1
THE IMPACT OF SOCIO-POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS ON THE
CHRISTIANS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
AHMAD FAUZI ABDUL HAMID
School of Distance Education, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800 Penang, Malaysia. Email: afauzi@usm.my
ABSTRACT
The subject of Christianity and Christians in the Middle East would seem to many be
as oxymoronic as the topic of ‘Islam in the West’. While interest in Western-based Islam as faith-cum-political ideology and in Muslims as a distinctive polity has accelerated in line with global geo-political developments, relative ignorance regarding Christianity and Christians in the Middle East has been the norm rather than the exception. This paper is a modest attempt to redress the lack of attention hitherto given to Middle Eastern Christians as a multi-disciplinary research area.
Keywords: Middle East, Christianity, Arab Christian, Eastern Christian, Muslim-Christian relations
Historical Setting
In the early days of the Prophet Muhammad’s (peace be upon him) missionary efforts
in the Arab Peninsula, he encountered not a few Christians who encouraged him in one way or another. While some ended up embracing Islam, others remained Christian but concluded friendship agreements with the burgeoning Muslim nation. Treaties signed with the Najran
Christians and St. Catherine’s Monastery were especially memorable accomplishments for the
Prophet of Islam in the realm of Muslim-Christian relations (Ahmad Fauzi and Shaik Abdullah 2009-10: 160-161; Chapman 2012: 92). Belying their indigenous status in the region, contemporary discourse on Middle Eastern Christians typically depicts them as lacking agency i.e. the ability to influence events and categories which affect them politically, economically, socially, and culturally. They are stereotyped as the perennial object of other actors, who in the Middle East with the exception of Israel, are invariably the Arab-Muslim and Persian-Muslim majorities. The general pessimism is aggravated by the tendency to assume that Middle Eastern Christians are necessarily helpless in arresting irreversible decline in terms of both numbers and clout (Belt 2009; Newman 2012).
Today, Middle Eastern Christians’ ontological experiences are conventionally discussed in conjunction with their status as dhimmis i.e. covenanted non-Muslim communities which the Muslim-dominated state is obliged to protect against external aggression in exchange
for jizya. Dhimmitudewas formalized within the nineteenth century Ottoman empire’s millet
2 his commitments to the activities of his church (McCallum 2007: 928-929).
The steady crumbling of the Ottoman empire, nonetheless, exposed the various Christian communities to the influence of Western imperial powers. European penetration, as manifest in the Tanzimat reforms of 1839-76, hastened Ottoman decline, the seeds of which were already present in internal decay (Mortimer 1982: 95-98, 127; Bromley, 1994: 50-51). These European powers, eager to expand their spheres of influence, resorted to adopting as their protectorates particular Christian communities whose religious persuasion most closely resembled theirs (Mitri 2012a: 43-44, 46-47). Under such an understanding, for instance, the French patronized the Middle Eastern Catholics especially the Maronites of Greater Syria, Britain and the United States of America (USA) became benefactors of Protestant groups, and Russia had the Orthodox churches as its clientele. In many ways, the so-called ‘Eastern
Question’ emerged due to rivalries among the advancing colonial powers, many of whom were guilty of fomenting dissidence and secessionist activities among their Middle Eastern co-religionists. The Christian minorities, on their part, welcomed such support, oblivious of the fact that the Western governments were using them as some kind of Trojan horse to consolidate their economic stranglehold on and to extract further concessions from Ottoman dominions (Mortimer 1982: 96). Already in virtual control of commerce and finance in the declining Ottoman economy, the Christian minorities were instigated in rebellious tendencies. Many of these unfortunately brought about massacres and suppression, thus signalling the de facto
abandonment of the Ottoman’s classic model of ethno-religious tolerance and pluralism (Corm 1983: 148, 152-153).
