CHURCH TIMES

Book Review

June 6, 2003

CHRISTIANITY IN THE LAND OF THE PHARAOHS

 The Coptic Orthodox Church By Jill Kamil

JILL KAMIL married into a Coptic family and has lived in Egypt for about half a century. In this book she brings together her knowledge of Egypt and its ancient Christian Church in a readable and engaging historical survey of Coptic Christianity from the earliest time to the present day. Well chosen illustrations illuminate the text.

Jill Kamil pays particular attention to the monastic inheritance of Coptic Christianity, focused notably in St Anthony and St Pachomius, who were the fathers of the solitary and communal life respectively. She outlines the experience of the Copts under Islamic rule, and has valuable material on Coptic art and iconography.

In recent decades, Coptic Christianity has experienced a remarkable revival and renaissance. The monastic life, rooted in ancient traditions of the Desert Fathers, is very much at the heart of that revival, though the Sunday schools have also played a key part. In 1979 I spent two months in the monastery of St Macarius in the Wadi al-Natrun, off the desert road between Cairo and Alexandria. Under the inspiration of its spiritual feather Matta el-Meskin (Matthew the Poor), this monastery not only attracted a large number of monks, but it provided a spiritual resource for countless laity who came on pilgrimage, and it pioneered the greening of the desert in advance of agricultural experiments. Other ancient monasteries have similarly flourished, and abandoned monastic sites have seen communities growing and thriving in them, for the first time in centuries.

One of the main themes of Jill Kamil’s historical argument is the considerable continuity that there is, as she believes, between Pharaonic culture and religion and many of the practices of Coptic Christianity. Although this can be over-stressed, there is surely what Newman would have called an “antecedent probability” of such continuity, bearing in mind the syncretism of late-Egyptian religion and Hellenistic practice.

Jill Kamil has produced a stimulating account of Coptic history which should inform and interest Christians from the West who are visiting Egypt. It will remind them of Egypt’s long Christian history, of the outstanding witness of Coptic Christians, and of the contribution Egypt made to the shaping of Christian faith and life.