At the beginning of the 19th century, the Christian population of the area now called Jordan (then part of the Ottoman dominion of Southern Syria) was nearly all Greek Orthodox, linked with the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Jerusalem.(1) By the end of the century, this church would face the challenge of Roman Catholic and Protestant missionaries; in the first half of the 20th century, the Greek Catholic Church entered Jordan, and later Baptists and Seventh-day Adventists began missionary work in the country.

All of these missionaries were meant to go and preach to non-Christians. In fact, all of them relied on attracting adherents from the Greek Orthodox Church. Their work was encouraged by internal factors in the tribal structure of the society, which led people to seek solutions to some of the limitations imposed by the Greek Orthodox Church in matters of marriage and inheritance. Others were drawn by the aid in goods and services which the missionaries offered.

After the first world war, Jordan was established as a state and work began on the formulation of a constitution. The drafters of the constitution regarded Christians in Jordan as citizens and left their religious organization to the various existing churches. At that time the population of Jordan was estimated at 225,000, about 4 percent of whom were Christians, mostly Greek Orthodox.

Various sources suggest that the rate of demographic growth among Christians in Jordan was about the same as that of the rest of the population, but Christians were more privileged than Muslims in terms of education. The various churches had established schools, which their children attended at least to the third elementary class, though the average pupil had six years of education. They were thus needed as clerks and administrators in the new administration, which explains why over time many Christians left their villages for the urban centres, where they received a cash income.

Christians in Jordan today are concentrated in the capital Amman and other large cities. Two villages are populated exclusively by Christians -- Shatana in the north and Hmud in the south. Many other villages have a considerable number of Christians.

During the period of the emirates (1921-46), the Christian population of Jordan increased considerably as a result of immigration, which was facilitated by the general policy of the prince for ideological and other reasons: ideologically, those who had led the Great Arab Revolt against the Turks in

1916 considered all Arabs as equal nationals; demographically, Jordan was thinly populated and newcomers were welcome; economically, those who came were mostly skilled people -- craftsmen, lawyers, educated persons -- whom the country needed to fill the gaps in its own labour pool.

Juridical issues

According to Article 1 of the 1952 revision and modification of the 1947 constitution, Jordan is an Arab kingdom and its people form part of the Arab nation. Article 2 specifies that "Islam is the religion of the state and Arabic is its formal language".

Chapter 2 of the constitution defines citizenship and the rights of Jordanian citizens. According to Article 6.1, all Jordanians are equal before the law without distinction in rights and duties despite differences of race, language and religion. Article 6.2 specifies that the state guarantees equal opportunities to all Jordanians equally, and Article 7 says that the state guarantees personal freedom. State protection of freedom of worship is explicitly set out in Article 14 for all religions according to the current customs in the kingdom, provided that this does not disturb the social order or contradict morality. Article 15 goes on to guarantee freedom of opinion and speech, provided that these do not contradict the laws of the land.

Judicial authority is treated in chapter 6 of the constitution. Article 99 classifies the courts into three independent types -- civil, religious and private. The religious courts are divided into shar'iyya (Muslim religious courts) and councils of other religious communities. The latter are recognized by the government as an institution of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan:

The councils of other [non-Muslim] religious communities are formed in accordance with the laws issued specifically for this purpose. These laws  specify the specialization of these Councils in relation to the questions

of personal matters, their estates as related to the communities' interests. But the personal matters for such a community are the same personal matters of Muslims which fall under the specialization of the

Muslim religious court (Art. 109.1).

In addition to the constitution, there are electoral laws which regard Christians as a minority and allot them, like other minority groups such as Chechens, Circassians and nomads, a given proportion of seats in parliament -- apparently out of recognition that these minorities would not be represented in government if there were not such specific quotas. The number of seats in the parliament allotted to Christians makes up 11.2 percent. In addition, the state has informally reserved ministerial posts in the government for Christians; and in nearly all the governments formed there have been one or two Christian ministers.

