In the new issue of The Tablet:

It’s a good article that covers more than the usual theme of the Christian diaspora from the Middle East – although that is well-documented, country-by-country, in the piece. He delves into theological and ecclesiological issues as well:

Christianity in the Middle East is often obscured, especially from the West. Its history has been a contested one, with followers – Assyrians, Chaldeans, Copts, Maronites – caught between an Eastern Christian identity and a rich, diverse, Arab Christian one. It is frequently forgotten that it was initially the Syriac Christians (and not Arab Islam) who handed on the heritage of science from the ancients through their translations into Arabic.

The Christological controversies of the fifth and sixth centuries produced a three-way split among the Christian Churches that still continues to this day, although it is only among the Churches of Syriac liturgical tradition that all three doctrinal positions are represented. The divisions were originally caused by controversy over how best to describe the relationship between the divinity and the humanity in the incarnate Christ. For the Orthodox and Catholic traditions the matter had been settled by the carefully balanced doctrinal formulation produced by the Council of Chalcedon in 451, but this had not been agreed by the Churches of the Middle East by the time of the Arab invasions of the seventh century, at the birth of Islam, when they were politically cut off from those of the Byzantine Empire and the West.

Centuries of Muslim Ottoman domination fossilised the Middle Eastern Churches in their divisions. Initially the Ottoman rulers centralised all Christian authority in their lands within the Patriarchate of Constantinople (followed a few years later by an Armenian Patriarchate). It was not until the nineteenth century that reformist measures allowed these ancient Churches to be formally recognised. Now a combination of contemporary crises and ecumenism are beginning to bring down the barriers. In recent years there have been agreements on many levels, from permission for partial mutual participation in sacraments, to the formation of future priests, catechesis. Christian theologians have been calling for a new evaluation of meaning to this innovative kind of communion that is growing among the Churches of the Middle East. The Christian Churches have become part and parcel of each other in some mysterious way.