The Politics of Materiality and Middle Eastern Christianity

This paper traces discourses on revolutionary politics in the Coptic Orthodox Church during the early Egyptian Republic (est. 1953). I argue that Egypt’s 1952 coup resonated with a Coptic community grappling with material corruption and spiritual decay, prompting a transformation of communal politics and religious thought in line with the period’s revolutionary ethos. This manifested in a populist wave in elections for the Coptic Communal Council and papacy that called for new blood, with a preference for younger candidates whose credentials were piety, spirituality, and ascetism rather than administrative experience. This was accompanied by a communal discourse that emphasized the affinities between socialism and Christianity, with clergy in particular arguing that Christianity constituted the origins of socialism in its purest form. While both currents were apparently inspired by the revolutionary period’s antiestablishment trajectory, I argue that their result was the incorporation of the Coptic Church into the ermerging authoritarian state.