Lebanon - (Asia)

Information about Lebanon

Lebanon as a state has existed only since 1920. But its history dates back to the Phoenician empire. Beirut was founded around 4,000 B.C. For more than 50 centuries various civilizations have molded its people, and the region has been ruled by Assyrian, Egyptian, Persian, Greek, Roman, and, later, Arab and Turkish occupants. British troops intervened in 1840 to master a major revolt. After the massacre in 1860 of 22,000 Christians by the Druzes, France intervened and from then on played a leading role in the region. At the end of World War I, when the Ottoman empire was dissolved, Lebanon was placed by the League of Nations under French mandate; this came to an end in 1943 when the independent Republic of Lebanon was proclaimed. In recent times a devastating civil war (1975-1991) brought Lebanon almost to collapse. It has since made much progress toward rebuilding its political institutions and regained its national sovereignty, although neighboring Syria continues to maintain (in 1997) about 30,000 troops on its territory. Under the Ta’if Accord — the blueprint for national reconciliation — the Lebanese have established a more equitable political system, particularly by giving Muslims a greater say in the political process.
For nearly 1,300 years, with the exception of the two centuries of Christian Crusades, the region has lived under Muslim rule. Christianity, however, survived, and since 1861 a special administrative district with Christian administrators exists in the area of Mount Lebanon traditionally inhabited by Maronite Christians. Lebanon offers a particular model of society inherited from the Ottoman system. Religious communities have equal rights and handle most matters of daily life as internal affairs. They have their own jurisdictions in matters of personal status and register legal acts concerning birth, marriage, divorce, and matters of inheritance. At the political level official functions have been clearly distributed among the confessional bodies; according to the unwritten “National Pact,” the president of Lebanon has to be a Maronite, the Prime Minister a Sunnite, the president of Parliament a Shiite.
The Maronite Church is the largest Christian church in the Lebanon. It has a close relationship with the Holy See in Rome. Christianity in Lebanon includes further Greek-Orthodox, Catholic-Orthodox (Melkites), Apostolic Armenians (they arrived in 1918 as survivors from the massacres in Turkey), Armenian Catholics, Syrian Orthodox (Jacobites), Syrian Catholics, Assyrian Orthodox, Chaldean Catholics, and Arab Catholics.
The Evangelical presence in this part of the former Ottoman Empire owes to the work of Ref missionaries, who arrived in the early 19th century from the United States and the British Isles. They worked primarily in Mount Lebanon and in major portions of the Syrian interior. The Ottoman authorities recognized the Prot faith already in 1848. Today most Prot are gathered under the umbrella of the Supreme Council of the Evangelical Community in Syria and Lebanon (1936). The Ref churches are part of the Middle East Council of Churches. For several decades the Near East School of Theology, which operates under the responsibility of various Prot churches, has provided theological training for candidates to the ministry.

Alliances

• Middle East Council of Curches
  Middle East Council of Curches MECC
• Supreme Council of Evangelical Churches in Syria and Lebanon
  

Churches

• Al-Ittihad Al Injili Al-Watani Fi Lubnan
  The National Evangelical Union of Lebanon NEUL
• National Evangelical Synod of Syria and Lebanon
  
• Union of the Armenian Evangelical Churches in the Near East
  

• Near East School of Theology
  NEST

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