The Coptic Orthodox Church

Denomination·Founded 451 CE·est. ~10 million, and disputed: the church claims 15 million in Egypt, while the state statistics agency CAPMAS puts all Egyptian Christians near 5.7 per cent of the population.

Judaism → Christianity → Oriental Orthodoxy → The Coptic Orthodox Church

The Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate of AlexandriaArchiveSaint Takla Haymanot Coptic Orthodox Site

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Rite of The Coptic Orthodox Church

The fasting year.

Wednesdays and Fridays, the fifty-five days of Great Lent, the Fast of the Apostles, the Fast of the Virgin, the Fast of Nineveh and the forty-three days before Christmas — well over two hundred days in a normal year. No meat, no dairy, no eggs, no fish on most of them, and on strict days nothing until the ninth hour.

⏱ Annual cycle — more than two hundred fasting days spread across the year◌ Every baptised Copt from about the age of seven
Add to My Beliefs →
What happensNo animal products, and nothing at all until the fast is broken at the ninth hour or after the liturgy
What it needsA cook who can keep a household vegan for weeks at a stretch
What it aims atTo make the body agree with the calendar rather than the appetite
Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this rite is held

The Coptic fasting calendar is the longest of any historic church, and it is not optional for the devout: the Fast of the Nativity runs forty-three days, Great Lent fifty-five, the Apostles' Fast varies with the date of Easter, and the Fast of the Virgin takes fifteen days in August. Children are eased into it, the sick and pregnant are dispensed, and the strictness varies between the village and the diaspora. What it produces is a distinctively Coptic cuisine and a shared bodily rhythm across a scattered people. A Copt in Melbourne is eating the same way as a Copt in Assiut in the second week of March.

The same ground, other faiths

rites that share this one's ideas
Nineteen days. The Bahá'í Faith · the interior Go deeper →
Ba'utha d-Ninwaye — the three days of Nineveh. The Chaldean Catholic Church Go deeper →
The doorway, the tulsi, and the kitchen. Hinduism Go deeper →
Uposatha — the observance day. Buddhism Go deeper →
Paryushana. Jainism Go deeper →
The Yom Kippur fast. Judaism Go deeper →

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