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When I was a small boy,
my parents used to drive me

round historic churches,
searching out whatever looked
interesting or odd.

But soon they realised that
they had created a monster.

The history of the Christian
Church became my life's work.

For me, no other subject can
rival its scale and drama.

For two thousand years,

Christianity has been one of the
great players in world history,

..inspiring faith,

but also squalid politics.

It is an epic story starring
a cast of extraordinary people,

from Jesus himself
and the first apostles

to empresses, kings and popes.

CROWD CHEERS

From reformers and champions
of human conscience

to crusaders and sadists.

Religious belief can
transform us for good or ill.

It has brought human beings
to acts of criminal folly

as well as the highest achievements
of goodness and creativity.

I will tell the story
of both extremes.

Christianity has survived
persecution,

splits,

wars of religion,

mockery, hatred.

Today there are two billion
Christians - a third of humanity.

Protestant,

Catholic, Orthodox,
Pentecostal and many more.

Deep down the Christian faith boasts
a shared core, but what is it?

In modern Europe,
Christianity seems threatened

by the apathy of a secular society.

Will it survive?

Can it?

I'm chasing the story of
Christianity across the globe,

coming face to face with people
who have got their own take

on this 2,000-year-old adventure.

And where better to start
than in the city which first knew
Jesus the Christ?

Jerusalem.

RADIO PLAYS POP MUSIC

I'm in Jerusalem for
a very good reason,

but it's probably
not what you think.

We've all heard something
of the Christian story.

Jesus, the wandering Jewish
teacher, crucified by the Romans.

Paul, who had hunted down Christians
until on the road to Damascus,

he experienced a
blinding vision of Jesus Christ
resurrected from the dead.

Paul's new-found zeal focused on
people beyond the Jews - Gentiles.

It took him far from Jerusalem, to
Rome, and it reshaped not just

the faith of Christ but in the end,
all estern civilisation.

That's the familiar story of
the origins of Christianity.

But I'm here in Jerusalem because I
want to look for something else.

You can find clues here in
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

The Church is said to have
been built where Jesus
was crucified and buried.

At its heart is what's
believed to be his tomb.

Somehow the followers
of Jesus became convinced
that he rose from here to new life.

The belief that Jesus
can overcome death is

the most difficult and troubling
affirmation of the Christian faith.

Over 20 centuries
it's made Christians act in heroic,

joyful, beautiful, terrible ways.

It's made this one
of the holiest sites on earth.

You see, at heart Christianity
is a personality cult.

Its core is the unprecedented
idea that God became human,

not in a pharaoh,
a king or even an emperor,

but in a humble peasant
from Galilee.

And the conviction that you can
meet Jesus, the son of God,

and transform your life
is a compelling message.

It's what drove Christianity's
relentless expansion.

But the Church built around the tomb
of Jesus is also the starting point
for a forgotten story,

a story that may
overturn your preconceptions
about early Christianity.

Pride of place in this building
goes to two churches.

This chapel belongs to
the Greek Orthodox Church.

Orthodoxy is a large part
of the Christian story.

The other church with a strong
presence here is actually

the biggest in the modern world -

Catholicism.

HE INTONES

Orthodoxy and Catholicism
dominated Christianity in Europe,

in the West, for its
first 15,000 years.

But as you walk around the edges of
the Church you can't fail to notice
other curious little chapels.

They're not Western or European,

they're Middle Eastern or African.

And they tell a very different story
about the origins of Christianity.

Around the back of Christ's tomb
is Egypt's Coptic Church.

There are plenty of other
Churches represented here, but you
need to know where to look.

Now this is the chapel of
the Syriac Orthodox Church,

which the Greek Orthodox
of course would call unorthodox.

Back outside and through a side door
leading up to the roof, you'll
find the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

Many versions of Christian history
would make this unorthodox too

and yet it's far older than
better-known versions of
Christianity, like Protestantism.

It's easy for tourists to dismiss
these ancient churches as quaint,

irrelevant even, but that
would be a big mistake.

These chapels contain vital
clues to the story I want to tell.

Because the origins of the
Christian faith are not in the West,

but here in these
ancient Churches of the East.

For centuries Christianity
flourished in the East.

And indeed at one point
it was poised to triumph in Asia,
maybe even in China.

