Church of the East/Assyrian Church of the East

The Liturgist

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That said @Pavel Mosko and I have experience with both, but I suggest we discuss it in Traditional Theology.

That said I think I am going to post request in the help forum for suggesting new forums, for a forum for Syriac Christianity which would cover the Syriac Orthodox, Assyrians, Maronites, Chaldean Catholics, and the various St. Thomas Christians of Kerala and the Malabar Coast, such as our new friend @coorilose , as Syriac Christianity, basically, all those churches which at one time used the Peshitta and spoke Syriac and continue to use either the East Syriac Rite or the West Syriac Rite, is a fascinating subject, and there are Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches using them.
 
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dzheremi

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I like the idea of a 'pan-Syriac' forum, though I am not Syriac myself. If I remember correctly, there was actually a current ACOE member on CF just a little while ago, though he pretty much exclusively posted on the EO forum, rather than here. I can't remember the poster's name at the moment, as I haven't seen it in a bit (I think he's gone inactive in recent months), but his presence and the periodic reappearance of questions about the ACOE here on VITD shows that there could be a gap filled by such a forum, even if there aren't enough ACOE believers here to substantiate having their own separate forum.

Question: Would it be appropriate there to bring up Western liturgies used historically by Orthodox in India, e.g., the Brahmavar connected to the mission of convert St. Alvares Mar Julius, Metropolitan of Ceylon and Goa? I posted about them once a long time ago (because I found a video of them celebrating the qurbono in Konkani, which is super interesting to me), but our friend Coorilose was not here yet at the time, and no discussion about them could be generated then. India is such an interesting meeting place of these different types of Christianity.
 
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The Liturgist

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How diverse is Christianity in India?
Very, because you have the ancient church in Kerala established by the Apostle Thomas who was martyred there in 53 AD, which contains some endogenous members of purely Jewish descent who survived a shipwreck (as there was a Jewish community in Kerala, the Kochin Jews, until the 20th century when nearly all emigrated to Israel, although their main Paradesi Synagogue in Kerala is preserved, but seldom has a minyan), and other members descended from those who converted from classical-era Hinduism or Judaism, and then you have churches that it set up missions to establish, such as the recently restarted Western Rite church in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), and then there are the Catholic Indians converted from indigenous faiths by the French and Portuguese, and the Protestant Indians, who belong mostly to the Church of South India, the Church of North India and the Church of Pakistan, which resulted from merging most of the missionary denominations who flourished during the British Raj, although these Uniting Churches have a somewhat Indian-incultured Anglican feeling to them and inherited membership in the Anglican Communion.

I was surprised and disappointed that the Church of England priest in his epic series Around the World in 80 Faiths during his sixth episode did not bother to visit at least one of the ancient St. Thomas Christian churches in Kerala. After all, he had time to visit some extremely obscure Hindu sects including one sect of fire-walkers, the Nath, who I have found next to no information about online, so it could literally be a sect as small as 30-40 guys who walk on burning coals, which is not a supernatural feat but a magic trick.
 
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