Welcome to the Charles Malik Archive

If free Christianity falls in Lebanon—and Lebanon is the last sanctuary of Christianity in the East—it will disappear not only across the Middle East, but also in Asia and Africa. (p. 4)

What makes men truly more human if not the value of existential freedom? O people, call this value the ‘greatest’ if you can! (p. 4)

In our day and age, it is an extremely perilous situation that in the entire Middle East Christianity is only truly free in Lebanon—free not through illusions and undue assumptions, but free in exactly the same way as it is in Europe and in America. (p. 4)

A free Lebanon is of priceless value in the general existential-humanistic design of the Middle East, and the Maronites are entrusted with this value, perhaps even more than others are. (3)

I come from a country and a people who have known more history than any other people. I tell you the excitement of time is important only if measured on the peace of eternity. What matters in the end is that which abides, that which remains immovable when everything else moves, even if it should be moved by it. And this is none other than the eternal spirit of truth and love, reaching for man, claiming and forgiving him, and sealing him with the seal of its adoption. For I tell you man will die unless, remembering his origin, awakening to his plight, he is constantly replenished, amidst tears of joy, by celestial food. (p. 244)

I know how embarrassing this matter is to politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen, and cynics; but, whatever these men think, the irrefutable truth is that the soul of America is, at its best and highest, Christian. (p. 243)

“We are all members one of another, and no matter how much we may try one another, surely goodness, patience, and trust—whether or not deserved—will prove exceedingly rewarding in the end.” (p. 242)

Political systems vary, but the need of man for truth and salvation will never cease. One therefore must press beyond politics, beyond the sheer framework of freedom, beyond the least common denominator which makes everybody feel comfortable and happy; one, I say, must press beyond these things into the domain of qualitative excellence, where, far from pleasing everybody, one may find one’s self standing absolutely alone. (p. 241)

…the contents of the American word. In elaborating a message, in articulating the word, there are two radically different methods of approach. There is first the method of the least common denominator. Here one endeavors to strike a balance that will please everybody and therefore challenge nobody. According to this method, the American message is that which is common to every shade of opinion throughout the land, that which makes everybody feel perfectly at home. (p. 241)

In particular, failure to understand that all political problems in the Near East are interwoven with religion, so that a true attitude to those problems can rest only upon a basis of true doctrine, and a false attitude to them will have disastrous effects upon the whole relationship between the great religions. (p. 43)