The headquarters of Christianity
might well have been Baghdad
rather than Rome.

And if that had happened
Western Christianity would
have been very different.

I will trace that huge voyage...

..from Jerusalem to Syria,

through Central Asia,

to the far reaches
of the Asian continent.

In my journey, I'll discover how
the Christian faith survived
worlds away from Jerusalem.

I'm not giving you a history of
Christian theology, though I won't

be afraid to plunge you
into many ancient arguments
about Christian faith.

The main character here
is not Jesus or the gospels.

It is in fact the Church,

the institution of Christian faith
that has fought its way
through history.

It all started here in Jerusalem,
when the first followers of Jesus
formed a Jewish Christian Church.

It was led by James, whom the
gospels call the brother of Jesus.

Here in the Old City is
the Armenian Cathedral of St James.

His tomb is said to lie
below the high altar.

The Jerusalem church probably would
have remained the headquarters
of a single unified Christianity.

But in the year 70, disaster struck.

A rebellion of Jews
against the Romans ended
in a siege of Jerusalem.

As troops finally broke into the
city, the Temple went up in flames.

Today its Western Wall
is all that remains.

Christians quit the city
before the siege.

Now the fledgling faith
would have to survive
outside its Jewish homeland.

But could it adapt?

That's the big test
facing any world religion.

With Jerusalem gone where would
Gentile Christians look now?

Well, you might think
obviously west to Rome,
because that's where Paul had gone.

But at the time it would not
have seemed obvious at all.

Paul had been killed in Rome.
So had the Apostle Peter.

What if you take the other road
out of Jerusalem - east?

Today this is Urfa
in south-east Turkey.

In the first century
it was called Edessa,

capital of a small kingdom,

and wealthy because it controlled
part of the main trade route east.

Edessa is special, because
its ruler King Abgar set an
important precedent here.

He chose to show his personal
devotion to Jesus by adopting
Christianity as the Kingdom's

official state religion, at least
100 years before the Romans did.

For the last 17 centuries,
Christianity has been repeatedly
linked with the state,

so in the United Kingdom,
the monarch is still Supreme
Governor of the Church of England.

And this is where it all started -
in the ancient Eastern
Christian kingdom of Edessa.

And Edessa pioneered
something else that has become
inseparable from Christianity...

HE SINGS

Church music.

Christian Edessa
has long since disappeared.

After the First World War
it became a community in exile, over
the border in neighbouring Syria.

This is the only surviving
descendent of that ancient Church.

CONGREGATION SINGS

But its liturgical chant is
still based on the distinctive
tradition of Edessa.

These hymns are derived from
the poetry of the great 4th century
Syrian theologian St Ephrem.

And he was building on an even
earlier tradition from these lands,

echoing the music
of the Roman Empire.

I found that service very touching
because what we were hearing was

the ghost of the music
of the streets and market places,

seized by the Church, turned
into psalms and hymns, taken

across the western Mediterranean,

turned into the music
of the whole Church -

Latin Gregorian Chant,
Johann Sebastian Bach,

even the tambourines
and guitars of the Pentecostals.
All come from here.

But at the start of
the 4th century, hymn singing

would have been the last thing
on the minds of Christians in the
western half of the Roman Empire.

HORN BLARES

In the West, most Christians
wouldn't be singing the public

praises of God because
it was too dangerous.

Successive Roman Emperors from Nero
onwards persecuted Christianity.

They hated it. I expect most Romans
would've agreed with them.

In the early 4th Century,
a betting man might have put

his money on Christianity becoming
a major religion here in the East,

but then something completely
unexpected happened in the West.

A new Roman Emperor, Constantine,
made Christianity his own.

Out went the old gods
and goddesses of pagan Rome.

In came the one God
of the Christians.

It was a turning point in the
history of the Christian faith.

It was more than a 100 years
after the King of Edessa had made
Christianity his official religion.

But to be the state religion
of a whole Empire was
something else altogether.

The ability to reinvent itself
would become a hallmark
of Christianity.

But this was the greatest
reinvention of them all.

It meant an end to persecution.
It brought power and wealth.

It gave the Christian faith
the chance of becoming
a universal religion.

From this moment, a Church
of the Roman Empire emerged.

In theory, it embraced Christians
in the Eastern Empire
as well as the West.

