Project Mount Lebanon – Manifesto
(Notre manifeste est également disponible en français. Téléchargez-le PDF ici: PROJET ÉTAT du MONT – LIBAN (Manifeste)
Preamble
Lebanon is going through an existential crisis. A devastated economy, wars, foreign influences, and the progressive dilution of Christian identity threaten the two-thousand-year heritage of the Christians of this country. Too often, our trials are exploited by hostile agendas that directly attack our faith, our history, our dignity, and our freedom.
Our presence has become negotiable. Once a living evidence anchored in Mount Lebanon and radiating across the entire Lebanese land, this Christian identity is today merely a cause defended by a minority. We refuse this decline.
We, Christians of Lebanon from all Churches and all backgrounds, Maronites, Orthodox, Melkites, Armenians, Syriacs, Catholics, Protestants, and all those who share our attachment to this land, united by fidelity to the Gospel and to our common history, have decided to react.
This manifesto is not a closed chapel: it is addressed to all Christians. It does not deny differences, but establishes a prior requirement: to place faith and history at the center, the condition for any cultural and political rebirth.
The time is no longer for lamentations nor for identity-based compromises.
It is time for the clear and resolute affirmation of who we are.
For Lebanon.
For the Christians of this country.
For the Mount Lebanese faithful to its founding message.
The Mount Lebanon We Want
I. Founding Principles and Governance Structure
The State of Mount Lebanon will be founded on authentic Christian values: absolute respect for free will, the primacy of goodwill, and the sincere pursuit of the common good. Individual and collective freedom will constitute its backbone.
Mount Lebanon will be a civic and democratic State, but not secular in the ideological sense: the separation between religion and political power will be real and effective, while allowing the Christian spiritual heritage to inspire laws and morals without ever imposing a theocracy. The Church and the various Christian confessions and the Druze will have a recognized consultative role, comparable to that of a moral and cultural council, without legislative or executive power.
II. Openness to Other Confessions and Fight Against All Forms of Xenophobia or Radicalism
Mount Lebanon, although a State with a Christian majority and identity, will firmly reject any form of xenophobia, aggressive confessionalism, or religious paranoia. Christianity, since its origins, is a religion of acceptance and love of neighbor.
All citizens of Mount Lebanon, whatever their confession, will enjoy the same full and entire civil and political rights: right to vote, freedom of worship, access to property (within the limits permitted by regulatory laws), to education, and to justice. The acquisition of Mount Lebanese nationality will never be based on a religious criterion, but on an objective historical and territorial criterion.
Mount Lebanon will thus be the last protected bastion of the Christians of the East, not against others, but for others: a beacon of human dignity in a region often tormented.
III. Relationship to Current Lebanese Christian Political Parties and Forces
The Mount Lebanon PROJECT is neither a political party nor a competing formation within the Lebanese Republic born in 1920. It does not seek to interfere in the internal political struggles of present-day Lebanon.
The day the State of Mount Lebanon comes into being, all Christians, whatever their political side, will benefit directly or indirectly, as it will be a sovereign refuge for the entire community. Criticizing or attacking existing Christian parties and leaders is therefore neither a priority nor a concern.
Our gaze is turned toward the future, not toward the quarrels of the present.
IV. The Diaspora: Backbone of the Project
The Lebanese and Mount Lebanese Christian diaspora, numbering several million people around the world, will constitute the main force for repopulation and development of the new State. Its exceptional skills, entrepreneurial spirit, considerable capital, and unfailing attachment to the ancestral land will make it the primary engine of the renaissance.
Mount Lebanon will offer the diaspora:
-An automatic right of return and simplified dual nationality;
-Major tax incentives for investments and donations;
-Special economic zones, an ultra-favorable regulatory environment for startups and technology companies;
-A secure, modern framework of life deeply imbued with authentic Mount Lebanese culture.
Mount Lebanon will thus become the “spiritual Silicon Valley” of the Near East, a regional hub for innovation, green finance, luxury tourism, and higher education.
V. Relations with Arab Countries
Mount Lebanon, through its recovered sovereignty, will not be part of the Arab League, as it has never been Arab, neither by history, nor by the primary language of its inhabitants, nor by its civilizational vocation.
This withdrawal will not be an act of hostility, but a serene affirmation of identity.
Far from creating enmities, Mount Lebanon will extend a hand to all its neighbors and to the Arab States to establish exemplary diplomatic relations, preferential trade agreements, energy, economic, and security partnerships.
We will fully respect the identity and sovereignty of each, hoping for reciprocity: that our Christian identity finally be recognized without ulterior motive.
VI. Relations with Israel
Mount Lebanon will live in peace with all its neighbors, without exception. Natural, historical, and human ties exist with Israel: tens of thousands of Lebanese reside there, a dynamic Maronite community has been established for decades, an official Maronite diocese exists there.
A treaty of economic, military, technological, educational, and cultural cooperation will be a priority from the first hours of independence.
This relationship will not be directed against anyone, but for the good of our two peoples who share the same aspiration to live with dignity and security on their ancestral land.
