Lord Cromer has written in his Modern Egypt about the Copts, criticising their character and essentially disparaging them for what he calls “the vices of servitude”. No one likes others to criticise him or his people, especially when the criticism is thrown at one and his nation in a generic way and without much understanding. But Lord Cromer was actually right in picking some of our vices – cowardice when we ought to be brave, dishonesty when we ought to be honest, passivity when we ought to take action, and selfishness when we ought to think less of ourselves and more of others. These vices were not original in the Copts – the Copts of the first Christian centuries were not like that, or at least the majority of them, from what we know of them. These vices have been brought about upon us by the intense fear generated in us by the almost 1400 years of Islamic and Arabic oppression to the extent that we can say the character of the Copts of today bear no much resemblance to the character of the Copts in our classical period (period before the Arab Conquest in the 7th century).
All this is bad enough, but to try to portray these as actually Christian virtues brings our vices to another level: our cowardice, dishonesty, passivity and selfishness are made to seen as abidance by the commandment of Christ to love our enemies.
Do not deceive yourselves, brethren, the vices of servitude are not the virtues of Christianity. No coward can be Christian: he cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven.