Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion, professing that Jesus was raised from the dead and is the Son of God, whose coming as the Messiah (Christ) was prophesied in the Hebrew Bible (called the Old Testament in Christianity) and chronicled in the New Testament. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with over 2.38 billion followers, comprising around 31.2% of the world population. Its adherents, known as Christians, are estimated to make up a majority of the population in 157 countries and territories.
| Christianity | |
|---|---|
 The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, a holy place of Christianity | |
| Classification | Abrahamic |
| Scripture | Bible (Old and New Testament) |
| Theology | Monotheistic |
| Region | Worldwide |
| Language | Biblical Hebrew, Biblical Aramaic, and Biblical Greek |
| Territory | Christendom |
| Founder | Jesus |
| Origin | 1st century AD Judaea, Roman Empire |
| Separated from | Judaism |
| Number of followers | est. 2.38 billion  (referred to as Christians) |
Christianity remains culturally diverse in its Western and Eastern branches, and doctrinally diverse concerning justification and the nature of salvation, ecclesiology, ordination, and Christology. The creeds of various Christian denominations generally hold in common Jesus as the Son of God—the Logos incarnated—who ministered, suffered, and died on a cross, but rose from the dead for the salvation of humankind; and referred to as the gospel, meaning the "good news". The four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John describe Jesus's life and teachings as preserved in the early Christian tradition, with the Old Testament as the gospels' respected background.
Christianity began in the 1st century, after the death of Jesus, as a Judaic sect with Hellenistic influence in the Roman province of Judaea. The disciples of Jesus spread their faith around the Eastern Mediterranean area, despite significant persecution. The inclusion of Gentiles led Christianity to slowly separate from Judaism (2nd century). Emperor Constantine I decriminalized Christianity in the Roman Empire by the Edict of Milan (313), later convening the Council of Nicaea (325) where Early Christianity was consolidated into what would become the state religion of the Roman Empire (380). The Church of the East and Oriental Orthodoxy both split over differences in Christology (5th century), while the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church separated in the East–West Schism (1054). Protestantism split into numerous denominations from the Catholic Church in the Reformation era (16th century). Following the Age of Discovery (15th–17th century), Christianity expanded throughout the world via missionary work, evangelism, immigration and extensive trade. Christianity played a prominent role in the development of Western civilization, particularly in Europe from late antiquity and the Middle Ages.
The three main branches of Christianity are Roman Catholicism (1.3 billion people), Protestantism (625 million-900 million), and Eastern Orthodoxy (230 million) while other prominent braches include Oriental Orthodoxy (60 million), Restorationism (35 million), and the Church of the East (600,000). Smaller church communities number in the thousands despite efforts toward unity (ecumenism). In the West, Christianity remains the dominant religion even with a decline in adherence, with about 70% of that population identifying as Christian. Christianity is growing in Africa and Asia, the world's most populous continents. Christians are persecuted in some regions of the world, particularly where they are in minority in the Middle East, North Africa, East Asia, and South Asia.
Etymology
Early Jewish Christians referred to themselves as 'The Way' (Koinē Greek: τῆς ὁδοῦ, romanized: tês hodoû), probably coming from Isaiah 40:3, "prepare the way of the Lord". According to Acts 11:26, the term "Christian" (Χρῑστῐᾱνός, Khrīstiānós), meaning "followers of Christ" in reference to Jesus's disciples, was first used in the city of Antioch by the non-Jewish inhabitants there. The earliest recorded use of the term "Christianity/Christianism" (Χρῑστῐᾱνισμός, Khrīstiānismós) was by Ignatius of Antioch around 100 AD. The name Jesus comes from Ancient Greek: Ἰησοῦς Iēsous, likely from Hebrew/Aramaic: יֵשׁוּעַ Yēšūaʿ.
History
Early Christianity
Apostolic Age
Christianity developed during the 1st century AD as a Jewish Christian sect with Hellenistic influence of Second Temple Judaism. An early Jewish Christian community was founded in Jerusalem under the leadership of the Pillars of the Church, namely James the Just, the brother of Jesus, Peter, and John.
Jewish Christianity soon attracted Gentile God-fearers, posing a problem for its Jewish religious outlook, which insisted on close observance of the Jewish commandments. Paul the Apostle solved this by insisting that salvation by faith in Christ, and participation in his death and resurrection by their baptism, sufficed. At first he persecuted the early Christians, but after a conversion experience he preached to the gentiles, and is regarded as having had a formative effect on the emerging Christian identity as separate from Judaism. Eventually, his departure from Jewish customs would result in the establishment of Christianity as an independent religion.
