Eve Tibbs offers a comprehensive yet accessible introduction to the beliefs and practices of the Eastern Orthodox Church for Western readers. Tibbs has devoted her career to translating the Orthodox faith to an evangelical audience and has over twenty years of experience teaching this material to students. Assuming no prior knowledge of Orthodox theology, this survey covers the basic ideas of Eastern Orthodox Christianity from its origins at Pentecost to the present day.

In recent years a new interest in the Eastern Churches has emerged in the Western Churches both Catholic and Protestant. The reader of this work will find answers to such fundamental questions as Who are Eastern Catholics?" "How did the Eastern Catholic Churches originate?" "Who are Orthodox Christians?" "How do Orthodox Christians differ from Eastern Catholics?" "Why do so many diverse Eastern Churches exist?" While it cannot answer all these questions thoroughly, this concise booklet can help interested laity, theological students, and ministers come to understand and respect Eastern Catholicism for its many contributions to the universal Catholic Church.

In the second edition of this major work, Dominican theologian Aidan Nichols provides a systematic account of the origins, development and recent history—now updated—of the relations between Rome and all separated Eastern Christians. By the end of the twentieth century, events in Eastern Europe, notably the conflict between the Orthodox and Uniate Churches in the Ukraine and Rumania, the tension between Rome and the Moscow patriarchate over the re-establishment of a Catholic hierarchy in the Russian Federation, and the civil war in the then federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia, brought attention to the fragile relations between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, which once had been two parts of a single Communion. At the start of the twenty-first century, in the pontificate of Benedict XVI, a papal visit to Russia—at the symbolic level, a major step forward in the ‘healing of memories’— appears at last a realistic hope. In addition, the schisms separating Rome from the two lesser, but no less interesting, Christian families, the Assyrian (Nestorian) and Oriental Orthodox (Monophysite) Churches, are examined. The book also contains an account of the origins and present condition of the Eastern Catholic Churches—a deeper knowledge of which, by their Western brethren, was called for at the Second Vatican Council as well as by subsequent synods and popes. Providing both historical and theological explanations of these divisions, this illuminating and thought-provoking book chronicles the recent steps taken to mend them in the Ecumenical Movement and offers a realistic assessment of the difficulties (theological and political) which any reunion would experience.

An insider’s account of the Eastern Orthodox Church, from its beginning in the era of Jesus and the Apostles to the modern age In this short, accessible account of the Eastern Orthodox Church, John McGuckin begins by tackling the question “What is the Church?” His answer is a clear, historically and theologically rooted portrait of what the Church is for Orthodox Christianity and how it differs from Western Christians’ expectations. McGuckin explores the lived faith of generations, including sketches of some of the most important theological themes and individual personalities of the ancient and modern Church. He interweaves a personal approach throughout, offering to readers the experience of what it is like to enter an Orthodox church and witness its liturgy. In this astute and insightful book, he grapples with the reasons why many Western historians and societies have overlooked Orthodox Christianity and provides an important introduction to the Orthodox Church and the Eastern Christian World.

Examines the long and often difficult history of the Eastern-Church Catholics (e.g., Melkites, Maronites, Ruthenians, Copts, Ukrainians) and their relationship, often tenuous, with Rome.

In Introduction to Eastern Christian Liturgies, renowned liturgical scholars Stefanos Alexopoulos and Maxwell E. Johnson fulfill the need for a new, comprehensive, and straightforward survey of the liturgical life of the Eastern Christian Churches within the seven distinct liturgical Eastern rites still in existence today: Armenian, Byzantine, Coptic, Ethiopic, East Syrian, West Syrian, and Maronite. This topical overview covers baptism, chrismation, Eucharist, reconciliation, anointing, marriage, holy orders, burial, Liturgy of the Hours, the liturgical year, liturgical ethos and spirituality, and offers a brief yet comprehensive bibliography for further study. This book will be of special interest to masters-level students in liturgy and theology, pastoral ministers seeking an introduction to the liturgies of the Christian East, and all who seek to increase their knowledge of the liturgical riches of the Christian East.