Coptic Orthodox Church, Principal Christian church in Egypt. Until the 19th century it was called simply the Egyptian Church. It agrees doctrinally with Eastern Orthodoxy except that it holds that Jesus has a purely divine nature and never became human, a belief the Council of Chalcedon rejected (see Monophysite heresy) in ad 451. After the Arab conquest (7th century), service books were written with Coptic and Arabic in parallel texts. Church government is democratic, and the patriarch, who resides in Cairo, is elected. There are congregations outside Egypt, especially in Australia and the U.S., and the church is in communion with the Ethiopian, Armenian, and Syrian Jacobite churches.
Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria Article
Coptic Orthodox Church summary
Below is the article summary. For the full article, see Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria.
church Summary
Church, in Christian doctrine, the Christian religious community as a whole, or a body or organization of Christian believers. The Greek word ekklēsia, which came to mean church, was originally applied in the Classical period to an official assembly of citizens. In the Septuagint (Greek)