The Xi'an Stele, erected in Tang China's capital in 781, describes in both Syriac and Chinese the existence of Christian communities in northern China. While scholars have so far considered the Stele exclusively in relation to the Chinese cultural and historical context, Todd Godwin here demonstrates that it can only be fully understood by reconstructing the complex connections that existed between the Church of the East, Sasanian aristocratic culture and the Tang Empire (617-907) between the fall of the Sasanian Persian Empire (225-651) and the birth of the Abbasid Caliphate (762-1258). Through close textual re-analysis of the Stele and by drawing on ancient sources in Syriac, Greek, Arabic and Chinese, Godwin demonstrates that Tang China (617-907) was a cosmopolitan milieu where multiple religious traditions, namely Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism and Christianity, formed zones of elite culture. Syriac Christianity in fact remained powerful in Persia throughout the period, and Christianity - not Zoroastrianism - was officially regarded by the Tang government as 'The Persian Religion'.Persian Christians at the Chinese Court uncovers the role played by Syriac Christianity in the economic and cultural integration of late Sasanian Iran and China, and is important reading for all scholars of the Church of the East, China and the Middle East in the medieval period.

In AD 988, Grand Prince Vladimir I of Kiev, replaced paganism with Eastern Orthodox Christianity as the official religious orientation of Kievan Russians. Joining the world-wide observance of the millennium of Christianity in Russia, the University of Oregon presented a symposium, art exhibitions, films and concerts to note the impact of Eastern Orthodox Christianity on the historical and cultural development of Russia and the Soviet Union. The collection of papers presented at the symposium by renowned specialists in Russian art, history and culture illuminates the meaning of Orthodox Christianity and its influence on the humanities in Russia and the Soviet Union today and provides the general reader, as well as teachers of Russian culture, with a better understanding of Russian culture and civilization.