Church in perilous times in Egypt

The news out of Egypt this week concerning Muslim-Christian relationships is not good. I have written previously about the difficulties suffered by adherents in Coptic Orthodox Church, an ancient church tracing its lineage to the earliest Christians. At 10 percent of the Egyptian population, this group is large enough to be visible and vocal but small enough to hold little power, particularly since most of the Copts come from the poorer segment of Egyptian society.

Violence between this Christian minority and the Muslim majority has a long history in Egypt, although that violence was kept in check by the recently deposed heavy-handed dictator Hosni Mubarak.

Egypt is in transition and it remains to be seen whether the army or a newly emerging civilian state will prevail or whether if a civilian state emerges it will be a fundamentalist Muslim theocracy or a moderate Islamic democracy. Either way, these are perilous times for the church in Egypt, where violence this week resulted in the brutal killing of over two dozen Christians and the injury to over 300 others.

One cannot help but think about the parallels in Iraq where the overthrow of the ruthless Saddam Hussein opened the door for a civil war in which the most innocent and helpless victims were the Iraqi Christians who, once a visible though tiny minority, have now practically disappeared from Iraq altogether.

This Egyptian narrative is not the only Muslim-Christian story emerging from Africa; the other story is far more promising and hopeful. The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to three women this week, two of whom are from Liberia, where civil war had destroyed that nation for 14 years until determined Christian and Muslim women nation refused to endure any more rape, killing and violence.

This week I watched