But in the East, many Christians
were unimpressed by the new
alliance, even hostile.

At stake were fundamental
disagreements about the direction
the faith should take.

Jesus had told people to
abandon wealth, not to ally
with the rich and powerful.

Remember his joke about a rich man
wanting to enter the kingdom

of Heaven was like a camel trying
to get through the eye of a needle?

Some Christians actually
listened to what Jesus had said.

It was Eastern Christians here
in Syria who led the way...

..showing Western Christianity
a pattern for spiritual life.

We call this pattern monasticism.

A way of life involving
isolation from the world,

austerity,

and suffering.

In the north of Syria there is one
of the oddest souvenirs of the new

religious movement
in Eastern Christianity.

For almost 40 years
a holy man called St Simeon

lived on top of a stone column.

He's now known
as a pillar saint or Stylite.

I am actually really excited to be
here, because I first saw a picture

of this when I was eight and I never
thought I'd come here and now I am.
I'm here.

And there it is,
the stump of his pillar.

Among all the other
pillars you can see.

it's the thing
which looks shapeless.

You've gotta imagine this stump
30ft high or whatever it was.

Very strange sight indeed.

It's still pretty strange.

Crowds came to see St Simeon
sitting on his pillar.

The church was built
around it after his death.

And it's pilgrims who made
the pillar look so strange.

In their search for healing
souvenirs, they whittled it down

until it looks like a
well-sucked holy lollipop.

St Simeon is the most
famous of many Syrian hermits

who tried to come closer to God
by punishing their bodies.

For them, suffering was the road
to salvation and they tried
to inspire others to follow.

According to the Syrian enthusiast
for St Simeon's Church I met,

this approach set Eastern
Christians apart from the West.

St Simeon here,

he was on the crossing
of two main roads

between Aleppo and Antioch,
between Apamea

and Syrius, so that was a crossing
where many people used to pass
with their caravan or whatever.

That's interesting because the
stereotype in Europe of the hermit

is someone who goes away
from the world,

yet this man is right
in the middle of things.

Yeah, therefore as you said,
when you see the man

as a Stylite - vertical connection -
he is between the land and God.

He is like a lighthouse.
Exactly. Here is a man,

who's suffered more than most
people in his life. What is it
that makes him want to suffer?

Christians at the beginning
of Christianity here,

they were thinking, "We are
passing by in this life.

"We should suffer. This is
a valley of the tears.

"Our day will be in the next
life where we will see God.

"We will be in Heaven, in paradise.

"We should suffer here
to deserve the other one."

A clear divide was growing
between East and West.

Even as the Roman Emperor was making
Christianity powerful and wealthy,

here on its Eastern borders,
many preferred a faith which denied
the temptations of the world.

Some started to gather in
communities where they could follow
God in purity and simplicity.

They created the very
first monasteries.

The new institution of
monastic life eventually

reshaped Christianity when the
Western Roman Empire fell apart.

Monks turned their
holiness into power,

and power is always a
problem for the Church.

People want it, and they'll
fight to get it.

And their fight gets mixed up
with what they believe about God.

Constantine may well have
thought that Christianity would
reunite his vast empire.

In fact the opposite happened.
It deepened existing divisions.

Constantine presided over four rival
centres of Christian authority.

Antioch, in modern day Turkey,
was the main focus in the East.

Further south was
Alexandria in Egypt.

The Bishop of Rome was the Pope,

honoured in the West
as successor to the Apostle Peter.

And trying to mediate
between these rival centres

was Constantine's new capital,

Constantinople,
present day Istanbul.

From the beginning,
Christians had argued over
passionately held beliefs.

But from here in his new capital,
the Emperor watched in horror

as the unity of the faith
was tested to its limits.

Matters came to a head
over a question at the heart
of the Christian faith.

Who exactly was Jesus and what
was his relationship to God?

Christians believe that
God is all-powerful,
the creator of the universe,

and Jesus is the son of God,

but he's also a flesh and blood man
who died on the cross.

Now a man who died on a cross
surely can't be the same as
the creator of the universe.

How then are they both the One God?

According to a thoughtful
but maverick Egyptian priest,
Jesus was not the same as God.

The priest's name was Arius.
He claimed that it
was impossible for God,

who is perfect and indivisible,

to have created the human
being Jesus out of himself.

