Silk road christianity

1. The economics, politics and spirituality of the
religions along the greatest highways on Earth.

2. 1.The Persian Church became the Church of the East in 424
and ‘adopted’ Nestorianism. Along the Old Silk Road, this
Nestorian Christianity encountered Roman Christianity and
Byzantine Christianity as it launched missions to the East.
2. Alopen was sent to China and arrived at Changan in 635.
Christianity spread to the steppes of Siberia.
3. Chinggis Khan ‘created’ Mongolia in 1207 and terrorized
Europe. His descendants mastered Asia as China’s Yuan
dynasty. Batu Khan & his Golden Horde of “Devil’s
Horsemen” nearly obliterated Roman Christendom in 1241.
4. Kublai Khan wanted the 7 Arts of Europe and requested
100 missionaries from the Pope that never arrived. Marco
Polo reported on widespread Nestorian Christianity at
Cambaluc (Beijing) and all over Cathay (China) in the 1280s.

3. … taught his disciples to
- be compassionate to the weak (Matt. 25:35-40, 45)
- preach the Good News of God’s love (Matt. 28:19)
- understand that his kingdom not of this world (John 18:36)
Within 400 years of his execution, Jesus’ followers had
spread throughout the Roman Empire and beyond. Some of
them went east of Jerusalem. They came to be known as the
Church of the East and preached the Gospel to the “Ends of
the Earth.” This is their story.

4. In 424, the Persian Church of Assyria became independent of
Byzantium and called itself the Church of the East (COTE)
with a Syriac liturgy.
The COTE increasingly ‘adopted’ Nestorianism and distanced
itself from the 4th Council’s Chalcedonian formula of 451.
In 498, the bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon assumed the title
“Patriarch of the East.”
The COTE was the Church of the Sassanid Empire of Persia
(224-651), and from the 9th to the 14th centuries it was the
world’s largest Church in geography, stretching from the
Mediterranean Sea to India and China.

6. In 489 the School of Edessa (Ur in Turkey) relocated to its
original home of Nisibis (near Ur in Turkey), founded in 350 to
study Theology, Philosophy, and Medicine. It is often called
the world’s first university.
The COTE actively launched missions to the Persian Empire
and India, competing with Rome and Byzantium for the soul
of Christianity.
In 644, it became a dhimmi community when the Persian
Empire fell to the Muslims and became the Caliphate of
Rashidun.

7. From Persia, the COTE launched missions to Central Asia,
converting large numbers of Uighurs, who were long time
Manicheans, to Christianity.
From Central Asia, missions into China and Siberia led to the
conversions of many city dwellers and nomadic tribes.
By the 10th century, Nestorianism in China declined but
Nestorian Christianity in the Steppes of Siberia thrived among
the Naimans, the Keraits and later, the Onguts among many
others.

8. How far the Church of the East (Assyrian/East Syrian)
missions reached we are never likely to know for certain.
As early as the 6th century, Cosmas Indicopleustes
encountered East Syrian Christians on the remote island of
Socotra off the coast of Yemen.
In the 8th century, Patriarch Timothy I of Baghdad sent
missionaries to Tibet but Christianity arrived there sometime
in the 6th century, some 800 years before the present Dalai
Lama’s Geluk (Yellow Hat) Buddhist sect was established.
East Syrian Christians reached Sri Lanka, Java, Sumatra,
Japan, Korea, Burma, Malaya, Vietnam, and Thailand.

10. 635: Patriarch Yeshuyab II from the Church of the East in
Baghdad sent Bishop Alopen to China. Emperor Taizong of the
Tang dynasty welcomed him and Persian Christianity’s
scriptures.
This “Nestorian” Christianity flourished in East Asia for
several hundreds of years. Churches were built in every
province of the country and copies of the Christian scriptures
were copied for distribution.
781: A stone stela was constructed to celebrate the arrival of
Alopen, now known as the Nestorian Monument.
8th-9th C: Patriarch Timothy I (780-823), via his Metropolitan,
ruled over Christians in all 10 provinces of China.

12. 845: The emperor banned all religions other than
Confucianism, and Nestorianism began to fade in China.
Nestorian Christianity did not develop strong Chinese roots
and was reliant on the emperors for political support. Unlike
Buddhism, Christianity remained a ‘foreign’ religion even
though Jesus was continentally Asian. With the fall of the
Tang dynasty in the 10th century, Nestorianism declined in
China, but spread out to Mongolia and Siberia.
13th century: When the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty ruled China,
the Church was revived but when that dynasty fell,
Nestorianism again fell from prominence.

14. 11th century
Nestorian Christianity spread by traders to many parts of the
Steppes of modern Siberia & Mongolia.
Over the next few centuries, various nomadic tribes as well
as settled peoples in this region turned to Christianity.
They include the Naimans, the Keraits, the Onguts and even
the “Black Chinese” of the Western Liao dynasty. When they
were eventually united as Mongolia, Christianity was already
a well-known religion among its warriors.

