Eastern Christianity is one of two major classification used to categorize church bodies with shared orientation within common historical root. Eastern Christianity is a category contrasted with Western Christianity, which comprises those Christian traditions and churches that originally were based to the west along the Mediterranean region. Eastern Christianity comprises church families within Christian traditions that originally developed during classical and late antiquity in the Eastern Mediterranean region and their later extensions.Specific areas include Western Asia, Asia Minor, Eastern Europe, Southeastern Europe, the Caucasus, Northeast Africa, the Fertile Crescent and the Malabar coast of South Asia, and ephemerally parts of Persia, Central Asia, and the Far East. The term does not refer to any single communion or particular church body. The term does not imply any unity of different communion of churches within its classification nor plurality of churches within this classification implies any disunity within any singular communion.
Major Eastern Christian communions include the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Oriental Orthodox Churches, along with churches descended from the historic Church of the East (Assyrian Church of the East and its offshoot, the Ancient Church of the East), as well as the Eastern Catholic Churches (which are in communion with Rome while maintaining their respective liturgical heritage), and the Eastern Protestant churches..
The Eastern Orthodox Church is the largest body within Eastern Christianity with a worldwide population of 220 million, followed by the Oriental Orthodox Churches at 60 million. The Eastern Catholic Churches consist of about 16–18 million and are a small minority within the Catholic Church. Eastern Protestant Christian churches do not form a single communion; the Ukrainian Lutheran Church claims 2,500 members while the Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church claims over one million members. The Assyrian Church of the East and the Ancient Church of the East, descendant churches of the Assyria-based Church of the East, have a combined membership of approximately 400,000.
Historically, Eastern Christianity could also referred to churches in Persian Empire that lay further east of the Roman Empire and could also referred to non-Greek churches within Eastern Roman Empire. However, with the advent of early Muslim conquests in the 7th century onwards, the term Eastern Church increasingly came to be identified with the Greek rite half of the Chalcedonian Christianity that would later centered in Constantinople following mutual separation with Western half from eleventh century onwards. This term is contrasted with the (Western) Latin Church, centered on Rome, which uses the Latin liturgical rites. The terms "Eastern" and "Western" in this regard originated with geographical divisions in Christianity mirroring the cultural divide between the Hellenistic East and the Latin West, and the political divide of 395 AD between the Western and Eastern Roman Empires. Since the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, the term "Eastern Christianity" may be used in contrast with "Western Christianity", which contains not only the Latin Church but also forms of Protestantism and Independent Catholicism. Eastern Catholic churches on the other hand, have more in common historically and theologically with Western Christianity than with other Eastern Christians.
Because the largest church in the Eastern Christianity is the Eastern Orthodox Church, the term "Orthodox" is also often used in an interchangeable manner with "Eastern Christianity", despite existence of other distinct Eastern Christian communions or traditions, which includes Oriental Orthodox, True Orthodoxy, and Old Believers. However, all Christian denominations including the ones who don't label themselves "Orthodox", whether Eastern or Western, regard themselves as orthodox in the literal sense, meaning "following correct beliefs". Likewise, all Christian denominations considered themselves to be "catholic" (meaning "universal"), and as sharing in the Four Marks of the Church listed in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (381 AD): "One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic" ().
Eastern churches (excepting the non-liturgical dissenting bodies) utilize several liturgical rites: the Alexandrian Rite, the Armenian Rite, the Byzantine Rite, the East Syriac Rite (also known as Persian or Assyrian Rite), and the West Syriac Rite (also called the Antiochian Rite).
Families of churches
Eastern Christians do not all share the same religious traditions, but many do share cultural traditions. Christianity divided itself in the East during its early centuries both within and outside of the Roman Empire in disputes about fundamental theology such as Christology, as well as through national divisions (Roman, Persian, etc.). It would be many centuries later that Western Christianity fully split from these traditions as its own communion. Major branches or families of Eastern Christianity, each holding a distinct theological dogmas, including of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox communion, the Eastern Catholic Churches and the Assyrian Church of the East.
In most Eastern churches, clergy is required to administer the sacrament of chrismation to infants after baptism before giving the Eucharist to them. Married man are allowed to be ordained as priest, provided they are not a divorcee. The Eastern Catholic Churches recognize the authority of the Pope of Rome, but those who have originally been part of other Eastern Christian churches closely follow the traditions of Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, or Church of the East, including the tradition of allowing married men to become priests.
