The Chaldean Church: A Complete History from the Apostle Thomas to the Modern Diaspora (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798199765749)

THE LARGEST EASTERN CATHOLIC CHURCH IN AMERICA - AND THE
ANCIENT FAITH MOST AMERICAN CATHOLICS HAVE NEVER HEARD OF.

In the suburbs of Detroit, in the cathedral of Baghdad, in the
half-restored churches of the Nineveh Plain, and in the silent
ruins of medieval monasteries scattered from Anatolia to China,
one of the oldest Christian communities in the world is still
celebrating the same Eucharistic prayer it has prayed since the
fourth century. This is the Chaldean Catholic Church - the
largest Eastern Catholic Church in the United States, with
roughly 224,000 American faithful, and the institutional
inheritor of an apostolic tradition that traces itself back
to the Apostle Thomas and his disciples Addai and Mari.

For sixteen centuries this Church has lived through events
that would have destroyed almost any other Christian community:

- The Great Persecution of Shapur II (4th century), which
killed tens of thousands of Persian Christians
- The missionary expansion that reached China in 635 AD and
left an inscribed Christian stele standing in Xi'an
- A Mongol golden age where Christian princesses ruled
alongside Genghis Khan's descendants
- The catastrophic destruction by Timur (Tamerlane) that
reduced a continent-spanning Church to a mountain remnant
- Four centuries of survival in the Hakkari mountains
- The first union with Rome in 1552 under Yohannan Sulaqa
- The genocide of 1915 (the Sayfo), the Simele Massacre
of 1933, and the ISIS occupation of the Nineveh Plain
in 2014
- Pope Francis's historic 2021 visit to Iraq

This book - the first comprehensive single-volume English-
language history of the Chaldean Catholic Church written for
general readers - tells that entire story. It traces the path
from the first apostolic missions in Mesopotamia, through the
controversies surrounding Nestorius and the formation of the
Church of the East, through the medieval golden age of
expansion across Asia, through the long centuries of decline
and mountain refuge, through the complicated three-century
path to union with Rome, through the modern genocides and
persecutions, to the contemporary Chaldean Catholic Church
in Detroit, San Diego, Sydney, Stockholm, and Baghdad.

It addresses what most readers don't know:

- Why the Anaphora of Addai and Mari is one of the oldest
Eucharistic prayers in continuous Christian use
- How the Nestorian controversy of the fifth century was
based largely on misunderstanding, and how the 1994 Common
Christological Declaration between Pope John Paul II and
the Assyrian Patriarch finally clarified it
- Why Christian missionaries from Mesopotamia reached
Beijing in 635 AD, eight hundred years before Marco Polo
- How the Chaldean community in metropolitan Detroit became
one of the most institutionally successful immigrant
religious communities in modern American history
- What survives of the ancient Christian heartland in Iraq
after the ISIS catastrophe - and what the future holds
for a Church that has now become primarily a diaspora
Church

Written for Catholics who want to understand the universal
Church beyond its Western expressions, for Chaldean faithful
who want to know their own story, for anyone moved by the
plight of Middle Eastern Christians, and for students of
Christian history who want to learn about a tradition that
has been overlooked by mainstream Western scholarship.

This is the book that the Chaldean Catholic community has
been waiting for - and the book that every Catholic with
an interest in the global Church should read.

Author: A. Servant Of God
ISBN-13: 9798199765749
Publisher: Independently Published
Language: English
Published: 06/02/2026
Pages: 164
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.45lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.41d