Coptic Church in Amman

An account while I was in Jordan in October 2012

                The other night a group of me and a few other BYU students decided to go to a Coptic church. There was a rumor that they were having a service on Thursday night. Fridays are the day for Sabbath day worship so I thought this was a bit odd but I decided to go either way.

I had ever been to a Coptic church before but I have heard much and studied very little about them. As one of my bosses is Coptic, I hear things periodically but she is not a strong Coptic in the sense of actual practice. I also had read much about them in the news regarding Egypt. Often times it is about the Coptic’s events dealing with Muslims in Egypt; most of the time they are not good events. The Coptic religion originates and is mostly found in Egypt.  Regarding the Arab Spring, Christians and Muslims united together to overthrow the Mubarak Regime. There was peace and alliance but just a few weeks prior to the beginning of the Arab Spring there were bombings in Coptic churches to probably incite revolts and a battle for a sense of control. Now, almost 2 years after the fall of Mubarak, Christians and Muslims are back at it with each other. The Coptic Church has many similarities with other churches. It has its own pope, the Coptic language is used during services and they can claim origin to the early apostles of the New Testament.

As we arrived to the Coptic church building I noticed that it was near the brand new, almost multiplex style, mosque. The mosque was beautiful, across the street from it was a large but simple church. The church building stood about 40-50 feet tall with a Christmas light lit up cross on the top of its highest point. We walked around the street trying to find a gate to get into the church grounds. I thought it was odd the church had walls around it but then I realized the mosque across the street had walls and that most of my own church buildings in the in the States had walls. It took a few Muslims who were crossing the street from the mosque to tell us where the gate was to get in. Turned out there was a little slot you can put your hand in to pull the lever to open the door but we didn’t realize this until after we had to call over for a person to open the door for us. This individual that opened the door was fully robed in priest clothes and had salt and pepper colored beard. The beard probably was a foot long and a half foot cap topped his head. He didn’t seem to want to say much to us at this time because he pointed us in the direction where we should go and then went back to sit on his chair. On our way out, we saw him sitting next to a younger male member and seemed to be speaking Coptic to him, almost like bestowing a blessing upon the young man.

As we walked closer to the main door, you could look inside and see lights and even candles lit inside. We were pretty nervous at first, we weren’t sure if we should knock or just open the door. Out of our group I decided to just open the door and walk in. As soon as I opened the door you could feel like you stepped back about 1000 years. The church, though had modern paintings, it was filled with cascade windows and arches. The doors were of the finest large wood carvings I have ever seen. The pews of the church were more modern, you could see scriptures written in Arabic from the New Testament written on the back side. Each pew had its own scripture.  There was about a group of 20 people listening to a man sit in the front dressed in business casual. It seemed all of the others there were dressed in business casual attire, including the women. The women were not veiled and even spoke more openly than I’ve seen Muslim women in social settings. The person giving the sermon we later found out was a visitor from Egypt, we could tell he was from Egypt because of his Egyptian Arabic dialect. It was kind of refreshing to hear it because that was the dialect I was taught in school. I sat down behind the others listening in and I found myself not paying too much attention to the sermon being given but more rather to the art work. It seemed that there were pictures of many of the notable prophets in the bible everywhere they could find a place to paint. Each prophet seemed to look about the same, white beards, old looking (some young), and carrying a scroll (probably scripture). A few had certain key symbols with them, for example, Moses was carrying a staff and two tablets. In the front, there was a pew and a wood wall that didn’t reach the top (the vaulted ceilings were about 40-50 feet high). On this wood wall was a spot for each of the twelve apostles and in the center top was a large wooden statue of Jesus Christ. There also was a miniature statue of Jesus Christ in the center of the priest’s area and then on the left side of the wood wall. Overall, the church was very beautiful with amazing artwork all around.

We were obviously late to the sermon but we weren’t the only ones. Two young Arabs came walking in down one of the aisles between the pews. They walked up where the priest’s area begins and took their sandals off where the step begins. They stepped up and began to cross themselves which I thought was the normal but then they knelt and began to pray similar to how a Muslims prays in the mosque. I was really confused because I thought for a moment that these were Muslims coming to pray in the church, almost to make a point against the Christians but this was not the case at all. After kneeling and putting their heads to ground for a few seconds, they got back up and crossed themselves again. Then they went and kissed both of the smaller statues of Jesus Christ and then each chose a picture of an apostle and kissed that. I think one kissed Paul and the other kissed Thomas. They then went near the entrance and each lit a candle and placed it in the appropriate spot of sand located at just below eye level in a circular tub.

Another member who was observing the sermon then handed us envelopes with the church’s name on the envelope. We of course took them but then after it was handed to us, we noticed that this was for the sake of paying offerings. One of the military guys with us paid five dinar but the rest of us did not.

The sermon was done (finally), it seemed to have lasted a total of two hours, an hour before and after we arrived. After the sermon, each of the members there were so anxious to speak to us! They wanted to ask us where we were from, why we’re in Jordan, and most importantly, to have us over for coffee and tea for next week’s sermon. The fellowship they were lending us reminded me of the type of fellowship we as Latter-day Saints had done. It was quite interesting to see how much they similar to us in this aspect. Coptics are primarily from Egypt so most of the people there were from Egypt but a small hand few were from Armenia. Most Armenians will say they go to the Armenian Church and never anything else so it makes me wonder if these Armenians were going for another reason.

This was my first experience with a Christian church in the Middle East. It was interesting to see another Christian church in a different culture where Christianity isn’t the most practiced religion. The Christians seemed to mix a lot of their practices with the Muslims. The act of prayer that the two young Arab men did at the beginning seemed too similar to what a Muslim would do when he first enters a mosque and begins to pray. Christianity was fairly established in the Holy Land when Islam came around and I wonder if maybe Islam took similar practices from Christianity. The idea of respect for the sacred area seems to be universal between the two religions. It also seemed that being a Christian, no matter what sect you were, was just as good as any other sect.