Ante-Nicene period
This formative period was followed by the early bishops, whom Christians consider the successors of Christ's apostles. From the year 150, Christian teachers began to produce theological and apologetic works aimed at defending the faith. These authors are known as the Church Fathers, and the study of them is called patristics. Notable early Fathers include Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria and Origen.
Persecution of Christians occurred intermittently and on a small scale by both Jewish and Roman authorities, with Roman action starting at the time of the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD. Examples of early executions under Jewish authority reported in the New Testament include the deaths of Saint Stephen and James, son of Zebedee. The Decian persecution was the first empire-wide conflict, when the edict of Decius in 250 AD required everyone in the Roman Empire (except Jews) to perform a sacrifice to the Roman gods. The Diocletianic Persecution beginning in 303 AD was also particularly severe. Roman persecution ended in 313 AD with the Edict of Milan.
While Proto-orthodox Christianity was becoming dominant, heterodox sects also existed at the same time, which held radically different beliefs. Gnostic Christianity developed a duotheistic doctrine based on illusion and enlightenment rather than forgiveness of sin. With only a few scriptures overlapping with the developing orthodox canon, most Gnostic texts and Gnostic gospels were eventually considered heretical and suppressed by mainstream Christians. A gradual splitting off of Gentile Christianity left Jewish Christians continuing to follow the Law of Moses, including practices such as circumcision. By the fifth century, they and the Jewish–Christian gospels would be largely suppressed by the dominant sects in both Judaism and Christianity.
Spread and acceptance in Roman Empire
Christianity spread to Aramaic-speaking peoples along the Mediterranean coast and also to the inland parts of the Roman Empire and beyond that into the Parthian Empire and the later Sasanian Empire, including Mesopotamia, which was dominated at different times and to varying extents by these empires. The presence of Christianity in Africa began in the middle of the 1st century in Egypt and by the end of the 2nd century in the region around Carthage. Mark the Evangelist is claimed to have started the Church of Alexandria in about 43 AD; various later churches claim this as their own legacy, including the Coptic Orthodox Church. Important Africans who influenced the early development of Christianity include Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen of Alexandria, Cyprian, Athanasius, and Augustine of Hippo.
King Tiridates III made Christianity the state religion in Armenia in the early 4th century AD, making Armenia the first officially Christian state. It was not an entirely new religion in Armenia, having penetrated into the country from at least the third century, but it may have been present even earlier.
Constantine I was exposed to Christianity in his youth, and throughout his life his support for the religion grew, culminating in baptism on his deathbed. During his reign, state-sanctioned persecution of Christians was ended with the Edict of Toleration in 311 and the Edict of Milan in 313. At that point, Christianity was still a minority belief, comprising perhaps only 5% of the Roman population. Influenced by his adviser Mardonius, Constantine's nephew Julian unsuccessfully tried to suppress Christianity. On 27 February 380, Theodosius I, Gratian, and Valentinian II established Nicene Christianity as the State church of the Roman Empire. As soon as it became connected to the state, Christianity grew wealthy; the Church solicited donations from the rich and could now own land.
Constantine was also instrumental in the convocation of the First Council of Nicaea in 325, which sought to address Arianism and formulated the Nicene Creed, which is still used by in Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Lutheranism, Anglicanism, and many other Protestant churches. Nicaea was the first of a series of ecumenical councils, which formally defined critical elements of the theology of the Church, notably concerning Christology. The Church of the East did not accept the third and following ecumenical councils and is still separate today by its successors (Assyrian Church of the East).
In terms of prosperity and cultural life, the Byzantine Empire was one of the peaks in Christian history and Christian civilization, and Constantinople remained the leading city of the Christian world in size, wealth, and culture.There was a renewed interest in classical Greek philosophy, as well as an increase in literary output in vernacular Greek. Byzantine art and literature held a preeminent place in Europe, and the cultural impact of Byzantine art on the West during this period was enormous and of long-lasting significance. The later rise of Islam in North Africa reduced the size and numbers of Christian congregations, leaving in large numbers only the Coptic Church in Egypt, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church in the Horn of Africa and the Nubian Church in the Sudan (Nobatia, Makuria and Alodia).
Middle Ages
Early Middle Ages
With the decline and fall of the Roman Empire in the West, the papacy became a political player, first visible in Pope Leo's diplomatic dealings with Huns and Vandals. The church also entered into a long period of missionary activity and expansion among the various tribes. While Arianists instituted the death penalty for practicing pagans (see the Massacre of Verden, for example), Catholicism also spread among the Hungarians, the Germanic, the Celtic, the Baltic and some Slavic peoples.
