The Eastern Churches

Many Christians are baffled by the complexity of the Christian East, which can appear to be a bewildering array of national Churches and ethnic jurisdictions. I will try to give a survey about all the Eastern Churches.

This approach yields four distinct and separate Eastern Christian communions:

The Assyrian Church of the East

It is not known exactly when Christianity first took root in upper Mesopotamia, but a Christian presence had certainly been established there by the mid-2^nd century. In the 3^rd century, the area was conquered by the Persians.
Around the year 300, the bishops were first organized into an ecclesiastical structure under the leadership of a Catholicos, the bishop of the Persian royal capital at Seleucia-Ctesiphon.
In the 5^th century, the Church of the East gravitated towards the radical Antiochene form of Christology that had been articulated by Theodore of Mopsuestia and Nestorious, and fell out of communion with the Church in the Roman Empire. This was due in part to the significant influx of Nestorian Christology by the Council of Ephesus in 431, and the expulsion of Nestorians from the Empire by Emperor Zeno (474-491). In addition, the Persian Christians needed to distance themselves from the official church of the Roman Empire, with which Persia was frequently at war. In this way they were able to maintain their Christian faith while avoiding suspicions that they were collaborating with the Roman enemy.
The Church of the East was always a minority in largely Zoroastrian Persia, but nevertheless it flourished for many centuries, with its rich scholarly activity centered on the famous school of Nisibis. The Church expanded through missionary activity into areas as far away as India, Tibet, China, and Mongolia.
The patriarchate was moved to the new city of Baghdad after it became the capital in 766.
The East Syrian rite of the Assyrian Church appears to have been an indipendent development from the ancient Syriac liturgy of Edessa. It may also preserve elements of an ancient Persian rite that has been lost. Services are still held in Syriac.

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The Oriental Orthodox Churches

The term Oriental Orthodox Churches is now generally used to describe a group of six ancient eastern churches. Although they are in communion with one another, each is fully independent and possesses many distinctive traditions.
The common element among these Churches is their rejection of the Christological definition of the Council of Chalcedon (451), which asserted that Christ is one person in two natures, undivided and unconfused. For them, to say that Christ has two natures was to overemphasize the duality in Christ and to compromise the unity of his person. Yet they reject the classical Monophysite position of Eutyches, who held that Christs humanity was absorbed into his single divine nature. They prefer the formula of St. Cyril of Alexandria, who spoke of the One incarnate nature of the Word of God.
Because they denied Chalcedons definition of two natures in Christ, these Christians have often erroneously been called monophysites, from the Greek word meaning one nature. The group has also been referred to as The Lesser Eastern Churches, The Ancient Oriental Churches, The Non-Chalcedonian Churches, or The Pre-Chalcedonian Churches. Today it is widely recognized by theologians and Church leaders on both sides that the christological differences between the Oriental Orthodox and those who accepted Chalcedon were only verbal, and that in fact both parties profess the same faith in Christ using different formulas.

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The Armenian Apostolic Church

Ancient Armenia was located in present-day eastern Turkey and in bordering areas of the former Soviet Union and Iran. Armenia became the first country to adopt Christianity as its state religion when king Tiridates III was converted to the Christian faith by St. Gregory the Illuminator at the beginning of the 4^th century (301). A cathedral was soon built at Etchmiadzin which to this day remains the center of the Armenian Apostolic Church. The monk St. Mesrob Mashtots invented the Armenian alphabet around the year 406, making it possible for the Bible to be translated into that language.
In 506 an Armenian Synod rejected the christological teachings of the Council of Chalcedon. At that time the Armenian Church was more concerned with fighting against the Persians who wanted to impose their religion on the Armenians. (Battle of Avarayr).
Long a vulnerable buffer state between the hostile Roman and Persian empires, the ancient Armenian kingdom was destroyed in the 11^th century. Many Armenians then fled to Cilicia (south central Asia Minor), where a new Armenian kingdom was established. Here the Armenians had extensive contacts with the Latin Crusaders. Although this new kingdom ceased to exist by the 14^th century and the Armenian people were dispersed, they survived in spite of foreign domination.
In the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire suffered a series of massacres and expulsions which led to the death of large numbers of them. It is widely believed that altogether 1.5 million Armenians died in the tragedy organized by the Turkish government in 1915.
The Armenian liturgy reflects the  Jerusalem, Syriac, and Byzantine traditions. While a distinctive Armenian liturgical tradition was being formed in the 5^th and the 7^th centuries, there was strong liturgical influence from Jerusalem and Syria. Later there was a period of byzantinization, and finally, during the Middle Ages, many Latin usages were adopted.
Although the Armenian Catholicos in Etchmiadzin is recognized by all Armenian Apostolics as the spiritual head of the Armenian Church, three other Armenian jurisdictions have emerged over the centuries: the Catholicosate of Sis, the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, and the Patriarchate of Costantinople.

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The Coptic Orthodox Church

The foundation of the Church in Egypt is associated with St. Mark the Evangelist who, according to tradition, was martyred in Alexandria in 63 AD. Eventually Egypt became a Christian nation and Alexandria an extremly important center of theological reflection. Moreover, monks in the Egyptian desert provided the first models for the Christian monastic tradition, having been nourished by the spiritual insights of the early desert fathers.
The christological teachings of the Council of Chalcedon in 451 were rejected by much of the Egyptian hierarchy and faithful. Persecutions intended to force acceptance only reinforced the resistance. Eventually a separate Coptic Church emerged with a distinct theological and liturgical tradition. From the 5^th to the 9^th centuries the Greek Patriarchs lived in the city of Alexandria, while the Coptic Patriarchs lived in the desert monastery of St. Macarius.
After the Arab invasion in 641, the Copts slowly diminished in numbers, becoming a minority in Egypt around the year 850. Arabic replaced Coptic as the official language of the country in the 8^th century.
The Coptic liturgy grew from the original Greek rite of Alexandria, developing by the 4^th century its own native characteristics.

