Far Eastern Orthodoxy

"Nestorian Stele" by Granger, 1887

EASTERN AND ORIENTAL ORTHODOXY IN CHINESE-SPEAKING COUNTRIES AND THEIR ISSUES

By Bishop Joseph Boyd (Ancient Church of the West) 

November 30^th, 2017

Abstract
The first part of this thesis posits an early date of first contact between China and Early Christianity. The second segment argues that Syriac documentation records the re-communion of the Byzantine and Persian Churches in 627AD, that Chinese documentation proves that Syriac mission called itself "Of Rome", that Chinese literature commemorates the founding Patriarch of its mission as being in communion with Constantinople and the West, and that there are no “Nestorian” teachings in the extant Christian literary record from the Tang through the Ming Dynasties. The third portion focuses on the Russian mission, from 1668 until 1956. The fourth part focuses on the contemporary situation of Orthodox missions in Asia, the difficulties, cultural prerogatives, canonical contradictions and political elements that put Orthodoxy at a disadvantage in the Sinosphere. The fifth through seventh portions then goes on to describe the primary Eastern and Oriental Orthodox missions to Chinese-speaking peoples, various clergy, their activities, projects and hopes for the future. The thesis ends with a call for humility, flexibility and reappraisal of Orthodoxy in China and the Far East.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Ancient Christianity in East Asia
   1. Christ’s Commission
   2. The Gospel of Thomas
   3. Hidden Tradition
   4. The Significance of Ancient East Asian Christianity to the West
2. The Church of the East in China
   1. Mar Alopen and the Argument for an Orthodox Presence in the Tang Dynasty
   2. The Appearance and Worship of Milo, the Coming Lord of the Last Judgment
   3. The Decline of the Eastern Church in China
3. The Russian Mission
   1. Cossacks in Siberia Become the Albizinians of China
   2. Peter’s New Mission
   3. The Struggles of the Mission
   4. The Years of Scholar Monks
   5. The Boxer Rebellion
   6. The Fall of White Russia
   7. The De-Indigenization of the Orthodox Church in China
   8. One Final Attempt to Establish Chinese Orthodoxy
4. Contemporary Eastern Orthodox Missions
   1. The Ecumenical Patriarchate
   2. The Moscow Patriarchate
   3. The Serbian Patriarchate
5. Contemporary Oriental Orthodox Missions
   1. The Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Church
   2. The Coptic Orthodox Church
6. Restoring the Original Church of China
   1. The Mission of the Holy Catholic Apostolic Assyrian Church of the East
7. Summary
8. Bibliography

Introduction: Ancient Christianity in East Asia
Christ prophesied to His Apostles, “Many will come from the East and the West and sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of Heaven.”[1] When Christ gave His “Great Commission” and sent the Apostles into the world, He sent with them the seeds of the Church, His Body, into all the corners of the universe, bringing the “Kingdom Within” into a state of visible incarnation, a physical and spiritual unity that would change the course of reality. “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore into all the earth and teach men whatsoever I have commanded you, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and lo, I will be with you, even until the end of the world!”[2] St. Luke tells us that as the Apostles stared into heaven at His Ascension, angels exhorted them to do as He had commanded, and they went into Jerusalem to await the coming of the “Paraclete” that Christ had promised to send from the Father, the Holy Spirit, Who would lead and guide into all truth. When the Spirit of God fell on them in tongues of fire, with the sound of rushing wind, giving them the gift of speech in many languages and the power to preach in the midst of the Holy City, we see that, immediately the Church spread all over the world. Present at the first great conversion to the Church were Europeans, Africans and Asians. The Apostles spoke their languages and men gathered from the East and West heard St. Peter’s sermon. Later, St. Peter would reaffirm this truth when He saw the Spirit upon the Roman household that spoke in the tongues of the Spirit, and he would remind the Jewish believers that “I perceive that God is no respecter of persons, but of the East and West all those who fear Him and work righteousness are accepted in Him.”[3] Churches sprang up all over the world within the first generation of Christian believers. In the East, Armenia, Edessa, Babylon, Ctesiphon, Socotra, and Kerala were all shining beacons of the Holy Spirit’s flame.

The Gospel of Thomas
The Gospel of Thomas, long quoted in early fathers, was recovered in both Iraq and Egypt around the turn of the last century, a part of a long-forgotten Gnostic repository, the Nag Hammadi. This text exposits the apostolic ministry of St. Thomas Dydimus, the “Doubter” who famously confirmed Christ’s physical resurrection, and tells the story of his successful ministry to India and the conversion of Emperor Gondopheres. This Indian Emperor is a confirmed historical figure in Hellenic North India, one of the remnants of Alexander the Great’s mythic conquest of the East, and he is central to the narrative of this text. In the epic saga of the Indian Orthodox Church, the Mar Thoma Kali Margum, a song that takes more than a whole day to sing and recounts the history of all the generations of the Church in India, it is claimed that both St. Thomas and St. Bartholemew made a mission to China.[4] There may even be a record of this mythic journey in the “Later Book of the Han”, a chronicle of the Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty. It tells the tale of Emperor Wu hosting an old man from the West, claiming that a man on a “frame” remade the world.[5] Regardless, St. Thomas returned to his Church and was martyred in India, but not before he started seven seats of episcopal authority (continued up until the 16th century, when abusive Portuguese colonizers made the indigenous church resist by appealing to various synods in the Middle East), all of which still survive up into the present. His body was later taken by one of the Patriarchs of the Church of the East to Babylon, cementing the authority of the Persian Church over the Indian Church and making it possible through later military conquest for pieces of the holy body of St. Thomas to make their way into the West. The Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches now venerate his partitioned relics.

Hidden Tradition
The history of Christianity in the Far East comes down to us as a hidden tradition. A bronze mirror from the Eastern Han Dynasty, dated roughly 300AD, is inscribed with a Christian verse – “Mirror made to show the likeness of the Divine face, to those who worship the One True God, Holy Mary has proven the Incarnation of the Son, He has appeared as the King of the World, and those who believe in Him will live again.”[6] A rocky outcropping in Eastern China is carved with scenes in the style of the Sui or Jin Dynasty that locals claim are the Life of Buddha, but that better fit a narrative of the Life of Christ.[7] Many graves in Xuzhou are inscribed with a sacrificial lamb, a basket of five fish and five round loaves, and with a wheel almost identical to the ones used by Roman Christians at the same time to secretly write out the name of Christ.[8] By the 600’s, there is already a well-established history of Eastern Christians in China. Missions were officially sanctioned by the first emperor of the Tang Dynasty, a peasant leader and strategist who claimed ancestry from the founder of Taoism, Lao Zi. His great-grandson employed Persian Christians as generals and almost paid for it with his life due to the revolt of one of his ambitious foreign general, An Lushan. Even though the revolt was put down by a Nestorian General, Aluohan, this disloyalty by foreign troops led to the official persecution of Christianity, which resulted in Christians moving south or west, into the colonial frontiers, where their presence could still be tolerated, far from central authority. The Metropolitanate of China probably continued up until the 14th century, under various guises, in the South and in the Mongolian lands. But by the arrival of the Roman Catholic Franciscan Mission under Archbishop John de Monte Corvino in the late 1200’s, it was already fading and greatly challenged by the arrival of a few witty westerners. By the time of Mateo Ricci’s arrival in the late 1500’s, the memory of the Syriac Christians was present only in a few places where they signed their rice with the sign of the cross before eating and worshipped the “King of Light”, and then explosively remembered by the rediscovery of the “Nestorian Stele” in Xi’An by a Franciscan brother and his Chinese converts.

The Significance of Ancient East Asian Christianity to the West
This stele would capture the imagination of the west, creating a strange convergence of philosophy, theology, exoticism and hysteria that resulted in the intense interest of many 17th century minds in the structure of the Chinese state. This fascination resulted in an idealized Confucianism, the tea-drinking craze, the adoption of abstract symbols in mathematics, and the birth of secular ideas that would become the Enlightenment. Athanasius Kirscher, François Quesnay, Joseph-Anna-Marie de Moyriac de Mailla, Jean-Baptiste Du Halde, Gottfried Leibniz, Blaise Pascal, Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Locke, Oliver Goldsmith and Adam Smith were all profoundly involved in this new world of ideas, made popular by how the translation of the Nestorian Stone led to an examination of Chinese values exposited by missionary Jesuits, who arguably did as much translating back into Latin, Italian and French as they did into Chinese. With the translation of the 12th century Chinese luminary, Zhu Xi, into French by Fr. François Quesnay, “Histoire Générale de la Chine” created an appreciation for a secular state based upon the cultivation of common virtues and competition, a meritocracy, and a free market based upon the Chinese Taoist concept of “Wu Wei” (the government doing nothing) was born.[9] Thus, the modern world of “conservatism” was born in a radical departure from the theory of Christian Empire and the Divine Right to Rule that was the central feature of Western civilization from the time of Constantine, using a Christian document proclaiming the Chinese sponsorship of a mission of the Syriac Church as a bridge. These are the origins of a secular ideology with which Orthodoxy constantly struggles and has developed philosophical reactions to, but which understands little about within its own context. Much of what the Orthodox have identified as the cultural ethos that alienates Orthodoxy from Western Christianity - the pragmatism, materialism and moralism that is often perceived as an insidious de-personalizing and secularizing force – was nascent within the Enlightenment, but is actually Chinese in origin![10]