Around 500, Christianity was thoroughly integrated into Byzantine and Kingdom of Italy culture and Benedict of Nursia set out his Monastic Rule, establishing a system of regulations for the foundation and running of monasteries.Monasticism became a powerful force throughout Europe, and gave rise to many early centers of learning, most famously in Ireland, Scotland, and Gaul, contributing to the Carolingian Renaissance of the 9th century.
In the 7th century, Muslims conquered Syria (including Jerusalem), North Africa, and Spain, converting some of the Christian population to Islam, including some of the Christian populations in pre-Islamic Arabia, and placing the rest under a separate legal status. Part of the Muslims' success was due to the exhaustion of the Byzantine Empire in its decades long conflict with Persia. Beginning in the 8th century, with the rise of Carolingian leaders, the Papacy sought greater political support in the Frankish Kingdom.
The Middle Ages brought about major changes within the church.Pope Gregory the Great dramatically reformed the ecclesiastical structure and administration. In the early 8th century, iconoclasm became a divisive issue, when it was sponsored by the Byzantine emperors. The Second Ecumenical Council of Nicaea (787) finally pronounced in favor of icons. In the early 10th century, Western Christian monasticism was further rejuvenated through the leadership of the great Benedictine monastery of Cluny.
High and Late Middle Ages
In the West, from the 11th century onward, some older cathedral schools became universities (see, for example, University of Oxford, University of Paris and University of Bologna). Previously, higher education had been the domain of Christian cathedral schools or monastic schools (Scholae monasticae), led by monks and nuns. Evidence of such schools dates back to the 6th century AD. These new universities expanded the curriculum to include academic programs for clerics, lawyers, civil servants, and physicians. The university is generally regarded as an institution that has its origin in the Medieval Christian setting.
Accompanying the rise of the "new towns" throughout Europe, mendicant orders were founded, bringing the consecrated religious life out of the monastery and into the new urban setting. The two principal mendicant movements were the Franciscans and the Dominicans, founded by Francis of Assisi and Dominic, respectively. Both orders made significant contributions to the development of the great universities of Europe. Another new order was the Cistercians, whose large, isolated monasteries spearheaded the settlement of former wilderness areas. In this period, church building and ecclesiastical architecture reached new heights, culminating in the orders of Romanesque and Gothic architecture and the building of the great European cathedrals.
Christian nationalism emerged during this era in which Christians felt the desire to recover lands in which Christianity had historically flourished. From 1095 under the pontificate of Urban II, the First Crusade was launched. These were a series of military campaigns in the Holy Land and elsewhere, initiated in response to pleas from the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I for aid against Turkish expansion. The Crusades ultimately failed to stifle Islamic aggression and even contributed to Christian enmity with the sacking of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade.
The Christian Church experienced internal conflict between the 7th and 13th centuries that resulted in a schism between the Latin Church of Western Christianity branch, the now-Catholic Church, and an Eastern, largely Greek, branch (the Eastern Orthodox Church). The two sides disagreed on a number of administrative, liturgical and doctrinal issues, most prominently Eastern Orthodox opposition to papal supremacy. The Second Council of Lyon (1274) and the Council of Florence (1439) attempted to reunite the churches, but in both cases, the Eastern Orthodox refused to implement the decisions, and the two principal churches remain in schism to the present day. However, the Catholic Church has achieved union with various smaller eastern churches.
In the thirteenth century, a new emphasis on Jesus' suffering, exemplified by the Franciscans' preaching, had the consequence of turning worshippers' attention towards Jews, on whom Christians had placed the blame for Jesus' death. Christianity's limited tolerance of Jews was not new—Augustine of Hippo said that Jews should not be allowed to enjoy the citizenship that Christians took for granted—but the growing antipathy towards Jews was a factor that led to the expulsion of Jews from England in 1290, the first of many such expulsions in Europe.
Beginning around 1184, following the crusade against Cathar heresy, various institutions, broadly referred to as the Inquisition, were established with the aim of suppressing heresy and securing religious and doctrinal unity within Christianity through conversion and prosecution.
Modern era
Protestant Reformation and Counter-Reformation
The 15th-century Renaissance brought about a renewed interest in ancient and classical learning. During the Reformation, Martin Luther posted the Ninety-five Theses 1517 against the sale of indulgences. Printed copies soon spread throughout Europe. In 1521 the Edict of Worms condemned and excommunicated Luther and his followers, resulting in the schism of the Western Christendom into several branches.