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The Ethiopian Orthodox Church

According to the ancient tradition, the first great evangelizer of the Ethiopians was St. Frumentius, a Roman citizen from Tyre who had been shipwrecked along the African coast of the Red Sea. He gained the confidence of the emperor at Aksum and eventually brought about the conversion of his son, who later became Emperor Ezana. Ezana later introduced Christianity as the state religion around the year 330. Frumentius was ordained a bishop by St. Athanasius of Alexandria and returned to Ethiopia to help with the continued evangelization of the country.
This Church is unique in retaining several Jewish practices such as circumcision and the observance of dietary laws and Saturday Sabbath  as well as Sunday. This is probably due to the fact that the earliest presence of Christianity in Ethiopia had come directly from Palestine through southern Arabia.
Geez, the ancient Ethiopian language, has traditionally been used in the liturgy, which is of Alexandrian (Coptic) origin and influenced by the Syriac tradition. Today a translation of the liturgy into modern Amharic is being used increasingly in the parishes.
From ancient times, all bishops in Ethiopia were Egyptian Copts appointed by the Coptic Patriarchate. Indeed, for many centuries the only bishop in Ethiopia was the Coptic Metroploitan. By popular demand, in 1929 four native Ethiopian bishops were elected to assist the ethnic Egyptian Metropolitan. In 1951 for the first time an ethnic Ethiopian Metropolitan was chosen by the Ethiopian clergy and laity. In 1959 the Coptic Patriarchate confirmed the independence of the Ethiopian Church, raising the rank of its head to Patriarch.

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The Syrian orthodox Church

The Syrian Church traces its origins back to the early community at Antioch, which is mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles. The Antiochene Church became one of the great centers of Christianity in the early centuries. But the Council of Chalcedon in 451 provoked a split in the community. The Councils teachings were enforced by the Byzantine imperial authorities in the cities, but they were largely rejected in the countryside.
In the 6^th century, the bishop of Edessa, Jacob Baradai, ordained many bishops and priests to carry on the faith of those who rejected Chalcedon in the face of imperial opposition. Consequently, this church became known as Jacobite, with its own liturgy (West Syrian or Antiochene) and other traditions using the Syriac language spoken by the common people.
The conquest of the area by the Persians and later by the Arabs ended Byzantine persecution, and created conditions favoring further development of the Syrian Church.There was a great revival of Syrian Orthodox scholarship in the Middle Ages, when the community possessed flourishing schools of theology, philosophy, history, and science. At its height, the church included twenty metropolitan sees and 103 dioceses extending as far to the east as Afghanistan.
But the Mongol invasions under Tamerlane in the late 14^th century, during which most Syrian churches and monasteries were destroyed, marked the beginning of a long decline. Terrible losses were suffered again during and after World War I because of persecutions and massacres in eastern Turkey. This led to a widespread dispersion of the community.

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Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church

In the mid-17^th century, increasingly upset with the latinization of their church by the Portuguese, most of the Thomas Christians in India broke away from the Catholic Church. This led thousands of faithful to gather at the Coonan Cross in Mattancherry on January 16, 1653, and take an oath to submit no longer to the authority of Rome.
In 1665 the Syrian Patriarch agreed to send a bishop to head the community on the condition that its leader and his followers agree to accept Syrian christology and follow the West Syrian rite. This group was administered as an autonomous church within the Syrian  Patriarchate.
However, in 1912 there was a split in the community when a significant section declared itself an autocephalous church and announced the re-establishment of the ancient Catholicossate of the East in India. This was not accepted by those who remained loyal to the Syrian Patriarchate. The two sides were reconciled in 1958 when the Indian supreme Court declared that only the autocephalous Catholicosate and bishops in communion with him had legal standing.
The precise size of these two communities is extremely difficult to determine and is hotly disputed by the two sides.

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The Eritrean Orthodox Church

Eritrea, located along the southwest coast of the Red Sea, was the site of the ancient Christian kingdom of Aksum. It began to decline in the 7^th century in the wake of the Muslim invasions, and a new Ethiopian kingdom was subsequently established in the interior.
Eritrea was an Italian colony from 1890 to 1941, when it was captured by the British. It entered a federation with Ethiopia in 1952, and was annexed as an Ethiopian province in 1962. A lengthy struggle for self-rule culminated with the countrys declaration of indipendence on May 24, 1993.
In July 1993, the bishops of the country appealed to Pope Shenouda III of the Coptic Church to obtain separation from the Ethiopian Church and autocephalous status. On September 28, 1993, the Coptic Holy Synod responded favorably to this request and authorized the training of ten Eritrean bishops in Coptic monasteries. The process of the establishment of an independent Eritrean Orthodox Church has taken place in accord with the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.
In February 1994 an agreement was signed in Adis Ababa that reaffirmed the autocephalous status of  both the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Churches, and recognized a primacy of honor of the Coptic Church among the Oriental Orthodox Churches in Africa.

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