The Holy Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East is one of the oldest Christian communities in the world. Its roots reach into the apostolic age itself, tracing its founding to the missionary journeys of the Apostles Thomas, Thaddeus (Addai), and Bartholomew (Mari), who carried the Gospel eastward from Jerusalem into Mesopotamia, Persia, and beyond.

While the churches of Rome and Constantinople grew under the protection of the Roman Empire, the Church of the East developed independently in the Parthian and later Persian Empires — a vast region stretching from upper Mesopotamia to the borders of India and China. From its earliest centuries, the Church flourished among the Assyrian people of northern Mesopotamia, and though it eventually embraced dozens of ethnic communities across Asia, the Assyrians have remained its enduring heart.

A Language Close to Christ

The liturgical and theological language of the Church of the East is classical Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic — the family of languages spoken by Jesus Christ himself. This is not a historical curiosity; it is a living inheritance. When the faithful gather for the Holy Qurbana and the ancient hymns rise in Syriac, the sound carries an unbroken connection to the speech of first-century Palestine. Few Christian traditions anywhere in the world can claim this proximity to the language of the Lord.

Apostolic Governance

The Church of the East is governed according to the apostolic model of bishops, presbyters, and deacons. Around AD 310, Papa bar Gaggai, the bishop of the Persian capital Seleucia-Ctesiphon, organized the bishops under a centralized structure and assumed the title Catholicos of the East. A century later, at a general synod in AD 410, the assembled bishops formally received the canons and creed of the Council of Nicea, and the head of the Church received the additional title of Patriarch.

Today, the Church is led by His Holiness Mar Awa III, Catholicos-Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East. The faithful are organized into dioceses spanning Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, India, Europe, North America, and Australia — a global communion rooted in one ancient tradition.

Worship and the Holy Qurbana

At the center of the Church’s worship stands the Eucharist, known in Syriac as the Qurbana Qaddisha — the Holy Offering. The eucharistic liturgy is attributed to the Apostles Addai and Mari, the missionaries who first brought the faith to Mesopotamia, making it one of the oldest continuously celebrated liturgies in all of Christendom.

The faithful receive the body and blood of Christ under both species of leavened bread and wine. A priest ordained in the apostolic succession presides, assisted by a deacon, in the presence of the gathered community of believers. Baptism is administered by triple immersion in the name of the Holy Trinity, followed immediately by Confirmation through the laying on of hands. The sacramental life of the Church — Eucharist, Baptism, Holy Orders, Absolution, Matrimony, Unction, and the Holy Leaven — forms the rhythm of the Christian life from birth to burial.

What the Church Believes

The teaching of the Church of the East rests on the faith of the universal Church as expressed in the Nicene Creed. At its heart stand two mysteries: the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation.

The Church confesses One Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It teaches that God the Word, the Only-begotten Son, became incarnate for humanity’s salvation — born of the Blessed Virgin Mary, taking upon himself a complete humanity with a rational and immortal soul, united to his divinity at the moment of conception. The divine and human natures of Christ are understood to be united in one Person, retaining their own properties without confusion, change, division, or separation.

The Church firmly rejects any suggestion that Christ was merely an ordinary man inhabited by God, or that there are two Sons or two Christs. It confesses one Lord Jesus Christ, who through his passion, death, burial, and resurrection redeemed humanity from the bondage of sin and death — the same yesterday, today, and forever.

A Church That Reached the Ends of the Earth

What is often forgotten in Western-centered histories of Christianity is how far east the faith traveled. By the seventh century, the Church of the East had established dioceses and monasteries across Persia, Central Asia, Tibet, and China. The famous Nestorian Stele, erected in 781 in Chang’an (modern Xi’an), records the arrival of Christianity in the Tang Dynasty court. At its height, the Church of the East may have been the most geographically widespread Christian communion in the world.

Centuries of persecution under Mongol, Timurid, and Ottoman rule decimated these communities. The Assyrian Genocide of 1914–1920 and subsequent upheavals displaced hundreds of thousands. Yet the Church endured. What survives today is not a relic but a living faith — diminished in numbers, undiminished in conviction.