A bit of an odd article, almost as though they don't want to admit to the Church being Catholic. The last of it speaks about the difference in education and income (which I know is very true) but still. Anyway, it is an article on an Eastern Church I suppose. Maybe it is not the entire article. There is a picture of the Church on the link.

Arab outpost

Religion: U.S. Census takes steps to count Arab-Americans but most would rather assimilate | Robert Carle

James Allen Walker for WORLD

NEW YORK—Step into Brooklyn's Church of the Virgin Mary, with its domed ceilings and marble columns, and it's like stepping into Lebanon. On Sunday mornings, the cantor sings the liturgy in Arabic, his deep baritone voice echoing off the stone walls of the incense-filled sanctuary. Icons and murals depict Jesus and saints as Middle Easterners with dark olive skin. "It's like seeing the Bible in color," says Father Antoine Rizk, who has pastored the church since 2004.

Rizk is an Arab-American, one of the 1.3 million living in the United States (according to the 2000 Census) or 3.5 million (according to the Arab American Institute). Two-thirds of them are professing Christians.

Arab-Americans earn master's degrees and doctorates at twice the national average, and Arab-American income levels exceed the national average by 20 percent.
http://www.worldmag.com/articles/15655

Most Arab-American parishes serve in English, although the recent immigration has meant something of a revival of Arabic. Arab-Americans have a strong drive to succeed, and they appreciate the point that in the USA one succeeds in English.

Fr. Serge

Abouna Serge we us Arabic, Greek, and English in the Divine Liturgy. Also, at Communion the chants are about half in Arabic. My favorite season is Great and Holy Lent, during Holy Week, the laminations are done so very mournfully in the Arabic. Just beautiful.

I'll say it again: none of the Christians of the Middle East are Arabs. The laws of religion and prohibitions on conversions from Islam to Christianity pretty much have ensured that Middle Eastern Christians are descended in a direct line from the Greco-Syrian and Coptic populations of the region in the 7th century. The only thing Arabic about them is their language.

It will be interesting to see how these people define themselves in the census.

Well, it is quite interesting that the United States government assigns the ethnic category "Hispanic" only to people of Latin American ancestry, regardless of whether or not they can speak Spanish; while Spanish Europeans are classified as "caucasian". And political correctness demands that all black people be described as "African-American" (even if they come from the West Indies), while a naturalized Afrikaner--a real "African-American", would likewise just be "white".

As there is nothing scientific about how the United States government handles classifications of race or ethnicity, it seems likely that the category "Arab" will be applied to all people whose ancestors came from the Middle East, even the Copts, even the Druze, even the Samaritans--everybody, of course, except the Jews.

It's interesting that people have to associate with a category and not inform what they are. When in the US I had to put myself down as 'White' which I really thought was so racist. As I am British by country of origin by birth , not 'white'. Given the choice some people from the Near East might just record themselves as 'Romans'. A term some people there still use to describe who they are.

Dear Stuart,

While there is truth in what you say, it is also true that there were Christians in the Arabian Peninsula before Mahomet came along. In order to remain Christians they fled north, to Lebanon and Syria (including Palestine).

Fr. Serge

The history of Christianity on the Arabian Peninsula is shrouded in mystery. We know that Christians were there, we know that Mohammed had contact with members of the Church of Edessa. But who were these people?

It seems clear that, if there were indigenous Arabian Christians, they were relatively few in number. Most of the Christians on the Peninsula seem to have come either from Nabatean Arabia (i.e., the Transjordan) or from Persia, and resided in trading colonies. Nabatean Arabia had long been hellenized, and the vast majority of its residents were of Syro-Phoenician or Greek descent.

In fact, the population of the Holy Land remained majority Christian and thus principally Syrian and Greek, down to the 13th century or so. As you know well, the Muslim conquerors were quite content to leave the Byzantine administrative structure in place and simply collect the revenues therefrom. They actually did little to convert the Christians there, though the impact of Dhimmitude was a slow but steady stream of defections from Christianity to Islam, exacerbated by the tendency of Muslims to take Christian wives and concubines, whose children would be raised as Muslims.

This situation continued until the Crusades, when the Muslims were rather shocked to find that their Christian dhimmis were inclined to support the Frankish interlopers (a fact that goes far towards rebutting the notion that the Muslims were enlightened and tolerant rulers). As a result, they began a massive transfer of populations, removing indigenous Christians from their lands and replacing them with fellahin from Arabia and Yemen, both in Syria-Palestine and in Egypt. Recent genetic assessments of Arabs in both areas indicate that they arrived no earlier than the 12th-13th centuries, and that their ancestors came from the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula.

Just what happened to the majority of the indigenous Christians is unclear. It would appear a lot of the deportees died (as one might expect) and more of them eventually converted and were assimilated into the Arab population. Others may have fled to more hospitable places, and a small, hard nut remained on the land, and are the ancestors of todays Middle Eastern Christian population.

The Maloof family (spelling varies, of course) are one of those families descended from Christians who fled Arabia.

Fr. Serge

A couple of the brothers of that family live here in Las Vegas, and at time attend the Maronite parish here.

hawk

Ray Mallouf, a second generation Lebanese from Oklahoma, was a QB with the Chicago Cardinals in the 1940's.

I know people in Central and South American countries who are ethnically European and don't have a drop of indiginous blood...if they were to fill out a U.S. census would they be 'white' or would they be 'hispanic'?

The last name Mallouf seems to be a common one. There was one in my elementary school.

I didn't know the Spaniards weren't counsted as "Hispanic." That's ridiculous!

Anyone from a primarily Spanish-speaking country or culture is Hispanic. People from Central and South America are Latino. So Brazilians are Latino, but not Hispanic, and Spaniards are Hispanic, but not Latino.

Alexis