The Church of the East in China

Mar Alopen and the Argument for an Orthodox Presence in the Tang Dynasty 
The first canonical documentation we have of Christian missions in China is not from China, but from the Byzantine record of Procopius, which states that in 551AD Justinian received a gift of silkworms from Nestorian Monks who had brought them from the East. From this gift, the Byzantine Roman Empire received an immense boon, founding a silk-making tradition that economically stabilized Greek textile production, and a liturgical vestment legacy that is now considered quintessentially Orthodox. This account predates the Chinese accounts and inscriptions by over seventy years.[11]

An ancient synodal history of the Assyrian Church of the East, called the “Chronicle of Seert”, recounts how Emperor Heraclius officially received the Catholicos-Patriarch Mar Yashuayab II. The Catholicos demonstrated his Orthodoxy to both the Roman Emperor and accompanying bishops through statement of faith and answer to questions, and concelebrated the Divine Liturgy with both Patriarch Sergius of Constantinople and Patriarch John II of Antioch in 627AD.[12] Upon returning from this monumental occasion of unification between East and West, the Catholicos ordained missionaries to establish a work among Christian Persian traders and merchants in China. Mar Yashuayab's name is inscribed at the top of the Nestorian Stele, which should rightfully be called the "Orthodox Stele" in light of the communion it represents, as "The Bo-To-Li (Patriarch) of Fulin." The "Nestorian Stele" describes the arrival of the missionary Mar Alopen, who received official sanction from the second Emperor of the Tang Dynasty, Taizong, for the promulgation of the new faith.

The official account states: "They brought books and images of the holy things and taught men to worship the Creator, so that virtue could enter into the Flowery Kingdom and bless the reign of righteous emperors…"[13]

The account continues with a description of the mission until 781AD, 145 years later, when the mission was officially prohibited in 845AD along with Buddhism, Manichaeism and the first Islamic mission and then pushed underground by persecution.

Just a few years after the arrival of Mar Alopen, China received a delegation of missionaries from the court of Heraclius, the last of the great Byzantine Emperors, carrying a mandate for the establishment of a Byzantine missionary metropolitanate, with the intent of a two-pronged attack against the Muslim Kalifate. The Emperor did not entertain ideas of such a far-flung confederation and had news of both a massive Muslim attack upon the Chinese border, which the Chinese had successfully deflected, and also of the defeat of Persian armies, both of which the Byzantines had no knowledge. The Emperor’s wisdom was Byzantium’s lament, for unbeknownst to both Emperor and missionary, Heraclius was long-dead and the Byzantine Empire would face a dark and uncertain future as it tried to hold back the black tide of Islamic terror. The Chinese record states: "In the Seventh Year of the reign, The Duke of Xi, Li Dafu, introduced the emissary of New Rome with the representative of the Persians, and this embassy was received as representative of their emperor, Heraclius. Gifts were brought by the Persians from Polin, and lions, sheep, medicines and other delights were received in our court.” Then, again, “In May, the King of Polin sent his emissary, Master of Monks, 'Da De’ (Great Virtue, transliteration of Sanskrit word, “bhadanta”, and used to mean “bishop” in the Christian context), to represent the empire of New Rome and call upon the Chinese Empire, and he was sent to stay with the Persian monks.[14] Thus, the communion between the Syriac and Byzantine Churches at this time seems to be a forgone conclusion as the Emperor declared a protected status for the Church that would later be called the “Maphrianate.” They worked with one another and used the pre-existing structure of the East Syriac Church.

Later, probably due to the fall of the Persian Empire to the Muslims, the official name of the Christian faith in China was changed from "Persian Religion" to "Roman Luminous Religion" (using the name for Rome associated with Constantinople, "Fulin" or "Polin"[15]). While many scholars have refused to see this as anything other than a misnomer, it is significant in that it stresses continuity with the West and is reinforced by the lack of anything "Nestorian" in the all of the Christian manuscripts that we have today. The Emperor's edict said: "The religion of the book that the Persians have spread here comes from Rome, and this has long been known and accepted in China. Because of their love of building temples, and because we desire clarity of name for their institutions, we must correct an error that has been propagated through our ignorance. Henceforth, in both capitals and in all the temples built by the Persians, their name must be changed to 'Temple of the Romans.' All officials must respect this proclamation. The proclamation here ends."[16]

As Samuel Hugh Moffett's conclusive work, "History of Asian Christianity" argues, and Philip P. Jenkin’s “The Lost History of Christianity” confirms, there was a long struggle for a restored and sustained communion between Byzantium and Babylon, greatly affecting the identity of Asian Christianity, which saw no contradiction in being both indigenous and also friends with Byzantium. Over three-hundred Double-headed Eagles, Greek Crosses, and Angel medals[17] were uncovered in Northern Chinese graves, showing strong cultural ties to Eastern Rome. This is also shown in the later visit of the Northern-China born Rabban Bar Sauma, who gave communion to both Pope and King of England in the 14^th century, and who also praised the Byzantine Emperor that “With the sight of the Christian king, fatigue hath vanished and exhaustion hath departed, for I was exceedingly anxious to see your kingdom, that which may our Lord establish.”[18] These heart-felt complements show that easterners saw no contradiction between their position as apostolic heirs of the Church in the East and of the doctrinal and canonical importance of the Byzantine Empire. There is, however, increasing documentation of the tragedy of a ravenous political Islam disconnecting the fledging communion that had grown between the Churches after the Council of Chalcedon and a realization of a balanced, Antiochian-Constantinopolitan approach. This is highly important for the Chinese mission because Mar Yeshuayab II established it through his ordinations and consecrations, and his name is commemorated on the “Nestorian Stele.” The “flow” of Apostolic Tradition therefore came through him and his disciple, Mar Alopen, who are both technically the canonical and Apostolic Enlighteners of China. The Jingjiao Stele in Xi’An should be considered a binding canonical document, issued by one of China’s most important emperors, establishing the East Syriac Church as the Church of the Chinese state. This view is reinforced by the fact that a delegation of Byzantine Bishop (大秦高僧) and his attendants, in 641AD, officially received at court in 647AD as ambassadors for the long-dead Byzantine Emperor, Heraclius, recognized and submitted to this primacy. The official documentation for this is found in the “Tortoise Oracle Record Bureau” (冊府元龜) of Wang Qinruo (王欽若) in the Song Dynasty and is incontrovertible.[19]

The Chinese Church was started by Aramaic-speaking, culturally-Persian, non-Greek ethnicity Christians (although they also were almost certainly not "Assyrian" ethnically). At this point in Asian history, they were in better contact with the West than previously acknowledged, in communion officially, and they were not considered to be a sect of marginalized heretics by Chalcedonian Christians.[20] The fact that later East Syriac bishop, Mar Isaac of Nineveh (reposed 700AD), is venerated by the Eastern Orthodox Church as a saint should also strengthen the claim that once canonical communion was established and recognized, it was never officially broken.[21] It was liturgical and ecclesial development on the part of the Byzantine Church that made eventual mutual recognition impossible. Timothy +Kallistos Ware, Bishop of Diokleia, states in his famous work, “The Orthodox Church”, that “The separation [between the Byzantine Church and the Church of the East] occurred for historical rather than doctrinal reasons – more through a lack of mutual contact than because of direct theological controversy…”[22] This is a vital point, especially since it also reflects the desires of the Church of the East today, having worked hard to reestablish this understanding through their "Common Christological Statement" and their continued dialogues with the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches.[23] China, if anything, proves that this restoration can happen, and that it might provide the cultural impetus and theater for such an important recognition of the shared legacy of the Eastern Churches!

The Appearance and Worship of Milo, the Coming Lord of the Last Judgment
Milo Buddha appears without explanation in China during the Tang Dynasty, called by a name that uses the same Chinese characters for the transliterated Aramaic word for Messiah, “Mishihe”, that appears on the Christian Monument of Xi’an. Milo or Miroku is the Buddha of the Future, and is called Meitreya (Friend, or Compassionate One) in Sanskrit, mentioned once in the Digha Nikaya Sutra in the 3^rd Century, which is thought to be of forged origins, since it has no precedent in the older schools of Buddhism.[24] He has no Indian god equivalents, no Buddhist theological precedents, and Hindus define Meitreya as an incarnation of Krishna, the same as they do Christ. Nevertheless, he is revered now in all forms of Buddhism and is venerated as the “Messiah” of Buddhism. He is believed by scholars to have come from the influences of Greece in early Tarim Basin culture, as a reflection of the teachings and personalities of Mithra, Zoroaster, or Christ on late Buddhist philosophers. Young and Moffett also speculate that he could reference of the Esoteric Jewish tradition of Metatron, the transcended Enoch of the Kabala.

