Please excuse the inaccuracies of automated translation:
Algeria: the Church is reborn
An Expert Interview With the decline of Christianity in Africa
Portuguese to English automated translation - http://translate.google.com/#pt|en
ALGIERS, Sunday, October 10, 2010 (ZENIT.org) - The Church in Algeria is considered by many as a shadow of its past. In the fifth century, more than 700 bishops were scattered throughout North Africa. Today, Christianity is not even 1% of the entire population.
Camille Eid, a professor at the University of Milan, journalist, writer and expert on churches in the Middle East, talks about the decline of the Church in Algeria and the signs of hope for its renewal.
Could you tell us briefly the history of the Church in Algeria? She was once a thriving church?
Eid: Yes. In the fifth century, had 700 bishops in North Africa. The Arab conquest brought a gradual decline, though at the tenth and eleventh centuries, we have testimony about letters sent to Rome, the Pope, or Christian communities had until that time. So for three centuries after the Islamic conquest, the Christian life was maintained, but declined gradually due to the Donatist heresy. Thereafter, the dynasty had Aghlabid, an Islamic dynasty that drove the conversion to Islam after the Norman conquest - or regaining - Sicily. In revenge, dictated that all Christians from North Africa to embrace the Islamic religion.
What year are we talking about?
Eid: We speak of the eleventh century and the twelfth century, when it ended any presence of Christianity across northern Africa, not only in Algeria but also in Tunisia and Morocco.
The Church became a church of the catacombs?
Eid: Yes We had to wait after that until the new return of Christianity, unfortunately in the form of colonialism. When the French arrived in North Africa, encouraged its citizens to sit, to buy farms, and so we had an increase in the presence of Christians from around 900 000 people, which implied a large increase.
Yes, especially in a very short period of time. Then there was another dip?
Eid: There, but we must remember that the Christian presence was under the influence of the French Republic, which in turn was influenced by Freemasonry, so ordered the Church and the first bishops of Algiers who forbade the local Muslim population entering the Church of print gospels and Christian literature in Arabic, to admit Muslims in their assemblies, to accept priests of Syria or Lebanon to speak Arabic. Ultimately, it was Islam and Christianity to the Algerians for the French. Thus there was an active presence of a missionary Church during this period. There were 900,000 Christians, but it was like an apartheid system.
And then what happened? The rapid decline?
Eid: Just after 1962, all French - "Pieds Noirs" (black feet) - and then returned to France were only a few foreign workers working in the fields of oil and gas. The war against France began in 1954 and ended in 1962, when Algeria became an independent country. In a year or two, all the Christians returned to France and this has reduced the Christian presence to less than 1% of the entire population.
Christians today are about 40 thousand in a population of approximately 33 million. As Christians are seen in Algeria?
Eid: Algeria is a country with socialist ideas of freedom and democracy, even under one-party system. Fundamentalist or radical Islamists are spreading a little into society, especially in major cities. The theme of women who wear the hijab or niqab has nothing to do with the Algerian customs because women tend to wear clothes eastern Algerian and not the niqab, which covers the face and hands. It is clear that there are two views on the Christians: they are the intellectuals, because many Algerians continue to use French in their daily lives, the French have that mentality and have a posture with regard to Christians, clearer and more clear that fundamentalism Arabic.
Where does this fundamentalist movement?
Eid: From Saudi Arabia. When the Saudi government has to hire teachers, nurses and doctors during the boom of oil in the 50s and 60s, the Gulf states, the Saudis asked specifically national of Egypt and Algeria. When these professionals returned, brought with them ideas Islamic fundamentalist Wahhabism or Salafism, as it actually is called. Thus, the Salafis have created associations, have infiltrated the labor unions and students in college and then became the majority. They won the 1990 elections and were on the brink of taking power, after the war began between them and the army. The war of 1990 caused over 200,000 deaths.
As if living in Algeria, the Middle East conflict?
Eid: There are 20 or 30 years, most people are directed to France due to cultural and commercial relations. Now Algeria is moving toward the Islamic world and the central issue is the Palestinian issue, the Arab-Israeli conflict. Thus, we have many Algerian jihadists who go to war in Iraq, the Caucasus (Chechnya or Afghanistan and Pakistan), which they call holy war. This indicates therefore that all these ideas that have great influence originate in Saudi Wahhabism and Salafism in and took this fundamentalist approach, which now reaches other countries and fronts, which are very distant from Algeria.