The Eastern churches' differences from Western Christianity have to do with theology, as well as liturgy, culture, language, and politics. For the non-Catholic Eastern churches, a definitive date for the commencement of schism cannot usually be given (see East–West Schism). The Church of the East declared independence from the churches of the Roman Empire at its general council in 424, which was before the Council of Ephesus in 431, and so had nothing to do with the theology declared at that council. Oriental Orthodoxy exist as distinct communion after the Council of Chalcedon in 451 but did not immediately form separate patriarchates until 518 (in the case of the Syriac Patriarchate of Antioch) and 536 (in the case of the Coptic Patriarchate of Alexandria).
Since the time of the historian Edward Gibbon, the split between the Church of Rome and rest of the churches in the East has been conveniently dated to 1054, though the reality is more complex as there was break of communion before and numerous attempted reunions after that date. This split is sometimes referred to as the Great Schism, but is now more usually called the East–West Schism. This final schism reflected a larger cultural and political division which had developed in Europe and Southwest Asia during the Middle Ages and coincided with Western Europe's re-emergence from the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.
Eastern Protestant church on the other hand emerged after engagement of Protestant missions that attempted to reform Eastern Christianity in the way they reformed the Western church before. The Ukrainian Lutheran Church developed within Galicia around 1926, with its rites being based on the Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom, rather than on the Western Formula Missae.
Eastern Orthodox Church
The Eastern Orthodox Church is an Eastern Christian communion whose adherents are largely based in Western Asia (particularly Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and Palestine) and Turkey, Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the Caucasus (Georgia), with a growing presence in the Western world. Eastern Orthodox Christians accept the decisions of the first seven ecumenical councils.
Eastern Orthodox Christianity identifies itself as the original Christian church (see early centers of Christianity) founded by Christ and the Apostles, and traces its lineage back to the early Church through the process of apostolic succession and unchanged theology and practice. Characteristics of the Eastern Orthodox Church include the Byzantine Rite (shared with some Eastern Catholic Churches) and an emphasis on the continuation of Holy Tradition, which it holds to be apostolic in nature.
The Eastern Orthodox Church is organized into self-governing jurisdictions along geographical, national, ethnic or linguistic lines. Eastern Orthodoxy is thus made up of fourteen or seventeen autocephalous bodies. Smaller churches are either autonomous or semi-autonomous, and each belonged to an autocephalous mother church.
All Eastern Orthodox are united in dogmatic agreement and sacramental life with each other, though a few are not in communion at present, for non-doctrinal reasons. This is in contrast to the Catholic Church and its various churches. Members of the latter are all in communion with each other, parts of a top-down hierarchy (see ). The Eastern Orthodox reject the Filioque clause as contrast to Catholics. The Catholic Church was once in communion with the Eastern Orthodox Church, but the two split after the East–West Schism and are no longer in communion.
It is estimated that there are approximately 240 million Eastern Orthodox Christians in the world. Today, many adherents shun the term "Eastern" as denying the church's universal character. They refer to Eastern Orthodoxy simply as the Orthodox Church.
Oriental Orthodoxy
Oriental Orthodoxy refers to the churches of Eastern Christian tradition that keep the faith of the first three ecumenical councils of the undivided Christian Church: the First Council of Nicaea (AD 325), the First Council of Constantinople (381) and the Council of Ephesus (431), while rejecting the dogmatic definitions of the Council of Chalcedon (451). Hence, these churches are also called the Old Oriental churches. They are the Coptic Orthodox Church, the Malankara Orthodox Church (India), the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the Syriac Orthodox Church and the Armenian Apostolic Church.
Oriental Orthodoxy developed in reaction to Chalcedon on the eastern limit of the Byzantine Empire and in Egypt, Syria and Mesopotamia. In those locations, there are also Eastern Orthodox patriarchs, but the rivalry between the two has largely vanished in the centuries since the schism.
Church of the East
Historically, the Church of the East was the widest reaching branch of Eastern Christianity, at its height spreading from its heartland in Persian-ruled Assyria to the Mediterranean, India, and China. Originally the only Christian church recognized by Zoroastrian-led Sassanid Persia (through its alliance with the Lakhmids, the regional rivals to the Byzantines and its Ghassanid vassal), the Church of the East declared itself independent of other churches in 424 and over the next century became affiliated with Nestorianism, a Christological doctrine advanced by Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople from 428 to 431, which had been declared heretical in the Roman Empire. Thereafter it was often known in the West, possibly inaccurately, as the Nestorian Church. Surviving a period of persecution within Persia, the Church of the East flourished under the Abbasid Caliphate and branched out, establishing dioceses throughout Asia. After another period of expansion under the Mongol Empire, the church went into decline starting in the 14th century, and was eventually largely confined to its founding Assyrian adherent's heartland in the Assyrian homeland, although another remnant survived on the Malabar Coast of India.