Worship In The East Syrian Churches: Nestorian, Chaldean, And Malabar

The East Syrian Christians engaged in widespread missionary activity across the Asian continent, but the rise of Islam reduced their communities to small remnants. The liturgy of these churches is doxological in character, filled with expressions of praise and emphasizing the fulfillment of Christian hope in the kingdom of heaven. Antioch was the original center of Syrian Christianity, with a second center developing by the end of the second century in Edessa. Edessa itself became divided by early Christological disputes between Monophysites (one person, one nature in Christ) and Nestorians (two persons, two natures in Christ), and soon political pressure drove the Nestorians further east into the Persian Empire. The Churches The Nestorian church was centered at Nisibis and organized as a distinct church in the fourth century by the bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon. Because it developed outside of the Roman Empire, it did so with a large measure of independence from what it called "th…