11 Running Head: CHRISTIANITY IN THE MDDLE EAST Christianity in the Middle East Elizabeth Weeden Ottawa University CHRISTIANITY IN THE MIDDLE EAST Abstract A brief survey of events and occurrences from the first century to the present day. This survey outlines the background for understanding the complex questions in relation to the presence of Christians and their relationship with the other religions in the Middle East at the present time. Christianity in the Middle East Background Christianity has been a considerably dominant religious force over the past centuries. A lot of theories have been surrounded with a lot of myths in the society with various other religious societies such as the Hindu community having various ways of thinking and regards towards Christians. Expansion of Christianity into communities of other beliefs has been eminent even with the fact that it has been compounded with several issues. In the Middle East for example, questions have been raised about Christians and their religion. Being a Muslim dominated region it is hard for Christians considering the various radical beliefs entailed in Muslim culture (Chapman, 2012). The situation for Christians in these regions is a complex one and it is hard for students to make it in these regions. Various irritating questions have been asked of Christians and in this case the questions are normally very complex in nature in such a manner that some are forced to keep to themselves or reduce their exposure to the people of the other religious beliefs. With a total of around 15 million Christians in the Middle East –Arab Christians. These arab Christians claim to be in the bible in the sense that they are mentioned as “ God fearing Jews from every nation under Heaven “ regarded to have been present in Jerusalem on the historic day in relation to the bible mentioning. These kind of people are known to be happy and confident about their long presence within the region for over 2000 years. History The Christians in Iraq look back at the golden age of considered for the Eastern churches around the 5th and the 12th century where the gospel was focused and spread to India and Chinese countries, the Christians then made enormous contributions to the Islamic civilization (Chapman, 2012).With the Christians based in Lebanon considering themselves to be the descendants to Phoenicians and their continued confidence that they have been based in the region from the early Christian times. The Christians in current Egypt in a similar manner, also consider themselves to be the descendants of the ancient Egypt and therefore consider the Arab Muslims who overcame them around the 7th century as the foreign invaders. Christians in the current state in the Middle East can only look back at the comfortable life of the Christians in the region before (Iwuchukwu, Mariners, Siltner, 2013). At the moment, the situation is far m ...