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Christianity in Syria
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Christians in Syria make up about 20% of the population, the largest Christian denomination is the Greek Orthodox church, closely followed by the Greek Catholic church; there are also a minority of Protestants.
The President of Syria has to be a Muslim, as a result of popular demand at the time the constitution was written. However, Syria does not profess a state religion, and does not officially favour any religion over another.
lass="link1" onMouseover='showByLink("m7919204",this)' onMouseout='hide("m7919204")'href="http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Damascus">Damascus was one of the first regions to receive Christianity during the ministry of St Paul.
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Christians in Syria make up about 20% of the population, the largest Christian denomination is the Greek Orthodox church, closely followed by the Greek Catholic church; there are also a minority of Protestants.
The President of Syria has to be a Muslim, as a result of popular demand at the time the constitution was written. However, Syria does not profess a state religion, and does not officially favour any religion over another.
Status of Christians in Syria
Damascus was one of the first regions to receive Christianity during the ministry of St Paul. There were more Christians in Damascus than anywhere else. After the military expansion of the Umayyad empire into Syria and Anatolia, the teachings of Islam came into practice and many became Muslims.
Damascus is open to Christianity. Christians have churches all over the city. Masses are held every Sunday and civil servants are given the mornings off on Sunday mornings to allow them to attend church, even though Sunday is a working day in Syria. Schools in Christian-dominated districts have Saturday and Sunday as the weekend, while the official Syrian weekend falls on Friday and Saturday.
Christians and Jews engage in and enjoy every aspect of Syrian life. Following in the traditions of Paul, who practised his preaching and ministry in the marketplace, Syrian Christians are participants in the economy, the academic, scientific, engineering, arts, and intellectual life, the entertainment scene, and the political arena of Syria. Many Syrian Christians are public sector and private sector managers and directors, local administrators, members in the Parliament, and ministers in the government. A number of Syrian Christians are also officers in the armed forces of Syria. They have preferred to mix in with Muslims rather than form all-Christian units and brigades, and fought alongside their Muslim compatriots against Israeli forces in the various Arab-Israeli conflicts of the 20th century. In addition to their daily work, Syrian Christians also participate in volunteer activities in the less developed areas of Syria. As a result, Syrian Christians are generally viewed by other Syrians as an asset to the larger community.
Syrian Christians have their own courts that deal with civil cases like marriage, divorce and inheritance based on Bible teachings. By agreement with other communities, Syrian Christian churches do not proselytise to Muslims and do not accept converts from Islam. Noteworthy Syrian Christians include the chronicler Paul of Aleppo, the chess player Philip Stamma, and the Syrian Armenian musician George Tutunjian.
Further information
The Christian communities of Syria, which comprise about 20 percent of the population, spring from two great traditions. Roman Catholicism and Protestantism were introduced by missionaries and a small number of Syrians are members of Western denominations. The vast majority, however, belong to the Eastern communions, which have existed in Syria since the earliest days of Christianity. The main Eastern groups are the autonomous Orthodox churches; the Uniate churches, which are in communion with Rome; and the independent Nestorian church. Even though each group forms a separate community, Christians nevertheless cooperate increasingly.
The schisms that brought about the many sects resulted from political and doctrinal disagreements. The doctrine most commonly at issue was the nature of Christ. In 431, the Nestorians broke away because of their belief in the dual character of Christ, i.e., that he had two separate but equal natures, the human Jesus and the divine Christ. Therefore, Mary was not the mother of God but only of the man Jesus. The Council of Chalcedon, representing the mainstream of Christianity, in 451 confirmed the dual nature of Christ in one person; Mary was therefore the mother of a single person, mystically and simultaneously both human and divine.
The Monophysites, another schismatic group, taught that Christ's divinity overpowered his humanity, resulting in a single divine nature. They were the precursors of the present-day Syrian and Armenian Orthodox churches. The Monothelites, precursors of the modern Maronites, tried to evolve a compromise by postulating that Christ had two natures, human and divine, but a single will.
By the thirteenth century, Eastern or Greek Christianity had irrevocably separated from Western or Latin Christianity. In the following centuries, however, especially during the crusades, some offshoots of the Eastern churches accepted the authority of the pope in Rome and entered into communion with Roman Catholic Christianity. Today called the Uniate churches, they retain a distinctive language and liturgy.
The largest Christian denomination in Syria is the Greek Orthodox church, formerly known as the Melkite church after the 5-6th centuries christian split, in which they stayed loyal to Constantinople ("melek" = king, is the Aramaic denomination for the Byzantine Emperor). The appellation "Greek" refers to the liturgy they use, not to the ethnic origin of the members; in fact this word is spelled in Arabic "Rum" for "Byzantines" (Oriental Romans). Arabic is now its main liturgical language.
The Syrian Orthodox or Jacobite church, whose liturgy is in Syriac, split off from the main body of Orthodoxy in the 5-6th centuries, over the Monophysite heresy.
The Armenian Orthodox church is the second largest Syrian Christian group. It uses an Armenian liturgy and its doctrine is Miaphysite (not monophysite, which is a mistaken term used or was used by the Chalcedonian Catholics and Orthodox).
Of the Eastern-rite Catholic churches (known as "Uniate" because they united to Rome, although they themselves reject this denomination as pejorative) the oldest is the Maronite, with ties to Rome dating to the twelfth century. This group originally held to the Monothelite heresy, but in 1215 renounced it. The liturgy is in Syriac.
Among this Catholic churches, the largest is the Syrian Catholic church, a Uniate offshoot of the Syrian Orthodox church, which uses the same liturgy as the Maronites and has a similar background. The Greek Catholic Melkite Church is a Uniate offshoot of the Greek Orthodox and, like it, uses Greek and Arabic. A part of the Greek Orthodox united with Rome after a disputed patriarchal election in 1724 (the Patriarchate of Antioch never recognized the mutual excommunications of Rome and Constantinople of 1054, so it was canonically still in union with both). Today the term "Melkite" is in use only among the Greek Catholic. The Uniate Chaldean Catholics derive from the Assyrian church; the later are the only descendants of the ancient Nestorian schismatics, who are in communion with no other church and have their own very ancient liturgy in Nestorian Syriac language.
With the exception of the Armenians, most Christians are Arab, sharing the pride of Muslims in the Islamic-Arabic tradition and in Syria's special role in that tradition. Many Christians, particularly the Eastern Orthodox, have joined in the Arab nationalist movement and some are changing their Westernized names to Arabic ones. More Syrian Arab Christians participate in proportion to their number in political and administrative affairs than do Muslims. Especially among the young, relations between Christians and Muslims are improving.
There are several social differences between Christians and Muslims. For example, Syrian Christians are more highly urbanized than Muslims; many live either in or around Damascus, Aleppo, Hamah, or Latakia, and there are relatively fewer of them in the lower income groups. Proportionately more Christians than Muslims are educated beyond the primary level, and there are relatively more of them in white-collar and professional occupations. The education that Christians receive has differed in kind from that of Muslims in the sense that many more children of Christian parents have attended Western-oriented foreign and private schools.
Christian Church
The main church in Syria is Eastern Orthodox, but Christianity in Syria is not monolithic, and there are many other churches including:
Christians in the cities
Christians spread throughout Syria and they are a majority in many provinces; mainly Aleppo where the largest Armenian population resides, Homs, Tartous, Suwayda and Al Hasakah.
See also
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