[Episcopal News Service] For the Rev. Halim Shukair, priest-in-charge at Mother of the Savior Episcopal Church, an Arabic-speaking parish in Dearborn, Michigan, being able to worship in one’s native language can help welcome people looking for a church home. That’s why he and the Rev. Charbel Zgheib, pastor of Salam Arabic Lutheran Church in Brooklyn, New York, collaborated to translate liturgies into Arabic.
“The Episcopal Church is working toward being inclusive and reflective of our very diverse communities in the U.S., and having different translations of the liturgy is a kind of church planting,” Shukair told Episcopal News Service.
About 70 parishioners – double from 2021 – are members of Mother of the Savior, which is housed within Christ Episcopal Church, and the congregation is still growing. Salam Arabic Lutheran Church has almost 100 parishioners.
Shukair, an immigrant from Lebanon, began translating liturgies in 2018 with the help of Wassim Wehbe, who was then a graduate student in Arabic. Three years later, Zgheib started working with Shukair on the project.
Zgheib told ENS that when he immigrated to the United States from Lebanon, he noticed that resources for Arabic-speaking Christians were “very limited” and had no structure around the liturgical year.
“Since the [Evangelical Lutheran Church in America] is in full communion with The Episcopal Church, Halim and I agreed that we should work together to make people more comfortable in worshiping in their own language,” Zgheib said. That way, “the churches will be more accessible to those who are already worshiping with us and those who don’t know about us yet, but we can now reach out to them more easily.”
The Book of Common Prayer’s Eucharistic Prayer D translated into Arabic. Photo: Courtesy of Halim Shukair
The two priests translated the Book of Common Prayer’s Holy Eucharist Rite II and parts of Evangelical Lutheran Worship, the ELCA’s primary liturgical and worship guidebook. They also produced Arabic-language resources for seasonal liturgical bulletins, key feast days, baptisms, marriages and funerals.
The work wasn’t a straightforward word-for-word translation of the English texts. Arabic is the official or co-official language in 22 countries – all located in the Middle East or North Africa – and they all have their own dialect. Shukair and Zgheib both said that they had to contextualize the liturgical structures and terminologies in a universal way that every native Arabic reader could understand culturally and linguistically. The priests translated the liturgies into Fusha, also known as Modern Standard Arabic.
“There are big differences in the way we speak in our own dialects … but what unites us all is Fusha Arabic is the official written language in every Arab country, and it’s taught in all Arab schools,” Shukair said.
The growing need for Christian resources in Arabic reflects the growing Arab American population, with the number quadrupling since the U.S. Census first measured ethnic origin in 1980. The Arab American population grew nearly 30% between 2010 and 2022. Today, about 3.7 million people of Arab descent live in the United States, 1.2 million of whom are immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa.
Michigan has the largest Arab American population by percentage in the United States. In 2023, Dearborn, a suburb of Detroit, became the first Arab-majority U.S. city with about 55% of the population claiming Arab ancestry.
Even though the Middle East and North Africa are predominantly Muslim regions, most Arab Americans – an estimated 63-77% – identify as Christians.
Zgheib said having liturgies available in Arabic is also a way for The Episcopal Church and the ELCA to respect Arab cultures and traditions while “creating something new for everyone.”
“People want to feel connected to their origins and not like they have betrayed their cultures. This is very important, especially for immigrants,” he said. “We are creating familiarity to help people worship God and give them a more engaged spiritual experience with room for openness and growth.”
In 2024, the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Detroit hosted its first bilingual Arabic and English service using the liturgies and bulletins translated by Shukair and Zgheib.
“It was wonderful. Everyone felt like they belonged,” Shukair said. “Bishop [Bonnie] Perry and the Diocese of Michigan have been so supportive with this work. It is my hope that all of The Episcopal Church will encourage more translation work and encourage dioceses to start reaching out to the Arab and Middle Eastern Christians. … Diversity is wonderful.”
-Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at skorkzan@episcopalchurch.org.