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Major Eastern Christian bodies include the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Oriental Orthodox Churches, along with those groups descended from the historic Church of the East (aka the Assyrian Church), as well as the Eastern Catholic Churches (which have either re-established or always retained communion with Rome and maintain Eastern liturgies), and the Eastern Protestant churches[2] (which are Protestant in theology but Eastern in cultural practice). Various Eastern churches do not normally refer to themselves as "Eastern", with the exception of the Assyrian Church of the East and its offshoot, the Ancient Church of the East.


The Eastern Orthodox are the largest body within Eastern Christianity with a worldwide population of 220 million,[3] followed by the Oriental Orthodox at 60 million.[4] The Eastern Catholic Churches consist of about 16–18 million and are a small minority within the Catholic Church.[5] Eastern Protestant Christian churches do not form a single communion; churches like the Ukrainian Lutheran Church and Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church have under a 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, with other Assyrians being Catholics within the Chaldean Catholic Church which broke away from the Assyrian Church in the late 17th century.[6]


Historically, after the loss of the Levant in the 7th century to the Islamic Sunni Caliphate, the term Eastern Church was used for the Greek Church centered in Byzantium, in contrast 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.[7] Some Eastern churches have more in common historically and theologically with Western Christianity than with one another.


Because the largest church in the East is the body currently known as the Eastern Orthodox Church, the term "Orthodox" is often used in a similar fashion to "Eastern", to refer to specific historical Christian communions. However, strictly speaking, most Christian denominations, whether Eastern or Western, regard themselves as "orthodox" (meaning "following correct beliefs") as well as "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" (Greek: μία, ἁγία, καθολικὴ καὶ ἀποστολικὴ ἐκκλησία).[note 1]


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).

3) Concerning the Eastern Catholic Churches, it is clear that they, as part of the Catholic Communion, have the right to exist and to act in response to the spiritual needs of their faithful.

16) The Oriental Catholic Churches who have desired to re-establish full communion with the See of Rome and have remained faithful to it, have the rights and obligations which are connected with this communion.

22) Pastoral activity in the Catholic Church, Latin as well as Oriental, no longer aims at having the faithful of one Church pass over to the other; that is to say, it no longer aims at proselytizing among the Orthodox. It aims at answering the spiritual needs of its own faithful and it has no desire for expansion at the expense of the Orthodox Church. Within these perspectives, so that there will be no longer place for mistrust and suspicion, it is necessary that there be reciprocal exchanges of information about various pastoral projects and that thus cooperation between bishops and all those with responsibilities in our Churches, can be set in motion and develop.

Migration trends[edit]

There has been a significant Christian migration in the 20th century from the Near East. Fifteen hundred years ago Christians were the majority population in today's Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine and Egypt. In 1914 Christians constituted 25% of the population of the Ottoman Empire. At the beginning of the 21st century Christians constituted 6–7% of the region's population: less than 1% in Turkey, 3% in Iraq, 12% in Syria, 39% in Lebanon, 6% in Jordan, 2.5% in Israel/Palestine and 15–20% in Egypt.


As of 2011 Eastern Orthodox Christians are among the wealthiest Christians in the United States.[23] They also tend to be better educated than most other religious groups in America, having a high number of graduate (68%) and post-graduate (28%) degrees per capita.[24]

Angold, Michael, ed. (2006). The Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. 5, Eastern Christianity. . ISBN 978-0-521-81113-2.

Cambridge University Press

Julius Assfalg (ed.), Kleines Wörterbuch des christlichen Orients, Wiesbaden 1975.

FitzGerald, Thomas (2007). "Eastern Christianity in the United States". . Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. pp. 269–279. ISBN 978-0470766392 – via Google Books.

The Blackwell Companion to Eastern Christianity

Jenkins, Philip (2008). . New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-147281-7.

The Lost History Of Christianity

Michelson, David Allen. (2022).The Library of Paradise: a History of Contemplative Reading in the Monasteries of the Church of the East. Oxford University Press.

Walters, J. Edward, ed. (2021). Eastern Christianity: A Reader. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.  978-0-8028-7686-7.

ISBN

Eastern Christian Churches

Archived 2012-02-04 at the Wayback Machine Information concerning Christians of Eastern rites who are in communion with, and under the jurisdiction of, the Pope, the Bishop of Rome.

Eastern Catholics

Byzantine Chant Studies Page

Archived 2019-11-05 at the Wayback Machine

The Greek Orthodox Church in Canada

OrthodoxWiki

Sample of Melkite Chant in English

Archived 2017-09-30 at the Wayback Machine

The Eastern Christian Churches

Fellowship and Aid to the Christians of the East