Journey Back to Eden.pdf - St Mark Coptic Orthodox Church Chicago

A TIME TO VISIT NEW PLACES 183Port Said is a functional, mercantile city—not what I wouldhave thought to be a tourist town. The bishop is a very bright andarticulate man with a vision for the Church in this region. He informedme that the number of Copts who live in this sector ofEgypt is somewhat less than the national average. In some partsthere are fairly empty corridors, but in the city itself, because oftrade, there is a higher pluralism of peoples and a greater number ofChristians. These Christians are of many kinds, especially agingpopulations of Italian Catholics and the Orthodox of Eastern Europe,as well as a significant number of younger Copts. The non-Copts, though, have been steadily moving out of the area, as industryand trade are progressively becoming more and morenationalized. The bishop said that the loss of the non-Coptic Christianshas somewhat weakened the Christian presence in the region.The Copts are keen on purchasing churches, especiallyCatholic churches, which have been abandoned by the recedingpopulations. In fact, the Coptic cathedral in this city is actually aconverted Catholic church. The interesting thing about it is thatthe church—which is not such an old one, after all—was not builton the traditional east-west axis on which classical Catholicchurches were formerly built. So when the bishop adapted it forCoptic use, he put the sanctuary and the pews on an east-west axis,even though the building space itself doesn’t quite accommodatethis arrangement. It’s odd to see a church in which the pews areplaced up and down the length of the nave. The altar in the sanctuaryis in a transept where I would expect a side niche of the churchto be. But it works.The Copts are determined to maintain the traditional orientationof prayer, that is, facing east, facing the rising sun. They considerthe rising sun to be a sign of the Resurrection of Christ Jesus,a sign of Easter. Of course, above all people, the Copts are determinedto preserve the natural sign value of the sun in terms of itsChristian iconography, because their ancestors, before they becameChristians, were worshipers of the sun. The Copts never forget theutility of the sun as a Christian sign and symbol.It does make me pause and reconsider the loss of this orientationin Western architecture. We still require a sun, no less thanthe Copts do, but we do not see its symbolic significance as muchas these desert dwellers do. It seems to me that the recent loss ofarchitectural orientation toward the sun deprives modern church