Friday, September 5, 2025

It is the 5th of September 2025. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

To quote Allen Ginsburg’s 1956 poem “America”—

I’m obsessed by Time Magazine.

I read it every week.

Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.   

Well, not that last part… And I don’t read any new Time magazines- but I’m obsessed with old Time Magazines as a time capsule of what captured America’s attention and how the “mainstream” looked at it- especially when it comes to questions about the church.  

And so, as I’m collecting stories from our collective Christian past, I flagged the following story from Time Magazine in September of 1981: “Religion: Egypt’s Copts in Crisis” with the first line of the story: “The oldest Christian community fights for a tenuous security”

This was a story in response to the shocking story from this, the 5th of September in 1981, when the President of Egypt, Anwar Sadat, had the Pope of the Coptic church, Shenouda III, and some 150+ other Coptic leaders arrested. Shenouda was put in a remote monastery and held under house arrest.

There had been hope amongst Egypt's Christians- the Copts (COPTS)- this word comes from the Arabic “qubt” which was cribbed from the Greek and initially meant just: “Egyptian”. With the Arab conquest of the region, “Coptic” took on a specifically Christian connotation.

Anwar Sadat- the 3rd President of Egypt after the coup (he helped orchestrate) had been behind the Yom Kippur war against Israel in ’73, but by ’79 he was meeting at Camp David and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Sadat and Egypt would be removed from the Arab League, and Islamist hardliners hated him, but there was reason to think that maybe this time would be different. Perhaps a lasting peace- and a multi-Confessional religious landscape would spread across the Middle East.

But to get there, Sadat had to deal with his Christian community- at the time, the Copts made up as much as 10% of the Egyptian population. And the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, being an autocephalous group (that means it has its own head) in the Oriental Orthodox community, had its own Pope, Shenouda III.

Shenouda, born in 1923, had become something of a wunderkind in the Coptic world. He had made his way through the ranks to become the bishop for Christian Education and was the head of all theological education for Christians in Egypt.

Upon becoming Pope in 1971, he was known for his ecumenical bent- he was the first Coptic Pope to meet the Pope at Rome in about 1500 years, and he travelled widely in the West to garner goodwill at a time when he felt his church was, in the words of Time Magazine, fighting for "a tenuous security”.

But part of this “tenuous” situation was, according to other Coptic leaders, Shenouda’s own doing. In the very tenuous years of 80 and 81, he seemed to poke the bear of the Islamic majority in Egypt. Sadat, the very tenuous President who was seen as “soft” on Christians and sectarian violence had broken out in Cairo with over a dozen people losing their lives.

Sadat met with a Coptic Abbot, Matta el Meskin, who had trained Shenouda but believed he had become a liability. Matta advised Sadat and gave him his blessing to remove Shenouda and others, even giving the president a list of more malleable Coptic leaders.

Interviewed after the arrest of Shenouda Matta responded: “I can’t say I’m happy, but I am at peace now. Every morning, I was expecting news of more bloody collisions. Sadat’s actions protect the church and the Copts. They are from God.”

From God… or Matta himself, who was then named Coptic Pope.

This was September of 81- and as you might know, the hardliners were not assuaged by Sadat’s arrest of Shenouda and other Copts- he would be famously assassinated the following month. Shenouda would come back to power in 85 under President Mubarak. And while the number of Coptic Christians in Egypt is notoriously difficult to decode, the Coptic church seems to have held steady with anywhere between 5 and 15% of the population.

Today we remember when things came to a head- the President (of Egypt) arrested the Pope (of the Copts) on this, the 5th of September in 1981.

 

The Last word for today comes from the daily lectionary and Jeremiah 16:

Lord, my strength and my fortress,
    my refuge in time of distress,


to you the nations will come

    from the ends of the earth and say,


“Our ancestors possessed nothing but false gods,

    worthless idols that did them no good.

Do people make their own gods?

    Yes, but they are not gods!” 

“Therefore I will teach them—

    this time I will teach them

    my power and might.


Then they will know

    that my name is the Lord.

 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 5th of September 2025, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who notes that we “orchestrate” coups… apparently that’s the verb of choice for overthrowing a government. He is  Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who remembers reading that the famously debunked “Bible Code” predicted the assassination of Sadat-  I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.