The final outcome of the Arab Spring will not be known for years, perhaps decades, but in the meantime Christian communities across the Middle East continue to wither.
The latest to face a possible exodus are Syrian Christians, many of whom are on the wrong side of the deepening civil war there.
The birthplace of Christianity has held populations of denominations that predate Islam: Maronite, Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholic, Armenian Orthodox, Armenian Catholic, Coptic Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox, Syrian Catholic, Roman Catholic, Chaldean and Assyrian Christian.
But theses churches have never stopped shrinking, in early times because of conversions to Islam to escape discrimination or worse, and more recently from emigration, low birth rates compared to their Muslim neighbors and violence by extremists among them.
A century ago, Christians made up perhaps 1 in 5 of Middle East peoples. Today it’s not even 1 in 20.
Though criticized for their human-rights records, some authoritarian and secular regimes, such Syria’s Assads, ironhandedly crushed most religious strife.
But the toppling of Saddam Hussein of Iraq and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt exposed a tragic result: resurgent Muslim radicals making life harder on the Christians of those lands.
Iraq is the most extreme example; two-thirds of its original 1.5 million Christians have fled homes and churches since U.S. forces invaded nine years ago. In Tunisia, a mob in June beheaded a convert to Christianity. A recent news story reported: “Dozens of Gaza Christians staged a rare public protest … claiming two congregants were forcibly converted to Islam and were being held against their will.”
The Syrian Christians may regret allying with President Bashar Assad against the majority Sunni Muslims. Assad belongs to the ruling Alawite minority, a sect out of mainstream Islam seen by fundamentalist Sunnis as heretical. Alawites make up about 12 percent of the Syrian population, same as Christians.
About 13 million Christians account for 4 percent of the people of the Middle East and North Africa, the smallest share of its population that is Christian of any other major geographic region, according to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
Ancient communities face extinction even in Israel, where Christians make up only 2 percent of the population. Nor can the most famous Holy Land towns escape being squeezed and drained by ongoing tension between Israelis and Palestinians. Jerusalem is now 1.5 percent churchgoers, leading some to foresee what would amount to an empty Christian theme park for Western visitors.
The birthplace of Christianity, Bethlehem, is often cited as a parable. Followers of Jesus once made up 90 percent of its people; now it’s 14 percent. The Israeli security wall and checkpoints isolate the city from Christian sites in Jerusalem, just seven miles away. At the same time, the Palestinian Authority has been accused of stealing West Bank land from Christians.
Only in Lebanon, where Christians were once dominant, do they retain considerable political power. After a civil war from 1975-89 largely along religious lines, relations amid the patchwork of religious communities remain delicate. The constitution dictates that the president is always Christian, the prime minister Sunni Muslim and the parliamentary speaker Shia Muslim.
In Jordan, nine of the 110 parliamentary seats are reserved for Christians, who have slipped to just 3 percent of the population.
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