Research Catalog

The Church of the East and the Church of England : a history of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Assyrian Mission

Title: The Church of the East and the Church of England : a history of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Assyrian Mission / J.F. Coakley.
Author: Coakley, J. F.
Publication: Oxford [England] : Clarendon Press ; New York : Oxford University Press, 1992.

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Request in advance	BX5128.2 .C63 1992	Off-site

Description

x, 422 pages : illustrations, maps; 23 cm

Summary

For some thirty years before the First World War, the Church of England maintained a mission of help to the Assyrian Church of the East (popularly known as the Nestorian church) in its then homeland, a corner of eastern Turkey and north-western Persia. The Mission had a controversial history. At home, not everyone could appreciate the rationale of a mission which was to aid an obscure and heretical body and which strictly forbade any conversions from this body to the Anglican church.
In the field, the missionaries had to do battle with xenophobic governments, with rival American and French missions, and with the Assyrians themselves, whose confidence proved difficult to gain. In some respects the Mission was unsuccessful, but it had notable accomplishments, especially in scholarship and in ecumenical diplomacy.
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Besides being the history of a Victorian missionary society, the present study deals in some detail with the history of the Assyrians in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries - both as the survival of an ancient church with hierarchy, liturgy, and theological formulas, and as an ethnic minority in the Middle East. Illustrations and maps enhance the value of the book as a source for the history of the time and place.
This is the first study of the relations between the church of England and the Church of the East, and is based on largely unpublished documents in English and Syriac.

Subject

Bibliography (note)

Contents

I. First Acquaintance. The Church of the East in 1835. Earliest contacts with the Church of England. George Percy Badger. An interval -- II. Towards a Mission, 1868-1884. New petitions, new plans. E.L. Cutts and Christians under the Crescent. Rudolph Wahl, Archbishop Tait's missionary. The end of the beginning -- III. Archbishop Benson's Mission, 1884-1890. The re-foundation. The first four years in Urmia. In the mountains. Nestorianism and printing. Home organization -- IV. Growth and Development, 1890-1896. The Sisters of Bethany. Maclean and his successors. Anglican v. Catholic missions: Turkey. Anglican v. Catholic missions: Persia. The end of expansion. The Court of Mar Shimun. F.F. Irving -- V. Reverses and Recovery, 1896-1904. The murder of a bishop. The Russian crisis. Reduced circumstances in Persia. Wider work in Turkey, narrower means at home. Catholics and the Catholikos again -- VI. Last Initiatives, 1903-1915. Mar Shimun and the Malabar connection. The Old Church in Persia.
Facing the doctrinal question. From Van to Amadia. After Browne. On sufferance -- VII. In Retirement, 1915-1938. The First World War. Wigram, the Mission, and the refugees. Unfinished business, 1922-1930. Disengagement.

ISBN

0198267444 :

LCCN

91033253

OCLC

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries