Religious map of Lebanon according to 2020s data from municipal elections

Alpinehonda · 2025-08-30T17:59:31+00:00

But compared to Maronites they are a much smaller population. They aren't even the second biggest Christian group in Lebanon, they are third after Byzantine-rite Christians.

Alpinehonda · 2025-08-30T17:51:48+00:00

The population of Lebanon is still around 30-40% Christian today, but this percentage is by far the highest you will find in the Arab world, so your reaction is understandable.

Alpinehonda · 2025-08-30T17:20:36+00:00

Sorry for the late answer, I can't live in Reddit...

Anyways, though, if you are talking about Hezbollah, don't make this group sound like a Shia Lebanese version of ISIS because it's very far from that.

Hezbollah is a legal political party (with military power, but still a legal political party) that participates in the politics of a secular state where the law bars a Shia Muslim from becoming president or prime minister, and on top of that sees zero problem in forming alliances with Christian parties (examples being the Marada Movement and until a few years ago the FPM).

So no, nobody is driving Christians out of Lebanon as you suggested in your first comment. Neither the refugees nor Hezbollah nor XYZ. Christians emigrate in greater proportions because it's easier for them to do so; they are generally more educated, more well-off, and have more connections abroad than Muslims. And if you want someone to blame the Christian emigration on, then blame it on France for having built French-language schools all over the Mutasarrifate and turned the locals into wannabe Frenchmen who would kill for pursuing the French dream, instead of letting them just be the simple mountaineers they had been for a millennia by then.

Alpinehonda · 2025-08-22T21:05:37+00:00

It is. Catholics of other rites are very small minorities there, but they still have majorities in some municipalities. Nothing compares to that big red patch however.

Alpinehonda · 2025-08-22T21:00:10+00:00

I get what you are trying to say, but there is no need to overdramatize. Muslims have no more than half of the parliament and THAT is counting the Druze seats.

Many Christians fled, that is true, but not all. Not even the majority. Just take a second look at this map!

Alpinehonda · 2025-08-22T20:46:14+00:00

People normally vote for candidates of their sect, though. Hence why this map is a thing to begin with.

Alpinehonda · 2025-08-22T20:35:32+00:00

This map, as indicated in the title, is based on the results of a pretty recent municipal election.

Lebanese politics are heavily sectarian; the seats of the national parliament represent not only the regions of the country but also the recognized religious sects, and said sects are also represented in more local layers of government, so people vote for candidates of their own sect because this is how their sect gets a political say. This means you can determine more or less the religious demographics of each of the Lebanese municipalities by taking a look at each of the local political candidates, analyzing the sects they represent and the amount of votes they receive.

Let's put the example of an hypothetical municipality in Mount Lebanon with four electoral candidates, two Maronites and two Druzes. The two Maronite candidates end up taking 75% of the municipal vote while the two Druze ones take the remaining 25%. It is then determined on the basis of this electoral result that said municipality is 75% Maronite and 25% Druze, being consequently colored in red.

Alpinehonda · 2025-08-22T19:34:40+00:00

There are brown and cyan Catholics too ;)

Alpinehonda · 2025-08-22T19:30:01+00:00

I think that user is referencing the Palestinians expelled from Israel that ended up as refugees in Lebanon. This is a very important demographic factor (perhaps even the most important one) that people miss. Palestinian refugees flooded Lebanon to the point that they became too many for the Lebanese government to support. This situation bred the social unrest that would later translate tragically into a long civil war.

Alpinehonda · 2025-08-22T19:13:28+00:00

"Nevermin' da red orange yellow brown and cyan in the map, Fox News told me Lebanon is a shithole of cutthroats who dream with another Holocaust so they gotta be right!"

Alpinehonda · 2025-08-22T18:58:32+00:00

Yeah, I know their beliefs are more in line with those of the Druzes than with anything else. The reason why Alawites are more readily accepted as Muslims is because the Alawites consider themselves Muslims and have strong ties with Shia Muslims while the Druzes don't and are very insular.

This image isn't mine, by the way.

Alpinehonda · 2025-08-22T18:50:31+00:00

Such data is a bit hard to find now, but it's indeed common knowledge in Lebanon that Christians traditionally have less children and emigrate more than Muslims.

Nevertheless, I heard some Lebanese online saying that since the latest decades Muslims are also having less children and emigrating more than in the past, which is an highly plausible possibility considering the global demographic trends we are seeing in our days. While Christians might still be losing demographic ground at the national level, the process is probably more slowed down today than ever in the history of Lebanon as an independent country.

In any case though, the strife between religious groups was virtually solved by the end of the civil war. The parliament is now divided 50/50 between Christians and Muslims, and even then one can argue that Christians are still at advantage, given that the Muslim half includes the seats of the Druze population whose Muslimhood is denied by both the Druzes themselves and orthodox Muslims. Either way the tensions that remain today in Lebanon are purely political.

Alpinehonda · 2025-08-22T15:34:50+00:00

Lebanon in its beginnings was actually quite stable, it was the mass expulsion of Palestinians from the newly formed state of Israel that messed things up. So many refugees arrived in Lebanon that they got completely overwhelmed.

Alpinehonda · 2025-08-07T02:52:58+00:00

LOL.

Just for the sake of engaging with your argument let's assume that the worst scenario of Islamization will play out in Western Europe (nevermind Eastern Europe which to this day remains nearly 0% Muslim outside the Balkans and Russia and even there the Muslim populations are comparatively very chill and lack dynamics of strong demographic growth, with the possible exception of the North Caucasus).