State, religious law and equality

The problem of maintaining two legal systems in Jordan, one civil and the other canonical, has created problems regarding equality. The laws to which the people are subject differ and their contents diverge considerably. In the canonical personal law of the Christian churches, for example, divorce, remarriage and polygyny are prohibited and security for married women in terms of bride wealth and alimony is not guaranteed. Islamic law allows divorce, remarriage and polygyny and guarantees security to married women. Thus it is not uncommon in the Jordanian Christian community for a man who wishes to leave or divorce his wife to avoid the Christian personal laws by proclaiming himself a Muslim and thus becoming subject to the shar'iyya court. A similar phenomenon is seen among Christian young women who wish to elope with and marry a Muslim man. By proclaiming their Islam, they evade the authority of the family, the clan or the tribe. (The converse phenomenon -- a Muslim woman eloping with a man who is not a Muslim -- is unknown in Jordanian society.)

It should be noted that the Jordanian state is still in the process of self-institutionalization, society-formation and integration. Thus the process of state maturation is not yet complete. In many respects the society remains traditional, and the formation of civil society is only at its beginning. Since the constitution specifies that Islam is the formal religion of the state, there are certain informal policies which are not congruent with the constitution. This is a result of both the pragmatism of the state and the orientation of society at large. Essentially, such policies do not constitute an assault on the personal and group liberties accorded to religious minorities. Yet many practices often work against the possibility of individual self-realization. For example, a number of posts can be held only by Sunni Muslims.

Proselytism in Jordan

As noted earlier, proselytizing among the Christian population of Jordan has been taking place since the first half of the 19th century. The first group of missionaries to be established were Roman Catholics. Among the reasons for this was the presence of the Latin patriarchate in Jerusalem and the establishment of a Roman Catholic seminary in Beit Jala (Palestine) which qualified people for the priesthood, recruiting them from different parts of Palestine and Syria, including Lebanon. Yet it was only in the third quarter of the 19th century that this missionary activity became effective, when a group was sent to al-Salt. That mission became active, establishing centres at al-Karak and el-Husn in 1887 and spreading throughout the country from here.(2)

By the turn of the century there were four groups of missionaries working in Jordan: Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholics, Anglicans and Greek Catholics (or Melchites). After the establishment of the state of Jordan, the Baptist church entered the country in 1946, establishing the first hospital in Ajlun in the north. In the 1960s they were followed by Seventh-day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses, though the latter group soon disappeared.

As noted, Christian missionary work in Jordan has taken place only among Christians. Since these were in the beginning essentially adherents of the Greek Orthodox Church, it can be said that the growth of all other Christian communities has been at the expense of the Greek Orthodox.

The interesting question is: what has motivated Jordanian Christians to convert to other Christian churches? A satisfactory answer to this difficult question would require considerable research and study into socio-cultural and economic circumstances. From my own studies of Christians in two different communities in Jordan it is evident that the socio-cultural conditions were the most pressing factors in leading individuals to take the step of converting.(3) Studies of proselytism may tend to concentrate on the religious-psychological factors, but these factors are closely connected to social and cultural realities; and we may conclude that wider and deeper studies are needed in order to say something convincing on this issue.

Conversion of Christians from one church to another in Jordanian society does not form a problem and meets no resistance whatever. Nor is the conversion of Christians to Islam a problem. The reverse does create problems on the social level, despite the fact that there is nothing in Jordanian law which opposes the conversion of persons to other religions and that the constitution guarantees freedom of religion. What is predominant here is the very stiff resistance of the traditional social and religious forces operating in society. These forces maintain the traditional system of values and norms which has been dominant in the history of this region for many centuries. Compared with other Arab societies, Jordanian society can be described as highly tolerant; and it has benefited from a wise leadership which has understood how to avoid clashes on the basis of religious grounds; nevertheless, the process of individualization as it has taken place in the Western world is still far behind in the Arab societies in general.

NOTES

(1) Cf. Mohanna Haddad,

"Detribalizing and Retribalizing.

The Double Role of Churches among

Christian Arabs in Jordan:

A Study in the Anthropology of Religion", The Muslim World, vol. 82, nos 1-2, 1992, pp.67-89.

(2) Ibid.

(3) Mohanna Haddad, "Christian Identity in the Jordanian Arab Culture: A Case Study from Two Jordanian Communities in North Jordan", 1998 (unpublished paper).

Mohanna Haddad teaches in the department of anthropology at the Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, Yarmouth University, Irbid, Jordan.

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