VII. Relationship to the Church
Unsurpassable Ecclesiastical Anchor: This project is deeply rooted in the Christian faith. It seeks to be faithful to the Gospel and respectful of the living tradition of the Oriental Churches of Lebanon (Syriac-Maronite, Greek-Orthodox, Melkite Greek-Catholic, Armenian Apostolic and Catholic, Syriac Orthodox and Catholic, Chaldean, Assyrian, Latin,…). None of its proposals can be interpreted as a questioning of the doctrine, discipline, or spiritual authority of our Churches.
Communion with the Holy See For the Churches in full communion with Rome, in particular the Maronite Church, this communion with the Successor of Peter is constitutive of their identity and remains an absolute historical and spiritual necessity.
For our brothers of the Orthodox and Apostolic Churches, we fully recognize their fidelity to tradition and to the authority of their respective patriarchates. The project does not require anyone to change their canonical status; it only asks for fraternity in common action.
The Church Does Not Impose, It Accompanies
The history of Eastern Christians shows a magnificent truth: very often, it is the faithful people, through their instinct for survival, their resistance, their visceral attachment to the land and to the Cross, who have dragged the Church behind them. It is the people who carried the Cross before the hierarchies sometimes formulated, after the fact, the theology of this fidelity. We fully assume this dynamic: the Lebanese Christian people today feel the vital necessity to reaffirm their identity and presence.
We believe that the pastors, in their diversity, will recognize this legitimate aspiration and accompany it with benevolence, as they have so often done in the past.
Golden Rule: No Public Criticism of the Church Whatever punctual divergences or silences may exist, we forbid ourselves any public criticism of ecclesiastical authorities, patriarchs, bishops, priests, monks, whatever their Church.
Debates, if they must take place, will always be conducted in discretion, filial respect, and fraternal charity. The visible unity of Christians is too precious to be damaged by polemics.
It is in this spirit of joyful fidelity to our Churches, of real communion among us, and of absolute respect for their authorities that we carry this project. We know that, as in the past, when the Christian people of Lebanon march with determination, their pastors always end up blessing the road.
VIII. The Army: A Force of Defense, Never of Aggression
Our weapons have never served to conquer, but always to protect our existence against invaders, occupiers, and foreign powers that wanted to erase us.
We reject the idea of a current Lebanese army that has become a tool of factions or hostage to external tutelages.
The army of the State we want, must be the armed expression of the only historical legitimacy that has never failed: that of Mount Lebanon as sanctuary and fortress of the Christians.
This is why we give it the name that says everything: Forces de Défense du Mont-Liban
Mount Lebanon Defense Forces (MDF)
A strictly defensive, professionalized army, financed primarily by the diaspora, whose sole mission is:
to protect the historical borders of Mount Lebanon,
to guarantee the right of return and the security of repatriates,
to defend the real sovereignty of the Mount Lebanese territory against any aggression.
Who We Are
For us, the Christian Nation of Lebanon is what unites us above rites and origins.
It is our common good, our ancestral land of Mount Lebanon and beyond, our living project. Neither frozen nostalgia nor narrow confessionalism, it is the shared struggle for the freedom of every baptized person and against all discrimination among Christians.
For us, faith in Jesus Christ is the only true cement. It founds freedom of conscience, absolute equality before God and before the law, real fraternity among all disciples whatever their Church. The theological is not decoration: it is the daily energy of the faithful that irrigates society.
For us, heritage is a common memory and destiny. From Canaanite, Greco-Roman, and Byzantine origins to centuries-long resistance, from persecutions endured together to coexistence forged in blood and prayer: it is the spiritual and national contract that binds us, renewed in each generation by attachment to Christ and to this land.
For us, Lebanese Christian culture is enriched by all: Maronites, Orthodox, Melkites, Armenians, Syriacs, Chaldeans, Latins… It never imposes itself; it radiates and welcomes.
For us, the Druze count among the historical founders of Mount Lebanon and are, rightfully, one of its autochthonous peoples. Thanks to their princes, their people, and their nobility, the Druze played an essential role in the very construction of the Maronite nation. Their place within the Mount Lebanese project is undeniable. The model of political regime (decentralization, federalism, centralization…) will be determined by their choice through suffrage within their community.
For us, political engagement is uncompromising against the dilution of our presence and against all oppression. No discrimination based on origin, rite, or sex has a place among us: it contradicts the Gospel. Effective equality between men and women is the foundation of the Christian family and of the society we want.
For us, respect for the Churches and the visible unity of Christians are sacred. We never publicly criticize our pastors or our brothers from different parties. We fight deadly ideas without hating people, praying for all so that the light of Christ may touch them. Our speech carries the dignity of the Cross.
For us, this is the springtime of the Christians of Lebanon. The time of renaissance has come. Christ is in our midst. He is and He will be.
This manifesto is our solemn commitment. From it will be born our objectives.
May Jesus bless our unity and our mission for the glory of MOUNT LEBANON.
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Turod Levnon 