ONCE DOMINANT LEBANESE CHRISTIANS NOW A MINORITY

Agence France Presse
September 12, 2012 Wednesday 6:15 AM GMT

Lebanon, which Pope Benedict XVI will visit this week, is home to
14 Christian denominations among 18 officially recognised faith
communities.

But figures on religious affiliation in Lebanon are only approximate,
because a national census has not been conducted since 1932, when
Lebanon was still under French mandate and 51 percent of the population
was Christian.

And there is little prospect of conducting a new one because of the
sensitive political issue of maintaining parity among confessional
groups.

An unwritten, but rigorously followed tradition mandates that the
president always be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister Sunni
Muslim and the parliament speaker a Shiite.

After the Copts of Egypt, Lebanon’s Christian community is indisputably
the second-largest in the Middle East.

Christians now represent nearly 35 percent of the country’s registered
population of some 4.6 million people, according to researcher Youssef
Shahid Doueihi, of Lebanon’s Maronite Foundation in the World.

They consist of six jurisdictions that submit to the authority of the
pope, with the Maronite church being the largest Christian group in
the country.

There are also four eastern Orthodox communities, three Protestant
sects and the Egyptian Coptic church, the latest to have been
officially recognised.

The Maronite Church traces its origins to the fourth century Syrian
monk Saint Maron, who sought refuge in north Lebanon’s Qadisha Valley
after fleeing persecution.

It united with Rome in 1736, but maintains its own traditions and
practices, including a liturgy in the ancient Syriac language.

Many of today’s Christians are descendants of those who converted
to Latin, Protestant and Anglican rites during the Ottoman Empire’s
various alliances with European powers in the 19th century.

The Armenians, who fled genocide in Turkey during World War I, are
divided into mainly Apostolic (Orthodox), as well as Catholic and
Protestant churches.

The Chaldeans, who are affiliated with Rome, came from Iraq in the
1950s, attracted by what was then an oasis dominated by Christians
in a region shaken by nationalist coups.

Maronites, who today number just under one million, were the most
powerful community prior to Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war. Their
influence has since waned as their numbers drop through emigration
and low fertility rates.

The Maronites along with some 310,000 Greek Orthodox and 204,000
Greek Catholics — a sect that split from Rome in the 18th century —
represent nearly all of Lebanon’s 1.59 million Christians.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress