Faith and Culture Elizabeth Monier This essay focuses on the interaction between Christian faith and culture in the modern North Africa and West Asia region. Christianity was born here, but today this region is largely made up of Muslim-majority nations, adding to the complexity of unravelling the relationship between Christian faith and culture. Moreover, ‘culture’ is itself a term that is difcult to defne neatly. Although a strong case exists for culture as ‘semiotic practices’, or the practices of meaning-making, culture can be problematic as an analytic category. While acknowledging this difculty and the complex nature of both the concept and the regional context, the purpose of this essay is not to solve these dilemmas. Rather, the focus is to summarise and explain some of the dominant perspectives through which Christians in this region relate their faith to their culture (and vice versa), culture being understood here as the semiotic practices that express the meanings that a particular community ataches to its collective existence. Since most of the region forms part of the Arab and Islamic world, the discussion concentrates on examining how the diferent denominational and national Christian communities relate to Arab and Muslim culture when Christianity is the minority religion. As well as considering how Eastern Christians relate to the transformation of their homelands to majority Muslim lands and the ways in which this informs their cultural interactions, this essay highlights points of interaction between Christians and the prevailing cultures of the region. These paterns of cultural activities highlighted among Eastern Christians where they are minoritised groups are then briefy compared with the paterns in states where Christianity has a more dominant status. The chapter examines Armenia as an example of a non-Arab Christian-majority state but also highlights the case of Lebanon, which can be considered an exception among the Arab nations in terms of the strength of Christian infuence. Transition from Christianity to Islam The Middle East is the site from which the major monotheistic religions emerged and evolved. This imbues the region with theological import and symbolic meaning so that the land and its link to faith remain a powerful element in narratives of local Christian cultures and expressions of faith. Copyright 2018. EUP. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 1/28/2022 5:07 AM via UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE AN: 1815010 ; Ross, Kenneth R., Tadros, Mariz, Johnson, Todd.; Christianity in North Africa and West Asia Account: s3859159.main.ehost