Western intervention left an indelible imprint on Middle Eastern society. It drove a wedge between Middle Eastern Christians and Muslims, who had shared a heritage in culture and language which stretches back to pre-Christian times. In fact, Middle Eastern society had always been kaleidoscopic in character, with varieties of local communities and tribes of different ethno-religious make-ups co-existing with one another (Corm 1983: 13-17). The contemporary emergence of Christian Zionists, a powerful lobby group in the West inspired by millennial expectations of the ultimate triumph of good over evil, has been mentioned as a great obstacle to peace in the Middle East. Biblical justification plays no small part in Western support for Israel, whose manifest existence is defended on the grounds that its founding had been pre-ordained by the Bible, in preparation for Christ’s Second Coming (Marsh 2005: 152 -153). Nineteenth century and early twentieth century missionary accounts made it quite clear that their aims were not merely converting non-Christians. Upon seeing the very limited impact of their proselytization efforts on Muslims and Jews, they partially shifted their attention to the
‘easier’ targets - indigenous Middle Eastern Christians whom the foreign missionaries tended
to view as ‘nominal Christians’ whose religious customs were seen to be so decadent to the extent of being ‘scandalous’ to Christendom (Fleischmann 1998: 309, fn. 23; Kark 2004: 216 -217).
Christian Identities in the Middle Eastern Nation States
In the carving up of the Middle East following the Ottoman collapse and the worldwide impulse favoring decolonization, the new nation states of Iraq (1932), Lebanon (1943), Syria (1946), Jordan (1946) and Israel (1948) were created. It has been argued that the modern nation state system in the Middle East originated from colonial pressures exerted by especially the
British and the French, aiming at securing unimpeded access to the region’s natural resource,
specifically oil, exploited in commercial quantities since the 1930s (Al-Naqeeb 1990: 79). Within this framework, the new nation states of the Middle East were characterized as rentier
3 food and technical know-how. Bromley defines a rentier economy as “an economy in which
income from rent dominates the distribution of national income,” while a rentier state is one in
which “the bulk of the externally derived rent is received...by the government,” and where rent makes up the larger part of the state’s income (Bromley, 1994: 94; cf. Luciani 1990: 65 -84, Beblawi 1990: 85-98).
Under pressure from both the Muslim and Western stakeholders, Middle Eastern Christians developed ambivalence for both, hence becoming embroiled in an identity crisis. Straddling between the Orient and the Occident, they presented contrasting images to one another. To their fellow Middle Eastern denizens, they embodied “the modern and the new,
renewal and progress, social liberation and modernization” (Kalaitzidis 2012: 63). In Palestine,
for instance, the long-standing public image of native Christians has been one of “elitism”,
“class privilege”, “non-violence” and “open personalities” (Kort: 2012: 41). To the West, however, they were backward Christians in need of salvation not significantly different from
that required of ‘heathens’. In fact, as the scenario in Jerusalem testifies, since the nineteenth
century, Western-based churches have pursued evangelism more vigorously among local Christians than among Muslims and Jews, drawing away large numbers of the Orthodox
faithful to become Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, Baptists and Pentecostals (O’Mahony
2005a: 90, Farah 2009: 251). The intense competition for Middle Eastern protégés has been
likened by Grafton to a Middle Eastern Christian ‘arms race’, where “Capuchins, Dominicans,
Lazarists, and Jesuits competed with the American and British mission societies over the right
to entice Eastern and Oriental Christians into their communities” (Grafton 2011: 239). Such
rivalries, occurring both within and between Roman Catholic and Protestant groups, were reinforced by their multiple connections to competing national and political interests, plus the grim reality that the different missionary clusters were often vying for influence of and favors from a limited pool of clienteles from among local converts and foreign donors respectively (Murre-van den Berg 2010: 43). As the Orient became increasingly confronted with the challenge of European colonialism, it was argued that Middle Eastern Christians served especially well as the bridge between East and West, being culturally part of the Arab world but yet, unlike their Muslim counterparts, foregoing the inhibitions against importing pedagogical techniques from their Western co-religionists, as evidenced in the splendid achievements of Christian-based universities in Palestine and Lebanon (Kattan, 2012: 50-52).
