Assyrian Church of the East

Heritage

The East Syriac church of Mesopotamia, organized under a catholicos at Seleucia-Ctesiphon in the Persian Empire, outside Rome's borders from the beginning. In the Middle Ages its missionaries reached India and Tang-dynasty China — the Xi'an stele of 781 records it. Massacre and displacement in the twentieth century scattered the Assyrian people of Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria; the diaspora brought the church to America, and Chicago served for decades as the seat of its Catholicos-Patriarch. The Ancient Church of the East, which separated in 1968 chiefly over the calendar, belongs to the same family. Older Western sources attached to this church a label drawn from a fifth-century controversy; the church rejects that exonym, and this record does not use it.

Theological family

East Syriac Christianity: fully trinitarian, confessing Christ true God and true man, its Christology articulated in the tradition of Theodore of Mopsuestia. The 1994 Common Christological Declaration signed with the Catholic Church affirmed that the two churches confess the same faith in Christ. The World Council of Churches lists the Assyrian Church as a church family in its own right — a third branch, not a sub-type of either Orthodox family.

Who decides what

A Catholicos-Patriarch with a synod of bishops governing a small worldwide church; diaspora dioceses in North America; parishes under priests, with strong lay community institutions.

What a first-time visitor would find

The Liturgy of Addai and Mari — among the oldest eucharistic prayers in continuous use anywhere on earth — celebrated in Syriac, a form of Aramaic, the language family Jesus spoke. Expect chant, incense, and a reverent, ancient plainness; communion is for prepared faithful.

What it has always cared about

Survival: an ancient Semitic Christianity carried through empire, massacre and exile; the memory of a missionary reach that once dwarfed the church's size; and in the diaspora, the parish as the keeper of the Assyrian language and people.

Its gift to the wider church

The Liturgy of Addai and Mari, which scholars of every tradition study as a window on the earliest eucharistic praying of the church; and the standing correction that medieval Christianity was never only European — this church had reached China while much of northern Europe was still unevangelized.

Commonly confused with

With the Syriac Orthodox Church — a different family (Oriental Orthodox) on the other side of the fifth-century disputes despite the shared Syriac heritage. With the Chaldean Catholic Church, which shares the East Syriac liturgy and people but is in full communion with Rome. Name-based data built on the word "Assyrian" cannot make these distinctions.

Range of views inside it

The Assyrian and Ancient branches differ on calendar and administration; diaspora parishes differ in language use and generational culture. Doctrine and liturgy are held in common.

Where Assyrian Church of the East churches are on the map

7 Assyrian Church of the East congregations appear on The Church Map, across 4 states.

• Arizona — 2
• California — 2
• Illinois — 2
• Connecticut — 1

Bodies and networks in this family

• Ancient Church of the East — episcopal
• Assyrian Church of the East — hierarchical