Beyond Church and State: Contentions of Minority Citizenship in Egypt

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This article attends to the entanglement of Coptic Christians and the Coptic Orthodox Church with a national politics centered around the citizenship concept and fraught with sectarianism. Since the early 1980s, the Coptic Orthodox Church has institutionally incorporated youth politics, pedagogy, and education through its Youth Bishopric. Following the 2011 Egyptian revolution, the rise of Coptic political movements that challenged the Church’s authority were portrayed by scholars as working in opposition to the Church’s politics and pedagogy. By weaving together accounts of the historical and contemporary programming of the Church’s Youth Bishopric and conversations around the discourse of citizenship in post-2011 Egypt among Coptic youth activists from the Maspero Youth Union, this article tracks Coptic contradictions of secular citizenship and debate over minority status. It specifically shows how Copts are engaging these contradictions in debate and ultimately parses out how the social conditions of such debate in itself may answer a call for an “ethical thematization” of religious difference.