The identity crisis affecting Middle Eastern Christians has been outlined by the Lebanese Protestant scholar George Sabra in terms of a dichotomy between two fundamentally different approaches of realizing their Christian identity, namely either as Arab Christians or as Eastern Christians. On the one hand, Arab Christians seek to identify themselves with the Arab nation and its Muslim populace, the Arabic language and Islam being definitive components of Middle Eastern culture and civilization. Historically, this approach can be
traced back to Syrian and Egyptian Christians’ welcoming of seventh century Arab conquerors
as liberators from fellow Christian Byzantine oppression, which locates its roots to the Arab
4
from the Middle Eastern Christians’ worldview, underlying which can also be found deep -rooted anti-Western and anti-Zionist sentiments. This cultural convergence, claims Sabra, reached its heyday during the greater part of the twentieth century (Sabra 2006: 50). At the turn of the century, Middle Eastern Christians had made a disproportionately significant contribution to the reflowering of Arabic literature, science and culture known as An-Nahda
(renaissance). A glance through Middle Eastern scholarly history will reveal a glittering account of Christian participation in such path-breaking Arab intellectual undertakings as the medieval translation movement from Greek to Syriac to Arabic and vice versa; there even emerged a distinctively Christian Arabic literature (Brock 2010: 178-182, Mitri 2012b: 70). Later, at the height of the decolonization era, Arab Christians played conspicuous leadership roles in the various pan-Arab nationalist movements that proclaimed support for secular principles of nationhood in modern heterogeneous societies (Michel 1997: 57-58). Among
prominent Christian figures in this regard were founder of Ba’ath party Michel Aflaq (1912 -89), Syrian National Socialist Party ideologue Antun Sa’adeh (1904-49), renowned Egyptian nationalist Makram Ebeid Pasha (1879-1961) and progenitor of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) George Habash (1926-2008) (Sabra 2006: 46, Marsh 2009: 280; McCallum 2012: 9).
On the other hand, Eastern Christians are wont to throw in their lot with the West, whom they regard as sharing with them a distinctive cultural and civilizational heritage whose origins were fundamentally Middle Eastern. While admitting that political machinations of contemporary Western powers have had adverse effects on the Middle East, Eastern Christians feel that a greater danger to their existence and vitality lie in the Islamic threat. To them, the only way to safeguard the unique identity of Middle Eastern Christianity is for the Christians to connect at all levels with their co-religionists from the larger world of Christendom. In short, Middle Eastern Christians should not identify themselves as Arab, and ought to view Muslim rather than Western forces as the true occupying power set out to condemn them to perpetual insignificance. Much fodder against Islam is made out of its alleged inherent anti-democratic features which stand out as perennial obstacles against peaceful coexistence between Muslims and minority non-Muslims. Sabra picks out the Lebanese intellectual Dr. Charles Malik (1906-87) as the chief protagonist of the Eastern Christian perspective. He further observes that, while both the Arab Christian and Eastern Christian tendencies are found across the spectrum of all Middle Eastern Christian communities and are far from being mutually exclusive, the Islamist revival and consequent Islamization of Middle Eastern polities have threatened to reduce the Arab Christian outlook to irrelevance (Sabra 2006: 48-51). Fears of Islamism have accelerated since the Arab Spring revolutions of 2011-12, with palpable Islamist influence being the norm in the formation of new governments which replaced autocratic regimes (Abu-Munshar 2012: 487).
5 nation, oblivious to the many disputations that such a disavowal of Arabism amounted to an
intentional invention of history. Phoenicians were supposedly the quintessence of ‘high culture’, to which occidental civilization locates its provenance and whence it inherits trading, travelling and literary skills (Kaufman 2001: 173-194; Kaufman 2004: 1-28). Even today, surveys of Maronite attitudes indicate their hardened stance against integration into a post-civil war plural Lebanese state (Khashan 1990: 728-743; Haddad 2001: 469-478).
Between the two polar ends of the Arab Christian and the Eastern Christian outlooks, lay a variety of Middle Eastern Christian responses to regimes which displayed a clear authoritarian slant for the greater part of their history. Under the autocratic regimes presided by Saddam Hussein in Iraq (1979-2003), Hosni Mubarak in Egypt (1981-2011) and Hafez al-Assad in Syria (1971-2000), Christians were generally seen as preferring the safe option of not opposing the dominant political establishment. Patriarchs of the various Christian communities developed a certain level of understanding with the national governments, toward the
protection and even furtherance of their peoples’ rights (McCallum 2007: 923-940). This contrasted with the rising tension that often prevailed in relations between the ruling elites and the Islamists, who were inclined to view the Christians as collaborators with the secular-nationalist regimes. The national leaders, on their part, undertook the responsibility of safeguarding the welfare and rights of their Christian minorities. Apart from ensuring that personal-cum-family laws of the Christians were respected (cf. Rabo 2012: 83-87), the secular-oriented Muslim heads of states co-opted many willing Christians who rose through the political and bureaucratic hierarchies of their home countries until reaching high-ranking positions. A prominent example in this regard was that of Mikhail Yuhanna aka Tariq Aziz, an ethnic Assyrian, Chaldean Catholic and long-time confidante of Saddam Hussein who served
loyally as Iraq’s Foreign Minister (1983-91) and Deputy Prime Minister (1979-2003). During the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88), many Iraqi Christians served valiantly for their homeland in various capacities, but were especially admired for their frontline exploits in military combat
(O’Mahony 2004a:. 129, O’Mahony 2004b: 442-443).
