Christianity in Algeria

Christian Berber family from Kabylia.

The conventional historical view is that the conquest of North Africa by the Islamic Umayyad Caliphate between AD 647 and 709 effectively ended Christianity in North Africa for several centuries.[10] The prevailing view is that the Church lacked the backbone of a monastic tradition and was still suffering from the aftermath of heresies including the Donatist heresy that contributed to the earlier obliteration of the Church in the present day Tamazgha.[11]

However, new scholarship has appeared that disputes this. There are reports that the Christian faith persisted in the region from Tripolitania (present-day western Libya) to present-day Morocco for several centuries after the completion of the Arab conquest by 700 AD.[12] A Christian community is recorded in 1114 in Qal'a in central Algeria.[13] There is also evidence of religious pilgrimages after 850 AD to tombs of Christian saints outside of the city of Carthage, and evidence of religious contacts with Christians of Muslim Spain. In addition, calendar reforms adopted in Europe at this time were disseminated amongst the indigenous Christians of Tunis, which would have not been possible had there been an absence of contact with Rome.

Local Christianity came under pressure when the Muslim fundamentalist regimes of the Almohads and Almoravids came into power, and the record shows demands that local Christians of Tunis convert to Islam. There are reports of Christian inhabitants and a bishop in the city of Kairouan around 1150 AD - a significant report, since this city was founded by Arab Muslims around 680 AD as their administrative center after their conquest. The indigenous Christian population in M'zab persisted until the 11th century.[14] A letter in Catholic Church archives from the 14th century shows that there were four bishoprics in North Africa, admittedly a sharp decline from the over four hundred bishoprics in existence at the time of the Arab conquest.[13] Berber Christians continued to live in Tunis and Nefzaoua in the south of Tunisia up until the first quarter of the 15th century.[13]

Cathédrale du Sacré-Cœur d'Alger in Algiers, Algeria

The Catholic Church was reintroduced in Algeria after the French conquest, when the Diocese of Algiers was established in 1838. As of the last census in Algeria, taken on 1 June 1960, there were 1,050,000 non-Muslim civilians (mostly Catholic) in Algeria (10 percent of the total population including 130,000 Algerian Jews).[15]

The basilica of Our Lady of Africa in Algiers.

Under French rule, the Catholic population of Algeria peaked at over one million. The country was divided into four dioceses, including one archdiocese:

• Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Algiers
  • Diocese of Constantine
  • Diocese of Oran
• Diocese of Laghouat (Immediately subject to the Holy See)

During French rule, Christianity was used as a tool of assimilation. French colonizers attempted to convert the Muslim population to Christianity as a form of modernization. Laws were put in place to establish Algerians’ rights as citizens based on religion. The Crémieux Decree of 1870 denied Muslim Algerians full citizenship status while granting local Christian and Algerian Jewish inhabitants full citizenship. Very few Algerians converted because of this law. The religion-based citizenship divides established during the French colonial rule sparked animosity between groups that would impact the stance of minority religions in Algeria for years post-colonial rule.[16]

After Algeria became independent in 1962, about 800,000 Pieds-Noirs of French nationality were evacuated to European France. The majority of those who evacuated were Christian or Jewish. Approximately 200,000 Algerian inhabitants of French nationality chose to remain in Algeria. The number of people with French nationality has continued to decrease over the decades. There were approximately 100,000 in 1965 and about 50,000 by the end of the 1960s.[17]

Proselytization of the Muslim population was at first strictly prohibited; later the prohibition was less vigorously enforced, but few conversions took place. The several Catholic missions established in Algeria mostly worked on charitable and relief work, the establishment of schools, workshops, and infirmaries, and the training of staff for the new establishments. Some of the missionaries of these organizations remained in the country after independence, working among the poorer segments of the population. In the early 1980s, the Catholic population numbered about 45,000, most of whom were foreigners or Algerians who had married French or Italians.[1]

Since independence, there has been a rise of Islamic fundamentalism. The 1996 murder of Pierre Claverie, Bishop of Oran was an act of violence by Islamic extremist terrorists against the Christian community.[18]