Other reformers like Zwingli, Oecolampadius, Calvin, Knox, and Arminius further criticized Catholic teaching and worship. These challenges developed into the movement called Protestantism, which repudiated the primacy of the pope, the role of tradition, the seven sacraments, and other doctrines and practices. The Reformation in England began in 1534, when King Henry VIII had himself declared head of the Church of England. Beginning in 1536, the monasteries throughout England, Wales and Ireland were dissolved.
Thomas Müntzer, Andreas Karlstadt and other theologians perceived both the Catholic Church and the confessions of the Magisterial Reformation as corrupted. Their activity brought about the Radical Reformation, which gave birth to various Anabaptist denominations.
Partly in response to the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Church engaged in a substantial process of reform and renewal, known as the Counter-Reformation or Catholic Reform. The Council of Trent clarified and reasserted Catholic doctrine. During the following centuries, competition between Catholicism and Protestantism became deeply entangled with political struggles among European states.
Meanwhile, the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus in 1492 brought about a new wave of missionary activity. Partly from missionary zeal, but under the impetus of colonial expansion by the European powers, Christianity spread to the Americas, Oceania, East Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
Throughout Europe, the division caused by the Reformation led to outbreaks of religious violence and the establishment of separate state churches in Europe. Lutheranism spread into the northern, central, and eastern parts of present-day Germany, Livonia, and Scandinavia. Anglicanism was established in England in 1534. Calvinism and its varieties, such as Presbyterianism, were introduced in Scotland, the Netherlands, Hungary, Switzerland, and France. Arminianism gained followers in the Netherlands and Frisia. Ultimately, these differences led to the outbreak of conflicts in which religion played a key factor. The Thirty Years' War, the English Civil War, and the French Wars of Religion are prominent examples. These events intensified the Christian debate on persecution and toleration.
In the revival of neoplatonism Renaissance humanists did not reject Christianity; quite the contrary, many of the greatest works of the Renaissance were devoted to it, and the Catholic Church patronized many works of Renaissance art. Much, if not most, of the new art was commissioned by or in dedication to the Church. Some scholars and historians attribute Christianity to having contributed to the rise of the Scientific Revolution. Many well-known historical figures who influenced Western science considered themselves Christian such as Nicolaus Copernicus,Galileo Galilei,Johannes Kepler,Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle.
Post-Enlightenment
In the era known as the Great Divergence, when in the West, the Age of Enlightenment and the scientific revolution brought about great societal changes, Christianity was confronted with various forms of skepticism and with certain modern political ideologies, such as versions of socialism and liberalism. Events ranged from mere anti-clericalism to violent outbursts against Christianity, such as the dechristianization of France during the French Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, and certain Marxist movements, especially the Russian Revolution and the persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union under state atheism.
Especially pressing in Europe was the formation of nation states after the Napoleonic era. In all European countries, different Christian denominations found themselves in competition to greater or lesser extents with each other and with the state. Variables were the relative sizes of the denominations and the religious, political, and ideological orientation of the states. Urs Altermatt of the University of Fribourg, looking specifically at Catholicism in Europe, identifies four models for the European nations. In traditionally Catholic-majority countries such as Belgium, Spain, and Austria, to some extent, religious and national communities are more or less identical. Cultural symbiosis and separation are found in Poland, the Republic of Ireland, and Switzerland, all countries with competing denominations. Competition is found in Germany, the Netherlands, and again Switzerland, all countries with minority Catholic populations, which to a greater or lesser extent identified with the nation. Finally, separation between religion (again, specifically Catholicism) and the state is found to a great degree in France and Italy, countries where the state actively opposed itself to the authority of the Catholic Church.
The combined factors of the formation of nation states and ultramontanism, especially in Germany and the Netherlands, but also in England to a much lesser extent, often forced Catholic churches, organizations, and believers to choose between the national demands of the state and the authority of the Church, specifically the papacy. This conflict came to a head in the First Vatican Council, and in Germany would lead directly to the Kulturkampf.
Christian commitment in Europe dropped as modernity and secularism came into their own, particularly in the Czech Republic and Estonia, while religious commitments in America have been generally high in comparison to Europe. Changes in worldwide Christianity over the last century have been significant, since 1900, Christianity has spread rapidly in the Global South and Third World countries. The late 20th century has shown the shift of Christian adherence to the Third World and the Southern Hemisphere in general, with the West no longer the chief standard bearer of Christianity. Approximately 7 to 10% of Arabs are Christians, most prevalent in Egypt, Syria and Lebanon.
Beliefs
While Christians worldwide share basic convictions, there are differences of interpretations and opinions of the Bible and sacred traditions on which Christianity is based.