Christian Responses to Middle Eastern Socio-political Developments
Understanding Christian responses to socio-political developments in the Middle East is impossible without taking into account the authoritarian political culture endemic to peoples of the region (McCallum 2012: 5). While the Western media and think tanks have tended to pin-point the allegedly inherent incompatibility between democracy and Islam, whose political traditions undergird Arab societies in general, in explaining the phenomenon of authoritarianism, David Grafton has recently pointed out that anti-democratic tendencies in the Middle East are properly rooted in the Arab family system, which concentrates authority in the patriarch or the shaykh. Such a patriarchal modality of authority cuts across ethno-religious boundaries, such that among Orthodox communities which have remained steadfast to Middle Eastern communitarianism with its embedded hierarchical systems, modern concepts of citizenship, individual freedoms and equality are as alien as obtaining in Muslim communities. Unlike in the Western-derived ‘civil society’ or ‘polity’ or in the Hellenistic polis, the locus of power in a Middle Eastern political unit is not the individual but rather the family, the tribe or the clan. A community is made up of different groups rather than distinct individuals; it was through the mechanism of such tribal-confessional loyalties reified in the millet system that the Ottomans reached out to the Christian minorities for centuries before arrival of Western powers (Grafton 2012: 19-27).
In the era of nation states, Christians’ modus vivendi vis-à-vis authoritarian Muslim
regimes and Arab Muslim majorities can be summed up by the ‘sameness and difference’
6 oil revenue, were pressured by a burgeoning Islamic resurgence to initiate Islamization
programs to appease their Islamic constituencies. In a nutshell, the Christian minorities’
existence is predicated on their ability to balance out narratives of sameness and difference with their fellow Muslim citizens. On the one hand, Christians regard themselves as equal citizens of their nation states, without any artificial differentiation from the majority Muslim populations. In this sense, they refuse being categorized as minorities, for such categorization reflects a legally inferior position to Muslims and dependency on the Muslim state for their protection. Their demand for equality is claimed to be embedded in the modern state system, without the need for any special attention reminiscent of the Ottoman-era dhimmi status imposed on them. In Egypt, for instance, the notion of Coptic Christianity is said to be
integrated with the concept of national unity. Trite answers of Copts and Muslims being ‘blood brothers’ when quizzed about differential aspects of both communities’ relative political
significance signify the presence of the sameness perspective (Emmett 2009: 452, Iskander 2012: 34-35; Galal 2012: 47-48). On the other hand, recourse to a measure of difference is required of the Christians in their quest for equal stakes in the definition and operationalization of nationhood. Without state intervention, a real danger of Christians being overwhelmed politically, economically and socially exists, particularly with the manifest advance of Islamist causes and categories in defining the character of contemporary Arab nation states. In Syria, for example, the positioning of Christians as minorities has even proffered advantages in that they are seen as allies of a state dominated by fellow minority Alawites, from whom they have historically managed to extract tangible concessions pertaining to freedom of religion (Rabo 2012: 82-83). Since the onset of the Arab Spring uprisings, however, the Syrian state has been drawn into a protracted civil war against Sunni insurgents who are purportedly supported by victorious elements of the Egyptian insurrection. In the long term, Christians are thus presented with a huge dilemma of whether to declare overt support for the ruling establishment, lest their partisanship ends up favoring the losing side, spelling out grave consequences for their fate in a future Syria commanded by a new set of Muslim leaders. (Gavlak and Morgan 2011, Street 2012, McCallum 2012: 11).
