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Archive 1Archive 2

Coptic women

An interesting article surrounding women in Christianity would be Coptic women. In Egypt, Coptic women are in a rather special situation because they are a minority of Christian women living in a Muslim-majority country, where the patriarchal culture is very strong. As Egyptian Christians, they are culturally isolated from other Christians because of the miaphysite schism. From inside the Church too, there are strong cultural pressures because of certain existing prohibitions against divorce, infidelity and abortion. [1][2][3] ADM (talk) 07:45, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Bull of Union with the Copts

The article should probably mention the Bull of Union with the Copts in the history section, which was adopted at the time of the Council of Florence in the Middle Ages. Even though the bull failed, it remains significant when discussing the past external relations of the Coptic Church, especially with regards to modern efforts by the ecumenical movement to achieve greater Church unity. ADM (talk) 15:43, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

New article

Does Coptic Ages have any merit? It seems to duplicate a lot of what is here and is totally unreferenced. Fences&Windows 00:35, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Title

Could someone explain to me why the title of the article is "Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria" instead of just "Coptic Orthodox Church"? Deusveritasest (talk) 06:45, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

St. Paul was an anchorite?

From the "The cradle of monasticism and its missionary work" section:

...This was the beginning of the monastic movement, which was organized by Anthony the Great, Saint Paul, the world's first anchorite, Saint Macarius the Great and Saint Pachomius the Cenobite in the 4th century.

What does the above mean? Is the Saint Paul referred to the Paul in the New Testament and author of several New Testament books? Is he the world's first anchorite, (meaning I guess that he was some kind of ascetic monk)? What is the basis for that claim? Is it a claim of the Coptic Church or of some monastic movement? Is it a claim accepted by any secular scholars? --Davefoc (talk) 09:14, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Reply to: St. Paul was an anchorite?

The article meant Saint Paul of Thebes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_of_Thebes not Saint Paul the Apostle.

This message was left for me on my talk page:
A totally different Paul from Paul the Apostle. See here. --λⲁⲛτερⲛιξ[talk] 16:42, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Assuming this comment is correct perhaps the article should be amended to specify which Paul is meant and a hyperlink provided for the intended Paul?

Font

I am a casual reader of this article and I notice that it requires a font of some sort - but this is not specified anywhere. What font is needed? Shouldn't the article mention what font is required, as other articles do? AprilHare (talk) 14:00, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

 Done Added a warning template under the infobox designating where you will find information on Coptic fonts. I've downloaded the first one listed and it works fine. EricLeb01 (Page | Talk) 05:50, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

CopticWiki

Please condider helping and maintaining http://copticwiki.org which is a Wiki specifically for the Coptic Orthodox Church. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.105.212.126 (talk) 10:52, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Other Christian churches in Egypt

What is the point of this? I'm unaware of any similar article (cf. Armenian Apostolic Church) that has a section such as this in it. It seems to me that it would be much more appropriately appended to an article on Egypt (or one on 'Religion in Egypt') with the addition to it of the Coptic Orthodox Church and retitled as 'Christian Churches in Egypt'. Irish Melkite (talk) 10:58, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

This sentence needs help

"There was an opinion in the Church that viewed that perhaps the Council understood the Church of Alexandria correctly, but wanted to curtail the existing power of the Alexandrine Hierarch, especially after the events that happened several years before at Constantinople from Pope Theophilus of Alexandria towards Patriarch John Chrysostom and the unfortunate turnouts of the Second Council of Ephesus in AD 449, where Eutichus misled Pope Dioscorus and the Council in confessing the Orthodox Faith in writing and then renouncing it after the Council, which in turn, had upset Rome, especially that the Tome which was sent was not read during the Council sessions."

That sentence is poorly and lazily constructed. Must all that information be shoe-horned within one sentence? I bet most people have trouble following it from start to end. I will not perform the edits, merely suggest that they be done. I also bet there are hundreds of articles with such abominations, but I digress. 68.185.19.38 (talk) 21:27, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Independence

Why does the time of "Independence" in the template say "Apostolic age"? Didn't the copts break away from the Church after Chalcedon? 24.191.87.42 (talk) 15:28, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Too many photos in the gallery?

There are probably too many photos in the gallery. They should be pared back to just a few, less than a dozen, leaving only the most significant and representative. --Bruce Hall (talk) 01:44, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Current Events

On the main page this section currently reads:

Coptic Persecution and oppression in Egypt

The New Years Eve Terrorist attack on the Coptic Orthodox Church in the city of Alexandria which left 21 dead [26] a premeditated and calculated strike at a minority group. 21 innocent people died for no other reason than their belief.

