The horrific murder of George Floyd, and the Arab angle of the story has begun a conversation regarding Middle Easterners and racism. It is an important discussion, and one that we discussed in an episode of @SamAndAmmar, but here I would like to discuss the Coptic angle.
Today, the Coptic Church has more than half a million sub-Saharan Africans among its followers, and it has done so by embracing African cultures while maintaining the Coptic faith. But the history of Copts and racism is long.
A natural point to start is the Copts relationship to Ethiopia. For 16 centuries, a Coptic monk would be ordained as Metropolitan of Ethiopia, and as Copts we should pride ourselves in that role, but racism was never absent from that complex relationship.
In his important book "Among the Copts", John Watson writes this about the relationship "The Copts share with many other peoples some ill-defined misgivings about black people. For centuries this incipient and unacknowledged racism was at the very least a part of the ...
Ethiopian-Egyptian Christian problem. It often seemed strange to the Ethiopians that bishops who crumbled before the might of Islam in the Nile valley were so aggressive and assertive when dealing with black Christians in the Orthodox Empire on the shores of Lake Tana."
He is not wrong. But that story, both its good and bad and ugly can be told another day. Instead I want to tell a story that is hardly known amongst Copts. That of a modern African Coptic Saint: Father Marcus El Askiti.
Fr. Marcus 27/2/1942-17/4/1983 was born Raphael Bernard Wanyama, on the Kenyan Ugandan border. He was raised as a Roman Catholic, but was hungry for an African church. In 1966 he met Fr. Makary El Soriany (later Bishop Samuel) in Nairobi.
Fr. Makary had been tasked by Pope Cyril VI to examine the Christian scene in East Africa and loom for ways to help newly independent African Churches. The two immediately clicked, and until his murder in 1981, Bishop Samuel was Fr. Marcus' mentor and father of confession.
in 1967, upon Samuel's invitation, Bernard traveled to Egypt & was baptized as a Copt. For 5 years he studied theology in Cairo receiving his B.A. in 71. He then went to El Sorian Monastery & became a Coptic monk, living as a hermit for a year. On 12/7/72 he was ordained a priest
But for all of his love for the Coptic church, and his zeal in becoming a Copt (he learned Arabic and Coptic), he was never truly accepted by us. When it came the time for ordaining a Bishop for Africa an Egyptian was chosen and not the native African.
But Fr. Marcus never wavered in his love for the Coptic Church. He was sent in 73 for a year to study patristics in a Greek monastery, then in 74 through Samuel he received a scholarship from the World Council of Churches to study at Kingsmead College, Birmingham, UK
By 75 he was studying at Drew University, New Jersey where he received an M.A. in 76. Without financial support from the church he worked washing dishes at the university cafeteria. In 79 he was finally made pastor of St. Mark Coptic Church in Houston.
Fr. Marcus was never accepted by many Copts as one of their own. John Watson recounts a member of the Coptic congregation in Houston asking the priest "what kind of a priest are you,: he replied "I am a Coptic Orthodox priest"
She replied "You many, for all I know, be an Orthodox priest, but a Copt you will never be. You have to be born a Copt to be a Copt." But his troubles were only to get more complicated in 1981 when Sadat banished Pope Shenouda & appointed a committee of Bishops to run the church
Fr. Marcus had led demonstrations in front of the Egyptian consulate in Houston to protest persecution of Copts & continued his activism after Pope's banishment. Initially he was restrained, his old friend Samuel was on committee, but after Samuel was murdered he became vocal
Eventually the Committee of Bishops under pressure by the Egyptian regime & frustrated by his support for the Pope excommunicated him on 10/3/82. The issue made it to U.S. courts and from his desert seclusion Pope Shenouda wrote a letter on 5/6/82 affirming Fr. Marcus as priest
In a movie like story, the letter was smuggled from the Monastery, then out of Egypt by a Copt to America. On 29/7/82 the U.S. court in a historic decision affirmed the authority of the Pope over churches in the West. But Fr. Marcus' days were numbered.
On 15/4/83, Fr. Marcus was last seen. U.S. police investigated the issue for years. His remains were found 27/12/84. He was gruesomely murdered. To this day, no one knows who did it.
Some accused the Egyptian state, his enemies spread rumors that he was gay and murdered by other gays, but most people involved believe he was killed by Copts hiring an assassin. Regardless of who did it, Fr. Marcus' story offers us a learning lesson about racism amongst us.
No matter how he tried, Fr. Marcus was never truly accepted by Copts as one of our own. The color of his skin was a major part of this. But if Copts never embraced him, he was and is a true Coptic Saint and martyr.
Let me end this with a quote by him "When we speak of the church we do not mean a social or secular organism, or even a humanitarian society concerned with the moral betterment of human life...
By Church we mean the life-giving Body of our Savior and God, Jesus Christ. We mean Jesus Christ Himself transmitted and extended to the ages. We mean the transmission of life."
You can read further details in John Watson's book and by googling his name, which will give you some newspaper articles covering his murder such as this upi.com/Archives/1983/… & upi.com/Archives/1985/…
Here is a picture of him amazon.ca/Marcos-Askiti-…
Here is a picture of him amazon.ca/Marcos-Askiti-…