Confronted with the authoritarian challenge, Middle Eastern Christians have responded by reasserting their distinctive ethno-religious identity. The long-standing failure of originally Western churches to indigenize their ecclesiastical hierarchies betrays a crude lack of understanding of Middle Eastern political culture. However, this has changed, for example, with, the installation of Michel Sabah, an ethnic Palestinian, as the Latin Patriarch in Jerusalem
in 1987, and his succession by Fouad Tawal, another Arab Christian, in 2008 (O’Mahony
2005b: 134-140, Grafton 2012: 28). Other Palestinian churches have also experienced indigenization efforts at the behest of their congregations, who felt the urgent need to unite under a more cohesive identity in the face of Israeli occupation. Concerned over the alleged failure of Greek clergymen to defend their interests, Palestinian members of the Orthodox church formed an Arab Orthodox Initiative Committee in 1992 to prod for increased native representation in the Patriarchate (Roussos 2005: 112-113). Within the Anglican Church, the last English Archbishop of Jerusalem, George Appeton, served from 1969 to 1974, after which a succession of Arab bishops has followed: Faik Ibrahim Haddad (1976-84), Samir Hanna Kafity (1984-98), Riah Hanna Abu El-Assal (1998-2007) and Suheil Salman Ibrahim Dawani (since 2007). Such Arabization, while having the positive impact of uniting Palestinian churches in adopting a common stand condemning Israeli repression of the intifada, has not
7 Missionary Society (CMS), also had a racialist record of opposing the ordination of Arab priests (Marten 2005: 184-185, 190).
Faced with constant uncertainty and tribulations, Middle Eastern Christians have reacted both inwardly and outwardly. Internally, they have experienced a religious revival of
their own which, different from their Muslim counterparts’ politico-ideological struggles to uphold Islam, has focused on spiritual aspects of their religion. As consciousness of their unique position as descendants of the earliest bearers of Christianity rises, they are gradually foregoing the shame of practising rituals, celebrating festivals and reciting liturgies which seem to so differentiate them from their Western religious brethren. As a matter of fact, such sui
generis traditions and customs have instead become a source of pride for many modern Middle
Eastern Christians (Murre-van den Berg 2009: 1-2). For lay and religious Christians alike, the Church has consequently emerged as a new force for social mobilization. In Egypt, for instance, Christian revival has taken the form of Sunday classes, theological study groups for laity, Coptic language lessons and pilgrimages to religious sites, especially monasteries. Indeed, Middle Eastern Christianity is especially distinguished by its monastic character, and resurgence of interest in monasteries and monastic life has been particularly telling among the youth, including highly educated ones. Religious tours, which include a trial stay in
monasteries, reinforce participants’ sense of Christian belonging and foster camaraderie via
activities such as congregational prayer, reflection and storytelling of narratives of Christian saints and martyrs (Galal 2012: 52-56). In Lebanon, the role of the Maronite Church as the definitive voice of Christians – politically marginalized since the end of the civil war in 1990, has been catapulted to the forefront by virtue of intra-Maronite wrangling among political camps, each in support of opposing Muslim factions (Harik 1999: 162). Nevertheless, instead of adopting clear-cut political stances, which would only further divide the Christian community, the Maronite Church has returned to the spiritual roots of its founder, the fourth century Syriac monk St. Maroun, via a re-assertion of its eremitical tradition (Hourani and Habchi 2004: 451-465).
