Chalcedon, China and the church.

Last night I saw a programme on the early history of Christianity.  As this was something I don't know all that much about, I watched it and found in interesting, despite the fact that the presenter looks like a Victorian gentleman-explorer.  For once it was nice to see a non-negative item about Christianity in the media.  The presenter wasn't sceptical, or looking to find faults, but was telling a story that is not well known, and throwing up a few surprises along the way.

The first programme engaged with the debates over doctrine within the early church, discussions at the Council of Chalcedon over how Jesus could be both fully God and fully human.  This was something I'd only vaguely heard about before, and to be honest the differences can seem a little confusing and hard to understand why it actually matters.  While the Western, European churches (Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants) decided in favour of Jesus's two natures, human and divine, coming together into one person who remained both human and divine (rather than the divine swallowing up the humanity and taking it over, or the human and the divine remaining separate), not everyone was satisfied.  Two separate Eastern churches split with the West's compromise, one on each side of the debate.

We don't hear much about the Oriental Orthodox Church or the Church of the East today, but part of the programme focused on the spread of the early church in the east, into areas we don't normally associate with Christianity- Syria, Egypt, Iraq and- most surprisingly- China.  China was the one that really grabbed my attention.  It surprised me to know that at about the same time as the Anglo-Saxons were being converted to Christianity in the 7th century, the church was making an impact in China.  The programme visited the site of an ancient Christian monastery- although a gang of angry locals stopped them from going inside, fed up with these Westerners tramping over their heritage.

It was interesting to hear that this early Chinese Church apparently took on board local culture and was able to adapt to different circumstances.  The presenter contrasted this with the nineteenth century missionaries, who were usually determined impose a Western, imperialist version of Christianity upon the 'natives.'  I found myself wondering how the modern expansion of the church in China fits into this?  Or indeed the spread of evangelical faith throughout the developing world?  Is westernised Christianity prepared to take on board 'culturally-relevant' ways of doing things to adapt to the specific needs of people in China, or India, or Central Africa, while still retaining theological integrity, or do we impose our songs, our liturgy, our hierarchy on them?  Come to think of it, are we willing to conduct services in Britain in a culturally relevant way, or do we impose an out of date structure on them?

Although it is sad that the Eastern churches fell out with the Western ones, the programme gave me some hope and optimism.  Out of that split came a great spread of the gospel all across Asia.  It was great to see the variety of ways of worshipping.  It was great to find that there were Christians worshipping, in different ways, in places I hadn't imagined there was a Christian community before the last couple of centuries.