We talked about various currents of Islam who are now taking a role in Algeria. For example, you mentioned Wahhabism. We could say that at this moment, the greater confrontation for domination of Algeria is not between Christians and Muslims but between Muslims and Muslims?
Eid: Exactly. The problem in Algeria is supporting a socialist military regime after independence, the FLN (Front de Libération Nationale). There never was a democracy. So we are in a transition phase and we expect to emerge a true democracy, because adopted a multiparty system. There is openness to the West and to all religions. The government also wants to tame the fundamentalists. The government wants to be seen as an ally of religion, why has introduced laws that show which is more Islamic fundamentalist.
And at the same time tries to be moderate?
Eid: Yes, but in the end, it becomes more restrictive for the life of the church. The 2006 law, for example, is really very restrictive. It prohibits activities outside of church facilities. The law requires the church not to conclude any rite out of places designated for worship. Limit such practices to places of worship. If a priest goes to the countryside where there is a church, but there is a community of 20 to 50 people can not celebrate because he is not officially listed as place of worship.
Secondly, any attempt to convert a Muslim is punishable by a fine or imprisonment. The government restricts entry visas to Catholic priests. Confiscate all the Catholic literature that comes from France at the airport. Therefore, people who hold that literature often tell employees that is for personal use.
The government admitted that there are conversions every year?
Eid: Six days! We have approximately thirteen thousand converts Algerian Berber origin.
This would not be an official statement because the government probably will not admit that there's more?
Eid: There is no official census, but we know that among the Algerian community in France, especially Berbers, are converted. We also know that the Berbers converted to Islam required. Maybe consider the conversion to Christianity as a form of opposition.
How is the life of a Muslim convert in Algeria?
Eid: There are whole villages in the region who are turning Berber and living this new life, which is really strange in a Muslim country, because the phenomenon can be reached at a level such that the government is unable to oppose this resistance .
They are trying to limit it a bit, but know they themselves are Algerians who converted to Christianity without outside influence of foreign missionaries as before, that came from outside. In the city of Oran, for two years, six Algerians arrested for distributing the gospel. For the first time we have a missionary activity carried out by Algerians and not by foreign missionaries, French or Spanish. This is new.
The former Bishop of Algiers, Henri Teissier Don, said he had "witnessed the slow death of the Church."
Eid: The presence of the Catholic Church in Algeria can not be restricted to those numbers because they impact on society is enormous. For example, the care that the church offers to the disabled and the elderly. All jobs from which Muslims are not concerned in hospitals, are made by the nuns. At universities and in all fields of social life (women, youth, media, translation, literature), the Church is present and there is a giant impact on Algerian society, with less than 10 000 Catholics living there.
There is a risk that the Church from becoming endangered?
Eid: Maybe yes. But perhaps as an institution, as we know, as a church of foreigners. The foreigners are leaving, but the local church in Algeria is experiencing a renaissance that had not happened since the seventh century or X. Then, after a thousand years, reviving local Christians have a new life for the Church. Neither French nor Spanish, nor Italian.
It is a sign of hope?
Eid: Yes In addition, we have many African students from sub-Saharan countries that come to Algeria to study and contribute to the life of the Church. So we have a substitution, the Europeans are gone and are replaced by Africans and by local Christians, who are Arabs or Berbers. I think it's a sign of the Holy Spirit's work, a hopeful sign, because for the first time we have not only local bishops or Arabs, as we saw recently, the new bishop of Algiers is Jordanian, and in neighboring Tunisian, had the Archbishop Fouad Twal (Latin patriarch of Jerusalem today, and N. R.'s) and now the Bishop Maroun Lahham, instead of the French bishops of all the countries of North Africa. We also have Algerian and Arab communities, not foreign communities formed by Europeans or Americans.
What can we do? What can the Catholic Church's universal for their Algerian brothers?
Eid: What pray. To pray and remember that these countries were not originally Muslims, converted to Islam after centuries of Christianity that flourished in these lands. So do not be so strange to return to its roots, Christian roots. In Italy, I met an Algerian couple who converted, and to be baptized, both chose two special names: the husband chose the name of Augustine and his wife, Monica, because of the two saints (St. Augustine and Santa Monica) that were of Algerian origin, of Hippo.
* * *
This interview was conducted by Mark Riedemann for "Cry God on Earth," a weekly radio-television program produced by Catholic Radio and Television Network (CRTN), in collaboration with the Catholic organization Aid to the Church in Need.
