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So Saturday night I spent the night reading about interesting older Christianities.
I started out looking at the Orthodox. There are splinter groups from them known as Old Beleivers. They came about because of the Russian Orthodox moving closer to the Greek Orthodox (mistakenly beleiving that it was closer to the old school Orthodox). Among the changes made were using two fingers versus three as the sign of the cross, and other such ritualistic and formal things.
The groups split off, this was way back pre 1600s I think. Since no Bishop left with them (well, one did, but he was killed)... they had no natural priests (After a bit). One of the major groups found a Bishop who was forced to flee and got him to set them up with Bishops. Others just quit doing sacrements.. quit having church/etc. Strangely, these groups have survived to this day... which seems weird to me (very unorganized, and often persecuted). Interestingly, among the sacrements that some quit taking part of was the sacrement of marriage.
Then I read some about the other Orthodox churchs. These broke off before the Eastern Orthodox/Roman split... They are fairly well known (The Coptics and Armenians and Ethiopians for example).
And then I read about an earlier split off, the Assyrian church (or something). Amazingly it is still around, it's split off was in 437 BC or something like that (supposedly related to nestorianism, but on reading it seems to mostly have been pushed by the Persian king wanting to distance Christians in his nation from Rome). Amazingly, this group had spread all the way to china before 1000 AD. Unfortunately, there was persectution, which weakened it in India and China. When China became more open recently, they discovered that there was still an Assyrian Church there, after 1000 years of seperation (very small, of course). I would like to read more about this church, the lead Bishop came to the US a while ago, and currently I think it is based in Chicago.
Anyways, wondering what other people things of these groups (Orthodox (not Eastern), Old Beleivers, Assyrian).
Oh, I also read about the Rastafarrians. Many of them beleive that the King of Ethiopia (in 1930) Haim is Jesus (he died in 1975 btw, and was a devote Ethiopian Orthodox). Besides the smoking of the herb, they seem very loose about a lot of social things (religion, etc).
Jon Miller
I started out looking at the Orthodox. There are splinter groups from them known as Old Beleivers. They came about because of the Russian Orthodox moving closer to the Greek Orthodox (mistakenly beleiving that it was closer to the old school Orthodox). Among the changes made were using two fingers versus three as the sign of the cross, and other such ritualistic and formal things.
The groups split off, this was way back pre 1600s I think. Since no Bishop left with them (well, one did, but he was killed)... they had no natural priests (After a bit). One of the major groups found a Bishop who was forced to flee and got him to set them up with Bishops. Others just quit doing sacrements.. quit having church/etc. Strangely, these groups have survived to this day... which seems weird to me (very unorganized, and often persecuted). Interestingly, among the sacrements that some quit taking part of was the sacrement of marriage.
Then I read some about the other Orthodox churchs. These broke off before the Eastern Orthodox/Roman split... They are fairly well known (The Coptics and Armenians and Ethiopians for example).
And then I read about an earlier split off, the Assyrian church (or something). Amazingly it is still around, it's split off was in 437 BC or something like that (supposedly related to nestorianism, but on reading it seems to mostly have been pushed by the Persian king wanting to distance Christians in his nation from Rome). Amazingly, this group had spread all the way to china before 1000 AD. Unfortunately, there was persectution, which weakened it in India and China. When China became more open recently, they discovered that there was still an Assyrian Church there, after 1000 years of seperation (very small, of course). I would like to read more about this church, the lead Bishop came to the US a while ago, and currently I think it is based in Chicago.
Anyways, wondering what other people things of these groups (Orthodox (not Eastern), Old Beleivers, Assyrian).
Oh, I also read about the Rastafarrians. Many of them beleive that the King of Ethiopia (in 1930) Haim is Jesus (he died in 1975 btw, and was a devote Ethiopian Orthodox). Besides the smoking of the herb, they seem very loose about a lot of social things (religion, etc).
Jon Miller
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