Meitreya worship is associated with the salvation teachings of Dengyo’s Tendai sect and Kobo Daishi’s Shingon sect, both of which focused on grace, esoteric knowledge, crying out for salvation, the intercession of saints, and hand symbols (particularly the symbol of the cross). These teachings hold greatest influence in Japan and have fed back over to China through the cross-polination of later missionary work. Kobo Daishi is known to have worshipped the text “Discourses of the Lord of the Universe”, an early Syriac commentary of Mathew Five translated by Mar Alopen. Its precepts form the central esoteric teaching in Shingon (“True Word”) Buddhism. This text was transmitted from Tang San Zang (Tripitaka), with whom Dengyo and Kobo studied in China. A copy of this document is kept at Kobo Daishi’s temple in Koyasan, documented by Anglican scholar, Elizabeth Gordon, who is known to have paid for and installed a copy of the Xi’An Stele at the site with the permission of the monastery’s Abbot, illustrating the intimate connection between Japanese Buddhism and early Christian teachings. San Zang, the central figure in the famous “Journey to the West”, was a disciple of the Indian Master, Prajna, who translated the first Syriac texts with his Chinese Christian friend “Jing Jing”, known as “Adam” in Aramiac. San Zang’s temple was nestled next to the first Syriac Christian temple in Xi’an, and there are many documented exchanges between the monks in both monasteries during the times Kobo and Dengyo were in China. A Buddhist history states: "Prajna, a Buddhist of Kapisa, traveled through Central India, Cylon and the Island of the Southern Sea, and came to China, for he had heard that Manjusri was in China. He arrived in Canton and came to the Upper Province (Northern China) in AD 782. He translated together with Jing-Jing, Adam, a Persian priest of the monastery of the Romans, the Satparamita-Sutra from a Hu text, and finished translating seven volumes."[25]

Milo has become a popular folk Buddha to the Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese. Budai, a venerable Zen master in the Tang Dynasty, was believed to be an incarnation of Milo by later Song Dynasty Buddhists, and so his image (a portly old man with a bag), became interchangeable with Meitreya. He is the Chinese and Japanese version of St. Nicholas, a saintly man who gives people things that they truly need. Ji Gong, the rebel Buddhist monk, became associated with an incarnation of Meitreya, and thus passed into the Taoist list of immortals, where he is still listed as a saint. The Unity Cult, Yi Guan Dao, claims that its founder was a reincarnation of Ji Gong, and thus, also claims that its leader was the Buddhist Messiah. He is known as the “Fat Buddha”, the “Laughing Buddha”, the “Blessing Buddha”, or the “Money Buddha” – it is this Buddha’s facial features that are considered “blessed” and “desirable” by the traditional Chinese view of beauty.

Milo Buddha is always shown with a unique hand position. The meaning of Milo’s three-fingered hand symbol cannot be explained by the “Mudras” of classical Buddhism, and is not explained in the Chinese or Japanese folk tradition. The hand symbol associated with these new forms of Buddhism was three fingers pointing up and two fingers making a triangle – This is the sign that the Persian Christians made with their fingers while motioning the sign of the cross, identical to the Byzantine Tradition, which is supported by Syriac Christian wall paintings and Shingon traditions of the sign of the cross made in their ceremonies. This is a sign that literally points back to Christ. It points to the “three above”, the smallest member of the Trinity is separated by a gap, or “the world”, showing that the Holy Spirit is in the world. The triangle in the thumb and ring finger can also represent the unity of the Trinity. Most importantly, it outlines the Name of Christ in Greek – ICXC – showing that Milo is naming the True Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ![26]

 The Decline of the Eastern Church in China
After the Tang Dynasty began persecuting Christianity, the Church of the East moved its center of activity from the capital and surrounding centers in Central China to the south east coast of Fujian, which was a newly opened trading port and a Chinese colony amidst Vietnamese, Hmong and Thai tribes. This port was frequented by Islamic traders and settlers, who were subjugating South East Asia, Indochina, and India, and the Arabic and Aramaic-speaking Christians became facilitators of the trade between the Muslim seafarers and the Chinese producers of fine silks, China, spices, precious stones, cloisonné, wood carvings, metal working and jade. In this less evangelistic and threatening mode, the Christian Faith was useful to the Chinese and was tolerated as a foreign religion, and it continued to have small bodies of Chinese believers sustaining a diminished presence in Hangzhou, Shenzhou, and Guangzhou, holding on until the arrival of a new influx of Christians during the Mongol occupation, calling themselves “Yelikewen.” These Mongolian Nestorians did not appreciate the Chinese Christian tradition as it had developed in the Tang, and there was little communication between the two groups. Marco Polo reports that the Metropolitan bishop of Quanzhou, the last seat of apostolic authority from the Tang, did not favor discussing Christian issues with the Mongolian Metropolitan of the capital Khanbalik (called “Dadu” by the Chinese and later renamed “Beijing”).[27] The two forms of Far Eastern Christianity had been separated too long and spoke substantially different languages. When the Ming Dynasty rose up to replace the Mongolian-led Yuan Dynasty, the leader of the rebellion, Ming Zhu Di, was a follower of a Buddhist-Manichean hybrid religion called the “Order of the White Lotus.” He set out to eliminate all “non-Chinese religions”, not realizing the irony of this position, and as a result Christianity disappears from the Chinese record until the establishment of a Jesuit mission two hundred years later. Zhu Di had the Christian temples of South China torn apart and the Cross-carved stones of altars and graves were buried beneath new roads, only to be discovered in the 1950’s by Communist soldiers as they rebuilt those same ancient highways.[28]

The Russian Mission

Cossacks in Siberia Become the Albizinians of China
In 1683, the Chinese emperor Kang Xi attacked what the Russians claim was a Russian Cossack village outpost of Albizin, or what the Chinese claimed was a Russian exploratory party into Chinese-held land. The battle took place on the Amur (“Black Dragon”) River, the natural demarcation between Northern China and Siberia. This whole area was believed to be Manchu territory by the Qing Emperor, held exclusively for the “People of the Eight Flags”, the Manchu tribes who had come to power in 1636 and ruled all of China until 1912. 30-70 Cossack soldiers (all reports give different numbers, with the possibility of their group gathering deserters and traders in Beijing later on) were captured by the Chinese and given the choice to serve the Chinese Emperor or face death or imprisonment. They submitted to the imperial forces as “Booi Aha”, “household servants” and were shackled and taken to Beijing, far from their northern home, where they were given a portion of the northern city wall to garrison. The soldiers were given a small plot of land, a collapsing Buddhist shrine to the Buddhist Protector “Guang-Yi", to make into their church. Fr. Maxim Leontiv called the building the “St. Nicholas Chapel” (later consecrated as the “Hagia Sophia”) after the icon of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker that they brought from Albazin, making it into the first Orthodox church in many centuries. Due to this successful integration of Russians into the Chinese system, Kang Xi consented to a change of policy stabilizing the China-Russia border in the Treaty of Nerchinsk and allowing for ongoing contact with Russian emissaries. The Cossack men took wives of the Mongolian and Solon peoples, both Turkic minorities from the north, and faithfully served the Chinese emperor and their Orthodox faith, raising many generations of Cossacks in China, keeping their grandfathers’ traditional role of guards and soldiers until the middle of the 1800’s. It is now estimated that there are around 600 Chinese who self-identify as descendants of the Albazin Cossacks, a tiny drop in the ocean of 1.4 billion people of China.

St. Peter’s New Mission
With a small contingency of Russians in the Chinese capital and a favorable treaty with the emperor, Peter the Great, Tzar of Russia, issued a Ukase/Edict declaring the destiny of the Orthodox Church to enlighten Siberia and China. Due to the Tzar’s status as the head of a newly reformed Orthodox Church at the dissolution of the Moscow Patriarchate in 1667, a new Metropolitan, Bishop +Philothei (Leschinsky), was elevated to Tobolsk and All Siberia at the Tzar’s command. The Metropolitan then established an official embassy was approved by Moscow for several monks in 1713 after the death of Fr. Maxim in 1712. In 1715 the Chinese gave property to the new monastic mission. By 1727 the issue of a mutually recognized sovereignty and an undisputed border between China and Russia was signed into the Sino-Russian Treaty of Kiakhta, and the basis for a Russian mission in China was established as its 5th article, the only European mission allowed in China for over one hundred years until the end of the Opium War, was officially begun. This treaty provided the outline for the mission’s operations until the 1911 Xinghai Revolution, and the effective modality of its interaction with the government until 1858 and the Treaty of Tianjin and their ratification by the Emperor in 1860, and provided official routes for commercial trade and political mission. It established a mechanism to support the ecclesiastical mission in Beijing as the official representative of the Russian Tzar through intergovernmental trade, a language school for Russian translators, and the requirement that Russian Archimandrites, monks and staff serve only one, ten-year ambassadorial term. Russian priests were, after this treaty, viewed by the Chinese government as both servants of the Russian Tzar and also public servants of the Chinese commonwealth, which made the Russians a class unto themselves. They could own property, trade, finance shipping and investments, collect rents and function in ways that no other foreigners could, and they also had the limited capacity to represent the Chinese emperor to the Chinese people in some official matters. The fact that Russian missionaries were welcomed by the same emperor who had been a catechumen in the Roman Catholic mission, writing stirring Christ-themed poetry, but who had, after the Pope had outlawed a Chinese Rite and a ritual for honoring deceased Chinese ancestors, outlawed Christianity and exiled all Western missionaries for the sake of preserving the peace and happiness of the Chinese people in their Confucian tradition, will never cease being ironic. It also is one of the greatest wasted opportunities in Christian history.[29]

