Boise-area Coptic community is growing. Soon, it will get a church of its own
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- Boise-area Coptic Orthodox community purchased land for its first church.
- The $2.5M Meridian project aims to serve 130 congregants within one year.
- Church leaders hope their new home will draw both a resident priest and new members.
For 17 years, the Treasure Valley’s Coptic Orthodox community has been without a permanent home. Members rented various spaces for services or had to travel to Seattle to visit the nearest established church.
As the community grew, it began to look for options closer to home, said Father Mina Salama, the parish priest at the Seattle Coptic church. With 10 families now living in Idaho, the community in late July bought property in Meridian to build the Virgin Mary & St. Mark Coptic Orthodox Church.
It will be the “FIRST EVER” Coptic church in Idaho, Salama told congregants in a Sunday post to the church’s Facebook page, and will fall under the jurisdiction of the Archdiocese of Northern California and the Western United States. Salama asked visitors to the page for their “prayers for this project, so God can complete it for his glory.”
Many of the church members are originally from Egypt, the birthplace of the Coptic Orthodox faith, Salama told the Idaho Statesman. Others are Eritrean, Ethiopian or American.
Established in the Egyptian city of Alexandria around 43 A.D., the Coptic Church is the main Christian church in Egypt, where its members make up about 10% of the country’s population, according to the Century Foundation, an independent think tank.
As a branch of the Oriental Orthodox Church, Coptic Christians follow their own pope, Tawadros II, whom they view as a first among equals rather than a figure with supremacy over other bishops, the BBC reported. Coptic Christians celebrate Christmas on Jan. 7, rather than Dec. 25. Along with some other churches, Coptic Christians view Jesus Christ as both fully divine and fully human.
Coptic services take place using Coptic, a language spoken in ancient Egypt, along with local languages and Arabic, the BBC reported. The church adheres to older traditions than many other churches, according to the Coptic Orthodox Diocese of Los Angeles, Southern California and Hawaii. The church has made fewer modifications than in other denominations to ancient Christian rituals or doctrines, the diocese wrote.
Salama, who is overseeing the construction of the new church in Meridian, told the Statesman he hopes it will be up and running within a year. All told, the project — funded largely by congregant donations — will cost about $2.5 million, he said.
Located at 4383 N. Locust Grove Road, the planned two-story, 9,000-square-foot building is designed to hold about 130 congregants, according to city planning documents.
The community is still looking for a parish priest. Salama is serving as its president for the time being. He said he hopes having the new church building will attract a priest and more congregants.
“You cannot get the priest before you get the place,” he said.
Readers can learn more about the church at orientalorthodoxy.com or at the congregation’s Facebook page.
This story was originally published August 2, 2025 at 4:00 AM.
CORRECTION: This story was updated on August 2, 2025 to clarify that the Coptic Orthodox Church is a branch of the Oriental Orthodox Church.
