The semi-official working party of members of the General Synod’s ecumenical council made its initial visit to Zamind only a matter of months after the area became accessible for Western visitors following the Soviet relaxation of the restrictions which had applied to foreign travel in the Taghiz Republic. The ‘Beeson Report’ of the B.C.C. working party on religious conditions in the U.S.S.R had suggested the existence of hitherto unknown autonomous Christian Churches in remote forest and mountain regions, and it was one such report which led us to Taghiz. But what we found there exceeded our wildest expectations and poses a serious challenge to all our ecumenical thinking.

Let me first sketch in the physical context. We descended from the plateau of Qudukh at 9,400 feet through an area of bleak marshes and lava fields which one of the group imaginatively likened to a petrified sea in storm. In due course we reached a vast basalt plain bisected by a large fast-flowing river. This river was flanked by a large expanse of rich black alluvial soil dotted with many small trees and berried shrubs. Before us was a lake of the deepest blue edged by sands of an orange colour, and beyond, rising up mysteriously in the midst of the plain, a stark massif scored with many small tumultuous mountain streams. In the upper reaches of one of these we could see a vast triangular platform of rock standing out from the mountain-side surrounded on all sides by branches of the stream; and on that platform stood the Monastery of Zamind existing in happy symbiosis with a sizeable and prosperous-looking village. We began to ascend, and as we approached more closely we saw a wealth of luxuriant vegetation -terebinth, tamarisk and yew predominating with a sprinkling of willows at the edge of the stream. Daisies and poppies abounded.