The Struggles of the Mission
China hosted 19 generations of missionaries, approximately 150 archimandrites and priests, until the establishment of an independent mission under Archimandrite Innokenty. The Archimandrite would mark the zenith of the mission at his elevation to Metropolitan of Beijing and his legal declaration of an Independent Chinese Orthodox Church in the Chinese Republic’s court system to insulate the mission and its properties from the claims of the Soviet Union during the early 1930’s. There were many holy men amongst these delegations, especially toward the end and under the enlightened leadership of saintly bishops in the 20th century. However, in the early years there was a laxity and largesse that offended the Chinese and caused uproar on several occasions. The consternation was due to the different ways that Russians viewed clergy rights and powers and the way that the Chinese viewed these same prerogatives. It was often noted how the Russian priests would ride through the streets like princes, with guards riding ahead to rudely shoo the Chinese out of the streets and a bodyguard riding behind, with swords and pistols flashing in the sun. The fourth through ninth delegations were known amongst the Chinese as horrifying, almost comical figures, whom Chinese mothers would use to scare their children into obedience. Part of this could be due to the Chinese perception of foreigners as large, horse-riding barbarians who did not bathe and who were rough and ready for a fight, but the other half may be based in an unfortunate reality of clerical arrogance and bad behavior. Fighting, womanizing, extreme alcoholism and delinquency are all part of the litany of complaints that litter the Chinese memory of the early Russian mission. “Eighteenth-century [Russian] missions are known for their idleness, drunkenness, and debauchery.”[30] Chinese records show that the 9th mission actually received a reprimand from the high court and were threatened with expulsion, due to their wild behavior, lack of respect and public drunkenness.[31]

The Years of Scholar Monks
The Russian mission did not start effectively evangelizing until the 1860’s, when they lost their exclusive position as the only protected embassy in China due to the “Eight Nation Powers”, who attempted to partition China at the end of the Second Opium War in the same way that colonial Europe was drawing maps in Africa and South America. This loss of power was also marked when the head of the 14th mission, Archimandrite Gury, wisely decided to move the mission out of the Russian diplomatic headquarters and back to the “Red House” temple, the Buddhist temple that had been given to Fr. Maxim by Kang Xi. Fr. Gury, who was an accomplished linguist and had a functional grasp of literary Chinese, involved Fr. Isaiah Polikin, even more gifted in Chinese than himself, and they translated the Divine Liturgy, the Book of Needs, and the Psalter into literary Chinese with the help of Mitrophan Yang, who later would be the first Chinese hieromartyr, ordained to the priesthood in 1882 by St. Nicholas of Japan. This move and their translations showed how seriously the Russians began to take the process of indigenization, appealed to the authority of one of China’s great emperors, and also effectively separated the mission from the diplomatic mission, something that had always been a millstone around the mission’s neck. Archimandrite Gury will always be remembered by Russians and Sinologists as a fountainhead of knowledge, wisdom and spirituality, but he is also unfortunately infamous to the Chinese because of one situation in which he acted as an emissary for the Chinese emperor with the eight nation powers, which were camped around Beijing at the end of the Last Opium War, simultaneously sending word to the Tzar to use the time of Chinese political upheaval to annex the northern territory of Manchuria in a move called the “Amur Acquisition." His duplicity was later discovered and the damage done to the Chinese trust was irreversible, especially after the Tzar successfully acted upon his advice and changed Northern China’s destiny as a result. The Russian take-over of the Chinese territories was intimately tied to the Orthodox mission, as is the resulting disastrous attempt by the Chinese to counter the annexation through the “Rush for the Eastern Pass” (闯关东), the opening up of the areas originally reserved for the Manchus for Han settlement that led to the deprivation and famine of over three million Chinese, and untallied death of innocents, because of severe droughts and floods soon after the area was resettled. This land-grab permanently blackened the image of the Orthodox mission in the minds of historically literate Chinese, even though it was not the direct result of Russian aggression and was due more to climate and management problems. Even with the tragedy of Orthodox involvement with the annexation of Manchuria, the Russian Mission reported from ten to forty conversions a year until after the Boxer Rebellion, when the years between 1903 and 1913 were marked with astonishing growth and a remarkable change of management under some truly evangelical figures. It was also the time when the Russian’s acquisition of land and properties, and their amazing use of factories and farms to create revenue for the mission, became a major route through which converts were brought in - as workers, managers, students and orphans. It was felt that this policy of rapid conversion and acculturation may be Russia’s only chance to stand up to the Roman and British Churches, both of which were making tens of thousands of converts and threatened to remake China politically and culturally in a Western image.

The work of ecclesiastical translation continued as Sinologist were wisely ordained and installed into the mission out of Metropolitanate of Tobolsk, many of whom had originally come in the 13th and 14th missions as students of Chinese language and culture. After this, Archimandrite Isaiah briefly replaced Archimandrite Gury, and then Archimandrite Pallady was ordained and sent to Beijing. Fr. Pallady was unquestionably the highest point in Russian China studies that the mission ever produced. He fastidiously worked on translating Orthodox life and thought for the Chinese Literati. Studying under him and eventually replacing him because of Archimandrite Pallady’s poor health, Archimandrite Flavian used Archimandrite Isaiah’s original translations and created new versions that were clearer and easier to understand when read aloud.

"[Archimandrite Flavian translated and retranslated] the Horologion (Book of Hours), the Shorter Trebnik, the Sluzhebnik, the main parts of the Kanonik, the Akathists to the Savior, the Mother of God and the Guardian Angel. New translations of the Sunday Oktoekhos, services for the twelve great feasts, the services of Passion Week and Easter Week were made; in addition the memorial service for the dead (Panikhida) was rendered into Chinese. Several works of devotion and morality were also translated."[32]

This translation work was essential for the next step of the mission, which God would bless in the person of a saintly Apostle to China.

The Boxer Rebellion  
It is into this rather self-defeating introversion that one of Orthodoxy’s brightest missionary minds was sent, and who, through amazingly resolute and studious work, and sheer dogged determination, the Orthodox mission had a turn-around unlike any in Christian missionary history.

Ivan Apollonovich Figurovich, named Innokenty upon his monastic tonsure, was born on February 24, 1863, in the Yenisei Diocese to the family of a priest.

"[Archimandrite Innokenty was] a graduate of the St Petersburg Theological Academy in 1892, [and] was filled with true missionary zeal. Prior to his arrival in China, he familiarized himself with the work of western missionaries in China. After visiting Mount Athos and the Holy Land, he arrived in China in 1897. His early years at the mission were taken up with learning Chinese and English and making plans for the future of the mission."[33] Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky) of blessed memory wrote of Innokenty, “he led a blameless life in heavy podvig and sought the glory of God, with no regard for himself.”[34]

On October 3, 1896, Fr. Innokenty was appointed Head of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Peking. In accordance with the wishes of the Ober-Procurator of the Holy Ruling Synod, Konstantin Pobedonostsev, in order to familiarize himself with missionary work in the Western countries, he departed Russia and traveled to London, Paris, Rome, Mt Athos, Palestine, Suez, Aden, Colombo, Saigon and Shanghai. He visited missionary institutions, mostly in Europe. On March 1, 1897, he arrived in Tyanzin.  After his arrival in Peking, he came to love the Chinese people with all his heart, the energetic Archimandrite Innokenty established a schedule of daily Liturgies at the mission, and within a year established a typographical shop and bindery, built 5 churches and a cemetery chapel, a mission rest house in Peitaho with a chapel dedicated to the Transfiguration of the Lord and a skete in Tsintantzui. That year, the Holy Synod gave its blessing for the bishop of Vladivostok to ordain two Chinese orthodox priests.[35]

Out of 450-500 Chinese Orthodox Albazinian descendants and converts in Beijing, 222 died in the Boxer Rebellion, a full half of the whole mission. 4 of the 5 churches were burnt, including the grand Dormition of the Theotokos Cathedral, which had been the center of Albizinian religious life for over a century. Fr. Innokenty wrote to his friend, Metropolitan +Anthony –

"Terrible was their fate. Their stomachs were cut open, heads were chopped off, they burned them in their homes. The Orthodox catechism teacher Pavel Van died a martyric death with prayers on his lips. Iya Ven, a teacher at the missionary school, was tortured by them two times. The first time, the Boxers hacked at her then dumped earth upon her. When she regained consciousness, her moans were heard by a guard (a pagan), and he brought her to his booth. Soon after the Boxers once again seized her and this time tortured her to death. Both times, Iya Ven joyfully witnessed Christ before her tormentors. After the terrible events of the first night, the peaceful Chinese found an 8-year-old boy, Ivan Tzi, the son of a murdered priest who was brutally mutilated by the Boxers: his fingers were cut off and there were wounds on his chest. When they asked the boy if he was in much pain, the boy replied with a smile that suffering for Christ was not difficult. This child martyr was seized, his head cut off and burned in a fire."[36]

Fr. Innokenty was noted to have left the safety of the Russian Embassy at the time of the attacks to minister last rites to those of his flock dying from the horrible attacks. This death toll was substantially higher than any other Christian mission and ended whatever hopes the Russian government had that Orthodoxy would become a form of Russian influence over the common Chinese person. Archimandrite Innokenty was ordered home and the mission closed. He refused and took the mission to Shanghai, where he received support and help from members of the Anglican Missionary Society and established a small church.