Creeds
Concise doctrinal statements or confessions of religious beliefs are known as creeds. They began as baptismal formulae and were later expanded during the Christological controversies of the 4th and 5th centuries to become statements of faith. "Jesus is Lord" is the earliest creed of Christianity and continues to be used, as with the World Council of Churches.
The Apostles' Creed is the most widely accepted statement of the articles of Christian faith. It is used by a number of Christian denominations for both liturgical and catechetical purposes, most visibly by liturgical churches of Western Christian tradition, including the Latin Church of the Catholic Church, Lutheranism, Anglicanism, and Western Rite Orthodoxy. It is also used by Presbyterians, Methodists, and Congregationalists.
This particular creed was developed between the 2nd and 9th centuries. Its central doctrines are those of the Trinity and God the Creator. Each of the doctrines found in this creed can be traced to statements current in the apostolic period. The creed was apparently used as a summary of Christian doctrine for baptismal candidates in the churches of Rome. Its points include:
- Belief in God the Father, Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and the Holy Spirit
- The death, descent into hell, resurrection and ascension of Christ
- The holiness of the Church and the communion of saints
- Christ's second coming, the Day of Judgement and salvation of the faithful
The Nicene Creed was formulated, largely in response to Arianism, at the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople in 325 and 381 respectively, and ratified as the universal creed of Christendom by the First Council of Ephesus in 431.
The Chalcedonian Definition, or Creed of Chalcedon, developed at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, though rejected by the Oriental Orthodox, taught Christ "to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably": one divine and one human, and that both natures, while perfect in themselves, are nevertheless also perfectly united into one person.
The Athanasian Creed, received in the Western Church as having the same status as the Nicene and Chalcedonian, says: "We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the Persons nor dividing the Substance".
Most Christians (Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Protestant alike) accept the use of creeds and subscribe to at least one of the creeds mentioned above.
Certain Evangelical Protestants, though not all of them, reject creeds as definitive statements of faith, even while agreeing with some or all of the substance of the creeds. Also rejecting creeds are groups with roots in the Restoration Movement, such as the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the Evangelical Christian Church in Canada, and the Churches of Christ.: 14–15 : 123
Jesus
The central tenet of Christianity is the belief in Jesus as the Son of God and the Messiah (Christ). Christians believe that Jesus, as the Messiah, was anointed by God as savior of humanity and hold that Jesus's coming was the fulfillment of messianic prophecies of the Old Testament. The Christian concept of messiah differs significantly from the contemporary Jewish concept. The core Christian belief is that through belief in and acceptance of the death and resurrection of Jesus, sinful humans can be reconciled to God, and thereby are offered salvation and the promise of eternal life.
While there have been many theological disputes over the nature of Jesus over the earliest centuries of Christian history, generally, Christians believe that Jesus is God incarnate and "true God and true man" (or both fully divine and fully human). Jesus, having become fully human, suffered the pains and temptations of a mortal man, but did not sin. As fully God, he rose to life again. According to the New Testament, he rose from the dead,ascended to heaven, is seated at the right hand of the Father, and will ultimately return to fulfill the rest of the Messianic prophecy, including the resurrection of the dead, the Last Judgment, and the final establishment of the Kingdom of God.
According to the canonical gospels of Matthew and Luke, Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born from the Virgin Mary. Little of Jesus's childhood is recorded in the canonical gospels, although infancy gospels were popular in antiquity. In comparison, his adulthood, especially the week before his death, is well documented in the gospels contained within the New Testament, because that part of his life is believed to be most important. The biblical accounts of Jesus's ministry include: his baptism, miracles, preaching, teaching, and deeds.
Death and resurrection
Christians consider the resurrection of Jesus to be the cornerstone of their faith (see 1 Corinthians 15) and the most important event in history. Among Christian beliefs, the death and resurrection of Jesus are two core events on which much of Christian doctrine and theology is based. According to the New Testament, Jesus was crucified, died a physical death, was buried within a tomb, and rose from the dead three days later.
The New Testament mentions several post-resurrection appearances of Jesus on different occasions to his twelve apostles and disciples, including "more than five hundred brethren at once", before Jesus's ascension to heaven. Jesus's death and resurrection are commemorated by Christians in all worship services, with special emphasis during Holy Week, which includes Good Friday and Easter Sunday.
The death and resurrection of Jesus are usually considered the most important events in Christian theology, partly because they demonstrate that Jesus has power over life and death and therefore has the authority and power to give people eternal life.
