Eastern churches

Eastern Christianity is one of two major classification used to categorize church bodies with shared orientation within common historical root. Eastern Christianity is a category contrasted with Western Christianity, which comprises those Christian traditions and churches that originally were based to the west along the Mediterranean region. Eastern Christianity comprises church families within Christian traditions that originally developed during classical and late antiquity in the Eastern Mediterranean region and their later extensions. The term does not refer to any single communion or particular church body. The term does not imply any unity of different communion of churches within its classification nor plurality of churches within this classification implies any disunity within any singular communion. Major Eastern Christian communions include the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Oriental Orthodox Churches, along with churches descended from the historic Church of the East (Assyrian Church of the East and its offshoot, the Ancient Church of the East), as well as the Eastern Catholic Churches (which are in communion with Rome while maintaining their respective liturgical heritage), and the Eastern Protestant churches.. The Eastern Orthodox Church is the largest body within Eastern Christianity with a worldwide population of 220 million, followed by the Oriental Orthodox Churches at 60 million. The Eastern Catholic Churches consist of about 16–18 million and are a small minority within the Catholic Church. Eastern Protestant Christian churches do not form a single communion; the Ukrainian Lutheran Church claims 2,500 members while the Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church claims over one million members. The Assyrian Church of the East and the Ancient Church of the East, descendant churches of the Assyria-based Church of the East, have a combined membership of approximately 400,000. Historically, Eastern Christianity could also referred to churches in Persian Empire that lay further east of the Roman Empire and could also referred to non-Greek churches within Eastern Roman Empire. However, with the advent of early Muslim conquests in the 7th century onwards, the term Eastern Church increasingly came to be identified with the Greek rite half of the Chalcedonian Christianity that would later centered in Constantinople following mutual separation with Western half from eleventh century onwards. This term is contrasted with the (Western) Latin Church, centered on Rome, which uses the Latin liturgical rites. The terms "Eastern" and "Western" in this regard originated with geographical divisions in Christianity mirroring the cultural divide between the Hellenistic East and the Latin West, and the political divide of 395 AD between the Western and Eastern Roman Empires. Since the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, the term "Eastern Christianity" may be used in contrast with "Western Christianity", which contains not only the Latin Church but also forms of Protestantism and Independent Catholicism. Eastern Catholic churches on the other hand, have more in common historically and theologically with Western Christianity than with other Eastern Christians. Because the largest church in the Eastern Christianity is the Eastern Orthodox Church, the term "Orthodox" is also often used in an interchangeable manner with "Eastern Christianity", despite existence of other distinct Eastern Christian communions or traditions, which includes Oriental Orthodox, True Orthodoxy, and Old Believers. However, all Christian denominations including the ones who don't label themselves "Orthodox", whether Eastern or Western, regard themselves as orthodox in the literal sense, meaning "following correct beliefs". Likewise, all Christian denominations considered themselves to be "catholic" (meaning "universal"), and as sharing in the Four Marks of the Church listed in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (381 AD): "One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic" (Greek: μία, ἁγία, καθολικὴ καὶ ἀποστολικὴ ἐκκλησία). Eastern churches (excepting the non-liturgical dissenting bodies) utilize several liturgical rites: the Alexandrian Rite, the Armenian Rite, the Byzantine Rite, the East Syriac Rite (also known as Persian or Assyrian Rite), and the West Syriac Rite (also called the Antiochian Rite).