Heaven Starts from Earth: Orthodox Welfare Practices and Embodied Theology in Lebanon

This presentation investigates indigenous theological models centered on socio-political activism within the Antiochian Orthodox Church and their activation amid the multipronged crises in present-day Lebanon. Drawing on ethnographic and archival research conducted from 2019 to 2021, I trace the discursive genealogies of these models back to the twentieth-century Antiochian revival (*nahda*). I also frame their activation on the ground within the context of an Orthodox socio-medical center in Beirut. Here I investigate welfare practices shaped at the intersection of embodied theology, sectarian practices, and community services. Along sect-based and humanitarian incentives, I argue that the center’s work and identity were defined by Orthodox calls of engagement with the divine through immersion into history. Yet, the human-divine relationality shaped by these calls intersected with sect and class sensibilities, calling for a reconsideration of the relation between Orthodox theology, sectarianism, and precarious livelihoods beyond traditional divisions of sacred-secular and national-sectarian.