Assyrian Christians Research Articles

Geldelijk of Geestelijk Gewin? Assyrische Bisschoppen Op De Loonlijst Van Een Amerikaanse Zendingspost

AbstractIn the forties of last century, American Protestant missionaries, sent forth by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, were working among the Assyrian (Nestorian) Christians in northwestern Iran. Nearly ten years after its beginnings, the 'Nestorian mission' went through a difficult period. Not only had the mission to cope with opposition from Roman Catholic missionaries and the Persian government, but also with internal quarrels about the preferred policy of the mission. The internal conflict concentrated on the employment of Assyrian bishops by the mission. Some of the missionaries were convinced that the earlier cooperation of the bishops with the mission was only to be attributed to the fact that they received salaries, rather than out of conviction. Even more, the mission's employment of the bishops could be understood as its approval of the episcopal organisation and various customs of the Assyrian Church. For some of the missionaries, these consequences were hard to accept. Their opponents within the mission greatly valued the positive aspects of the employment of the bishops: it provided the missionaries with good opportunities to preach among the Assyrians, at the same time showing the Assyrians that the Protestants' main aim was not to subvert their customs but to stimulate a revival within the Assyrian Church. In this article, I have argued that it were these opportunities for preaching among the Assyrians which constituted the main reason for Rufus Anderson to support the latter party, even if some aspects of their policy were not in line with the general policy of the American Board of that time. As to the reasons for the Assyrian bishops to work with the American missionaries, I assume that both 'spiritual' and 'material' aspects were involved; the main reason, however, not being the bishops' attraction to the Protestant faith as such, but to the process of modernization and emancipation which the Protestant mission was thought to represent.

Kurdish Independence and Russian Expansion

A KURDISH independence movement was officially inaugu rated at the San Francisco Conference in April 1945, in a * letter addressed to the delegates in the name of the Kurd ish League. letter was accompanied by a memorandum on the Question. It makes little difference that the ma terial presented was strongly reminiscent of what had appeared in brochure form upon the same subject at the Paris Peace Con ference in 1919. figures in the memorandum may not be acceptable. demands for Kurdish autonomy may be exagger ated to the point that many readers of liberal intention will con sider them ridiculous. Certain facts, nevertheless, remain. There is a Kurdish independence movement. It has three active propa ganda centers, one located in Syrian Beirut, a second at Sauj Bulagh in western Iran. third center is in the Communist Party of 'Iraq, which has published a program of reforms with the resounding title of The Charter of the Kurdish People. Its 17 clauses include: collaboration with the Arabs of 'Iraq; real independence of the Kurds and Arabs (implying that 'Iraq is under British imperial control); freedom of political opinion and expression; distribution of lands in fee simple to the peasants; old age, sickness and unemployment security; freedom of worship for religious minorities, with special mention in this regard of the Turcomans, Yezidis, Arabs and Assyrian Christians; and encour agement of public instruction for both sexes, with native schools and teaching in the Kurdish language. All of this is admirable enough, if one can grant that Kurdish independence is feasible or that it is advisable from the point of view of world security. Cer tainly Kurdish Communism is something quite different from the Moscow brand.

An Eastern Patriarch's Education in England

In The Times of January 28th, 1925, appeared tne interesting announcement that ‘Mar Shimun XXI, the Patriarch of the Nestorian or Assyrian Christians, who is only sixteen years of age, arrived in England yesterday, and proceeded to St. Augustine's College, Canterbury, where he is to be educated.’This is not the first occasion on which a Patriarch of an Eastern Church has received his education in England, and it may be instructive to follow the career of the Orthodox predecessor of the Nestorian Patriarch Mar Shimun XXI, especially as we possess a good deal of information about him, which is, I believe, practically unknown in England. The Greek in question was Metrophanes Critopoulos, who subsequently became Patriarch of Alexandria. He arrived in London about the middle of the year 1617.The whole story of this mission of Critopoulos is extremely interesting, for it is closely bound up with the struggle between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism in the Thirty Years' War, and with the aspirations of Cyril Loucaris, that Patriarch of Constantinople who was in close touch with Western ideas, was accused of being a Calvinist, and was duly anathematised therefor by the Council of Constantinople in 1638. He is probably best known in this country for his present of the celebrated Codex Alexandrinus to King Charles I in 1628.It is not my intention to describe the career of Cyril Loucaris, except in so far as it touches upon the story of Critopoulos; it has been presented at length by Neale, as has also the episode of Metrophanes Critopoulos as far as the information about him was then available.