The oppression of the Coptic people in Egypt is widespread and regular, the situation in Egypt is that of the Apartheid in South Africa but without the political force behind it, while the Egyptian government will condemn these attacks as acts of terrorism, justice to those who lost their lives will not be served, those who committed these atrocities will not be brought to justice. South Africa didn't cave in to external pressure, they caved in due to internal pressure, rebels, the Africans tried everything peaceful, they were murdered going to school yet they still marched, Gandhi leaned his theory of Civil Disobedience[27] through the South African Rebel Movements led by the likes of Steve Biko and Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress (ANC), but nothing changed till they started fighting back, they died in their thousands but they got independence, and most of their confrontations were peaceful demonstrations where the Afrikaner white 'police' would open fire at the crowds with automatic machine guns... killing women children and men indiscriminately.

An oppressed people is a time bomb waiting to happen, it is a lesson repeated in history countless times.

(end of quote)

This section has been marked as disputed neutrality.

It seems to me to be a valid complaint, in that it claims discrimination against Copts and other Christians, but only refers to one (very serious) incident.

It would be better to list alleged claims of intolerance by Islamic extremists and of legalised discrimination by the State, which would make a more neutral and fact based section, together with alleged incidents of intolerence by Copts against Muslims.

For example:

How easy is it to change religion Copt to Muslim and Muslin to Copt? Are there legal barriers?

What restrictions are there upon building new Churches and what upon building new Mosques?

How many attacks have there been on Christian groups and how many upon Muslim groups? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cerddaf (talk • contribs) 17:28, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Cerddaf 3-1-2011 17:29 GMT — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cerddaf (talk • contribs) 17:30, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

There is no attempt at npov in the section, the diatribe about South Africa emphasises it and has no place in the article. I have removed all but the factual element until it is sustantially rewritten Markmcgrego (talk) 14:19, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Even apart from neutrality issues, this article is about a faith/organisation that has existed for nearly 2000 years. Including a section about the deaths of 21 people suffers from WP:RECENTISM. I say remove the whole section. If the bombing (tragic as it is) ends up having a more profounding impact on the church, it should be re-included then. Ashmoo (talk) 13:06, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm personally having my doubts about having a "current events" section in something that's supposed to be an encyclopedia article, as the definition of "current" changes as time goes by - you typically wouldn't have a section for current events in a hard-copy of an encyclopedia, such as Britannica, for instance. ♠ 15:55, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Introduction needs some reworking.

The introduction states: The Church belongs to the Oriental Orthodox family of churches, which has been a distinct church body since the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451, when it took a different position over Christological theology from that of the Eastern Orthodox Church.

This is historically incorrect. There was no such thing as the "Eastern Orthodox Church" in October 451. There was one Holy and Catholic Apostolic Church, plus, of course, the usual crowd of dissidents, heretics, do-it-your-selfers which any religion develops within the first few decades.

The schism between the Roman and Eastern (Constantinople) churches didn't happen for another millenium, usually cited as happening when the legates from Rome and the Patriarchs of Constantinople mutually excommunicated each other in 1054 (although it was a much more graduate separation than what most textbooks state--it took from the end of the 9th Century until the early 15th century to break off all ties, although the most definitive break occurred at the beginning of the 14th Century with the siege and sack of Constantinople in retaliation for the massacre of nearly all the Roman Catholics in 1182).

Suffice to say, the introduction needs to be rewritten to reflect the historic reality, and to help avoid the confusion of Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.73.1.89 (talk) 17:05, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Coptic religious practice

This article gives very good information about the history and management of Coptic Christianity, but says nothing at all about the actual religious practices of Coptic monks and nuns, practices related to monastic life and the propagation of the religious life in Coptic monasteries, along with the relationship between the Coptic monastics and church on the one hand, and the Coptic society in Egypt. 59.164.1.194 (talk) 07:46, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

History needs expansion

What, complete historical silence between the 12th century and the 19th? Really, everything after Chalcedon is pretty slight even then. What of those 1500 years?--Akhenaten0 (talk) 14:41, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 1 December 2015

Change the spelling of "Monastery of Saint Anthony (California)" to "Monastery of Saint Antony (California)". This is consistent with how the name of the monastery is spelled on the website: [1] Sejongfan (talk) 06:58, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ http://www.stantonymonastery.org/

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STRANGE FAULSE FORMULATION !

