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WHEN CHURCHES JOIN - 6. General Documents

Local Ecumenism Information Kit
- Developed by the Local Ecumenism Working Group, NSW Ecumenical Council, October 2000
Phone (02) 9299 2215 for more information.

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Appendix 2. Understanding the Member Churches of the NSW Ecumenical Council

2.3 The Oriental Churches

These member churches of the NSW Ecumenical Council are: The Holy Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East, and four churches that are commonly called 'Oriental Churches', namely, the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Coptic Orthodox Church, the Syrian Orthodox Church and the St Thomas Indian Orthodox Church.

It needs to be acknowledged that the category 'oriental' is a convenient though not exact one. There is no necessary connection between the churches so named, being separated from each other by great distances and separate histories, except that none of them is in communion with Constantinople - though decisions in the late 20th century are slowly modifying that relationship. The 'Oriental' churches do recognise each other as Christian churches and communion is possible between them. But the Assyrian Church is not regarded by them as belonging to the same category.

The development of the major Sees of (Rome), Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem and Constantinople has been traced (see previous pages). They are, in origin, churches of the Roman/Byzantine Empire, though there are many differences in culture, language and history between them, and they are autocephalous churches, that is, fully independent.

The church based at Antioch in New Testament times was (at least) bi-lingual: Greek and Syriac. As times changed, these also became political divisions, and the result was a division in the churches between those who owed allegiance to the Roman Empire and its bishops, and those who - in modern terms - represent various ethnicities. People who spoke Semitic languages spread from what is now Turkey to Iran and Iraq, that is, across the borders of the Roman Empire. In general, one may speak of 'West Syrians' and 'East Syrians', the former lying in part within the empire, at such centres as Antioch itself, Damascus, and Edessa (now Urfa, on the Turkish/Syrian border), and the latter based further away to the east, around the great rivers of the Tigris and the Euphrates. Both linguistic and liturgical traditions began to develop separately. When empires (Roman, Assyrian, Persian) clashed, it was sometimes necessary for whole communities, and certainly individual leaders, to move for safety's sake; after a while, the churches fell out of communication, and ultimately, of communion. The Church of the East was a missionary church, and spread widely as far as China and Tibet.

THE 'ORIENTAL' CHURCHES

The Armenian Apostolic Church
Greater Armenia was a huge tract of land stretching from the Caspian Sea in the east to the Black Sea in the west, from the Caucasius mountains in the north to the Taurus mountains in the south. At the beginning of the 20th century, a terrible persecution fell upon the Armenians of Turkey, and at least one and a half million were killed, the first holocaust of the century. North-western Armenia was a soviet republic, containing Etchmiadzin, the monastic capital of the Armenian Apostolic Church. After the collapse of the soviet republic, Armenia struggled to independence, racked by wars within and with its neighbours in Azerbijan.

The church traces its origins to the apostles Bartholomew and Thaddeus. The great 'illuminator' of Armenia is St Gregory, who converted the Armenian king in 301, making Armenia the first Christian nation. Armenia has its own language and alphabet, and a rich store of art and literature. In 451 the country was divided by competing empires, the Byzantine and the Persian, and thus was not represented at the Council of Chalcedon that year. This is the basis of its breach with the Eastern Orthodox churches.

Persecution under Turks and Islam in general has meant that Armenians exist largely outside their original borders; church authority is also dispersed. There are two Catholicos-Patriarchs, the senior resident in Etchmiadzin, the second in Beirut (the See of Cilicia). There are patriarchs in Jerusalem and Constantinople. In Australia, Archbishop Aghan Baliozian resides in Sydney, where the church is located in Chatswood. The language of the liturgy is Armenian.