Determined to keep the mission open, Archimandrite Innokenty returned to Russia after he had strengthened his position and had regrouped his people, sure that there were priests to serve the community if he was detained in Russia and could not return. He then made the difficult journey to St. Petersburg, where he consulted with his long-time friend, Metropolitan +Anthony, who also had the ear of the Tzar and was highly influential in supporting the Chinese mission. +Anthony had the Holy Synod of Moscow and All Russia rescind their original order to close the mission and personally promised support of over 200,000 rubles per year out of his own coffers to support the mission. With this new support and confidence, Archimandrite Innokenty was nominated by the Holy Synod to become the first Bishop of Beijing and the Metropolitan of China. It was an astonishing victory, both politically and spiritually. He was consecrated on June 3rd, 1902, and was sent back to China as the unquestioned voice of the Russian Church to China and of the Chinese to Russia. After China had its own missionary bishop, the work exploded. Many more readers, deacons and priests were ordained. The industriousness of the Russians in Beijing and their work with small-scale schools increased and blossomed into a seminary, 18 boys grammar schools and 3 girls schools with 700 students, an orphanage, a free clinic and 2 monasteries. Mission centers were built all over China, some by Chinese invitation, and 19 churches were built all over the interior. Services were said by Metropolitan +Innokenty in Chinese along with many Chinese clergy. Remarkably, from 1907 to 1917, over 500 converts were catechized and baptized a year. Milk farms, brick factory, candle factories, cannery, flour mill, bakery, textile looms and handicraft companies were created for new converts to work in and manage, and the churches that had been torched were rebuilt in grand Russian style, larger and better furnished than ever before. The 200 years of property acquisition on the part of the Russian Diplomatic Mission turned into a resource for Church development when the Chinese government was forced to pay for the destruction of the Boxer Rebellion. The mission compound at Beiguan was given a bell tower and bronze bells from Russia. The compound sprawled over a hundred acres, a little piece of paradise in the midst of the Beijing City chaos, carefully farmed with geese, chickens, cows and sheep, with the bells tolling the hours and calling the newly Orthodox workers to prayer. By 1917 the church that had been reduced to 250 people in 1901 had grown to over 5000 converts on the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution!

The Fall of White Russia
October 25th, 1917, on the Julian Calendar, the unthinkable happened in Russia - the imperial “Symphonia" between Emperor and Orthodox Church that was established during the reign of Justinian at the Council in Trullo, came to an abrupt and brutal end. With the abdication of Tzar Nikolas II and the refusal of his brother, Grand Duke Mikhail to claim the throne, political chaos plunged Holy Russia into an atheist revolution. The Imperial Family was slaughtered, Imperial Nobles and White Russian armies were all put to flight, and those amongst the loyal and religious Russian peasants could only flee in hopes of sparing some of their children’s fragile lives. All of these profoundly unfortunate events would directly affect the Chinese Mission in devastating ways and challenge the Orthodox vision of indigenous missions to its core. Immediately, the Chinese mission was cut off from the Russian Government and the Holy Synod of Moscow. Very quickly it was apparent that there would not be a stable, synodal body under which to submit the mission, and so Metropolitan +Innokenty came under the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad and the Diocese of Beijing became the first diocese in China. Over the next few years, hundreds of thousands of White Russians entered northern China, living mostly in Harbin, first under the Chinese Republican government in a special protectorate, and then as a persecuted minority under Japanese rule as all with Russian ethnicity were feared as allies against the Axis and spies for the Soviet Union. The Russians also trickled down to other areas of inland China: Beijing, Wuhan, Guangzhou, all had a sudden burst in Russian population, but none as great as Shanghai, where the Russian population numbered over 300,000 at the beginning of the 1930’s after the defeated White Russian Navy limped to its ports from Vladivostok in 1922. Shanghai established 8 parishes with 4 large churches and became in the East what Paris was to the Russian Emigres in the West, a center of Russian intellectual life and culture for those in exile.

With the huge influx of Russian nobility, 20 Churches were built in Harbin. Sundays in the summers became a White Russian holiday, adorned with women and children out for picnics in the parks driving Russian-style carriages, dressed in starched and billowing white dresses. In 1919, St. Jonah of Manchuria came from Russia to lead the Northern Chinese Church (汉口教区). He brought the Icon of Tabynsk with him, which had been revered in Russia for 300 years because of its miraculous ability to determine its own resting place and its affinity for salt springs, where it would do mysterious works of healing. Until his early death, Bishop +Jonah established an orphan home for 40 children, supported 500 students to study for free, had a church kitchen open daily to feed 200 people, and opened a free clinic for people too poor to pay for medical assistance amongst the Russian refugee population. St. Jonah oversaw the construction of the famous St. Sophia of Harbin, finished in 1924, and in 1935 the St. Alexy Church was completed, which was the last Russian Orthodox Church built in China.[37]

The De-Indigenization of the Orthodox Church in China
In 1929 the Russian Soviets sued the Chinese Mission for all funds, properties and holdings, stating that the Russian Orthodox Church was an organ of Russian polity and belonged to the ruling government of Russia. Metropolitan +Innokenty wisely chose to define the Orthodox Church in China as an independent body, pointing to the separation of the mission from the political embassy in the 1860’s and the appointing of a canonically self-sufficient hierarchy as evidence. The Chinese Republican High Court, under the direction of Chiang Kai-Shek, ruled that the Orthodox Church was a native body and was in no way subject to the Patriarchate of Moscow, thus protecting all holdings from seizure. While the Russians residing in China rejoiced that the Soviets had been defeated, they violently rejected Metropolitan +Innokenty’s proposal to elevate worthy Chinese hieromonks to episcopal status, and at the Metropolitan’s death in 1931, they passed over the senior-most Chinese hieromonk, Sergei Chang Fu, to enthrone another Russian monk and assistant to +Innokenty, Archimandrite Simon, to the Diocese of Beijing. This resulted in the Chinese clergy protesting to the government that the “Chinese Orthodox Church” had been taken over by Russians and not functioning as legally dictated by Chinese law. Chiang Kai-Shek tried to have Fu installed as the new Metropolitan, but the Russians rioted and the Chinese government had to come to terms with the fact that the Church was “Chinese” in name only, completely unworkable with the boycott of the Russian faithful and clergy.[38] Archimandrite +Victor was elevated to the episcopacy at the repose of Met. +Simon in 1933, and he resumed his predecessor’s vision of an indigenous Church, free from the damaging influences of Russian politics.

One Final Attempt to Establish Chinese Orthodoxy
Interestingly, it was during the same time that Metropolitan Dositej of Serbia, a close friend of the first head of ROCOR and mentor to Met. +Innokenty, Met. Anthony Kharprotsky, established “brotherly” relations with Catholicos Geevarghese II of the Malankara Orthodox Church of India.[39] This is the first well-documented attempt to find grounds for unity between Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches. The Serbia and India exchanged visits and ROCOR was heavily involved in the project, via their Mission to Jerusalem. Two ROCOR priests were also in residence with the Malankara Orthodox, Archimandrite Lazarus Moore (a converted Anglican priest who would later become famous by mentoring Fr. Peter Gillquist and the Campus Crusade for Christ leaders into the Orthodox fold), and the future rector of St. Tikhon’s Seminary, Archimandrite Andronik (Elpedinsky), helping the two sides understand each other better at the “Mount Thabor Ashram/Darya” in Pathanapurum. Nicholas Zernov also came to lecture in Kerala at this time and had a profound effect upon ecumenical relations.[40] Roughly between 1933 and 1937, the head of the China Mission, Bishop +Victor, left China and took up residence on the Malabar Coast, attempting to bring about the anticipated communion within the scope of the China Mission, for the establishment of an “Asian Orthodox Church.”[41] This was perhaps because of the general perception that the Chinese Orthodox Church, already 10,000 strong, would only be able to find a sustainable solution to the problem of polity and identity within an Asian Church, one with a distinct identity from the Russian Church. It was commonly assumed by many hierarchs at the time that a new day was dawning for inter-Christian communion and Met. +Anthony was known for his advocacy of receiving Anglican Clergy in their orders,[42] which meant that, if doctrinal agreements could be reached, the Schism between East and West could come to an end and Orthodoxy could be shared with the whole world. It was an ambitious plan and a goal that riveted the Orthodox world with a new sense of purpose, unfortunately, this attempt to unite the Indian Orthodox and Russian Orthodox Church was unsuccessful for reasons obscured by time and intentional obfuscation. Perhaps this failure was due the repose of Met. +Anthony in 1936 and the enthronement of Met. +Anastasius Gribanovsky? The new Archbishop of ROCOR was the very one who had received and re-ordained Archimandrite Lazarus contrary to +Anthony’s opinion, and he represented a faction that was increasingly anti-ecumenist and actively working to undermine the Pan-Orthodox Conference of 1923, in which Met. +Anthony had been so favorably involved.[43]

Met. +Victor returned to China in 1938 and was proclaimed Archbishop of China by the Russian Church Abroad at the beginning WWII when communication became impossible. The situation in China had become increasingly perilous as Japan annexed the old Russian parts of Northern China and formed the new country of Manchukuo under the rule of the puppet emperor, Puyi. This forced more Russians to relocate to Shanghai, which was turned into a battleground months after their relocation in 1937, as Japan moved to take the rest of China. What followed was 7 years of horror as the Japanese exterminated millions of Chinese and thousands of Russians. At the end of the war, in October of 1945, +Viktor was received back into the Russian Orthodox Church, Moscow Patriarchate, in anticipation of peace between the Nationalist Chinese Government and the Soviets, hoping to get the mission back on track after over a decade of turbulence. In defiance of +Victor’s decision, the ROCOR consecrated Bp. +John Maximovitch as a rival to the claims of the Moscow Archbishopric of China and he set about immediately to counter Metropolitan +Victor’s “ecumenism”, effectively splitting the Russian Emigre community in China (which numbered around 3 million) and ending the popular Russian support of a Chinese mission. When China underwent its own Communist Revolution in 1949, the Moscow Patriarchate ordered Metropolitan +Victor to turn the mission over to its native clergymen, of whom two, Symeon Du and Vasily Shuan, were elevated by +Victor to the episcopate, and the church was granted autocephalous status by the Holy Synod of Moscow in 1956. Understaffed, underfunded, and quaking under four decades of tight Russian control and ethnic politics, the few Chinese clergy gave out, +Vasily died in 1963, Bishop +Symeon traveled to Russia to be with +Victor where he stayed until his death in 1965, and the rest were imprisoned during the years of the Cultural Revolution. The whole project was effectively shuttered by 1967, with only three surviving priests and two deacons. Thus, 300 years of the Russian Orthodox Mission in China came to a tragic end.

