History & overview · every faith gets one
The first families of Christendom — parted at Chalcedon.
The communion of Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopian, Eritrean, Syriac, and Indian churches that could not accept Chalcedon's two-natures formula in 451. One incarnate nature of the Word, they confessed — and fifteen centuries of separate, unbroken liturgy followed.
The founding
No single founder — Oriental Orthodoxy accreted rather than began.
What it holds
The divine. One God in three persons.
Death and after. Resurrection and judgment.
The line
descent is public here — where it came from, what left itBranches:
The Armenian Apostolic Church — The first nation baptised, and the church that outlived the nation's states. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church — Tewahedo — made one. Its own canon, its own calendar, and the Ark. The Coptic Orthodox Church — Saint Mark's see, and the longest fasting year in Christendom. The Syriac Orthodox Church — Antioch's church, still praying in Aramaic. The Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church — Saint Thomas's Indians, with a catholicos of their own since 1912. The Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church — Thirty years old and sixteen centuries old at the same time.