Lebanese Christian nationalism: A theoretical analyses of a national movement

This thesis examines the distinctiveness of Lebanese Christian identity, and the creation of two interconnected narratives pre and during the civil war: the secular that rejects Arab nationalism and embraces the Phoenician origins of the Lebanese, and the marriage of the concepts of dying and fighting for the sacred land and faith. This study portrays the Lebanese Christian national movement as a social movement with a national agenda struggling to disseminate its conception of the identity of a country within very diverse and hostile societal settings. I concentrate on the creation process by the ethnic entrepreneurs and their construction of the self-image of the Lebanese Christian and the perception of the "other" in the Arab world. I study the rhetoric of the Christian intelligentsia through an examination of their writings and speeches before, during and after the civil war, and the evolution of that rhetoric along the periods of peace and war. I look at how the image of "us" vs. the "other" has evolved with the changing societal and political structures as a national movement evolved into an armed resistance.