With a membership currently estimated at over 85 million members worldwide, the Anglican Communion is the third largest Christian communion in the world, after the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches.

The solemn form of Eastern Christian anointing requires the ministry of seven priests.

Category: Eastern Christian liturgy

Present-day Christian religious bodies known for conducting their worship services without musical accompaniment include some Presbyterian churches devoted to the regulative principle of worship, Old Regular Baptists, Primitive Baptists, Plymouth Brethren, Churches of Christ, the Old German Baptist Brethren, the Eastern Orthodox Christian Church and the Amish, Old Order Mennonites and Conservative Mennonites.

Athanasius is venerated as a Christian saint, whose feast day is 2 May in Western Christianity, 15 May in the Coptic Orthodox Church, and 18 January in the other Eastern Orthodox Churches.

The traditional role of a bishop is as pastor of a diocese ( also called a bishopric, synod, eparchy or see ), and so to serve as a " diocesan bishop ," or " eparch " as it is called in many Eastern Christian churches.

; Chorbishop: A chorbishop is an official of a diocese in some Eastern Christian churches.

Category: Eastern Christian ecclesiastical offices

An Eastern Christianity | Eastern Christian Icon depicting Constantine I and Christianity | Emperor Constantine and the Fathers of the First Council of Nicaea ( 325 ) as holding the Niceno – Constantinopolitan Creed of 381.

Like the Eastern Orthodox, the Roman Catholic Church through Apostolic succession traces its origins to the Christian community founded by Jesus Christ.

In the Eastern Christian traditions, priests and deacons are allowed to be married, yet have to remain celibate if they are unmarried at the time of ordination.

The Apostolic Canons or Ecclesiastical Canons of the Same Holy Apostles is a collection of ancient ecclesiastical decrees ( eighty-five in the Eastern, fifty in the Western Church ) concerning the government and discipline of the Early Christian Church, incorporated with the Apostolic Constitutions which are part of the Ante-Nicene Fathers

That Council of Chalcedon is one of the first seven Ecumenical Councils accepted by Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, and many Protestant Christian churches.

The Council is considered by the Roman Catholics, Eastern Catholic Churches, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Old Catholics, and various other Western Christian groups to have been the Fourth Ecumenical Council.

Modern gay Christian leader Justin R. Cannon promotes what he calls " Inclusive Orthodoxy " ( not to be confused with the Eastern Orthodox Church ).

According to a tradition preserved in Eastern Christian folklore, Golgotha was the summit of the cosmic mountain at the center of the world and the location where Adam had been both created and buried.

Some Christian denominations ( such as Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox ), include a number of books that are not in the Hebrew Bible ( the biblical apocrypha or deuterocanonical books or Anagignoskomena, see Development of the Old Testament canon ) in their biblical canon that are not in today's Jewish canon, although they were included in the Septuagint.

Some Christian denominations hold that salvation depends upon transformational faith in Jesus, which expresses itself in good works as a testament ( or witness ) to ones faith for others to see ( primarily Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Roman Catholicism ), while others ( including most Protestants ) hold that faith alone is necessary for salvation.

All Christian monasticism stems, either directly or indirectly, from the Egyptian example: Saint Basil the Great Archbishop of Caesaria of Cappadocia, founder and organizer of the monastic movement in Asia Minor, visited Egypt around AD 357 and his rule is followed by the Eastern Orthodox Churches ; Saint Jerome who translated the Bible into Latin, came to Egypt, while en route to Jerusalem, around AD 400 and left details of his experiences in his letters ; Benedict founded the Benedictine Order in the 6th century on the model of Saint Pachomius, but in a stricter form.

Other Christian churches also laying claim to the description " Catholic " include the Eastern Orthodox Church and those churches possessing the historic episcopate ( bishops ), such as those of the Anglican Communion.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, also called the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre, or the Church of the Resurrection by Eastern Christians, is a church within the Christian Quarter of the walled Old City of Jerusalem.

Deuterocanonical books is a term used since the sixteenth century in the Catholic Church and Eastern Christianity to describe certain books and passages of the Christian Old Testament that are not part of the Hebrew Bible.

In the 20th century, there has been more contact between Protestants and Christians from Eastern traditions which claim apostolic succession for their ministry.