Contemporary Eastern Orthodox Missions

The Ecumenical Patriarchate
The new interpretation of Chalcedon 28, fashionable amongst Greek canonists and theologians at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Seminary[44], is directly connected to the impetus to establish the Metropolitanate of Hong Kong and South East Asia (OMHKSEA).[45] This unregulated area, if brought under Istanbul, will make the anachronistic reading of “Asia” in the original canon a de facto reality. In 1996 the Ecumenical Patriarchate used a request from the local Orthodox believers of Hong Kong to have a parish priest as an excuse to invest a metropolitan bishop with claims over all of East and Southeast Asia, as well as India, China, and Mongolia.[46] Three-fifths of the world’s population would be canonically under the omophorion of one bishop of the Holy Synod of Constantinople.
Originally, the able and cosmopolitan + Nikitas Lulias, of the United States was selected for the job. He served from 1997 to 2008, and was ecumenically active, appealing to traditionalist Anglicans and Roman Catholics for a base amidst the upper class, British-educated Chinese of Hong Kong and Singapore. His mission, politically, was a success, but in the long run, it was exhausting and underfunded. +Nikitas was expected to colonize the whole of East Asia and Southeast Asia on an increasingly restricted budget, and was a spent force by 2008. He is now the Metropolitan of Berkeley, CA, where he heads the Patriarch Athenagoras Orthodox Institute.

Replacing +Nikitas at his own request and enthroned in Istanbul into 2008, Metropolitan +Nektarios Tsilis has taken a different approach. He plays a canonical "long game" and has divided authority over the huge metropolis with his younger brother Metropolitan +Konstantinos, who now rules from Singapore, an eparchy created by synodal act at the same time as the vote to consecrate +Nektarios as Metropolitan Bishop. There are currently two Chinese-speaking priests, Archimandrite Jonah Mourtos, a monk from Mount Athos who started the Greek Orthodox Mission in Taiwan in 2001, and Fr. Jeffery Yang, an American-born Chinese, who works on the Mainland and serves in Hong Kong since 2014.

The Moscow Patriarchate
Due to the rising interest in Orthodoxy as the “Spirit of the Russian People” by many Eurasian writers, such as Alexander Dugin and Yevgeny Primakov, and Vladimir Putin’s own conversion, Russian Orthodox Missions in China is increasingly perceived as a route to “Soft Power” by the Russian government. Fr. Denis Pozdnyaev, was originally sent as a deacon to pastor a small community of Russians in Hong Kong in 2003, and initially agreed to work with Met. + Nikitas and use the Greek Church as his base of ministry, until he was ordained priest in 2004 and established his own church space in Wan Chai. He then became the head operative of the Russian mission in China and now runs the information mission amongst the Chinese against the Ecumenical Patriarchate. By 2007 the “Hong Fang” facilities in the Russian Embassy in Beijing was restored, priests were officially stationed in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. In 2010, the Holy Synod of Moscow and All Russia declared China to be a part of their “Canonical Territory” in Article 3 of the General Provisions, which defines the structure of the Russian Orthodox Church.[47] The Russians have subsequently ordained two Chinese priests - Fr. Anatoly Gong Chengming in 2014 and Fr. Alexander Yu Shi in 2015 to serve in Hong Kong and Harbin respectively - as a way of proving their Chinese-ness and rooting their Church as the indigenous structure in China. The Russian Mission’s reliance upon radical former-Protestant discontents to direct and control the discussion of Orthodoxy in China has led to a generally negative impression amongst other Christian groups and a sense of fear connected with the politically powerful and well-funded mission. The suspicion of collusion with the Russian state was confirmed when, in May of 2013, Patriarch +Kirill, visited the Premier Xi Jinping and top leaders of China, not in his name or in the name of the Church, but in the name of President Vladimir Putin.[48]

Fr. Denis has tirelessly overseen missionary translations sponsored by the Missionary Society of Sts. Peter and Paul, using funds raised by the devout Chinese-American convert, Mitrophan Chin, which are mostly raised from convert parishes in the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America. This society has, along with the efforts of Archimandrite Jonah and his translator Pelagia Yu in Taiwan, produced the vast bulk of Orthodox apologetic and catechetical materials, now reaching over thirty small volumes and many tracts. The Greek material has tended to focus upon Orthodox explanations of history, Nicene doctrine and liturgy, generally building explanatory bridges to Christians of other traditions. The Russian literature tends to focus on lives of saints, miracle-working icons, attacks upon Protestantism, Catholicism, “Liberal Orthodoxy”, anti-ecumenism and apologies for the infallibility of the Orthodox Tradition as expressed in the Russian Orthodox Church. The Russians have been extremely effective at projecting the anti-ecumenist vision into the consciousness of those few Chinese attracted to the worshipful and historical aesthetics of Orthodoxy. It is highly illuminating that one of the most widely distributed documents by the Russian mission is a tract called “Basic Principles of the Attitude of the Russian Orthodox Church Towards the Other Christian Confessions.” [49]

The Serbian Patriarchate
There has also been an intermittent mission by the Serbian Orthodox Church through the person of Hieromonk Damascene of Platina, who has undertaken the unfinished work of his master, Fr. Seraphim Rose, in attempting to spread Orthodox Christianity through the employment of Chinese philosophy. There are roughly 50 converts through the St. Herman Monastery’s mission, and one Shanghainese young man has taken up residency as a novice within the monastery. Fr. Damascene brought China to the forefront of many American Orthodox minds in the publication of his book “Christ the Eternal Tao”, which takes a significant step in trying to repair the ethnocentric and dismissive way in which the Chinese historically were treated by Orthodox missions. Unfortunately, the philosophical categories employed are more projected hopes than founded upon facts, and much must still be done to create a dialogue between Confucian and Taoist thought with the Uncreated Light of the Cappadocian Fathers and St. Gregory Palamas.

Contemporary Oriental Orthodox Missions

Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Church
Over the last twenty years a number of Oriental Churches have established footholds in China and the Chinese-speaking world. The most successful among them have been the Armenians, who built churches in Harbin, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Myanmar and India during the days of British Colonization and under the sponsorship of White Russian protection in Northern China during the final days of the Russian Mission. The Armenian Mission’s ability to simultaneously communicate and interact with both Anglicanism and Russian Orthodoxy served it well as a refuge for Armenian Diaspora during the days of the Turkish oppression and the Armenian Genocide. Many Armenians escaped to the Far East and rebuilt their communities amongst displaced Russians, immigrating with them to places like the United States, Canada and Australia when China became inhospitable to European refugees.[50] Armenians have kept a small presence at the oldest church of Singapore, the Church of St. Gregory the Illuminator.[51] The V. Rev. Father Zaven Yazichyan, leader of the Armenian Spiritual Pastorates of Singapore, Myanmar and Bangladesh, heads the mission to descendants of the Armenian Diaspora, which has included a few Chinese intellectuals. They hold liturgy two to three times a year, on major feast days. His Holiness Karekin II, Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians, His Grace Bishop Haigazoun Najarian, Primate of the Diocese of Australia and New Zealand, His Eminence Archbishop Aram Ateshian, Patriarchal Vicar of Constantinople, recently consecrated a chapel in the “Jack & Julie Maxian Hong Kong Armenian Center”, which functions as the Armenian Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, in 2013 for use within the Armenian community. So far no priests have been assigned to Hong Kong and liturgy is only held rarely. [52]

Coptic Orthodox Church
The Coptic Diocese of Australia, New Zealand and Oceana has also developed a network in Hong Kong and the Mainland for pastoral work amongst Egyptian Christian traders, businessmen and students, many of whom work in the textile and plastics industries in Chinese industrial centers of Wuyi and Guangzhou. The mission has recently come under the direct oversight of the Patriarchate of Alexandria, as the mission intends to train Chinese clergy in the near future. The St. Mark’s Coptic Church in Hong Kong has been headed intermittently by English-speaking priests from Australia, Fr. Dawood Lamey, Fr. Youhana Kamel and Fr. Fam Morris. The Australian Diocese also holds services at the Armenian Cathedral in Singapore on a bi-weekly basis, flying in Fr. Augustinos Nada of Sydney, Australia, to head the mission.[53] Occasional pictures of Coptic worship in small chapels set up in Chinese homes will surface, but no permanent churches have been established. However, there is a large enough community of students and businessmen in Beijing to start a small monastery in a high-raise apartment complex, manned by one hieromonk and a lay-brother, from whence there is some limited interaction to the Chinese community. Coptic missions show great promise, but because of the intense language and cultural difference, and a general lack of skilled Chinese or English, it has not yet reached its starting potential.[54]