15. Christian witness in the Steppes came from Central Asia and
central to their expansion was the support of Merv, once the
greatest city on earth.
In 1009, the bishop of Merv (modern Turkmenistan) informed the
patriarch of Baghdad (modern Iraq) that an entire tribe of
Kerait Turks in the Steppes (modern Russia) had become
Christian and petitioned to support them.
Among the Keraits would subsequently be the mother of Kublai
Khan, first emperor of China’s Yuan dynasty and Great Khan of
the Mongols.
Nomadic tribes (from modern Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan) also
turned to “The Man on the Cross.”

17. During this same 11th century, Western Christianity was being
torn apart by Latin and Greek speaking Churches into the
Roman Catholic and Byzantine Orthodox Churches.
In Persia, Islam was the main religion, ruled as the Abbasid
Empire. There, a Turk named Seljuk rose to power and
defeated the Abbasids in Baghdad before taking control of
this Islamic empire of Asia.
In 1064, the Seljuk Turks attacked Armenia.
In 1071, they defeated the Byzantine empire to form the
Sultanate of Rum (modern central Turkey), the Arabic word
for Rome.

18. 12th century
In every Christian denomination, religion and politics
shadowed each other closely.
The religious center of Armenian Christianity shifted from
Greater Armenia (NE Turkey) to Lesser Armenia (SE Turkey)
when the Catholicus (spiritual leader) moved his ‘throne’
away from Mount Ararat.
The political center of Armenia was led by King Toros II who
founded the Kingdom of Armenia in 1145.
In the tussle between Roman Catholic and Armenian Orthodox
Churches, the Pope sent missionaries to convert Armenian
Christians to Latin Christianity, forming the Latin-Armenian
Church.

19. Rome continued its Crusades and within Lesser Armenia
Count Baldwin established the County of Edessa at Ur (Sanli-
Urfa in modern SE Turkey) before becoming King of
Jerusalem.
OT connection: Edessa was once called Ur, the hometown of
Abram, before he left for Harran on his migration to Egypt.
NT connection: According to Eusebius, Edessa was once ruled
by a Christian King Abgar V, who received a letter from Jesus.
He was subsequently converted by one of Jesus’ 72 disciples.

20. Today, it is called Sanliurfa, Turkey

21. 12th-13th centuries
Temujin becomes Chinggis Khan (Great or Universal) and
‘unified’ the warring tribes of the Steppes thereby creating
the Mongol Empire in 1207.
Mongols worshipped Tengri, a shamanistic god of the sky. But
Chinggis was mentored by the Christian Kerait king Toghrul
Wang Khan (the legendary Prester John?). He intermarried
Shamanistic Mongols with Christian Keraits, starting with
himself.
He was succeeded by Ogetai as Great Khan.

24. Chinggis Khan arranged 3 marriages between his family with
Christian Kerait princesses:
1) Ibaka-beki was wed to Chinggis himself.
2) Bektutmish was wed to Chinggis’ oldest son, Jochi.
3) Sorkakthani was wed his other son, Tolui. She became the
mother of three imperial sons –
a) Mongke, Great Khan and emperor of the Mongols,
b) Hulagu, emperor of Persia, and
c) Kublai, Great Khan and emperor of China.

25. 1240s: Mongol forces invaded Cilicia (Lesser Armenia),
Azerbaijan, Georgia & India. Batu Khan’s Golden Horde
swept through Europe to Poland, Hungary and Austria,
threatening Christendom.
Pope Innocent IV quickly sent a delegation of Franciscans to
Karakoram hoping to make a deal with the Mongols against
their common enemy – the Muslims.

27. From 1242-1342, 8 Catholic missions were sent across to Asia:
The 1st Franciscan envoy to Karakorum was John of Plano
Carpini who took the northern Silk Road and arrived in 1246
to witness the coronation of the 3rd Great Khan, Guyuk.
He found the Mongol Khan surrounded by Christian
administrators and civil servants – all Nestorian Christians.
The 2nd Franciscan envoy to Karakorum was William of
Rubruck in 1253. He began his mission from Acre, onto
Constantinople, via the Black Sea and towards China by
crossing the Tien Shan mountains.

29. Pope Innocent IV accused the Mongols of killing the Magyars
(for murdering Mongolian envoys) and demanded their
conversion to Christianity. He was given the chilling reply:
“..and when you say, ‘I am a Christian. I pray to God. I
arraign and despise others.’ How do you know who is
pleasing to God and to whom he allots his grace?...now,
you…in person…must come and pay us homage.”
Every major political leader in human history claimed divine
sanction for world domination. The Pope and the Khan were
no different.

30. In 1251, Mongke was elected the 4th Great Khan of the
Mongols. He sent one brother Hulagu to attack Persia and the
Muslim Capital of Baghdad, where the Church of the East was
ruled from. He sent his other brother Kublai to rule over
northern China.
Reports that many in Mongol-controlled Central Asia
(centered at Samarqand) converted to Nestorian Christianity.
The transitions from shamanism to Buddhism, Islam,
Nestorianism, then back to Islam, Russian Orthodoxy and
Communism.
Today, a third round of Islam has made Samarqand an
interesting study of factors that changed religious
associations in concert with changing political climates which
in turn generated economic uncertainties.

