Sounds like you’re talking about the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. The Eastern church split off from the Roman church sometime around the year 1000.

The Eastern church doesn’t have a pope, but the Patriarch of Constantinople is the “first among equals” of the leaders of the various sub groups (like the Greek Orthodox, the Russian Orthodox, and several others).

Well before the final schism between Rome and Constantinople (the Latin West and Greek speaking East) in the 11th century…..

A whole other bunch of Christians were doing their thing down in Egypt. Led by the bishop of Alexandria, the Coptic Church evolved on its own, and the man who held that office was called a pope. He still is called that, and the Coptic Church today has about 12-15 million adherents.


We in the West have been almost oblivious to any historical developments in Christendom outside of the Latin speaking West. Only vaguely aware of Orthodoxy, and almost oblivious to Coptic Christians, we in the West developed our theologies and historical understandings as if we were the apple of God’s eye and the only stream of Christendom that mattered- Roman Catholicism and various strains of Protestantism.


It’s as if the rest of Christendom fell off the edge of the earth, and only recently have we begun to understand that there’s an entire world of Christian life, theology and practice that has been doing their things for almost 2000 years.

There’s even a small community of Christians in India that traces its origin story to the apostle Thomas, who, in the traditions the exist even in the West- headed east after the crucifixion and disappeared.

No, they say. “He didn’t disappear. He came here.”

During one of the Crusades, one Crusader army on its way the Holy Land to do battle with the Muslim hordes, even stopped off on the way to plunder Constantinople.