But hang on. If Jesus Christ is not
fully God, then is his death

on the cross enough to save you from
your sins and get you to Heaven?

If you care about the afterlife
and they did, that's the
biggest question you can ask.

The power of Christian belief
lay in its claim to wipe away all

the misery that humans feel about
sin and death, our guilt and shame.

Christ died to give us the chance
to have an infinitely better life.

Arius' view could be seen
to undermine all this.

And so he was condemned.

Yet the fact was many Christians
had said the same over the previous

three centuries, here
on the shores of the Bosphorus
as much as anywhere else.

But Constantine couldn't allow this
divisive idea to split the Church
and in the process, his Empire.

He had to put a stop to it.

Just a few hours out of Istanbul
is one of the most important sites

in Christianity's turbulent history.

Bishops from across the Empire
were summoned to solve the crisis

in an Imperial Palace now thought
to be submerged beneath this lake.

Today the town here is called Iznik.

Back in the 4th century it was
the city of Nicaea, the setting
for the famous Council of Nicaea.

There had been church councils
before, but this was the first
held in the presence of an Emperor.

And it was Constantine, who proposed
the vital statement which he hoped
would send everyone home satisfied.

The phrase was that Jesus was
"of one substance" with the Father.

In Greek, that's homoousios.

# I believe in one God... #

After many more arguments
over the next half century,

this phrase stayed at the heart

of one of the most important
Christian texts of all time.

# ..in one Lord Jesus Christ... #

We call it the Nicene Creed,
and it's still recited

in everyday worship
throughout the Christian world.

# ..being of one substance
with the Father... #

It states that God is
equally the Father,
Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit.

They are three in one,

the Trinity.

# Amen. #

The Emperor must have
breathed a sigh of relief.

Emperors longed for unity.

Inconveniently for them, Christians
repeatedly valued truth rather more.

A hundred years later, in 428,
a clever but tactless scholar

was appointed the new
Bishop of Constantinople,

Nestorius.

Bishop Nestorius wasted little time
in plunging the Church

into a fresh quarrel
about the nature of Jesus.

It would end the unity of the Church
once and for all and in the process

consolidate eastern Christianity
as a distinct and formidable force.

Now I'll try to get to
the heart of what might seem
a very technical argument.

After Nicaea, we know that Jesus
Christ is of one substance with
the Father, so he's divine.

But he's also a man. So he's human.

He has two natures
but he's one person.

How does that actually work?

Nestorius understood
the two natures in Christ

as being something like oil
and water contained in a glass.

Although they are
in the same container,
they remain quite separate.

So in Christ there are two
separate natures - human and divine.

It seemed a neat
and satisfying formula,

especially for Christians
seeking salvation.

If Jesus was fully human,
people could identify with him

and if he was fully divine, he could
grant the gift of eternal life.

But many thought it too neat.

The Bishop of Alexandria in Egypt,
called Cyril, was appalled.

Separating out the two natures
of Jesus tore Christ in two.

Imagine a glass containing water
and wine. They mix indivisibly.

So, Cyril argued, it is with Christ.

His human and divine
natures come together as one.

Cyril's followers
squared up to Nestorius.

This really was a fight to the death
because understanding exactly
how Jesus was God

explained how he was powerful
enough to save you from Hell.

At first Cyril seemed
to have the upper hand.

He had Nestorius hounded
out of Constantinople

and banished to
a remote Egyptian prison.

But Nestorius' supporters remained.

And so once again
a Roman Emperor was left fearing
that his state would fracture.

He had to call yet more councils.

Eventually in 451 the bishops of
the Empire gathered just across
the straits from Constantinople

for another landmark
council in Church history.

The Council of Chalcedon
met to define the future
of Christian faith.

The Council met just over there.

It tried to do what all Emperors
want, to sign up everyone to a
middle of the road settlement.

When you do that, it always helps
to have a few troops around.

So the Council decreed a compromise.

In essence it backed Nestorius'
oil and water emphasis -

that whilst here on earth Christ
the divine and human being was

"recognised in two natures,
without confusion, without change".

But in a nod to Cyril's followers,
it straightaway added "without
division, without separation".

