now we do have a Coptic Church that does not specify ethnicity but since the word Copt = Egyptian you can pretty much figure who goes there
I’m 1/40th of the local Coptic Orthodox community, and have never been to Egypt and have no Egyptian blood. Ditto the Mexicans, Scots-Irish, American, Jordanians, Armenians, Sudanese, and Ethiopians we have had worship with us on various occasions. In the church at which I was baptized, St. Mark COC in Scottsdale, there are likewise Anglo-Americans, Mexicans, Iraqi Assyrians, Egyptians, black Africans (I’m assuming they were Ethiopians based on dress, but I didn’t get a good look at them or get to speak with them before or after my baptism), etc. Virtually every kind of person that you could find in a Catholic or Episcopal church, you can find in a Coptic one. “Coptic” has to do with the historical roots of the Church (no different than any of the mainline churches in that regard, as there was a time not terribly long ago on the worldwide Christian timescale when “Episcopalian”, “Lutheran”, etc. stood in for virtually one ethnocultural identity, or at best a group of related identities, i.e., Western and Northern European people/whites), but it has less and less to do with its makeup every day. In some places, like Bolivia, the native Orthodox Church is Coptic in its liturgical norms, Orthodox in its faith, and
100% non-Egyptian, save for the handful of priests who brought the faith to the country in the first place. (And it’s not just a handful of curious fetishizers of the exotic, either; from people I’ve met who have served there, I learned that over 400 attend services weekly in the cathedral in La Paz alone, with many, many more in the countryside and other major cities.)
And of course in America the liturgy is entirely or mostly in English (where I attend it is 80% English, though I am currently the only native speaker who attends regularly), just like how in Bolivia and Mexico (and now or very soon Costa Rica, glory be to God) it is in Spanish, in South Africa/Zambia/Kenya/etc. it is in English and the local language, etc. These are surely not the methods of a church that is primarily or even secondarily interested in preserving some hallowed ethnicity. You are writing out of ignorance.
The truth sometimes is unpleasant
:
Not nearly as unpleasant as your spreading ignorance and misinformation about a faith that you know nothing about.
“Dios ten piedad de nostros”, chanted for Vespers by HG Bishop Anba Youssef, from the Coptic Church in Bolivia
Sincerely (hey, why not…everyone else has done it),
An Anglo-American/Mexican mutt who has been accepted into the Coptic Orthodox Church the same as literally every other person recognized by it as holding the Orthodox faith in the history of all Christianity (Roman/Western saints, including bishops, too)
little bit better-they are ethnic Churches and likely will remain so-not in this millenium will we see female Orthodox prests (=======
Our 100% American priest (of as vanilla a “British Isles” heritage as one might imagine possible) conducts the DL in English…in our Russian church. A quick search, though, reveals Episcopal services nearby conducted entirely in Spanish…huh, whaddayaknow.