Some Protestants feel that such claims of apostolic succession are proven false by the differences in traditions and doctrines between these churches: Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox consider both the Church of the East and the Oriental Orthodox churches to be heretical, having been anathematized in the early ecumenical councils of Ephesus ( 431 ) and Chalcedon ( 451 ) respectively.

Some Christians, such as Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, also have traditions of fasting, in which saints, as well as Jesus, are claimed to have been able to go for a period of time ( without any food, or with no food but the Eucharist ).

The Eastern Catholic Churches, while united with Rome in the faith, have their own traditions and laws, differing from those of the Latin Rite and those of other Eastern Catholic Churches.

While Western philosophical traditions, as exemplified by Descartes, equate mind with the conscious self and theorize on consciousness on the basis of mind / body dualism ; some Eastern philosophies provide an alternate viewpoint, intimately related to substance dualism, by drawing a metaphysical line between consciousness and matter — where matter includes both body and mind.

There are two distinct cultural traditions of dragons: the European dragon, derived from European folk traditions and which is ultimately related to Greek and Middle Eastern mythologies, and the Chinese dragon, with counterparts in Japan, Korea and other East Asian countries.

Easter therefore varies between 4 April and 8 May on the Gregorian calendar ( the Julian calendar is no longer used as the civil calendar of the countries where Eastern Christian traditions predominate ).

Many Protestants ( especially those belonging to the magisterial traditions, such as Lutherans, or those such as Methodists, that broke away from the Anglican Communion ) accept the teachings of the first seven councils but do not ascribe to the councils themselves the same authority as Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox do.

: “ We say that it origin of the traditions is polar, and the pole is nomore Western than it is Eastern.

In non-doctrinal matters the church had occasionally shared from local Greek, Slavic and Middle Eastern traditions, among others, in turn shaping the cultural development of these nations.

This article covers the organization of the Eastern Orthodox Churches rather than the doctrines, traditions, practices, or other aspects of Eastern Orthodoxy.

The most recent study on the ante-Aesopic fables or the fables in ancient Near Eastern languages by Akimoto discovers the rich fable traditions in ancient Mesopotamia and Anatolia ; for example, the Ninurta-uballitsu Assyrian fable collection which is the oldest known fable collection with the compiler's autograph and the completion date 883 BCE, the Hurrian-Hittite bilingual fable collections are embedded in a long myth and the storyteller tells after each fable his / her own moral.

This may even lead to an institutional variability, as in North Korea, where, after the presidency of party leader Kim Il-Sung, the office was vacant for years, the late president being granted the posthumous title ( akin to some ancient Far Eastern traditions to give posthumous names and titles to royalty ) of " Eternal President " ( while all substantive power, as party leader, itself not formally created for four years, was inherited by his son Kim Jong Il, initially without any formal office ) until it was formally replaced on 5 September 1998, for ceremonial purposes, by the office of Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly, while the party leader's post as Chairman of the National Defense Commission was simultaneously declared " the highest post of the state ", not unlike Deng Xiaoping earlier in the People's Republic of China.

Eastern European heraldry is in the traditions developed in Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine, and Russia.

In Eastern Christianity and other icon-painting Christian traditions, the icon is generally a flat panel painting depicting a holy being or object such as Jesus, Mary, saints, angels, or the cross.

In Eastern Orthodoxy and other icon-painting Christian traditions, the icon is generally a flat panel ( generally of wood ) painting depicting a holy being or object such as Jesus, Mary, saints, angels, or the cross.

According to Eastern traditions, she retired to Ephesus with the Theotokos ( Mary, the Mother of God ) and there she died.

"( ) Although the term is not specifically used of her in the New Testament, Eastern Christianity refers to her as " Equal to the Apostles "), and later traditions name her as " the apostle to the apostles.

In Roman Catholic tradition, Mary of Bethany is identified as Mary Magdalene, while in Eastern Orthodox and Protestant traditions they are considered separate persons.

In Latin tradition, Mary of Bethany is often identified as Mary Magdalene ( of whom more is recorded in the gospels as well as in later traditions ), while in Eastern Orthodox and Protestant traditions they are considered separate persons.