The Coptic Orthodox Church
Egyptian tradition holds that the Christian faith was first preached there by St Mark the Evangelist, who was martyred in Alexandria in AD68. Coptic Christians (the word 'Copt' comes from the Greek Aiguptos, Egyptian) also recall the flight of the Holy Family to Egypt after the persecution of Herod, and the Virgin Mary continues to hold a very special place in Coptic devotion. Alexandria was rich soil for the growth of faith and theological understanding, having already given the world the Septuagint, a translation of the Hebrew canon of the Bible into Greek, and being a centre of Platonic philosophy in ancient days. The city became a great centre of Christian learning, led by teachers such as Clement, Origen, and Cyril.

As elsewhere in the Roman Empire, theological dispute led to division of churches. Encouraged perhaps by the rivalry between an ancient See like Alexandria and a new one, Constantinople, difference in emphasis grew into sharp discord. At base, the Alexandrian school emphasised the unity of the divine and human natures in the one Lord Jesus Christ; the Antiochian school - which included Constantinople in its sphere of influence - emphasised the duality of Christ's natures while also maintaining the unity of his person. Around such ways of attempting to describe the mystery of the incarnation dispute raged for several centuries. One way of holding the emphases together was accepted at Nicaea (325); further refinements were agreed at Chalcedon (451). This was not the end of the story; those Alexandrians who did not like Chalcedon's way of putting things were labelled heretic (and 'monophysite', one-nature believers) by those who accepted Chalcedon's definition. There were various attempts at unity, but eventually other factors came into play; for instance, the Arab conquest of Egypt meant that the Byzantine Empire could no longer enforce its Church's views in Egypt. From this point, the Coptic Church developed its distinctive life, sometimes flourishing under Arab rule, and at other times suffering persecution.

The Coptic Church has enjoyed a strong revival in the last thirty-to-forty years, under Pope Kirillos VI and the present Pope, His Holiness Shenouda III, who has also played a major part in the reconciliation of Orthodox and Oriental churches. In the Coptic Church, monastic life has flourished. There is a huge Sunday School movement. Church-related social services throughout the nation have increased, new churches are being built - and there has been an expansion into the western world, in Europe, America and Australia. This growth is reflected quite strongly in Australia. There are now monasteries in Sydney and Melbourne, and many churches (including ten in Sydney), schools and other welfare services. In 1999, a Bishop was appointed to a new diocese based in Melbourne.

The Syrian Orthodox Church
The Syrian churches' experience parallels that of the Egyptian, that is, theological and political disputes separated the family of the church in the fourth and fifth centuries, and we have witnessed progress towards their reconciliation in the twentieth. Whereas the Coptic Church is a majority of the Christians in Egypt, the Syrian Church is smaller than the [Greek] Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch.

The Syrian Orthodox Church inherits the traditions of Antioch and of the 'West Syrians' (as distinct from the 'East Syrians', the [Assyrian] Church of the East). The clearest sign of this is their preservation of the Syriac linguistic and cultural heritage. Syriac is used in the liturgy, though Arabic is the language of ordinary communication. Its theological teachers include the great Ephrem (c.306-376), the hymnographer (see, for example, The Australian Hymn Book no. 417), whose life illustrates one of the difficulties of the whole Syrian church. When the borders of the Roman Empire (and the protection it provided for Christians) were changed in the battle with the Persians, he had to move from his native town of Nisibis (in modern Iraq) to Edessa (modern Turkey).

After the divisions caused by Chalcedon, the Syrian Church (labelled as 'monophysite') was isolated, and declined. Its revival was led in the 6th century by the bishop of Edessa, Jacob Baradaeus (c.500-578); some writers refer to the church as 'Jacobite' in his honour, but the Syrian Church does not accept the description. The church flourished in the Middle Ages, but suffered terrible persecution under the Mongols in the 14th century. The church spread widely throughout the east, from Afghanistan to Turkistan and Sinkiang. Since the 17th century, the Syrian Patriarchate has included an autonomous church in India, on the Malabar coast. A division in this church resulted in the Malankara Syrian Orthodox Church, which has congregations in Melbourne and Sydney (see next sub-section).

