In some ways, the Church, as we know it, got its real start as a result of Nero’s decision to persecute its members for starting the great fire in Rome. Oh, it had been there for several years, and it was spreading in every direction from its “home turf” in the Judean hill country. By the 60s, there were Christian movements to the east, in Persia and even India; to the south, in Egypt, Arabia and Ethiopia; to the west in Greece, Rome (of course), France, Spain and Britain; and to the north, in Albania, Armenia and what we today call Turkey, and the Caucasus. The wide-ranging travels of the Apostles and other Disciples had, by this time, planted Churches all over the known world. But, the Church as we know it, the Catholic Church (including the “Orthodox” Church of the Greeks and Russians) barely hints at the existence of those other Christian Church bodies. “Our” Church is that of Peter, Paul and John. Our history is one of Roman persecution, met with stoic martyrdom in the circuses of Roman cities all over Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.
But, what about those other Churches? Were they “real”? The answer, by any reasonable call, has to be “yes”. Indeed, while some never endured persecution at all, many of them faced their own persecutions, and have their own martyrs.
Among these is the Church in Persia. Known variously as the “Church of the East” and The Assyrian Church of the East”, these Christians endured their own times of persecution by the Parthian Empire, to whom Persia belonged, at the time. There, the Church was looked down upon as being of Roman origins (that is, the Roman Empire), in a land that had its own religious tradition. There, Zoroastrianism held sway, and anything Roman was despised and persecuted. Only after the Romans began persecuting Christians did the government decide to allow, and later even support, the emerging Eastern Church. Eventually, under the Sassanids (ca. 300 AD), the Eastern Church even became the official religion, for a time.
The Church of the East looked to the Bishop of Antioch for religious oversight until that link was no longer possible, and then established their own Patriarchate (“pope”) in Babylon, an arrangement that lasted well into the Islamic period. The Assyrian Church of the East still exists, and is undergoing terrible persecution today, in Iran, Iraq, Syria and that part of the world. Note that they should not be confused with the Copts, of Egypt, who are also under persecution (remember the 21 Christians beheaded a week or so, ago?). The Coptic Church is a survival of the Church in Alexandria, and thus was always a part of the “Catholic” Church, co-equal with Rome and Constantinople, and it shared in the persecutions by the Empire of Rome.