Before speaking about the nitty gritty of the different Oriental Churches. I thought it might be illuminating to talk about some of the why (as far as my joining them).

Many times people think about conversion and it is put in terms of things like finding the right answer, "the True Church", and things like that. And that really isn't the way I saw it.

Rather than seeing it as finding the right place, or answer or something (like a panacea). I found that it was a fact that I found that the Church, and Christianity, etc. was a much bigger thing then what my former (Protestant Evangelical) understanding said about it.

I decided to kick things off by doing a nice long series about the Oriental Orthodox Churches. I will probably spend a lot of time on the Ethiopian Church since I don't get to talk about that one very much. It is very exotic and interesting. And it is also the heaviliest populated of all the Oriental Churches.


The term Oriental Orthodoxy refers to the churches of Eastern Christian traditions that keep the faith of only the first three ecumenical councils of the undivided Church - the First Council of Nicaea, the First Council of Constantinople and the Council of Ephesus - and rejected the dogmatic definitions of the Council of Chalcedon. Hence, these Churches are also called Old Oriental Churches.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriental_Orthodoxy

The Oriental Orthodox Communion is a group of churches within Oriental Orthodoxy which are in full communion with each other. The communion includes:

• The Oriental Orthodox Communion
  • The Armenian Apostolic Church
  • The Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria
    • The British Orthodox Church
  • The Ethiopian Orthodox Church (Tewahedo Church)
  • The Eritrean Orthodox Church (Tewahido Church)
  • The Malankara Orthodox Church of the East
  • The Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch
  • The Malankara Jacobite Syriac Orthodox Church
  • 
    
• from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriental_Orthodoxy