Christianity—Central Asia

In numbers of adherents, Christianity is Central Asia's second major religion after Islam. Missionaries, merchants, scholars, and diplomatic envoys traveling from Europe to the Far East all contributed to the penetration of Christianity to Central Asia. Over time, Christianity grew and consolidated itself to reach the present state of acceptance and coexistence with Islam. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the newly independent states of Central Asia guaranteed their populations religious freedom. Nevertheless, recently a new wave of religious regulation has appeared in a number of those states. Some fear that for security reasons new restrictions on religion may be imposed in the fight against Islamic fundamentalism.

The earliest Christian community in Central Asia emerged in what is now Iran in about 200 CE. Between the fourth and sixth century Christians were also found in China and Mongolia and in the seventh century in the present Central Asian Region. Many of the Turks who in the 1800s served in the army of the Governor of Bukhara (now in Uzbekistan) bore the sign of the cross on their foreheads. Coins and ornaments of the period also bore this cross-like image.

New information has come to light since the 1990s concerning the earlier stages of Christianity in Central Asia, and concerning a Christian community in the city of Merv in Turkmenistan in particular. At the Council of Constantinople (381 CE), the community was the first one granted metropolitan status (that is, it became an episcopal center). This was thanks to Bar Shaba (third century CE), one of the first active promoters of the Eastern Church, which appeared soon after the Roman Empire split in the fourth century. Exiled with his wife from Iran to Merv for his faith, Bar Shaba converted many people to Christianity. He constructed several churches in and near the city, and assigned them preachers, so that they could care for the people and perform religious services.

Churches and monasteries were built and ecclesiastical centers functioned. In Asia, Christians were regarded as excellent doctors, scribes, scholars, diplomats, and theologians, and often included top government officials. The Sogdian period from the sixth to the tenth centuries was the golden age of the Nestorian Christians (Christians who emphasized the independence of Christ's human nature and his divine nature), who left traces of their presence all over Central Asia.

Another important historical site is the Armenian abbey on the shore of lake Issyk-Kul in Kyrgyzstan. According to legend, this is the location of the grave of Saint Matthew. On a hill to the south of Samarqand in Uzbekistan, along with various Christian symbols, a chancel of fire was found. As this is a Zoroastrian symbol, it shows that the two religions mingled.

An apostolic nuncio to the Tartars was appointed in April 1245 by Pope Innocent IV and made a long journey through Central Asia. His was probably one of the first Catholic diplomatic missions to the Far East. The Franciscan friar Giovanni da Pian del Carmine, a contemporary and disciple of Saint Francis of Assisi, reached the court of the Great Khan Guyuk in 1246, nearly thirty years before Marco Polo. But Venetians and Genoese merchants were already in Central Asia with their goods and their Catholic faith, and records indicate that Christianity was already current there. During his journey, the friar learned that Prince Michael of Tchernigov, a fervent Christian (later made Saint Michael of Russia) and his assistant Theodore (later Saint Theodore of Russia) had been executed for refusing to recognize the divinity of Genghis Khan. Another Franciscan, the German friar William of Rubruck, visited the area in 1253.

By the thirteenth century, Asia was conquered by the Mongolian Tartars, and Islam started to displace all other religions. But Muslims respected Christians and other "people of the book" and never interfered with their rites; they simply taxed them as foreigners. By the sixteenth century, Christianity in Central Asia came almost to a standstill, and visits by Roman Catholic missionaries became rare.

At the end of the seventeenth century, the first Russian settlers appeared in eastern Kazakhstan. In their new land, Russian peasants found an escape from serfdom, and Old Believers (those who refused to accept mid-seventeenth-century reforms to the Russian Orthodox Church) found a break from religious oppression. From the mid-nineteenth century, a new era of Christianity began in Central Asia, arising from the political interest of the Russian Empire in its southern borders. Unusual churches appeared—army garrison churches, mobile vans that serviced the railway builders, and later, the first permanent church— in Kazakhstan, in 1847.

Poor migrants, most of them orthodox Christians, rushed to Asia in the hope of finding free land, jobs, and markets. The officialdom, military officers, and craftspeople included many Germans, Poles, and Lithuanians, who were Catholics and Lutherans. A Mennonite group established three different settlements in today's Kyrgyzstan. In addition, a community of Armenian Christians was engaged in winemaking, silkworm breeding, and trade. The inflow of Christians increased when prisoners and clergymen of World War I—Hungarians, Czechs, Poles, and Austrians—were brought here.

In 1871, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church and the State Council of Russia established the Turkestan eparchy with headquarters in Vernyi (now Almaty), and after 1916, in Tashkent. In order to survive, the eparchy—situated in predominantly Islamicterritory and uniting a diverse community—had to find its own path. The picture was further confused a few years later by the problems of regulating the different religions' relations with the Soviet authorities. The Orthodox communities, whose numbers decreased sharply, were not allowed to keep their property, which was declared the common property of the people. Soviet authorities disbanded the Catholic and Lutheran communities. Religious celebrations were replaced by revolutionary holidays. A wave of terror was launched against the clergy.

Kazakh women pray during a mass celebrated by Pope John Paul II during his visit to Kazakhstan in September 2001. (AFP/CORBIS)

The Communist attitude toward the Russian Orthodox Church changed somewhat during the World War II, when the Church played a big propaganda role in defending the motherland. But the negative view of any type of religion persisted until the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the collapse of the Soviet system finally removed the trammels of atheism.

Today Christians of different denominations— Russian Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Adventist, Baptist, evangelical, and others—are all actively involved in their pastoral activity and most of them are officially registered in the nations of Central Asia. Islam and Christianity coexist peacefully. Relative stability was achieved at the cost of compromises that the official church had to make with the state during the Soviet period and afterward. Today Christian festivities are celebrated not only by Central Asian Christians but also by people of other faiths.

In autumn 1996, in the presence of the holy patriarch of Moscow and all Russia, Aleksei II, Christians celebrated the 125th anniversary of the Tashkent-Central Asian eparchy. In the same period the Vatican also established a general nunciature (papal diplomatic mission) in Almaty (Kazakhstan), in charge of all Central Asian states and with missions in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan.

On a darker note, a new wave of religious restrictions has appeared in various Central Asian countries. The secular governments are trying to protect themselves against a wave of Islamic fundamentalism, fearing terrorism and calls for an Islamic state in Central Asia. This new trend is being carefully watched by the democratic institutions in the West and may represent a sad new page in the history of Christianity's development in Central Asia.

Foltz, Richard C. (1999) Religions of the Silk Road: Overland Trade and Cultural Exchange from Antiquity to the Fifteenth Century. New York: St. Martin's Press.

Lewis, David C. (2000) After Atheism: Religion and Ethnicity in Russia and Central Asia. Richmond, Surrey, U.K.: Curzon.