More information www.aisbrasil.org.br, www.fundacao-ais.pt.
An Expert Interview With the decline of Christianity in Africa
Portuguese to English automated translation - http://translate.google.com/#pt|en
ALGIERS, Sunday, October 10, 2010 (ZENIT.org) - The Church in Algeria is considered by many as a shadow of its past. In the fifth century, more than 700 bishops were scattered throughout North Africa. Today, Christianity is not even 1% of the entire population.
Camille Eid, a professor at the University of Milan, journalist, writer and expert on churches in the Middle East, talks about the decline of the Church in Algeria and the signs of hope for its renewal.
Could you tell us briefly the history of the Church in Algeria? She was once a thriving church?
Eid: Yes. In the fifth century, had 700 bishops in North Africa. The Arab conquest brought a gradual decline, though at the tenth and eleventh centuries, we have testimony about letters sent to Rome, the Pope, or Christian communities had until that time. So for three centuries after the Islamic conquest, the Christian life was maintained, but declined gradually due to the Donatist heresy. Thereafter, the dynasty had Aghlabid, an Islamic dynasty that drove the conversion to Islam after the Norman conquest - or regaining - Sicily. In revenge, dictated that all Christians from North Africa to embrace the Islamic religion.
What year are we talking about?
Eid: We speak of the eleventh century and the twelfth century, when it ended any presence of Christianity across northern Africa, not only in Algeria but also in Tunisia and Morocco.
The Church became a church of the catacombs?
Eid: Yes We had to wait after that until the new return of Christianity, unfortunately in the form of colonialism. When the French arrived in North Africa, encouraged its citizens to sit, to buy farms, and so we had an increase in the presence of Christians from around 900 000 people, which implied a large increase.
Yes, especially in a very short period of time. Then there was another dip?
Eid: There, but we must remember that the Christian presence was under the influence of the French Republic, which in turn was influenced by Freemasonry, so ordered the Church and the first bishops of Algiers who forbade the local Muslim population entering the Church of print gospels and Christian literature in Arabic, to admit Muslims in their assemblies, to accept priests of Syria or Lebanon to speak Arabic. Ultimately, it was Islam and Christianity to the Algerians for the French. Thus there was an active presence of a missionary Church during this period. There were 900,000 Christians, but it was like an apartheid system.
And then what happened? The rapid decline?
Eid: Just after 1962, all French - "Pieds Noirs" (black feet) - and then returned to France were only a few foreign workers working in the fields of oil and gas. The war against France began in 1954 and ended in 1962, when Algeria became an independent country. In a year or two, all the Christians returned to France and this has reduced the Christian presence to less than 1% of the entire population.
Christians today are about 40 thousand in a population of approximately 33 million. As Christians are seen in Algeria?
Eid: Algeria is a country with socialist ideas of freedom and democracy, even under one-party system. Fundamentalist or radical Islamists are spreading a little into society, especially in major cities. The theme of women who wear the hijab or niqab has nothing to do with the Algerian customs because women tend to wear clothes eastern Algerian and not the niqab, which covers the face and hands. It is clear that there are two views on the Christians: they are the intellectuals, because many Algerians continue to use French in their daily lives, the French have that mentality and have a posture with regard to Christians, clearer and more clear that fundamentalism Arabic.
Where does this fundamentalist movement?
Eid: From Saudi Arabia. When the Saudi government has to hire teachers, nurses and doctors during the boom of oil in the 50s and 60s, the Gulf states, the Saudis asked specifically national of Egypt and Algeria. When these professionals returned, brought with them ideas Islamic fundamentalist Wahhabism or Salafism, as it actually is called. Thus, the Salafis have created associations, have infiltrated the labor unions and students in college and then became the majority. They won the 1990 elections and were on the brink of taking power, after the war began between them and the army. The war of 1990 caused over 200,000 deaths.
As if living in Algeria, the Middle East conflict?
Eid: There are 20 or 30 years, most people are directed to France due to cultural and commercial relations. Now Algeria is moving toward the Islamic world and the central issue is the Palestinian issue, the Arab-Israeli conflict. Thus, we have many Algerian jihadists who go to war in Iraq, the Caucasus (Chechnya or Afghanistan and Pakistan), which they call holy war. This indicates therefore that all these ideas that have great influence originate in Saudi Wahhabism and Salafism in and took this fundamentalist approach, which now reaches other countries and fronts, which are very distant from Algeria.