Christian churches accept and teach the New Testament account of the resurrection of Jesus with very few exceptions. Some modern scholars use the belief of Jesus's followers in the resurrection as a point of departure for establishing the continuity of the historical Jesus and the proclamation of the early church. Some liberal Christians do not accept a literal bodily resurrection, seeing the story as richly symbolic and spiritually nourishing myth. Arguments over death and resurrection claims occur at many religious debates and interfaith dialogues.Paul the Apostle, an early Christian convert and missionary, wrote, "If Christ was not raised, then all our preaching is useless, and your trust in God is useless".
Salvation
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life".
Paul the Apostle, like Jews and Roman pagans of his time, believed that sacrifice can bring about new kinship ties, purity, and eternal life. For Paul, the necessary sacrifice was the death of Jesus: Gentiles who are "Christ's" are, like Israel, descendants of Abraham and "heirs according to the promise" The God who raised Jesus from the dead would also give new life to the "mortal bodies" of Gentile Christians, who had become with Israel, the "children of God", and were therefore no longer "in the flesh".
Modern Christian churches tend to be much more concerned with how humanity can be saved from a universal condition of sin and death than the question of how both Jews and Gentiles can be in God's family. According to Eastern Orthodox theology, based upon their understanding of the atonement as put forward by Irenaeus' recapitulation theory, Jesus' death is a ransom. This restores the relation with God, who is loving and reaches out to humanity, and offers the possibility of theosis c.q. divinization, becoming the kind of humans God wants humanity to be. According to Catholic doctrine, Jesus' death satisfies the wrath of God, aroused by the offense to God's honor caused by human's sinfulness. The Catholic Church teaches that salvation does not occur without faithfulness on the part of Christians; converts must live in accordance with principles of love and ordinarily must be baptized. In Protestant theology, Jesus' death is regarded as a substitutionary penalty carried by Jesus, for the debt that has to be paid by humankind when it broke God's moral law.
Christians differ in their views on the extent to which individuals' salvation is pre-ordained by God. Reformed theology places distinctive emphasis on grace by teaching that individuals are completely incapable of self-redemption, but that sanctifying grace is irresistible. In contrast Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and Arminian Protestants believe that the exercise of free will is necessary to have faith in Jesus.
Trinity
Trinity refers to the teaching that the one God comprises three distinct, eternally co-existing persons: the Father, the Son (incarnate in Jesus Christ) and the Holy Spirit. Together, these three persons are sometimes called the Godhead, although there is no single term in use in Scripture to denote the unified Godhead. In the words of the Athanasian Creed, an early statement of Christian belief, "the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and yet there are not three Gods but one God". They are distinct from another: the Father has no source, the Son is begotten of the Father, and the Spirit proceeds from the Father. Though distinct, the three persons cannot be divided from one another in being or in operation. While some Christians also believe that God appeared as the Father in the Old Testament, it is agreed that he appeared as the Son in the New Testament and will still continue to manifest as the Holy Spirit in the present. But still, God still existed as three persons in each of these times. However, traditionally there is a belief that it was the Son who appeared in the Old Testament because, for example, when the Trinity is depicted in art, the Son typically has the distinctive appearance, a cruciform halo identifying Christ, and in depictions of the Garden of Eden, this looks forward to an Incarnation yet to occur. In some Early Christian sarcophagi, the Logos is distinguished with a beard, "which allows him to appear ancient, even pre-existent".
The Trinity is an essential doctrine of mainstream Christianity. From earlier than the times of the Nicene Creed (325) Christianity advocated the triune mystery-nature of God as a normative profession of faith. According to Roger E. Olson and Christopher Hall, through prayer, meditation, study and practice, the Christian community concluded "that God must exist as both a unity and trinity", codifying this in ecumenical council at the end of the 4th century.
According to this doctrine, God is not divided in the sense that each person has a third of the whole; rather, each person is considered to be fully God (see Perichoresis). The distinction lies in their relations, the Father being unbegotten; the Son being begotten of the Father; and the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and (in Western Christian theology) from the Son. Regardless of this apparent difference, the three "persons" are each eternal and omnipotent. Other Christian religions including Unitarian Universalism, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Mormonism, do not share those views on the Trinity.
The Greek word trias is first seen in this sense in the works of Theophilus of Antioch; his text reads: "of the Trinity, of God, and of His Word, and of His Wisdom". The term may have been in use before this time; its Latin equivalent,trinitas, appears afterwards with an explicit reference to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, in Tertullian. In the following century, the word was in general use. It is found in many passages of Origen.