31. 1260: Kublai was elected the 5th Great Khan. He stayed on at
Khanbaliq or Cambaluc (Beijing) rather than move to
Karakoram in Siberia.
1266: Kublai met the Polo brothers. His interest in Jesus was
evident when he requested 100 Christian teaching monks and
oil from the lamp in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Although his primary interest was the legendary Seven
(Liberal) Arts of Europe, he knew that European philosophies
and learning were shaped by the teachings of Jesus. Already
in China, the Jesus Sutras, Chinese texts describing the
teachings of the Christ, were published.

32. 1274: Niccolo and Maffeo Polo returned with 17-year old
Marco Polo and all three of them stayed for 17 years in the
service of the Khan. According to Marco, he was made
Governor of Hangzhou and served as a roving reporter for the
emperor.
1291-1294: The three Polos escorted a Mongol princess to
the Ilkhan of Persia, via the sea route, stopping in Sumatra,
Sri Lanka and India, and returned to Venice rich and full of
tales of Cathay.

34. The West had known about Christians in Asia but were
uncertain about their numbers. However, from 1236-1241,
Batu Khan’s onslaught across Asia and into Europe terrified
the highly politicized Papacy. From 1245-1345, Rome sent 8
long-range expeditions to establish political relations with
Mongol China.
The 5th expedition, led by John of Montecorvino, arrived at
Cambaluc in 1294, just after the death of Kublai Khan. Both
Marco Polo & John de Montecorvino reported large numbers
of Syriac Christians from Baghdad and Damascus in China,
and many along the towns of the Old Silk Road.
What does this tell us about the nature and state of
Christianity following the Christian diaspora from Palestine?

35. Cathay refers to China. It derived from the word Catai,
which originated from the nomadic Khitan people of northern
China who founded the Western Liao dynasty (907-1125).
They migrated to modern Kyrgyzstan and called themselves
Hala Qidan. Local Turkish Arabs mispronounced it as Kara
Khitan.
“Kara” means black in Turkic. History records them as the
Karakhitais or Qara Khitai (Black Khitans) of Turkestan
(Central Asia). So the name Black Chinese was born.
How did the homeland of the 'Black' Chinese become Cathay?
Back in Europe, Marco Polo described the southern Chinese as
Manzi and the northern Chinese as Catai, adulterated into
Cathay. Thus, Europeans came to call all of China, Cathay.

37. Silk Road Christianity became the largest region of
Christianity in the world, and it was entirely non-Western.
Persian “Nestorian” Christianity dominated Christendom
outside the ‘Christendom’ of Europe.
Roman “Catholic” Christianity attempted to politicize the
faith of Jesus and created an obstacle to the conversion of
Asia that persists to this day.
Byzantine “Orthodox” Christianity continued to do battle
with the increasingly successful Seljuk Turks until
Constantinople fell in 1453.

39. Samarqand in modern Uzbekistan was once the capital of Silk
Road trading between Europe and Asia. It was known as
Marakanda by the Greeks and Afrosiab by the Sogdians, some
2550 years ago.
In 329 BC, Alexander the Great destroyed the city despite
being charmed by its stunning beauty. When it recovered
under the Romans, Sogdian became the lingua franca of the
Silk Road merchants and Zoroastrianism was the most popular
religion. Every Christian mission would have had to engage
Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism on its way eastward.
In 1907, archaeological discoveries at Dunhuang, China,
confirmed the dominance of this language of trade.

40. These ancient cities along the Silk Road were the fabled
caravan towns which hosted tired camel trains of traders and
religious scholars as they traversed the greatest terrestrial
highways of human creation.
Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Manichaeism,
Gnosticism, Christianity and Islam would all be changed by
each other as their truth-claims were put to the test in direct
encounters with other faith beliefs.
By the time official Nestorian Christianity made its way
eastward from Damascus and Baghdad, unofficial conversions
led to many communities of faith that now had to deal with
the politics of belief.

45. Spirituality has always been part of the human experience,
from shamanism of Ice-Age Cave art to the animisms of many
cultural myths to institutionalized philosophies.
Religions became the expression of spirituality during the
Axial Age, 900-200 BC, when philosophies and rituals merged.
The Mongols created the largest empire in history, but
Christianity influenced the world’s economics and politics,
and shaped the direction of human history.
Of the many Christian traditions, the Church of the East
along the Old Silk Road crossed three continents in its diverse
missions activities, and made its stamp on the worldviews of
nations that emerged in its wake.

46. But let us return to what Jesus really stood for:
1. A kingdom not of this world – John 18:36. Do not ‘grow’
the Church at the expense of the people’s spiritual growth.
2. A love for humanity, to make disciples of every nation –
Matthew 28:19. Let us humanize the language of faith.
3. A compassionate grace for the suffering of the weak and
underprivileged – Matthew 25:35-40, 45. Let us be concerned
for the voiceless.