The Platform Oosters Christendom is a news service focusing on various aspects of the lives of Eastern and Oriental Christians, churches and cultures in the Netherlands and worldwide. The website is managed by the Institute of Eastern Christian Studies (IvOC) in Nijmegen.
The third major branch of Christianity is still often a terra incognita for many Western Christians. Information about Eastern churches rarely appears in the mainstream media, and if it does appear there it is often in connection with coverage from crisis regions such as Syria, Ukraine or Ethiopia, or because of separate, usually controversial events.
Equally, the position of eastern churches on general themes is hardly known, whether it is church and state in the former Soviet Union, Christianity and Islam, positions on human rights, civil society or climate change.
However even without direct connection to current events, there are many ambiguities or even misunderstandings about faith, lore and the history of Eastern Christians. In many ways, this even applies to the knowledge of Eastern Christians in the Netherlands vis-à-vis their own tradition.
Misunderstandings and one-sidedness can even lead to conflict. Against this background, the Platform offers up-to-date, reliable, objective and well-founded information from the world of Eastern Christianity.
To this end, we bring our academic expertise, language knowledge and network to show a better and more complete picture of Eastern Christianity. Although based on research and knowledge of academic science, this information, based on solid journalism, is intended for a wide audience.