Copts are the largest Christian community in the Middle East and among the world’s oldest Christian communities. Once the objects of American missionary efforts, they have recently become newly visible in Western political and religious imaginaries. ISIS-related violence and anti-Muslim politics have spurred U.S. politicians and evangelical networks to mobilize projects of “saving” Middle Eastern Christians, reinforcing the moral discourse of the “Persecuted Church.”
Drawing on fieldwork among Coptic migrants across Egypt and the U.S., Martyrs and Migrants examines how American imaginaries of global Christian persecution reshape Coptic collective memory and public identity. Lukasik argues that transnational Copts translate martyrdom into ambiguous forms of visibility, forging a theopolitics of Christian kinship in blood even as they remain subject to racialization, detention, and exclusion. This roundtable reflects on the book’s interventions into debates over religion and empire, violence and migration, and the contested politics of recognition and belonging in contemporary Christianity.