This sentence : "The Council of Chalcedon, from the perspective of the Alexandrine Christology, has deviated from the approved Cyrillian terminology ..." can not be true ! There was Cyrillian terminolofy in this period of time ! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.227.244.217 (talk) 12:56, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

Unsourced

This edit is wholly unsourced and has no basis in a WP:RS. I removed it once already. 72.201.104.140 (talk) 23:22, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

A gap in the article

I see good coverage of history and administration but little of the actual beliefs, theology and worship of the Coptic Church. Compare this with similar articles on the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. -Ad Orientem (talk) 15:30, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

I would have referred you to Oriental Orthodoxy, which is arguably where most of the information on doctrine belongs, but there is precious little in there as well. I think you've accurately identified a large gap in Wikipedia's coverage. However, the liturgy is described in some detail at Alexandrian Rite. It would be redundant to explain it here because several Churches share the same Rite and it would needlessly duplicate information. Shockingly, the Alexandrian Rite is not, at present, mentioned anywhere at all in this article. I will rectify that immediately. 72.201.104.140 (talk) 03:54, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

founder

The article on Greek Orthodox Church of Alexandria lists St. Mark as founder. Why not this one? Did Dioscorus set out to found a church? I thought the Copts claim to be the original and continuing church? Even with explanation of apostolic succession of Dioscorus, this seems to give away the show, in comparison with the other article (GOCA as above). --Richardson mcphillips (talk) 10:28, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Feel free to update the infobox of Greek Orthodox Church of Alexandria accordingly per WP:NPOV. Chicbyaccident (talk) Chicbyaccident (talk) 10:36, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Warning: Edit Warring

red-outlined triangle containing exclamation point Warning To all concerned... Stop it or blocks will follow. -Ad Orientem (talk) 23:24, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Cairo

Some time in the past, the Popes of Alexandria moved to Cairo. I decided that this be mentioned. 15:37, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

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"Copts United"

The article currently says, of the Captic Language, "The language is used to preserve Egypt's original language, which was banned by the Arab invaders, who ordered Arabic to be used instead." This is sourced to "Copts-United.com", which to my eyes doesn't look like a particularly reliable source: [4]. I'd appreciate if someone who reads Arabic could look into it. Alephb (talk) 00:36, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

User:Alephb, while I can’t read Arabic, I seriously doubt this qualifies as an RS. To my knowledge, while the Arabs did indeed make Arabic the official language of governance and business, I don’t recall having ever read that they “banned” the language. Disuse and loss of spoken Coptic was likely a natural result of assimilation and being second-class citizens, I would think. Mobility in such a society is difficult when you don’t speak the language of power, and to be sure, it was something of a gradual adoption... Even if the adoption of Arabic as the primary language happened within a few short generations. I could be wrong though- it’s not as if the Caliphate(s) had never suppressed a language. I’ll look to see if I can find any sources, but I know most are likely to be in French or German (as were most “Oriental” studies well into the mid-20th century), and I’m rubbish at reading either of them. Symmachus Auxiliarus (talk) 02:56, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

Updated the grossly inflated membership based on actual surveys and reliable sources

Eight consecutive census results from 1927 to 1996 shows a declining trend in Christian population; 5.7% in 1996. Even if we take in account the possibility of Christians being under-counted in censuses, other third party surveys and analyses too provide the same figures. The nationally represented Egyptian Demographic and Health Survey conducted under the auspices of US AID reported 5% of the respondents to be Christian. Pew Research Center too tried to find the number of Christians in Egypt. Based on data from verifiable census figures and other nationwide surveys, they came up with a figure of 4 million (5% of Egyptians). Pew also found that the Egyptian Christian diaspora is not particularly large as claimed by churches; the total cumulated size of Egyptian-born Christian populations in the United States, Canada and Australia, is approximately 160,000.[1] Qscience Connect analysed data from the same 2008 survey and found out that there are about 4,274,145 Copts in Egypt.[2]

Other estimates are not based on surveys per se, yet there is an observed trend among reliable and reputable sources to comfortably and safely approximate the total Coptic Christian population to 10% of the Egyptian population. Harvard University taking into account the Church's claim, approximates membership to 7 million.[3] Government agencies like US department of state, the CIA and the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office estimate the Egyptian Christian population at 9 to 10% (close to 10 million).[4][5][6] Similarly, well known media houses like the BBC and CNN estimate the Coptic Christian population between 6 to 11 million.[7][8] National Geographic Society estimates at 10% of the Egyptian population.[9] Hence, followed suit and approximated the Coptic Orthodox membership to 10 million. Please note that this is more than double the figure reported by any real surveys or scholarly analyses and would comfortably accommodate the Egyptian Christian diaspora.