Christian religious revival has taken place not only within specific faith-based communities but also between the different denominations. The most significant manifestation of this new consciousness of inter-group solidarity has been the phenomenal growth of ecumenical churches, organizations and initiatives in recent years. A watershed was arguably reached in November 1994 with the joint declaration between Pope John Paul II and Patriarch of the Church of the East toward solving age-old Christological disputes, followed by the lifting of barriers against a Catholic attending Eucharist held at the Church of the East, and likewise for a member of the latter church wanting to participate in a Catholic-held Eucharist
(O’Mahony 2004a: 121-122). In Syria, not only are ecumenical churches rising in numbers, but inter-marriages between members of different Christian churches are also no longer a taboo (Rabo 2012: 83). While ecumenism has taken hold across denominations and countries, in nowhere has it been more urgent and vivid than in the Holy Land, where the environment is no less influenced by Christian sentiments of being besieged on two fronts: by the Israeli state and by the Islamists, some of whom wage significant clout in the interim Palestinian governments. Socio-economic factors and demographic decline weigh heavily against Christians in their tenuous relationship with the Muslim majority, with the inevitable outcome of deterioration of Christian political clout despite their traditional advantage in education and the economy (Shdema 2012: 515-530). Moreover, the great diversity of the Christian landscape in Jerusalem has meant that ecumenical efforts were never going to be easy. It was only in January 1997 that the three Patriarchs of Jerusalem achieved the unprecedented task of jointly presiding, sitting side by side, a ceremony to mark the beautification of the dome sheltering the tomb of
8 Orthodox Patriarch Diodoros (1981-2000) warned Catholics against proselytization in the fields of education and welfare (Marsh 2009: 281). The most important ecumenical development to have emanated from Palestinian Christians has been Naim Ateek’s founding of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem in 1989. Sabeel has become a household name for having hosted luminaries such as the scholar Edward Said, peace negotiator Hanan Ashrawi, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Archbishop Rowan Williams in speaking engagements (Marsh 2005: 159-162, Robson 2010: 47). Palestinian Christian charities are well-known for distributing aid, benefits and a host of social services cutting across religious and confessional lines (Sarsar 2005: 37-39, Farah 2009: 256). The prevailing Arab Christian perspective amongst Palestinian Christian elites has been foregrounded by
Marsh, “Any future for Palestinian Christianity must be a future in the context of Islam” (Marsh
2009: 284). Besides pioneering intra-Palestinian ecumenical efforts, Palestinian Protestant leaders also played a pivotal role in the formation of the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC), which has taken a bold stand opposing Christian Zionism as propagated by Western Christian evangelists (Marten 2005: 193, Marsh 2005: 153; Marsh 2009: 281).
Another popular outward response of Christians to socio-political developments in the Middle East has been emigration outside the region. While the pace of Christian outward emigration has certainly accelerated in recent years, contributing to a leap in the numerical decline of Christians – which many see as the most crucial issue facing them (Chapman 2012: 104-105), in reality the pattern of Middle Eastern Christians’ emigration to the West had existed ever since the Western powers established their presence in the region. Prior to Western capitalist interests establishing economic bases, Western missionaries had earlier pioneered humanitarian work in the form of schools, medical services and the introduction of modern amenities to the average Middle Eastern populace, Christian and Muslim alike. In exporting modern lifestyle to their target groups, they were acting as agents of cultural change to those whose posterity unsurprisingly developed a fascination for everything Western (Al-Sayegh 1998: 339-356, Murre-van den Berg 2002: 39-49). For those who were able to climb the social ladder via educational advancement, emigration to the West seemed to be a naturally attractive option, especially in view of prevailing uncertainties in the Middle East. Almost all Middle Eastern churches today have branches in the West. With what are perceived to be increasing Islamist aggressiveness and bleaker economic prospects as time passes (cf. Zeidan 1999: 59), the emigration tide looks set to continue in spite of widespread concern expressed at a possible disappearance of Christians in a not too distant future.
Conclusions
Throughout their eventful history, Middle Eastern Christians have had to perennially
situate themselves in relation to the ‘other’. These ‘other’ parties were not only alien to Middle
Eastern Christians, but they also almost always bore the traits of an active occupier intent on imposing foreign categories and lifestyles on the indigenous population. Identities of the
‘other’ vacillated between East and West, later taking the forms of ‘Muslim powers’ and ‘Western powers’ respectively. The identity of each category was plural: on the one hand, the
dominant ‘Muslim powers’ with whom Middle Eastern Christians have had to deal with over the centuries include the Umayyads, the Abbasids, the Mamluks, the Ottomans, secular-oriented Muslim nation states and now Islamist-influenced nation states. The ‘Western
powers’, on the other hand, shifted from the Byzantines through to the Crusaders, Roman
9 circumstances and interests. Such identities could be religious (Christian, Orthodox, Protestant, Catholic etc. with their varied denominations), ethnic (Arab, Assyrian, Maronite, Coptic, Armenian, etc.) or national (Palestinian, Syrian, Lebanese, Iraqi, Jordanian, etc.). With such diversity and volatility in the identity constructions of Middle Eastern Christians, neither the impact of socio-political developments on them nor their attendant responses evince a coherent pattern or monolithic qualities, let alone predictability. In spite of the diligent ecumenical endeavors of recent years, achieving Christian unity in the Middle East has a long list of obstacles lying in front of those determined to tread the path.
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