And that compromise is how
the Churches which descend
from the Emperor's Christianity,

the Catholic,
Protestant and Orthodox,

have understood the mystery
of Jesus ever since.

But frankly
it was a fairly shabby deal
that left plenty of people unhappy.

Cyril's supporters
were naturally angry,

but the followers of Nestorius
felt marginalised and insulted too.

Nestorius had died
a heretic in exile.

And even though Chalcedon used some
of his theological language, it did
nothing to restore his reputation.

The losers of the council of
Chalcedon refused to fall into line.

It was a watershed. Imperial
and non-imperial Christianity
would never be reconciled.

Instead something new happened.

The church split for the first time,
something that would happen
many more times in its history.

The imperial Church now found itself
focused solely on the Mediterranean.

It had no choice.

Eastern Christians were not going
to be pushed around by the Emperor.

But unlike their Western cousins,
Christians in the East
would now have to survive

in the midst of hostile
and alien religions,
without the backing of an Emperor.

You might think it
would be the end of them.

But in any religion,
apparent misfortune can be a spur,

even stimulate expansion.

For Eastern Christians this was
the start of a great adventure,

to take what they believed was
the true and First Christianity
to the far ends of Asia.

In the 6th century, on the eastern
fringes of the Roman Empire,

Syria was emerging as
an alternative Christian
centre of gravity to the West.

HE CHANTS

THEY ANSWER

Priests sympathetic to Cyril
of Alexandria's mixed
water and wine view

of Christ, were secretly
consecratedas Bishops.

A new Eastern Church was born.

It's now called
the Syriac Orthodox Church.

Today its priests are trained at its
headquarters just outside Damascus.

The seminary offers a glimpse of
what Imperial Western Christianity

might have looked like if Chalcedon
had chosen in favour of Cyril.

Instead of the rational,
tidy Christianity of the West,

this is a faith
which glories in mystery.

It pays meticulous attention
to ritual...

..in particular to
the quality of the performance.

MEN SING IN UNISON

One of the tutors at the seminary,
Father Fady,

suggested to me Eastern Christianity
is more in touch with its
origins than the West.

What do you think is lacking in
the Western Church tradition?

Well, you find the liturgy
in the East to be so much
richer in symbolism.

The way people communicate is
not only through words, but through

gestures, through the way, you know,
the person is expressing himself

through his body,
or voice, tune or whatever.

Now this is very different from how
Western spirituality has developed,

which was always through philosophy,
so you always have theologians who

are philosophers, but in the East,
you always have theologians

who are either poets, or maybe
icon drawers or whatever.

All Christian worship is drama,
full of sign and symbol.

But what Father Fady is claiming is
that Eastern Christianity has made

a priority of passing down gestures,

which take you right back
to the beginnings of the Church.

When the priest lifts the communion
bread for example, it symbolizes
Jesus rising from the dead.

You could say that
the most important assertion

of the Syriac Orthodox Church
is its claim to authenticity.

Key sections of this service are in
the ancient language called Syriac.

It's a dialect of Aramaic,

the actual language
which Jesus spoke.

What makes me so enthusiastic
about my Church is that

the Church speaks
the language of Christ,

so if you want to read the history
of the Church or the spirituality

of the Church, you really need
Syriac in order to access
all the manuscripts

and you know the writings
of the early Church.

Here, on the fringes
of the Roman Empire,

was a Christianity now fully
in charge of its own destiny.

These Syrian Christians
honoured the memory of Cyril

and other Christians
felt the same way.

Go to the ancient Church
of Egypt, the Copts,
or the ancient Church of Ethiopia,

and you'll find that they've not
yet forgiven the Roman Emperor
for the Council of Chalcedon.

But just as confidence was
growing among Eastern Christians,

in the 7th century
the whole of Christianity,

East and West,
found itself in danger.

It had to face up to a rival,

a new militant faith...

Islam.

Followers of the prophet Muhammad
began their push out

from the Arabian peninsula in 632,

conquering much of the known
world with astonishing speed.

Islam brought huge damage
to Imperial Christianity.

As it travelled west,
it wiped out much of the southern
provinces of the old Roman Empire,

It reached across north Africa,

into Spain, and into
Sicily and Italy.

It even threatened
mighty Constantinople.

That fight between Imperial
Christianity and Islam

for the soul of Europe
lasted centuries.

