Christianity inKuwait is a minority religion.
In 2020, there were an estimated 289 Christian Kuwaitis residing in Kuwait,[2] along with an estimated 837,585 non-citizen Christians.[3] In total, they make up 17.93% of the population.
A 2015 study estimates some 350 Christians in Kuwait who are former Muslims.[4]
Kuwait is the onlyGCC country besidesBahrain to have a local Christian population who hold citizenship.[5][6]
Christian Kuwaitis can be divided into two groups. The first group includes the earliest, who wereIraqi Christian (Assyrian andArab/Antiochian Greek) immigrants and their local-born descendants.[7] They have assimilated into Kuwaiti society, like their Muslim counterparts, and tend to speak Arabic with aKuwaiti dialect; theirfood andculture are also predominantly Kuwaiti. They make up less than a quarter of Kuwait's Christian population. The rest (roughly three-quarters) of Christian Kuwaitis make up the second group. They are more recent arrivals in the 1950s and 1960s, mostly Kuwaitis of Palestinian ancestry who fled the BritishMandatory Palestine due to the1948 Arab-Israeli war and decided to settle in Kuwait.[7] There are also smaller numbers who originally hail fromSyria andLebanon.[7] This second group is not as assimilated as the first group, as theirfood,culture, andArabic dialect still retain aLevant feel. However, they are just as patriotic as the former group, and tend to be proud of their adopted homeland, with many serving in the army, police, civil, and foreign service. Most of Kuwait's Christian citizens belong to 12 large families, with the Shammas (from Turkey) and the Shuhaibars (from Palestine) being some of the more prominent ones.[7]
Although there is a small community of Christian citizens, a law passed in 1981 prevents the naturalization of non-Muslims; however, male citizens who were Christians before 1980 (and male children born to families of such citizens since that date), can transmit their citizenship to their children.[8]
Traditionally,Eastern Orthodox Christians in Kuwait belong to the jurisdiction ofEastern Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East. Eastern Orthodox parish in Kuwait was reorganized in 1969 by late metropolitanConstantine Papastephanou of Baghdad and Kuwait (1969-2014), who visited Kuwait on many occasions.[9] His successor is MetropolitanGhattas Hazim of Baghdad and Kuwait (since 2014). His official seat remains in Baghdad, but administrative headquarters of the Archdiocese are located in Kuwait. Today, Eastern Orthodox parishes in Kuwait are administered by priests Ephrem Toumi and Filimon Saifi.[10]
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The denominations of both citizen and foreign Christians in Kuwait include, but are not limited to, the following:
In 2012 the country had 7 official churches and 18 non-official churches, with Kuwait's largest cathedral being situated in the eastern part of Kuwait city.[11]
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