Restoring the Original Church of China

The Mission of the Holy Catholic Apostolic Assyrian Church of the East
The Assyrian Church of the East, Diocese of California, under Bishop + Mar Awa Royel, has also developed an outreach to the Chinese in Hong Kong through the work of Dr. David Tam and the “Jingjiao Fellowship”. They hosted delegations of Assyrian clergy in 2010, 2012, and 2015.[55] The fellowship has been actively involved with the Anglican Church of Hong Kong in hosting and facilitating a study group on Ancient Chinese Christianity, as well as with the Lutheran “Dao Feng Shan” Mission, which was an attempt to return to Tang Dynasty Christianity by the famous Lutheran missiologist, sinologist and anthropologist Wilhem Reichelt. The Jingjiao Fellowship, while struggling with a lack of doctrinal cohesion and an understanding of the ethos of Ancient Christianity, shows great promise in creating awareness of Tang Dynasty Christianity and its relationship to other Apostolic Churches. It is hoped that Dr. Tam and other interested parties may someday provide the basis for a resurrection of the East Syriac Tradition in China.[56]

Summary
East Asia is a great leveler, a platform upon which the dignified and time-honored Constantinopolitan legacy must vie with the resourceful, culturally unimpressed and historically uneducated Chinese Protestant underground church. These Protestants claim inspiration, martyrdom, grace and exclusive ecclesiology in a fundamentalist spirit that would make many of the strident, anti-ecumenical monks of Holy Mount Athos pale in comparison. The East has always played this role as Nestorians, Jacobites and Melkites all had equal standing as “People of the Cross” under Buddhist, Daoist or Muslim rulers. In many ways it provides a historical paradigm for our current situation, as we find secularism equating all forms of historical Christianity and marginalizing all of its communities as it attempts to get all “minority groups" connected to the globalized, consumerist, secular pattern of life, with its incipient atheism, scientism, and faith in human progress. Those with a convenient counter-narrative to western claims of moral superiority, such as Gays, Muslims and Transgendered, play another role, that of the projected victim, useful for the restructuring of society through manipulation of political and entertainment sensibilities. Eastern Christians, with their attachment to all that condemns the West in the eyes of Postmodernists and Cultural Marxists, will be forever condemned to the new Dhimmitude of Secularism, and pushed to abandon their quaint and outdated modalities of existence.

The situation for the Oriental Orthodox, Chalcedonian Orthodox and Assyrian Church in East Asia is complicated by layers of forgetfulness, self-redefinition, language, and cultural prerogatives, which makes charting a path forward difficult. Often that which seems cut and dry, simple statements of fact according to our current paradigms, especially upon abstract cultural constructs claiming to be “inspired”, “unchanging”, and “universal”, are upended by the mere presence of the Far East and its clearer, unbiased memory of things as they actually occurred, not as we wish them to be remembered. Inconvenient facts abound, such as the Greek Orthodox mission taking up residence with the East Syriac Church in the Chinese capital of Chang’An in 647AD, the involvement of Christians in the attempted overthrow of Emperor Xuanzong in the An Lushan Revolt during the Tang Dynasty in 780AD (and thusly finding itself labeled a rogue religion and disfavored by the Chinese court), and the way in which Russian monks and priests acted as smugglers, spies and merchants in the Russian Chinese Mission during the 1700’s. Archimandrite Gury’s involvement in the Russian annexation of Manchuria, inadvertently leading to the loss of millions of Chinese lives, and the way that St. Jonah, the “Enlightener of Manchuria”, excluded the Chinese from even entering the Harbin Cathedral at the turn of the last century by hanging bronze plaques beside Narthex doors that said “No Chinese” in the Chinese language, also create conflicts for the received narrative. The contradictions and incompatible abstractions continue up until the present, with a large-scale canonical fight for territory between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Ecumenical Patriarchate, each with well thought out, revisionist histories, each with a true perspective, and each completely refusing to hear the other side - which also has a valid point. China reveals the worst in Christianity in general and in Orthodoxy in particular. It could be seen as a challenge to be “plastered over”, as various Orthodox fundamentalists have attempted, either from Platina or from the Boston-based Orthodoxy.cn, or it could be used as a call to humility and dialogue, making Orthodoxy more truthful and even more able to spread the Gospel in China and the post-Christian world as a result. To do so is the great challenge of Orthodox Christianity in the contemporary world.