Trinitarianism
Trinitarianism denotes Christians who believe in the concept of the Trinity. Almost all Christian denominations and churches hold Trinitarian beliefs. Although the words "Trinity" and "Triune" do not appear in the Bible, beginning in the 3rd century theologians developed the term and concept to facilitate apprehension of the New Testament teachings of God as being Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Since that time, Christian theologians have been careful to emphasize that Trinity does not imply that there are three gods (the antitrinitarian heresy of Tritheism), nor that each hypostasis of the Trinity is one-third of an infinite God (partialism), nor that the Son and the Holy Spirit are beings created by and subordinate to the Father (Arianism). Rather, the Trinity is defined as one God in three persons.
Nontrinitarianism
Nontrinitarianism (or antitrinitarianism) refers to theology that rejects the doctrine of the Trinity. Various nontrinitarian views, such as adoptionism or modalism, existed in early Christianity, leading to disputes about Christology. Nontrinitarianism reappeared in the Gnosticism of the Cathars between the 11th and 13th centuries, among groups with Unitarian theology in the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, in the 18th-century Enlightenment, among Restorationist groups arising during the Second Great Awakening of the 19th century, and most recently, in Oneness Pentecostal churches.
Eschatology
The end of things, whether the end of an individual life, the end of the age, or the end of the world, broadly speaking, is Christian eschatology; the study of the destiny of humans as it is revealed in the Bible. The major issues in Christian eschatology are the Tribulation, death and the afterlife, (mainly for Evangelical groups) the Millennium and the following Rapture, the Second Coming of Jesus, Resurrection of the Dead, Heaven, (for liturgical branches) Purgatory, and Hell, the Last Judgment, the end of the world, and the New Heavens and New Earth.
Christians believe that the second coming of Christ will occur at the end of time, after a period of severe persecution (the Great Tribulation). All who have died will be resurrected bodily from the dead for the Last Judgment. Jesus will fully establish the Kingdom of God in fulfillment of scriptural prophecies.
Death and afterlife
Most Christians believe that human beings experience divine judgment and are rewarded either with eternal life or eternal damnation. This includes the general judgement at the resurrection of the dead as well as the belief (held by Catholics, Orthodox and most Protestants) in a judgment particular to the individual soul upon physical death.
In the Catholic branch of Christianity, those who die in a state of grace, i.e., without any mortal sin separating them from God, but are still imperfectly purified from the effects of sin, undergo purification through the intermediate state of purgatory to achieve the holiness necessary for entrance into God's presence. Those who have attained this goal are called saints (Latin sanctus, "holy").
Some Christian groups, such as Seventh-day Adventists, hold to mortalism, the belief that the human soul is not naturally immortal, and is unconscious during the intermediate state between bodily death and resurrection. These Christians also hold to Annihilationism, the belief that subsequent to the final judgement, the wicked will cease to exist rather than suffer everlasting torment. Jehovah's Witnesses hold to a similar view.
Practices
Depending on the specific denomination of Christianity, practices may include baptism, the Eucharist (Holy Communion or the Lord's Supper), prayer (including the Lord's Prayer), confession, confirmation, burial rites, marriage rites and the religious education of children. Most denominations have ordained clergy who lead regular communal worship services.
Christian rites, rituals, and ceremonies are not celebrated in one single sacred language. Many ritualistic Christian churches make a distinction between sacred language, liturgical language and vernacular language. The three important languages in the early Christian era were: Latin, Greek and Syriac.
Communal worship
Services of worship typically follow a pattern or form known as liturgy.Justin Martyr described 2nd-century Christian liturgy in his First Apology (c. 150) to Emperor Antoninus Pius, and his description remains relevant to the basic structure of Christian liturgical worship:
And Sundays, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons. And they who are well to do, and willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with the president, who succours the orphans and widows and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds and the strangers sojourning among us, and in a word takes care of all who are in need.
Thus, as Justin described, Christians assemble for communal worship typically on Sunday, the day of the resurrection, though other liturgical practices often occur outside this setting. Scripture readings are drawn from the Old and New Testaments, but especially the gospels. Instruction is given based on these readings, in the form of a sermon or homily. There are a variety of congregational prayers, including thanksgiving, confession, and intercession, which occur throughout the service and take a variety of forms including recited, responsive, silent, or sung.Psalms, hymns, worship songs, and other church music may be sung. Services can be varied for special events like significant feast days.
Nearly all forms of worship incorporate the Eucharist, which consists of a meal. It is reenacted in accordance with Jesus' instruction at the Last Supper that his followers do in remembrance of him as when he gave his disciples bread, saying, "This is my body", and gave them wine saying, "This is my blood". In the early church, Christians and those yet to complete initiation would separate for the Eucharistic part of the service. Some denominations such as Confessional Lutheran churches continue to practice 'closed communion'. They offer communion to those who are already united in that denomination or sometimes individual church. Catholics further restrict participation to their members who are not in a state of mortal sin. Many other churches, such as Anglican Communion and the Methodist Churches (such as the Free Methodist Church and United Methodist Church), practice 'open communion' since they view communion as a means to unity, rather than an end, and invite all believing Christians to participate.