Additionally, due consideration should also be given to the figures provided by other legitimate online encyclopedias like Encyclopædia Britannica which also state that Copts constitute 10% of the Egyptian population. How does this article's previously stated baseless and senseless estimate at around 20 to 25 percent with a figure of 25 to 30 million Copts, compare to any of the above estimates?--Longsword9 (talk) 06:19, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ "How many Christians are there in Egypt?". Pew Research Center. 16 February 2011.
  2. ^ "Characterizing the Copts in Egypt: Demographic, socioeconomic and health indicators". QScience Connect. 1 June 2013. p. 22. doi:10.5339/connect.2013.22.
  3. ^ Harvard University, Religious literacy project. "Coptic Christianity in Egypt". rlp.hds.harvard.edu.
  4. ^ "Egypt". United States Department of State.
  5. ^ "Africa :: Egypt — The World Factbook - Central Intelligence Agency". www.cia.gov.
  6. ^ "Country Profile: The Arab Republic of Egypt". webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk.
  7. ^ "BBC - Religions - Christianity: Coptic Orthodox Church". www.bbc.co.uk.
  8. ^ "Who are Egypt's Coptic Christians?". CNN.
  9. ^ "Ancient Egypt gave rise to one of the world's oldest Christian faiths". History Magazine. 19 April 2019.

Scandal section repeatedly deleted

The scandal section is repeatedly deleted despite having reputable sources. There are politics at play which aim to maintain the church's untarnished image - unfortunately this also can hamper necessary social change. --Titus Obelisk (talk) 21:31, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 05:09, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Child sexual abuse cases

Hi, I've removed a large swath of content from the section on child sexual abuses, for numerous reasons. It's mostly explained in the edit summaries but I thought I'd post this here so people can discuss it. Firstly, this article was sourcing whole paragraphs of information, and it's about coronavirus in Egyptian prisons. Just... what? Secondly, there was a lot of information (particularly about living people) sourced to random social media posts, or even worse information sourced just to instagram accounts or hashtags themselves. The section on Priest Isak Soliman could plausibly be re-added, but it will need a better source than the primary source court documents, so I've removed it for the time being (see WP:BLP). This is both because we need to establish due weight for inclusion of the event, but most importantly because of WP:BLPPRIMARY: "Do not use trial transcripts and other court records, or other public documents, to support assertions about a living person", primary sources like these should not be interpreted by Wikipedia editors, but instead by reliable secondary sources.

There's probably information that could be re-added here, but please do not re-add it without first familiarizing yourself with Wikipedia's sourcing and BLP policy, and then secondly fixing the numerous issues with the material as it was before. Volteer1 (talk) 16:35, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Volteer1, your edits were a marked improvement, and I doubt anyone familiar with our policies would contest this. Your version largely avoids (I believe) any serious BLP or DUE pitfalls. While this information is generally encyclopedic, there tend to be a lot of coatracking of overly critical material on this subject, and in the particular case of this article, a lot of crap citations. I agree there needs to be better independent and secondary sourcing on the article. Though I'd imagine there's something of a paucity of this in English, I'm willing to bet that more such sources exist in Arabic (which unfortunately, I can't read). Symmachus Auxiliarus (talk) 01:44, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
@Symmachus Auxiliarus: I unfortunately know very little about the subject matter and haven't been bothered to look into this in great detail, it was just easy enough for me to fix the egregious errors without having to think very hard. Perhaps when I can be bothered to look into it more I can work on trying to fix what problems still lie in the only section that at least seemed to be properly sourced, and dig around for other sources to see what can be added back. But, alas, another time. --Volteer1 (talk) 01:49, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
Volteer1,@Symmachus Auxiliarus: From what I've seen across wikipedia (other church's sexual abuse cases) there appears to be no singular example of a case which is relayed with this amount detail. I was wondering if it would be more prudent to stick to the facts instead of explain the play by play of events according to Sally. Titus Obelisk (talk) 03:06, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

As Titus Obelisk is stating, there is no Wiki page of other churches in which the abuser's name is fully written. Also, this is a page concerning the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. Adding personal situations to this page is irrelevant. It can be put on a different page, but it has nothing to do with the Church. It has something to do with a person, a priest, not the whole church. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.31.39.190 (talk • contribs)

I've trimmed it way, way down. It's one incident and the level of detail was rather extreme and not particularly relevant for an encyclopaedic summary of events. I'm still not entirely convinced, however, that it should just be removed entirely – this is an incident that still did receive a significant amount of attention in reliable sources, so I do think it should probably get some mention. Regarding other churches, you're right that the level of detail here was a bit absurd, but e.g. there's a whole article on it for the Catholic Church: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases. The Catholic Church is, however, far more known for these kinds of issues, so they're not comparable one-to-one obviously. ‑‑Volteer1 (talk) 16:27, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
Volteer1 I agree, but would it be appropriate to removed the timeline as it is written out? Why not simply include the general facts?Titus Obelisk (talk) 18:29, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
What do you mean by "the timeline"? ‑‑Volteer1 (talk) 18:32, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
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