Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Martyrs and Migrants: Coptic Christians and the Persecution Politics of Us Empire

Martyrs and Migrants: Coptic Christians and the Persecution Politics of Us Empire

Lukasik, Candace

Hardcover

Series: North American Religions, Book 23

Religion General General ChristianityImmigration & Refugees

ISBN10: 1479833193
ISBN13: 9781479833191
Publisher: New York University Press
Published: Mar 25 2025
Pages: 304
Weight: 1.21
Height: 0.81 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

Winner, 2025 Alixa Naff Best Book Award in Migration Studies, given by the Moise Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies

How Coptic Christian migrants reshape religious identity through the imagination of US empire

Coptic Orthodox Christians comprise the largest Christian community in the Middle East and are among the oldest Christian communities in the world. While once the objects of American missionary efforts, in recent years Copts have been in the spotlight for their Christianity. A spate of ISIS-related bombings and attacks have garnered worldwide attention, leading to a series of efforts from US politicians, think tanks, and NGOs to re-channel their efforts into saving these Middle Eastern Christians from Muslims. The increased targeting of Copts has also contributed to the moral imaginary of the Persecuted Church, particularly among American evangelicals, which embraces the idea that Christians around the globe are currently being persecuted more than any other time in history.

Drawing on years of extensive fieldwork among Coptic migrants between Egypt and the United States, Martyrs and Migrants examines how American religious imaginaries of global Christian persecution have remapped Coptic collective memory of martyrdom. Transnational Copts have navigated the sociopolitical conditions in Egypt and the global consequences of the US war on terror by translating their suffering into the ambiguous forms of religious and political visibility. Candace Lukasik argues that the commingling of American conservatives and Copts has shaped a new kind of Christian kinship in blood, operating through a double movement between glorification and racialization. Occupying a position between threat and victim, Copts from the Middle East have been subject to anti-terror surveillance in the US even as they have leveraged their roles as persecuted Christians. Through Lukasik's careful examination of the everyday processes shaping Coptic communal formation, Martyrs and Migrants broadly reveals how ideologies of spiritual kinship are forged through theological histories of martyrdom and of blood, demonstrating the global dynamics and imperial politics of contemporary Christianity.

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