But the conflict also
had an Eastern front.

This is one of the world's oldest
mosques, the Great Umayyad Mosque.

It was built at the heart
of a new Muslim Empire

ruled by the Umayyad Dynasty
from here in Damascus.

Crude modern versions of history
see the coming of Islam

as a "clash of civilisations",
in which Islam quickly wiped out
Eastern Christianity.

But the truth is rather different.

Here there was more of an encounter
of civilisations.

Much like the destruction of
Jerusalem in the 1st century,

the arrival of Islam was indeed
a crisis point for Christians.

But Christianity
proved it could meet this new
challenge to its survival.

The Umayyads didn't have
the resources or the inclination
to force conversion on Christians.

In fact, they did deals
with local leaders.

Christians did become second-class
citizens and later rulers

even forced Christians to wear
distinctive yellow clothing.

Much later, European Christians
would do that to Jews.

Despite all that there is
evidence that Christianity
did influence Islam.

Christianity played a part
in shaping Muslim worship.

It even affected its doctrine.

The Umayyad Mosque stands on
the site of a Christian Church

and still contains a shrine said to
be the tomb of John the Baptist,

this Christian saint
is honoured as a prophet in Islam.

But perhaps most remarkable
is the likelihood that the act of
prostration during Muslim prayer

was originally inspired by
Eastern Christian tradition.

I discussed all this with Islamic
scholar and Syrian politician
Mouhammad Habash.

According to our faith in Islam.

we believe all prophets,

as prophet of God and as messengers
of God, but Jesus Christ has more.

In our faith, we believe him
as a spirit of God

and we believe he is coming back
exactly in this white minaret.

Oh, this white minaret.
This white minaret -

it's named Jesus Minaret, because
Prophet Mohammad he said.

"By God Jesus Christ
is coming back to you

"exactly in white
minaret in Damascus."

And here we are in this great
courtyard and it's really quite
natural to take our shoes off

but I have also seen the same thing
in the sanctuary of a Christian
church during the Holy Eucharist,

so do you think it's
possible that such customs

are actually borrowed by Islam in
its first days from Christianity?

My colleagues in parliament, he
mentioned this one to leave off your

shoes and how to pray.
He said in all the churches,

in all Christian sects,
you can find the same praying as
Islam, five times every day,

and you can find people who pray
on the land, not on church.
Believe me there is

more in common than you think
between Islam and Christianity.

As Christians here learned how
to live side-by-side with Islam,

one group of Eastern
Christians was about to get an
unexpected new lease of life.

Remember Nestorius, the
Bishop who won the day at Chalcedon,
but still came off the loser?

Well, adapting to
the challenge of Islam

provided just the spur his followers
needed to embark on their own great
Christian venture in the East.

Nestorius died in exile in Egypt,
but his supporters

helped build a church independent
of both Imperial Christianity

and the Syriac Orthodox Church.

They based their headquarters
further east, in modern Iraq.

They called themselves,

appropriately,
the Church of the East.

THEY CHANT

This is one of the Church's
Iraqi congregations.

It's had a presence in what is
now Iraq for over 15,000 years.

Only recent wars have forced this
congregation to worship in exile
across the Syrian border.

It's naturally proud
of its ancient lineage.

But in fact it has a much
bigger significance
in the history of Christianity.

That's because these Eastern
Christians persuaded their
Muslim rulers that they

had unique skills to offer.

Skills gained during
the time they spent

arguing about the nature of Christ.

They turned Greek theology,
literature and philosophy into their
native Syriac to argue the case.

They became the think tank
of the middle east.

So when the new Muslim Empire
wanted to translate Greek science
and philosophy into Arabic

it was to the ancestors of these
Christians that it naturally turned.

We in the West owe the
Church of the East a huge debt.

Much of what we know about
Greek learning,

from medicine to astronomy
and even the system of Arabic
numerals in use today,

all come to us courtesy of
those Christian translators.

The value of the scholars
to their Muslim rulers
ensured that the Church thrived.

Within 200 years of the rise
of Islam, Patriarch Timothy I
of the Church of the East

presided from the Abbasid
capital of Baghdad

over an area that extended
from Jerusalem to Central Asia

even to India,
which was home to a thriving Church.

Its descendants are still there.