Bibliography

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[1] Matthew 8:11, King James Version
[2] Matthew 28:18, KJV
[3] Acts 10:34, KJV
[4] Hudra, Breviary of the Church of the East, Hymn for the Apostles of the East (Kerala, India: Chaldean Syrian Church of the East in India, 1968), pg 884
[5] Later Book of the Han, Vol 2, Chapter 19
[6] My translation of the original text, published as “The Christian Gospel Mirror of the Han Dynasty,《汉代基督教福音铭文镜》“制作这面神镜，来尊崇敬拜独一无二的上帝。圣母玛利亚目证了耶稣基督是上帝的独生子，他有帝王一般的显赫。凡立志信他的，要重新、必须、再生一回。”Original news report published 09/07/2010 and available at http://www.cchicc.com/news.php?id=11966, last accessed August 1^st, 2017.
[7] Prof. M.M. Ninan, Acts of the Apostle Thomas: The Story of the Thomas Churches, (San Jose, CA: Global Publishers, 2011) pgs 37 & 88
[8] Zhang Duomo, Xin De Magazine, 432^nd Edition, No. 36, reports on three documented Christian finds recognized by China Archeology Association. “On August 1^st, 2002, the People’s Daily reporter Li Hang wrote, ‘Chinese Economic Association and Theology Professor Wang Weipan, has successfully argued that the stone carvings of Xuzhou from the Eastern Han dynasty fit Biblical and Christian narratives, and that they are evidence of early Chinese interaction with the Gospel. If accurate, this would prove transmission of the Christian story by the year 87AD. On December 22^nd, 2005, the China Daily reported that ‘Jiangsu Xuzhou archeologist had discovered a ‘Han Dynasty Catholic Gospel Inscribed Bronze Mirror’, this was reported again in greater detail on June 23^rd, 2009, in the Shanghai periodical, “Wen Hui” (Literary Collections). If true, this would push back the establishment of Christianity in China back to the first century and extend known Christian history in China by over 500 years.” Original Chinese available at http://club.kdnet.net/dispbbs.asp?id=9092261&boardid=2, last accessed August 1^st, 2017.
[9] Christian Gerlach, Wu-Wei in Europe: A Study of Eurasian Economic Thought, March 2005 (London, England: London School of Economics, Department of Economic History, Diss), pgs 3-33
[10] Michael Keevak, “The Story of the Stele: China’s Nestorian Monument and Its Reception in the West, 1625-1916” (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2008), 61-87
[11] Procopius, On the Wars, Internet Medieval Sourcebook, Procopius: the Roman Silk Industry c. 550. Available at: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/550byzsilk.html. Accessed August 1st, 2017
[12] S.G. Mgr Addai Scher, Histoire Nestorienne Inédite: Chronique de Séert. Seconde Partie, Patrologia Orientalis, 13.4 (Paris, France: Firmin-Didot et Co Imprimeurs-Editeurs, 1919), pgs 557-558: E. A. Wallis Budge, The Book of Governors: the Historia Monastica of Thomas, Bishop of Marga, A.D. 840, (edited from Syriac manuscripts in the British museum and other libraries. London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1893), pgs 123-127; and, Amri et Slibae De Maris, Patriarchis Nestorianorum Commentaria (Romae: De Luigi, 1896), pg 50
[13] P.Y. Saeki, The Nestorian Monument in China, (London, England: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1928), pg 42
[14] Oracle Bureau 971.10-15, Translation by the Author：王欽若, 《冊府元龜》 （九百七十一卷）: 五月拂林国王遣大德僧新罗王并遣使来朝…七年正月奚王李大辅及新罗国并遣使来贺正突骑施匐车鼻施啜苏禄笄波斯国并遣使朝贡石拂林国王遣吐火罗国大首领献狮子二零羊二拂涅铁利越喜并遣使来朝。
[15]Wu Liwei, “Reflections on Jingjiao Studies, Questions and Problems”《关于景教研究的问题意识与反思》，(Shanghai, China: Fudan Journal of Social Sciences, No. 5, 2011), Zhang Zhushan, Researches into “Folin” as a Name in Chinese History 《“拂菻”名称语源研究述评》, (Beijing, China: History Research Journal, No.5, 2009), Friedrich Hirth, The Mystery of Fulin (Los Angeles, California: Journal of the American Oriental Society, No. 33, 1913), pgs 193-208
[16] This is from “Miscellaneous Proclamations” of the Tang, Vol. 27, with translation by the Author. The original reads, 《唐会要‧大秦寺 》： “天宝 四载九月诏曰波斯 经教出自 大秦传习而来久行中国。 爰初建寺因以为名将欲示人必修其本。 其两京 波斯寺 宜改为 大秦寺 。 天下诸府郡置者亦准此.”
[17] On permanent display at the Hong Kong University Museum, Hong Kong Island, under the curatorship of Dr. Florian Knothe.
[18] History of Rabban Barsawma, translated from Syriac by E.A. Wallis Budge, (Harrison & Sons, Ltd., St. Martin’s Lane, London, W.C. 2, 1928)
[19] Lin Yin, Fulin Monks: Did Some Christians Other Than Nestorians Enter China During the Tang Period (Histoire et Tradition, Proche-Orient Chretien, No. 57, 2007), pgs 24-42
[20]The official reception of the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon in the Church of the East occurred in 544AD under Patriarch Mar Aba the Great, and is documented in the East Syriac Synodikon, translated in J.B. Chabot, Synodicon Orientale (Paris, France: Imprimerie Nationale, 1902), pgs 1-16. A full explanation of this reception is found in the important thesis by Rev. Ephraim Ashur Alkhas, Philosophical Terms and Anthropology in the Christology of Mar Babai the Great and St. Maximus the Confessor (Berkeley, California: Thesis at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, September 2015), pgs 46-47
[21] Met. +Hilarion (Alfeyev), “The Spiritual World of Isaac the Syrian”(Collegeville, MN: Cistercian Publications, 2001), pgs 1-28
[22] Timothy +Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Church (London, England: Penguin Books, 1997), pg 313
[23] This declaration of Chalcedonian Christology was signed by H.H. John Paul II and H.H. Mar Dinkha IV, available at http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_11111994_assyrian-church_en.html for review, last accessed August 1^st, 2017
[24] “Another Buddha — Metteyya (Maitreya) — will gain Awakening, his monastic Sangha numbering in the thousands. The greatest king of the time, Sankha, will go forth into homelessness and attain arahantship under Metteyya's guidance.” Digha Nikaya 26, Cakkavatti Sutta: The Wheel-Turning Emperor, translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu, 2002 (available at http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/dn/dn.26.0.than.html), last accessed August 1^st, 2017.
[25] P.Y. Saeki, The Nestorian Monument in China (London, England: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1928), pg 72
[26] John M.L. Young, By Foot to China: Mission of the Church of the East, to 1400, (Diss., Westminster Theological Seminary, 1984, available at Assyrian International News Agency Books Online, www.aina.org), pgs 15, 16 & 26, last accessed August 1^st, 2017.
[27] Moffett, Vol. 1, pg 448
[28] Prof. Samuel N.C. Lieu, Dr. Lance Eccles, Prof. Majella Franzmann, etc, Corpus Fontium Manichaeorum: Series Archaeologica et Iconographica: Medieval Christian and Manichaean Remains from Quanzhou (Zayton), 2012 (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers n.v.) pgs 1-51
[29] Liam Matthew Brockey, Journey to the West: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579-1724 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), pgs 164-203, and, Andrew C. Ross, A Vision Betrayed: The Jesuits in Japan and China, 1542-1742 (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1994) pgs 190-199
[30] Eric Widmer, The Russian Eclessiastical Mission in Peking in the eighteenth century, (Cambridge, MA: East Asian Research Center, Harvard University, 1976), and, Albert Parry, Russian (Greek Orthodox) Missionaries in China, 1689-1917; Their Cultural, Political, and Economic Role
 (Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 9, No. 4, Dec., 1940), pgs 401-424
[31] Le Feng, “Investigations into Eastern Christianity” (Beijing, China: Religion and Culture Press, 2008), pgs 423-426 (乐峰著《东方基督教探索》中国北京：宗教文化出版社，2008) Quotation translated from the original by the author, pg 425 - “再如第九届传教士团团长卑丘林是个干了大量坏事的人。由于他和其他传教士"行为不正”，生活极为腐烂，“受到中国理籓院的训斥”。
[32] Jeremias Norman, Blackwell Companion to Eastern Christianity (Oxford, England: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2007), pg 283
[33] Norman, pg 284
[34] Anonymous, “Bei-Guan” (Tianjin, China: Russian Orthodox Mission Printing Press, 1939), pg 35
[35] Protopriest Nikolai Ponomarev, Khristiyanstvo na Dal’nem Vostke [Christianity in the Far East], Harbin, Doctoral thesis, 1937, p. 193, quoted by Protopriest Serafim Gan, Chancellor of the Synod of Bishops, Secretary of the First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia: www.synod.com/synod/engdocuments/enart_protseraphimganmetrinnocent.html, last accessed August 1^st, 2017.
[36] Ponomarev, pg 193
[37] Met. +Hilarion Alfeyev’s Documentary, “都主教伊拉里昂（阿尔费耶夫）的电影 “东正教在中国”, (Moscow, Russia: Department of External Church Relations, 2013), available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87sAEP4Lb1w&t=18s, last accessed August 1^st, 2017.
[38] Daniel H. Bays, A New History of Christianity in China (London, England: Blackwell Publishing, 2012), pg 213
[39] Dr. Meledath Kurian Thomas,  “Eighty Years of Indo – Serbian Orthodox Relations and Saint Dositej Vasić of Zagreb” (Kerala, India: Malankara Orthodox Mission Society, 2014), pgs 1-7, also available at http://theorthodoxchurch.info/blog/news/eighty-years-of-indo-serbian-orthodox-relations-saint-dositej-vasic-of-zagreb. Last accessed August 1st, 2017.
[40] Fr. Andrew Midgley, “A Lifetime in Pilgrimage”, Mettingham, Suffolk, 2014, http://www.rocorstudies.org/2017/02/11/a-lifetime-in-pilgrimage-archimandrite-lazarus-moore-1902-1992, last accessed August 1^st, 2017.
[41] Anonymous, Irénikon, Vol. 12 (Amay, Belgium: Union des églises, 1936), pg 185
[42] Metropolitan +Anthony Khrapovitsky, “The Basis on Which Economy May Be Used In the Reception of Converts” (The Christian East, Vol. VIII, 1927), pgs 60-69
[43] St. John Maximovitch was the first bishop to openly envision ROCOR’s mission in the world as an anti-ecumenist scion, a divinely appointed prophetic voice bequeathed in the suffering of the Russian people to decry the coming religion of the Antichrist, as seen in his enthronement homily in 1938. This is one of the reasons why Met. +Anastasius Gribanovsky chose to elevate him, and this shared vision became their principle theological contribution to contemporary Eastern Orthodoxy. Anti-ecumenism was only echoed as ROCOR’s official theme in its 3rd Synod in 1974 under Archb. +Phileret, http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/council.htm, last accessed August 1^st, 2017.
[44] This interpretation was promulgated anonymously by a “Statement from the Faculty of Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Seminary” in 2009 and caused a stir around the Orthodox world as it clearly identifies the place of the Ecumenical Patriarchate as “Primus Sine Paribus” (First Without Equals). It is available at https://www.goarch.org/-/the-leadership-of-the-ecumenical-patriarchate-and-the-significance-of-canon-28-of-chalcedon for review, last accessed August 1^st, 2017.
[45] As shown my OMHKSEA’s own declarations of this principle, hosted on their website: http://www.omhksea.org/2014/01/first-without-equals-a-response-to-the-text-on-primacy-of-the-moscow-patriarchate/, last accessed August 1^st, 2017
[46] Edict of the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, 1997, Chapter: 1163, Title: The Orthodox Metropolitanate of Hong Kong and South East Asia Ordinance (30/06/1997).
[47] Official proclamation available at https://mospat.ru/en/documents/ustav/i/, last accessed August 1^st, 2017.
[48]This information is reported in multiple sources, but lack first-hand accounts. A second-hand account from the official news release is available at http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Patriarch-Kirill-calls-for-recognition-of-Orthodox-Church-in-China,-but-is-silent-on-religious-freedom-27912.html, last accessed on August 1^st, 2017.
[49] Published in 2009 in Hong Kong and distributed under the Chinese title, 《俄罗斯正教会对待其它基督教派信徒的基本原则》
[50] This narrative is offered by Tamar Najarian’s blog, https://tamarnajarian.wordpress.com /2012/04/08/armenians-in-china/, and a pictorial journal of Armenian life in Northern China at http://hyesharzhoom.com/pictorial-history-of-the-armenians-in-china-1919-1945/, last accessed August 1^st, 2017.
[51] Reported in the Armenian Weekly in January of 2015, available at http://armenianweekly.com/2015/01/06/armenians-of-singapore/, and a historical overview at https://roots.sg/Content/Places/national-monuments/armenian-apostolic-church-of-saint-gregory-the-illuminator, last accessed August 1^st, 2017.
[52] The consecration of the Armenian chapel is available for view on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfUBu0lQ91c&t=2510s last accessed on August 1^st, 2017, and news of an Armenian Liturgy held in Guanzhou in 2014 was reported as a headline in the Armenian Weekly, December 14^th, 2014, online at http://armenianweekly.com/2014/12/15/china/, last accessed August 1^st, 2017.
[53] Press release available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20170610202311/ http://asbarez.com/160571/divine-liturgy-celebrated-in-armenian-church-in-singapore/, last accessed August 1^st, 2017.
[54] Much of this information was learned through many conversations with Chinese friends interested in Oriental Orthodoxy, Christy Ma, Isaac Wong, Dr. David Tam, Edward Yong and Alan Demitrios Ho. Information about the Assyrian Mission in China was gathered during my personal work with the Assyrian Church of the East between December 2014 and July 2016.
[55]Bishop +Mar Awa’s press release on the Assyrian Church website, dated December 10^th, 2012 - http://news.assyrianchurch.org/bishop-mar-awa-royel-visits-china/, last accessed August 1^st, 2017.
[56] Dr. Tam and the Jingjiao Fellowship meets with the Assyrian Patriarch, press releases from June 18^th, 2012 and July 28^th, 2014, on the Assyrian Church website: http://news.assyrianchurch.org/catholicos-patriarch-receives-director-of-jingjiao-fellowship/, and http://news.assyrianchurch.org/director-of-hong-kong-based-jingjiao-fellowship-received-by-catholicos-patriarch/, last accessed August 1^st, 2017.