a Coptic Orthodox Church down the street. When I moved to Escondido for graduate school, the Lutheran Church down the hill had just sold their building and shortly thereafter, opened its doors as the new local Coptic church. Now in Northern California, Coptic Orthodox Churches serve hundreds of families in the area.
The Copts come from Egypt and are an ancient Christian community tracing its roots to the 1st century C. E. They have been living under Muslim Arab rule since the 7th century C. E. and gradually became a minority population as Egypt gradually adopted the Muslim religion. Today, the Copts face a common challenge among minorities in the Middle East and that is one of displacement: Due to violence and persecution from Muslim majority nations, they are forced to flee their homeland.
As a result, the Copts have been immigrating to the U.S. in increasing numbers over the years. With that immigration comes an importation of values that resonate with many Americans because of a common Christian heritage. Unfortunately, due to the fact that Americans have generally been ill-informed on the diversity of ethnic groups and religions in the Middle East,, they tend to not be aware of ethnic groups like the Kurds, or the Druze, or other minority groups like the Copts.
Americans could learn a few things from their Coptic neighbors. The first is that Copts are not Arab Christians. This might be surprising, but the Copts are their own distinct ethno-religious group going back to the 1st century roots of the Coptic Church. In fact, some have already noted the fact that the Copts serve as a link from ancient Egypt to the modern state. Most Americans do not understand this dynamic because we typically perceive the Middle East to be one Muslim Arabic monolith.
But this perception is ill-informed and misguided since there are a number of ethnic and religious minorities throughout the Middle East that have lived under Muslim rule for centuries yet have retained their ethnic and religious distinctives. One of those minority groups is the Jews, who unfortunately are not given the proper description as an ethno-religious minority in the Middle East. They are instead falsely labeled as “white settlers” on indigenous Arab land. If they were properly understood by Americans as an ethnic and religious minority, this could serve as an aid to combating antisemitism on college campuses that has broken out in the past year.
A better understanding of the Copts could afford a more nuanced approach to minorities not only abroad, but here at home. The Copts’ search for religious liberty in the West resonates with our own heritage. As a nation founded by religious pilgrims seeking a safe haven to worship freely, Americans should extend a welcome to Copts as well as show solidarity for their struggle against persecution in their native homeland.
Not only can knowledge of the history of these neighbors help to foster solidarity within their own community, it can also help pave the way for other minorities in the Middle East experiencing displacement and marginalization.
