[_DeadFred_]

If you come from a American Christian background these are really worth exploring. Being ex-catholic/ex-Christian I found that they share enough to make them more accessible (I guess) than other religions, but also different in thought from what I grew up in, and those combined really help me expand on my personal thinking. I did a study group that a Greek orthodox priest put on for non-orthodox and it was awesome. Watching him shutdown old school American Christians and their focus on decoding a few sentences in English when he pointed out 'that's not even really what the words mean in the original text' and then getting mini-lessons on old languages and meanings I felt like I was back in school and completely changed a lot of my surface level understand of Christianity (asking my family religious questions the answer was don't questions/it's this because it's this).

From the comments here I think I'm going to look into the Indian off shoots. Up until now I've mainly explored through Egyptian, Syrian, and Greek/Russian orthodox friends. I wonder if there is an Indian style church established in the US that would have literature created to be accessible to an American church centric point of view? I've always envied the deep spirituality my Indian Christian/Muslim friends have had, I wonder if exploring the Indian church could help me with that. I did a couple year long study with a Pakistani Muslim friend but I didn't really connect with it, though his beautiful spirituality/groundedness/family beleifs have been a godsend as a life mentor.

[vattoli_porinju]

For indian you can check the st thomas christians or syrian christians or malankara nasranis from state of kerala that trace their origin to st thomas visit in the 1st century and were under the church of east. They follow the syriac based liturgies. I mentioned to specifically check with these because other christians in india are all latin rite catholic or protestant, which all started with european arrivals and so most won't be much aware of the histories outside their group. And checking with any hindu or muslim from india won't do any good because first they are not even much aware of all these different denominations, and most outside kerala won't be aware of all these since this community is historically concentrated in that specific region of the country; now the second reason is the nation is now in hinduthva peak where there is a lot of conflict from majority hindus with muslims and christians and the ideology itself say muslims and christians are internal threats and they all just dismiss everything about christianity as fake and try to always associate christianity with euorpean colonisation and hence anti national cheaters.

Now the migrants of st thomas christians or syrian christians or malankara nasranis community from the state of kerala are present in western nations, including america and have churches there. Currently, the community is split into the following different denominations:

* Syro malabar catholic church - follows a modified east syriac litrugy * Malankara orthodox syrian/malankara jacobite syrian church - follows west syriac litrugy * Syro malankara catholic church - follows a slightly modified west syriac litrugy * Marthoma syrian church - follows a protestantified west syriac

You can check with these churches to know more.

[_DeadFred_]

Thank you!