The Search for Ancient Christians on the Silk Road: China and Beyond (July 7 – August 7 /2012)

xxxxxx The moniker ‘the Silk Road’ (die Silkenstrasse) which originated with the German geographer and explorer, Ferdinand von Richtofen in 1877, alludes to a near 8000-kilometre-long trade route that connected China and the Mediterranean world in antiquity. The widespread usage of the term since that time has infused the vast, wild and harshly beautiful lands of Central Asia with an evocative allure to those who crave travel in lonely, out of the way places. The romance of the Silk Road, however, predates by centuries, the coining of the name. It is evocatively evident in the accounts of medieval travelers like the famed Marco Polo who recorded their exotic adventures enroute from Baghdad to China. The perilous difficulties encountered in the course of their travels served to enhance the romantic attraction. In very recent times, the celebrated travel writer, Colin Thubron, ignites wanderlust in his readers with the suggestion that ‘to follow the Silk Road is to follow a ghost….through the heart of Asia [which] has officially vanished, leaving behind it the pattern of its restlessness: counterfeit borders [and] unmapped peoples.’

In truth, however, to speak of the ‘Silk Road’ fosters a couple of large, commonly held, misconceptions. First, there were more than one route connecting east and west in the ancient world. ‘The Road’ was in actual fact an arterial network of routes from Central Asia to Europe and India which spanned over 12,000 kilometres and developed over three millennia. Commercial goods were actually transported by a series of agents before arriving at their intended destinations. Second, while silk was indeed one of the prized commodities coveted from the Far East by Roman women, the intrepid camel caravans which traversed inhospitable, life threatening, landscapes for the sake of making profit carried more than silk. Their precious cargo included spices, gems, gold, garments, perfumes, furniture and much else. In a broader sense, beyond the economic importance of merchandising, the ‘Silk Road’ was a metaphor for east-west cultural interchange on a scale unprecedented in world history. The sands of the frightening, Taklimakan Desert which was easier to enter than to exit have yielded long preserved, micro symbols of the civilizational crosspollination which occurred in the form of coinage from the Han dynasty period bearing images of the Greek gods, Zeus and Hermes. Philosophical ideas, religious ideologies and patterns of social behaviour flowed along the same routes as commercial goods bound for distant lands.

The exchange of religious beliefs and practices was conceivably the most enduring legacy of the Silk Road. It became a mobile venue for interfaith dialogue and conflict among the adherents of Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Manichaeism, Zorastrianism, Taoism, and Confucianism. Business minded merchants and missionizing monks who were travel companions, stopped at oasis towns along the way such as Bukhara, Samarkand, Tashkent, Bactra and Kashgar bearing sacred Scriptures and perhaps winning converts. One can imagine the crosscultural and interfaith conversations which occurred during moments of relaxation when the energies of humans and camels were being replenished in caravanserais. The extent and success of the evangelizing activity of the Church of the East along the Silk Road which reached China by the 7th century is a much undertold and sadly underappreciated story in the Christian West. The ‘highway of commerce’ did double service as a ‘way of pilgrimage.’ It made possible what Dale Irvin and Scott Sunquist have claimed in their History of the World Christian Movement. (2001) to be ‘the first sustained encounter between Christian faith and Chinese culture.’ The story of Christianity’s spread through Central Asia to China is meticulously documented and beautifully photographed in Christoph Baumer’s volume, The Church of the East. An Illustrated History of Assyrian Christianity. (2006).

According to Silk Road scholar, Frances Wood, a preponderance of maps depict the Silk Road as commencing in Xi’an in China and then running westward through Lanzhou, following the westernmost branch of the Great Wall to Dunhuang where it split into a northern and southern route. The former, though longer, was less arduous than the latter. Both, however, were equally dependent for survivability on oasis settlements in the shadow of encircling mountain ranges. In the West, the Silk Road(s) concluded in Damascus, Alexandria, Constantinople and Rome.

On this epic, breathtaking, Down Ancient Paths odyssey we’ll undertake the challenges (modest by ancient standards) of travelling the Silk Road through the enchanted world of lost civilizations and a legendary Christian empire ruled by a mysterious ‘Prester John’ figure whom western Christendom believed would come to its aid in its enervating struggle with Islam. A spectacular digression from our Silk Road itinerary will take us into Tibet, ‘the roof of the world’, which never participated in Silk Road trade but was the mountainous stronghold of hostile warriors who regularly raided the caravans and cities of the Silk Road, managing even to conquer Xi’an, the Chinese capital itself, in the 8th century CE. Tibet then, was not the domicile of pacifistic Buddhists it is today.

For a complete information packet, including a detailed daily itinerary, please contact Dr. Charles Nienkirchen at cnienkirchen@ambrose.edu