Oriental Orthodox Church
The Oriental Orthodox churches came to a parting of the ways with the remainder of Christianity in the 5th century. The separation resulted in part from the Oriental Orthodox churches' refusal to accept the doctrine which held that Jesus Christ is in two natures — one divine and one human, although these were inseparable. It has a total of approximately 60 million members worldwide. Currently the majority of Oriental Orthodox Christians live in Africa and nearby areas of Turkey and Armenia.
Below are photos of two churches: (1) Holy Trinity Cathedral in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and (2) St. Mark Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Cairo, Egypt:
The Oriental Orthodox Churches are a communion of six autocephalous (that is, administratively completely independent) regional churches. Each church may or may not have defined geographical boundaries of its jurisdiction and is ruled by its council of bishops or synod presided by a senior bishop–its primate (or first hierarch). The primate may carry the honorary title of pope or patriarch. Each regional church consists of constituent eparchies (or, dioceses) ruled by a bishop. Some churches have given an eparchy or group of eparchies varying degrees of autonomy (self-government). Such autonomous churches maintain varying levels of dependence on their mother church, usually defined in the document of autonomy."
The following is a list of autocephalous churches:
The Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria;
The Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch (sometimes called 'Jacobite');
The Church of Armenia (sometimes called the Armenian Apostolic Church);
The Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church (sometimes called the Indian Orthodox Church);
The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church; and
The Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church.
One of the autocephalous churches with the largest membership is the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. The church follows the Coptic Rite that uses the Coptic language, a language that was used in Egypt but now extinct. The language can trace its origin to ancient Egypt dated around 3400 BCE (see Egyptian writing page for more information). Most Coptic Christians live in Egypt, and there are members and churches in USA, Canada, Australia, and United Kingdom.
Currently, the Oriental Orthodox and the Eastern Orthodox churches are in dialogue to reconcile their differences. Below are two documents related to this effort:
