Today, Christianity as a global religious community encompasses over a third of the entire world’s population, Eastern Christian communities represent approximately a fifth of that total number. However, despite the significant contribution that Eastern Christians have made to the history and richness of Christianity, their continued presence and witness has been often overlooked or neglected.

This important and unique collection of papers by an international team of scholars seeks to put before a wider public audience innovative contributions on the contemporary history and theology of Eastern Christianity. Eastern Christianity is looked at as a living tradition. Religious themes and theological currents are viewed in their modern political and historical contexts. Papers look at a whole range of themes-ecumenism, monasticism, the contemporary witness of today’s Desert Fathers, the politics of religious revival, Eastern Christianity in Jerusalem, relations with Islam, church-state issues, relations between Eastern and Western Christendom-from various Eastern Christian perspectives: Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopian, Eastern Catholic, Greek, Russian, and Syriac.

Contributors Sebastian Brock Basil Cousins Kjartan Anderson Harry Hagopian Makis Makris Avril Makhlouf Dorothea McEwan Anthony O‘Mahony Kevin O’Mahoney Joachim Persoon Sotiris Roussos Hratch Tchilingirian John Watson Louis Wehbe John Whooley

Publication February 2004

216 x 135 mm; approx. 620 pages, hardback; £28.00

ISBN 1 901764 23 0

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