A confessional community is a group of people with similar

religious belief Faith, derived from Latin ''fides'' and Old French ''feid'', is confidence or trust in a person, thing, or In the context of religion, one can define faith as "belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion". Religious people often ...

s. In the

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...

, this allowed people to be grouped by religious confession as opposed to nationality or ethnicity, which was more consistent with the existing social structure. People were able to represent themselves more effectively as a group than as individuals. With the

rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire The rise of the Western notion of nationalism in the Ottoman Empire eventually caused the breakdown of the Ottoman ''millet'' concept. An understanding of the concept of nationhood prevalent in the Ottoman Empire, which was different from the cu ...

and after the Ottoman

Tanzimat The Tanzimat (; ota, تنظيمات, translit=Tanzimāt, lit=Reorganization, ''see'' nizām) was a period of reform in the Ottoman Empire that began with the Gülhane Hatt-ı Şerif in 1839 and ended with the First Constitutional Era in 1876. ...

(1839–76) reforms, the term ''Millet'' was used for legally protected ethno-religious minority groups, similar to the way other countries used the word nation.''State and Nation in Multi-Ethnic Societies: The Breakup of multinational states''
Uri Ra'Anan, Manchester University Press ND, 1991, , p. 18]. The Lebanese Constitution is based on the idea of Confessionalism, a balance of powers between a number of state-recognized confessional communities.

References

Demographics of the Ottoman Empire Politics of the Ottoman Empire Religion in the Ottoman Empire Society of the Ottoman Empire Confessionalism {{Ottoman-stub

See also

References