World Society Contexts of the Politics of Being Christian in the Middle East

The chapter addresses what it means to be Christian in the Middle East today by exploring the tensions between individual and collective Christian identities and practices, taking into consideration the context of world cultural pressures. Churches in the Middle East are characterized by collective, corporate self-identities, intertwined with communal identities and structures, that are institutionalized in political arrangements. At the same time, world polity emphases on rights including religious rights, along with globalization’s individuating everyday life, especially for youth, tend toward greater individuality. Yet, neither world culture nor regional religions are essentially individualistic or collectivistic. This study starts with the fact that being Christian in everyday life is quintessentially local, and traces how its embeddedness in increasing scales of neighborhood, nation-state, region, and world political and cultural institutions shape these tensions. It analyzes how tensions between individual and collective are amplified or attenuated by contentions over religious rights and by how they are institutionalized in state regimes. Special attention is paid to how these processes interact in complex ways to affect societal and political practices of inclusion and exclusion and to shape Christian responses to those practices.