Many Monks Across the Sea

“Many Monks across the Sea is a solid resource for scholars and practitioners on monastic praxis. It is about an embodied theology of mission that highlights an early case of monks having roles in their own wider society but also beyond it, ‘across the sea’. This is part of a growing body of works that dispels the erroneous notion that monks like mystics were called principally for prayer and meditation in insulated communes. Monasteries were sites of serious scholarship and training but also of broader missional contacts and encounters. The book is a pleasure to read but, it is clearly a product of rigorous research and reflection.”

Dr. David Singh

“Steve Cochrane is not just a good historian and an excellent researcher, but has spent decades of his life in South Asia. His long first-hand experience with Muslim-Christian relations add another dimension to this book. In light of recent events, it is all the more important that many people discover how the two groups were able to co-exist peacefully in certain times and places. This book is not just about a distant past, but a powerful source of hope for the future.”

Dr. Tom Bloomer

“The presence of Christianity in the Arab and Persian historical centres of Islam is little known, and the liveliness of the churches in the centuries before Islam and under early Islamic rule is a forgotten part of religious history. So it can be a surprise to know that church leaders in the first centuries of Islam frequently exerted substantial influence over caliphs and were respected by Muslims and Christians alike. Even more, it can be a shock to hear that Christian missions sent from Mesopotamia extended along the Silk Roads as far as China, and also maintained links along the sea trading routes in the Indian Ocean, where monasteries and church communities attested to the presence of Christianity far beyond its assumed boundaries. This book seeks to bring light to the Eastern Churches under early Islam, in order to reveal something of the vigour of Christianity where it has been overlooked or unexpected. It brings together existing scholarship and adds new, to provide a picture of a faith that sees the challenge of mission and meets it with integrity, courage and imagination.”

Prof. David Thomas