[MondoQueen]

Remember Danny Thomas? He was a Christian from Lebanom. I have a friend who is a Syrian Christian. There are Christians in the middle east, you know. That’s where Christians were at first.

[muawiyah]

Indiana's governor, MItch Daniels has grandparents from the Syria/Turkey border region ~ and there's this absolutely huge body of Syrian Orthodox and Catholic Christians who resettled in Lake County, Indiana and gradually infiltrated down the interurban to Indianapolis. Toledo, Ohio is noteworthy for the number of Arab Christians who settled there early in the last century.

My father and now deceased Senator Stevens of Alaska grew up in Brightwood, an Indianapolis neighborhood with 40% immigrants ~ both Arabic and Turkish were common languages in their childhood! I don't recall running across any record of an Orthodox church there but St. Rita's had quite a mission effort to deal with all the immigrants.

On the Saturday closest to the end of Syrian Orthodox Christmas folks were invited to take their used Christmas trees to one of the city parks for burning. I knew about the guys with the double height black hats as a babe in arms inasmuch as they supervised that activity.

Orthodoxy of all nationalities, and Arab Christians in particular, are common in some parts of America ~ the older East Coast cities have no monopoly on them.