Brief History

Church of the East is the result of the missionary activities of the Apostle Thomas in Persia and India during the middle of the first century CE. 

By the 6th century it is said the Church of the East numbered almost 80 million people spread throughout Syria, Arabia, Persia, Armenia, India, the East India Islands and China. 

By the 7th century Islamic persecutions started taking its toll on the Eastern Christians. Whilst millions were martyred others were subjected to the status of secondary citizenship and humiliation which caused many from the East to flee to the West and the North. The number of Eastern Christians declined rapidly. Over the centuries many millions eventually gave in to the incessant tortures and social pressure and converted to Islam. 

During the past 1 200 years the Church broke up into numerous little groups, each attempting to survive on its own since communication across the various borders was impossible for Christians under oppression. Some of the groups eventually changed their statements of faith to find a sympathetic ear with the Western Christians in an attempt to solicit their protection. These groups were later incorporated into either the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Anglican strains of Western Christianity and some survive in this state of affairs even to this day. The name of the Church of the East was variously used by different groups who broke with the original spontaneous movement - names such as Syrian Orthodox Church of the East, Assyrian Church of the East, Orthodox Church of the East and other, still survive. 

By the 18th century the Western world 'discovered' the remnants of Eastern Christians in India and Kashmir and set out to convert them to another set of beliefs. These beliefs were formulated at western councils during the first seven centuries. The Roman Catholic and Anglican 'missions' to the Eastern Christians destroyed and edited thousands of holy Scripture which had been the inheritance of the East since St. Thomas. Again the Church of the East was cut down when the Western 'missionaries' incorporated the small groups into their fold - changing their inherited eastern Christianity to the so-called 'orthodoxy' of the Roman Empire's councils. 

Currently small numbers of faithful still survive in mountain ashrams of Kurdistan, Kashmir, Jammu, Ladakh and Baghdad. 

The current revival of Church of the East in the West is a very recent miracle. Recent translations of most of the Church's written works now makes it possible to minister to the English speaking world while the Internet is about the only mea

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