Dying at Church and On the Way There

Egypt. The iconic land of pharaohs, pyramids, the Nile - and more recently, violence.

During my two years living in Cairo (2010-2012), chaos ruled. People were shot, run over, and beaten in Tahrir Square and nearby Maspero; tanks blocked the streets; and 50 cal. machine-gun tracer rounds and bonfires lit up the night.

It all started six months after our arrival.

With the heady days of the "Arab Spring” spreading from Tunisia to Egypt, by January 25, 2011 - the first day of Egypt's revolution - Tahrir Square was packed with protesters. Seventeen days and hundreds of civilian deaths later, Hosni Mubarak, the man who had ruled his country with an iron fist, was deposed. The country celebrated. I celebrated.

But sadly, the revolution didn’t bring about the changes we had all hoped for. In recent years things have only gotten worse. Poverty and political oppression have increased, and tourism and hope have declined.

Yesterday I received the following message from the US embassy in Cairo (I’m still on the email list for US citizens living in Egypt):

Terrorists have attacked targets associated with the Christian community in Egypt. Incidents have occurred in both urban and isolated settings. Additional attacks may be possible. The Egyptian Government has deployed police and military forces to protect Egyptian citizens and foreign visitors.

More than ever, the religious persecution of Egypt’s Coptic Christians continues.

As I read the US State Department warning, I was immediately reminded of New Year’s Day 2011. I had awoken that morning to reports of a midnight bombing at a Coptic church in Alexandria. I was shocked. Twenty-one people had been killed by a car bomb as they left church after a New Year’s Eve service.

Just a few months earlier, I had been invited by a group of friends from a Coptic congregation to participate in a mission trip and had spent three days in the remote town of Sohag, a day’s train ride up the Nile, distributing food, clothes, and money to men, women, and children I’ll never forget. Now, people just like them were dying.

The 2011 church bombing was just the beginning. After Mubarak’s overthrow, sectarian violence erupted throughout the country with church burnings, random killings, and military attacks against Christians occurring in Cairo, Alexandria, the Sinai, and small towns up and down the Nile.

Five years later, with ISIS in the picture, the killings have become more systematic and frequent. In December 2016, a church was bombed, killing 29. This past Palm Sunday, two more churches were hit, killing 45. And in the latest atrocity, on May 26, Copts traveling to a desert monastery were ambushed by masked gunmen. Twenty-eight passengers in the three-vehicle convoy were killed, including six children. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack - and the three previous church bombings.

As I think back on my days in Egypt, I remember my friends there - both Christian and Muslim - and I am heartbroken. They have suffered too long.

But as the State Department warns, and reality tells us, there’s probably more to come.