A confessional community is a group of people with similar

religious belief A belief is a subjective attitude that something is true or a state of affairs is the case. A subjective attitude is a mental state of having some stance, take, or opinion about something. In epistemology, philosophers use the term "belief ...

s. In the

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire (), also called the Turkish Empire, was an empire, imperial realm that controlled much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th to early 20th centuries; it also controlled parts of southeastern Centr ...

, 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 and after the Ottoman

Tanzimat The (, , lit. 'Reorganization') was a period of liberal reforms in the Ottoman Empire that began with the Edict of Gülhane of 1839 and ended with the First Constitutional Era in 1876. Driven by reformist statesmen such as Mustafa Reşid Pash ...

(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