We talked about various currents of Islam who are now taking a role in Algeria. For example, you mentioned Wahhabism. We could say that at this moment, the greater confrontation for domination of Algeria is not between Christians and Muslims but between Muslims and Muslims?
Eid: Exactly. The problem in Algeria is supporting a socialist military regime after independence, the FLN (Front de Libération Nationale). There never was a democracy. So we are in a transition phase and we expect to emerge a true democracy, because adopted a multiparty system. There is openness to the West and to all religions. The government also wants to tame the fundamentalists. The government wants to be seen as an ally of religion, why has introduced laws that show which is more Islamic fundamentalist.
And at the same time tries to be moderate?
Eid: Yes, but in the end, it becomes more restrictive for the life of the church. The 2006 law, for example, is really very restrictive. It prohibits activities outside of church facilities. The law requires the church not to conclude any rite out of places designated for worship. Limit such practices to places of worship. If a priest goes to the countryside where there is a church, but there is a community of 20 to 50 people can not celebrate because he is not officially listed as place of worship.
Secondly, any attempt to convert a Muslim is punishable by a fine or imprisonment. The government restricts entry visas to Catholic priests. Confiscate all the Catholic literature that comes from France at the airport. Therefore, people who hold that literature often tell employees that is for personal use.
The government admitted that there are conversions every year?
Eid: Six days! We have approximately thirteen thousand converts Algerian Berber origin.
This would not be an official statement because the government probably will not admit that there's more?
Eid: There is no official census, but we know that among the Algerian community in France, especially Berbers, are converted. We also know that the Berbers converted to Islam required. Maybe consider the conversion to Christianity as a form of opposition.
How is the life of a Muslim convert in Algeria?
Eid: There are whole villages in the region who are turning Berber and living this new life, which is really strange in a Muslim country, because the phenomenon can be reached at a level such that the government is unable to oppose this resistance .
They are trying to limit it a bit, but know they themselves are Algerians who converted to Christianity without outside influence of foreign missionaries as before, that came from outside. In the city of Oran, for two years, six Algerians arrested for distributing the gospel. For the first time we have a missionary activity carried out by Algerians and not by foreign missionaries, French or Spanish. This is new.
The former Bishop of Algiers, Henri Teissier Don, said he had "witnessed the slow death of the Church."
Eid: The presence of the Catholic Church in Algeria can not be restricted to those numbers because they impact on society is enormous. For example, the care that the church offers to the disabled and the elderly. All jobs from which Muslims are not concerned in hospitals, are made by the nuns. At universities and in all fields of social life (women, youth, media, translation, literature), the Church is present and there is a giant impact on Algerian society, with less than 10 000 Catholics living there.
There is a risk that the Church from becoming endangered?
Eid: Maybe yes. But perhaps as an institution, as we know, as a church of foreigners. The foreigners are leaving, but the local church in Algeria is experiencing a renaissance that had not happened since the seventh century or X. Then, after a thousand years, reviving local Christians have a new life for the Church. Neither French nor Spanish, nor Italian.
It is a sign of hope?
Eid: Yes In addition, we have many African students from sub-Saharan countries that come to Algeria to study and contribute to the life of the Church. So we have a substitution, the Europeans are gone and are replaced by Africans and by local Christians, who are Arabs or Berbers. I think it's a sign of the Holy Spirit's work, a hopeful sign, because for the first time we have not only local bishops or Arabs, as we saw recently, the new bishop of Algiers is Jordanian, and in neighboring Tunisian, had the Archbishop Fouad Twal (Latin patriarch of Jerusalem today, and N. R.'s) and now the Bishop Maroun Lahham, instead of the French bishops of all the countries of North Africa. We also have Algerian and Arab communities, not foreign communities formed by Europeans or Americans.
What can we do? What can the Catholic Church's universal for their Algerian brothers?
Eid: What pray. To pray and remember that these countries were not originally Muslims, converted to Islam after centuries of Christianity that flourished in these lands. So do not be so strange to return to its roots, Christian roots. In Italy, I met an Algerian couple who converted, and to be baptized, both chose two special names: the husband chose the name of Augustine and his wife, Monica, because of the two saints (St. Augustine and Santa Monica) that were of Algerian origin, of Hippo.
* * *
This interview was conducted by Mark Riedemann for "Cry God on Earth," a weekly radio-television program produced by Catholic Radio and Television Network (CRTN), in collaboration with the Catholic organization Aid to the Church in Need.
More information www.aisbrasil.org.br, www.fundacao-ais.pt.