Copts in Michigan

Who Are the Copts?

3 WhoAretheCopts? O ne oft-cited theory is that the word “Copt” is derived from the name of the ancient Egyptian capital city of Hikaptah, which literally meant “house of the spirit of Ptah” in the language of the pharaohs.3 It is thought that the Greeks phonetically corrupted the city’s name into Aigyptios, their word for the inhabitants of Egypt.4 Thereafter, the Arabs added to this phonetic change in the seventh century a.d. by calling Egypt dar al-Qubt (or dar alQibt ), Arabic for “home of the Egyptians.” The Arabic Qubt was then further modified in the European languages as Copte in French, Kopte in German, and Copt in English. This etymological examination thus reveals how the “kapt” in Hikaptah likely evolved—or perhaps devolved—successively into Aigyptios, Qubt, and Copt. In this original sense, the word “Copt” is synonymous with “Egyptian.” The renowned coptologist Pierre du Bourguet correctly notes that “defining the word ‘Copt’ is not an easy matter. Gratuitous applications of the term in many circumstances have come together under the Coptic umbrella, resulting in a surprising mixture of connotations. A definition, therefore, that considers factual usage or acceptable conventional usage becomes necessary .”5 It follows, then, that a basic set of definitions is necessary in order to proceed, for determining who the Copts are is a sine qua non of any learned conception, and fruitful analysis, of the Coptic community. 4 Eliot Dickinson It is perhaps fitting to first examine how the Copts, or more specifically the spokesmen of the Coptic Orthodox Church—the oldest representative institution of the Coptic community—see and define themselves. In The Coptic Orthodox Church: A Lily Among Thorns, Dr. Raafat Fahim Gindi explains: “Coptic: It means Egyptian, the word Copt is derived from ‘Gypt’ in Aegyptius which is the Greek name of Egypt. It is now restricted to the Christians of Egypt to distinguish them from the Moslems. Also, it applies to those who believe in the Coptic Orthodox Church.”6 Other regularly accepted definitions are similar: a Copt is commonly understood to be “one of the natives of Egypt descended from the Ancient Egyptians,” or “a member of the Coptic Church,” and Coptic is “the extinct language of Egypt that developed from ancient Egyptian, now used liturgically by the Coptic Church.”7 Thus, the Copts are an ethnic group that, as Max Weber famously put it, entertains “a subjective belief in their common descent because of similarities of physical type or of customs or both, or because of memories of colonization and migration.”8 They are also a religious group defined by membership in the Coptic Orthodox Church, so that, in theory, anyone can become a Copt through conversion to Coptic Orthodox Christianity. While these are the basic definitions that set the parameters for the following exploration of the Coptic community in Michigan, there are a number of inescapably vexatious, but nevertheless germane, questions that arise when discussing the Copts. Just as Friedrich Nietzsche once said that “it is characteristic of the Germans that the question: ‘What is German?’ never dies out among them,”9 there are also people who quibble about what it means to be a Copt and who can be one. The Coptic Orthodox Church is in communion with the Armenian, Indian, Syrian, Eritrean, and Ethiopian churches (known collectively as the Oriental Orthodox Churches), and it is the mother church of the latter two. To what extent can members of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, of which there are perhaps as many as forty million, be considered Coptic? And what about the Coptic Catholic Church, which is in communion with the Roman Catholic Church but headed by Archbishop Antonios Naguib, the Coptic Catholic patriarch of Alexandria? Are Copts who have joined Protestant churches, or converted to Islam, still Coptic? Lastly, can Muslim Egyptians who identify as descendents of the ancient pharaohs justifiably claim to be Copts? COPTS IN MICHIGAN 5 Further complicating the matter of definitions is the existence of religious and spiritual groups in the United States who claim to be Coptic. There is, for example, the True Temple of Solomon Church in Highland Park in Detroit, which says it is a branch of the Coptic Church. Its Web site has a picture of the sun setting over the pyramids at Giza, as well as camels in the desert, and asserts that the Bible is a “Black History Book” and that “Jesus was a Black Man!!!”10...