Oriental Orthodox Church
The Oriental Orthodox Church is a group of distinct churches that have their origins in the Middle East. The term is used to avoid confusion with the Eastern Orthodox Church. Oriental Orthodox Churches include the Syrian Orthodox Church (also known as the Jacobite Church), the Armenian Gregorian Apostolic Orthodox Church, and, outside Asia, the Coptic (Egyptian) Orthodox Church, of which the Ethiopian Orthodox Church is a branch. These churches resemble the Eastern Orthodox Church in liturgy and structure, but they reject the findings of the Council of Chalcedon (451 CE), which defined Christian orthodoxy. For this reason they are also known as the non-Chalcedonian churches. Specifically, these churches reject the teaching that Christ is "of like nature" (Greek homoiousion) with God the Father, asserting instead that he is "of the same nature" (homoousion). From this precept they take the name Monophysite (one body).
The Syrian Orthodox Church was persecuted as heretical under the Byzantine empire, but under Islamic rule it attained the status of "protected community" (dhimmi). Today its members account for approximately 10–12 percent of the population of Syria. A tiny community survives in southeast Turkey, where it is subject to pressures of assimilation and emigration. The patriarch of the church, formerly resident at the monastery of Deir az-Zafferan near Mardin in Turkey, now lives in Damascus, Syria. An ancient Syrian Orthodox community, tracing its origin to the mission of the Apostle Thomas, exists in Karnataka State, India. The church also exists in émigré communities in Africa, the Americas, Australia, and Europe. The church uses Syriac, an ancient Semitic language closely related to biblical Aramaic, as its liturgical language, although 99 percent of its followers are Arabic speakers.
The Armenians claim to have been the first people to have adopted Christianity as a state religion, the ancient Armenian state having been outside the Byzantine empire. Ninety percent of Armenians worldwide belong to the Armenian Orthodox Church, and there is a strong identification between the membership of the Armenian church and the Armenian nation. The church is held to have been the preserver of Armenian identity against Muslim Turks and Iranians. As such, the Soviet authorities permitted the church's leader, the catholicos, to remain in his traditional seat of Echmiadzin after the Soviet takeover of Armenia. This legitimized the USSR as the protector of the Armenian nation after the genocide of 1915 (which Turkey denies) in which the large Armenian population of eastern Anatolia was either massacred or forced across the desert to Syria, where large Armenian communities of Anatolian origin remain. Outside Armenia itself, diaspora communities are to be found across the Middle East, especially in Iran, Syria, and Israel/Palestine.
Both the Syrian and Armenian Churches have socalled Uniate branches in communion with the Roman Catholic Church. Two other Uniate churches originated as non-Chalcedonian churches. These are the Maronite Church, the dominant Christian confession in Lebanon, and the Nestorian, or Assyrian, Church, with its leadership in Baghdad, Iraq, and followers in Iran, Turkey, and Syria, where many adherents fled after persecution in Iraq in the early twentieth century.
Further Reading
Challiot, C. (1998) The Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch. Geneva, Switzerland: Inter-Orthodox Dialogue.
Mar, Gregorios. (1982) The Orthodox Church in India. New Delhi: Sophia Publications.
Nersoyan, T. (1996) Armenian Christian Historical Studies. New York: St. Vartan Press.
Ramet, P. (1988) Eastern Christianity and Politics in the Twentieth Century. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Vogt, K., and N. van Doorn-Harner, eds. (1997) Between Desert and City: The Coptic Orthodox Church Today. Oslo, Norway: Novis-farlag.
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