Everywhere in this vast area,
Timothy was known by the ancient

Syriac title of respect for
a religious leader, "Mar".

Maybe a quarter of all
Christians saw Mar Timothy
as their spiritual leader -

probably as many as the Bishop
who was Pope in Rome.

So here in Syria and Central Asia,
Christianity had passed
a crucial test.

In contrast to the West, it was
unable to rely on military strength

and so had learned to make
the most of persuasion,

negotiation.

But Christianity is at
heart a missionary faith,

and in the Abbasid Empire,
conversion from Islam was forbidden.

So the Eastern Church
had to find other ways to expand.

The solution was as radical as
the later expansion of Western
Christianity in the Americas.

The Church of the Middle East
decided to spread to the Far East.

Christianity is now so identified
with the West that we've forgotten

that long ago the belief that
God became man in Jesus found
fertile ground in the Far East.

But that's exactly what
happened in 7th century China.

And we're beginning to understand
how Christianity may have managed to
survive in such an alien culture.

I met Martin Palmer, a writer on
early Chinese Christianity who
believes he's found the smoking gun.

The missing evidence from
the Christian presence in
China in the 7th century.

That's around the same time
as Christianity was beginning to
convert Anglo-Saxons in England.

Martin came across a map of
modern day Shaanxi Province,

where there was thought to be a long
lost 7th century Christian monastery
called Da Qin.

To find it he needed to pinpoint
an identifiable traditional
Chinese landmark.

This map was a very faded
pencil map, so I got out

a huge magnifying glass,
put a whopping great light on it,

looked at this, read the characters
and then suddenly realising I knew
exactly where it was... Wow.

..because the next temple up
on this map was Lao Guan Dai

and that's the temple over there.

OK. Right on that hill,
that wooded hill over there.

Lao Guan Dai was the most important
Daoist Temple in Tang Dynasty China.

GONG RESONATES

And now on a hillside,
just across from that Temple,

Martin was looking for evidence
of a Christian monastery.

The monastery seemed to have a tall
typically Chinese feature,

a pagoda.

And that's exactly what Martin
found, only a mile away.

It was in a terrible state then.

Now the Chinese have given it
a good deal of TLC,

because it is such
an extraordinary survival.

We arrived to find a 115-year-old
nun and I know this is beginning

to sound like Indiana Jones,
but she made tea for us

and I was desperately looking to
see if I could find something
with a cross on it,

so I went up the hill
just to look down on it

and that's when I realised
this was a Christian site.

How?

All Daoist, Buddhist
and Confucianist temples
face south,

that's the geomantic, the feng shui
direction of Chinese temples. Yep.

All historical Christian churches
face east as you know...
Yep, east, west, yep.

..better than anybody else.
This terrace cut into the side
of the hill runs east, west.

So I ran down the hill going,
"Yes, yes, I know it's true,
I know it's true!"

And the Buddhist nun kind of drew
herself up to her full height of
five feet and stared me

in the knee caps and went,
"What's going on?" So I said,

"Well, we think that this might
once upon a time have been

"a very ancient Christian church",
and she drew herself up
even more and she went,

"Well, of course, it was
the most famous Christian church
in China. Didn't you know that?"

THEY LAUGH

There are moments, Diarmaid,
when you just sort of think,
"Thank you, God!"

The Christian monastery
seems to have adopted
typical Chinese architecture.

Inside the building there are
sculptures, which Martin believes

survive from the Pagoda's
Christian days. But when we tried
to take a look, we hit a problem.

SHE SHOUTS

HE SHOUTS

Today the ground floor of the pagoda
is a Buddhist Temple.

And some locals have had enough
of world interest in the building

as an historical Christian site.

In spite of lengthy negotiations,
I was not going to get inside.

I've a certain sympathy
for the angry villagers.

When my sort of Western Christian
culture bludgeoned its way
by force into China

in the 19th century,
it humiliated the Chinese.

They've not forgotten that.

But when long before,
the Church of the East

arrived on the scene,
it was very different.

And Martin was keen to show me
more about the differences.

An hour's drive away is the capital
of the Tang Dynasty, Chang'an,
modern day Xi'an.

It is home to a remarkable museum
of ancient stone-carved records
known as stelae.

The so-called Forest of Stelae
is really an ancient library

of classic Confucian writings,
Chinese poetry and history.