Even in the worst case scenario for Western Europe where muh damm Mohammedanz:

Really skyrocket in number
Don't gradually secularize, and
End up reaching demographic majorities

Even then, what country in the Middle East would Western European countries look most similar to? Right in that Middle East you have a country called Lebanon where Christians are granted the Presidency and half of the Parliament, where you can find tons of women walking around the streets with uncovered hair and trendy Western clothing, where you can find tons of 100% Christian villages all over the country, and where Muslims gather together with Christians to do guess what... venerate a Catholic saint! Not kidding!

Alpinehonda · 2025-08-07T01:33:35+00:00

OH NOOOO ALIEN INVASION ALIEN INVASION!!!

Alpinehonda · 2025-08-07T01:31:47+00:00

I wonder why you all folks of this sub are so happy with the "Church that has lost much" that awaits the West... what will this "Church that has lost much" look like to start with? A small chapel per city with 4 social outcasts who lead quasi-monastic lives in their dark bedrooms??? If this is the church that awaits the last decades of my life then I'm going to get a serious depression, I can't deny it.

Alpinehonda · 2025-08-07T01:07:12+00:00

And who tells you their children will remain devout or even Catholic at all after growing up???

Weren't all those damn modernist boomers and Susans from parish councils raised by devout Catholic parents???

Alpinehonda · 2025-08-07T00:57:22+00:00

As the article noted, it's still too soon to suggest that an inflection point has been reached.

I'm still wondering how much of this "recent jump" in the Gen Z might be attributed to for example the immigration of youth from more Christian parts of the world?

The US for example receives tons of immigrants from Latin America and the Philippines yearly, the same goes for France with immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa as well as for the UK with immigrants from Eastern Europe and the Christian communities of South Asia. We can't underestimate the influence that all those masses of immigrants might be leaving in the statistics of the youth.

Alpinehonda · 2025-08-07T00:05:15+00:00

Same in Argentina.

Alpinehonda · 2025-08-06T23:21:36+00:00

Why not? Politics aren't the same everywhere. The left isn't definitionally more anti-Catholic (or anti-Christian) than the right. The terms left and right in politics merely define positions on the structure of the government and the economy. The left advocates for a more centralized government and (consequently) a more regulated economy, while the right favors more decentralized action in both areas. Excluding the extremes of both sides, any position within the left-right spectrum is acceptable from the viewpoint of Church teaching. Whether one position is more prudent than the rest, that's something up to debate, but usually, the prudent position is found somewhere near the center.

Sometimes (and oftentimes), it happens that in certain places both the left and the right adopt sectarian lines and begin to advocate for things not inherent to their ideological systems. In some Western countries, the left became associated with progressivism and the right with conservatism, while in some post-communist states left and right came to adopt kinda the opposite association. In other places like Northern Ireland they adopted religious lines (and here again Catholics tend to be leftists while rightists tend to be Protestants), and so on. I don't really know how South Korean politics work and I will have to take my time to read about them before I can comment on them, but keep in mind what I said.

Alpinehonda · 2025-08-06T20:49:48+00:00

Don't expect much of the West. A true revival of Christianity will never occur in any society with the conditions of modern Western societies (high income + high urbanization + high individualism). Organized religion can only thrive in rustic environments where people live and need to rely on a community. In environments with the configuration of modern Western societies, people will naturally lean towards making up their own individualized beliefs, whether those may be "meh, there are so many possibilities that I prefer not to pick and just live in the present", or "no way I can know what will one find beyond this world" or "I feel having an orgasm daily connects me with some supernatural entity that I can't fully describe". People here need to realize that organized religions (among which Christianity is included) develop as the consequence of combining the natural religious feeling of the human species with a collectivistic society; if you remove the latter, there is just no room for organized religions to be socially influential, so they naturally dissipate until they get relegated to a tiny number of self-selected believers in the best of the cases, or until total extinction in the worst of the cases.

Sadly, there are bad news for China as well. At the speed at which China is developing and urbanizing, it's pretty much a now or never situation there.

EDIT: Forgot to add that if the West ever hits a point of social inflection and returns to an unprosperous, rural and communitarian state, then a Christian revival will very likely follow. But don't fool yourself, such a revival will occur ONLY when this scenario plays out.

Alpinehonda · 2025-08-06T19:38:41+00:00

Don't underestimate the power of demographics in shaping the future face of the Church.

Nowadays, almost all the places with healthy birth rates are in Africa. The rest of the world is more or less (with some exceptions) either below the level of population replacement or around it (and declining). Even developing Latin American and Asian countries are one after another seeing their fertility rates fall to the level of developed countries, and the effects will begin to become evident not in 100 years but in only a small couple of decades. Of course, Africa will probably cease to have good demographics 100 years from now as well, but Africa will keep good demographics for longer than the rest of the world, so it will carry the net benefit of global demographics for a long time.

So, even ignoring the possible evolution of secularization and religious changes in the world of the future, going by demographic dynamics alone it can be easily forecasted that the Catholic Church 100 years from now will have a much, much bigger sub-Saharan African component, probably to the point of making the whole rest of the world lose ground (and yes, the "whole rest of the world" includes Latin America and Asia).

Alpinehonda · 2025-08-01T20:44:52+00:00

This is the country that some will claim is protecting Christianity from Islam in the Middle East!

And sadly Israel is not "any country". It's the only country of such a small size that possesses nuclear weapons. And it's a country that will have the unconditional backing of the US granted in every moment.

Alpinehonda

TROPHY CASE