In modern times, Syrians in Turkey have suffered badly, and still do. The Patriarchate moved its headquarters from Turkey to Syria (it was in Antioch, Turkey, until 1034, and then in various monasteries in Turkey) in the 1920s, and to Damascus, Syria, in 1959. The present Patriarch is His Holiness Mar Ignatius Zakka I Iwas. There is good cooperation and growing unity with their neighbouring (Greek) Orthodox Church under His Beatitude Patriarch Ignatius IV, forged not least through friendships formed in the World Council of Churches. In Australia, Syrian Orthodox come from many countries, including Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, and they have churches in Melbourne and Sydney.

St Thomas Indian Orthodox Church
There are three major Syrian churches in India: the Mar Thoma Syrian Church of Malabar, the Malankara Jacobite Syrian Church (which is under the Syrian Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch), and the autocephalous Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church.

Much of what is today the Kerala state in India used to be known as Malabar. Over many centuries, for Christians there, the Syrian spiritual and liturgical tradition was part of their inheritance, and their liturgical language was Syriac; hence the epithet 'Syrian'.

Up to the 16th century, all of them belonged to a single church with one common tradition that traced its origins to the work of the apostle Thomas. According to that tradition, Thomas landed at the port of Cranganur on the Malabar coast in AD52, established churches in seven places in Kerala, and died a martyr's death in 72 at a place near Madras. The tradition is old, strong and integral to the self-understanding of the Syrian Christian community. Certainly, there is sufficient evidence to support the presence of a thriving Christian community in this part of India from the 4th century onwards. This is probably due to the Persian (East Syrian or Assyrian) Church, which was very active in missionary work. However, very little is known about how the church was organised and how it lived and witnessed within the Hindu milieu.

In the 16th century, the Church in India suffered divisions as a result of western colonial missions. Roman Catholic missionaries arrived from Portugal and attempted to unite the eastern Christians with Rome. They briefly succeeded in 1599, but there was a revolt in 1653. Each dispute left another split in the Christian community. The eastern churches appealed for help to several hierarchs in the Middle East, and the Syrian Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch sent a bishop in 1665. The rifts among Indian Christians were further extended in part by the missionary efforts of the Church of England's Church Missionary Society, which was active in the region from 1795. Consequently, today, a large section of the Church in India is part of the Roman Catholic Church, a much smaller number who continued in the Anglican Church are now in the Church of South India, while others influenced by the Reformation form the Mar Thoma Church.

Within the section of the Church under the Syrian Patriarchate of Antioch, there were tensions between the claims of Antioch and the independence of the local church. This tension resulted in a separation, when the Malankara (Indian) Orthodox Church declared itself autocephalous in 1912. The dispute was over various reforms and the ability of the Indian Church to make its own decisions. However, in recent times, the two churches (that separated in 1912) have begun to move towards reunion.

The Malankara (Indian) Orthodox Church, with the Syrian Orthodox Church, therefore belong to the family of Oriental Orthodox churches.

In India, with a well-equipped theological college, a mission training centre and many educational and charitable institutions, the church is fully involved in the life of the country. However, it also has a diaspora in North America, Malaysia, Singapore and the Gulf Countries, and now in Australia. With the Catholicos - His Holiness Baselios Mar Thoma Mathews II - based in Kottayam, Kerala, the church has a total membership of 2.5 million, 21 dioceses (including two in America and Europe), 23 bishops, 1400 parishes, 1400 priests, 2 theological seminaries, 1 mission training centre, 18 monasteries, 13 convents, 210 monks, 200 nuns, 17 university colleges, 240 schools, 15 industrial training centres, 30 hospitals, 5 teacher training colleges, 35 destitute homes and orphanages, and 12 mission centres.

In Australia, the Malankara (Indian) Orthodox Church has parishes in Sydney and Melbourne. The Sydney congregation of 50 families has been established as a parish - St Thomas Indian Orthodox Church - with the ordination of an Australian citizen as parish priest by His Holiness the Catholicos on 24th October 1998. The church immediately applied for membership of the NSW Ecumenical Council.