And there are other stelae gathered
from around this imperial capital.

One of these great stones is quite
breathtaking when you
realise what it is,

nothing less than
an ancient commemoration

of the Church of the East
in China dating back to 781.

And this is it. This is the Da Qin
Stone. There's the words "Da Qin".

Now Da Qin means
a big empire in the West.

The Chinese knew that there was
a whopping great Empire,
somewhere to the West.

Now, whether they were referring
to Rome or the Byzantine Empire

or the Syrian Empire, we're not
sure, but what they're saying is,

"This is the Western Empire's
religion of brightness".

There's the word for religion,
there's brightness,

and that was the name that
the Chinese Christians gave

to their own religion,
the religion of light.

But can I show you one other thing
which will link you back to Syria
where you've just been... Right.

..with China, because round here,
on the walls here,

can you see how we've got
some Syriac texts...

Oh, yes.

..and then underneath
the Chinese names. Yeah.

And each one of the Chinese names
starts with the same character

and that's the character
for Mar meaning...

Oh, Priest! Exactly. Yes, yes.

Now what strikes me
standing by all these

great stones is that this Christian
one is just like all the others.

Exactly, exactly. So here
we are in the year 781

in the greatest empire
in the greatest period

of Chinese Civilisation
that there has ever been

and we have Christianity
coming, proud of its roots,

but also able to mix and move
amongst the Chinese

with great ease.

Indeed, wherever they went, Eastern
Christians seemed to find sympathy

in societies
very different from theirs.

So the mystery is what happened
to the Church of the East?

We know that in the 9th Century
a new Chinese Emperor turned
against all foreign religion.

The Church seemed to disappear.

This was the examination hall, but
it also had a religious function.

But Martin has an intriguing theory
that rather than vanish, the Church
may have gone underground.

We have a record. Marco Polo,
who comes in the late 13th century

loathed the Church of the East. He
was a good Catholic, hated them.

He says that 700,000 hidden
Christians re-emerged.

Now he probably underestimates,
because he didn't like them.

Yes, he's talking about
a huge number. Huge number.

So if Chinese people were prepared
to put that much effort
into Christianity,

what is it that has made
Christianity Chinese?

Well, I think whereas the Church in
the West, once it had conquered the
Roman Empire, doesn't meet another

literate culture, other than Islam
with which it has a few problems,
until the 15th century,

the Church of the East is
engaging with the greatest
intellectual centres the world has.

And therefore the kind of
Christianity they developed was
a Christianity of dialogue,

not of conquest. They never... Never
was the Church of the East imperial.

It was a Church of merchants,
not of the military,

and that is a huge
difference, because merchants
like to arrive at a compromise.

Eastern Christianity's
ability to adapt and spread
without an army to back it

may have helped it survive in China
at least until the 9th century.

By then Western Christianity
had only just begun to make inroads
into central and northern Europe.

That's a point that's
often been missed.

You might say the Church
of the East failed in China.

It never gained permanent
favour from Emperors.

It worshipped in a foreign language,
Syriac. It seemed to fade away.

But if Martin's right,
it didn't completely.

And maybe the Christianity we know
needs to regain its ancient
ability to listen.

Today, Christianity is
seen as a Western faith.

Indeed, many in the Muslim world
would see "Western" lifestyles
as "Christian" lifestyles.

But Christianity is not
by origin a "Western" religion.

Its beginnings are in the Middle
East, where there still exist

Churches which have been Eastern
since the earliest Christian era.

The story of the first Christianity
tells us that the Christian faith

is in fact hugely diverse
with many identities.

And it shows us that far from being
a "clash of civilisations",

in the East, the encounter between
Islam and Christianity
enriched both faiths.

And yet, for all of Christianity's
ability to re-invent itself,

it was ultimately eclipsed
across most of Asia.

It suffered too many
misfortunes - massacre,
plague, persecution.

Islam suffered them too,

but Islam had enough
powerful friends to survive.

In the next episode of my history
of Christianity, I will follow

the western road out of Jerusalem,
to Rome and beyond.

And there we will see what
happens to Christianity when
it has powerful friends.

Why not take part in the Open
University's online survey -

"What does it mean to
be a Christian today?"

At...

..and follow the links.

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