Sacraments or ordinances
And this food is called among us Eukharistia [the Eucharist], of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined. For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Savior, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh.
In Christian belief and practice, a sacrament is a rite, instituted by Christ, that confers grace, constituting a sacred mystery. The term is derived from the Latin word sacramentum, which was used to translate the Greek word for mystery. Views concerning both which rites are sacramental, and what it means for an act to be a sacrament, vary among Christian denominations and traditions.
The most conventional functional definition of a sacrament is that it is an outward sign, instituted by Christ, that conveys an inward, spiritual grace through Christ. The two most widely accepted sacraments are Baptism and the Eucharist; however, the majority of Christians also recognize five additional sacraments: Confirmation (Chrismation in the Eastern tradition), Holy Orders (or ordination), Penance (or Confession), Anointing of the Sick, and Matrimony (see Christian views on marriage).
Taken together, these are the Seven Sacraments as recognized by churches in the High Church tradition—notably Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Independent Catholic, Old Catholic, some Lutherans and Anglicans. Most other denominations and traditions typically affirm only Baptism and Eucharist as sacraments, while some Protestant groups, such as the Quakers, reject sacramental theology. Certain denominations of Christianity, such as Anabaptists, use the term "ordinances" to refer to rites instituted by Jesus for Christians to observe. Seven ordinances have been taught in many Conservative Mennonite Anabaptist churches, which include "baptism, communion, footwashing, marriage, anointing with oil, the holy kiss, and the prayer covering".
In addition to this, the Church of the East has two additional sacraments in place of the traditional sacraments of Matrimony and the Anointing of the Sick. These include Holy Leaven (Melka) and the sign of the cross. The Schwarzenau Brethren Anabaptist churches, such as the Dunkard Brethren Church, observe the agape feast (lovefeast), a rite also observed by Moravian Church and Methodist Churches.
Liturgical calendar
Catholics, Eastern Christians, Lutherans, Anglicans and other traditional Protestant communities frame worship around the liturgical year. The liturgical cycle divides the year into a series of seasons, each with their theological emphases, and modes of prayer, which can be signified by different ways of decorating churches, colors of paraments and vestments for clergy, scriptural readings, themes for preaching and even different traditions and practices often observed personally or in the home.
Western Christian liturgical calendars are based on the cycle of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church, and Eastern Christians use analogous calendars based on the cycle of their respective rites. Calendars set aside holy days, such as solemnities which commemorate an event in the life of Jesus, Mary, or the saints, and periods of fasting, such as Lent and other pious events such as memoria, or lesser festivals commemorating saints. Christian groups that do not follow a liturgical tradition often retain certain celebrations, such as Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost: these are the celebrations of Christ's birth, resurrection, and the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Church, respectively. A few denominations such as Quaker Christians make no use of a liturgical calendar.
Symbols
Most Christian denominations have not generally practiced aniconism, the avoidance or prohibition of devotional images, even if early Jewish Christians, invoking the Decalogue's prohibition of idolatry, avoided figures in their symbols.
The cross, today one of the most widely recognized symbols, was used by Christians from the earliest times. Tertullian, in his book De Corona, tells how it was already a tradition for Christians to trace the sign of the cross on their foreheads. Although the cross was known to the early Christians, the crucifix did not appear in use until the 5th century.
Among the earliest Christian symbols, that of the fish or Ichthys seems to have ranked first in importance, as seen on monumental sources such as tombs from the first decades of the 2nd century. Its popularity seemingly arose from the Greek word ichthys (fish) forming an acrostic for the Greek phrase Iesous Christos Theou Yios Soter (Ἰησοῦς Χριστός, Θεοῦ Υἱός, Σωτήρ), (Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior), a concise summary of Christian faith.
Other major Christian symbols include the chi-rho monogram, the dove and olive branch (symbolic of the Holy Spirit), the sacrificial lamb (representing Christ's sacrifice), the vine (symbolizing the connection of the Christian with Christ) and many others. These all derive from passages of the New Testament.
Baptism
Baptism is the ritual act, with the use of water, by which a person is admitted to membership of the Church. Beliefs on baptism vary among denominations. Differences occur firstly on whether the act has any spiritual significance. Some, such as the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, as well as Lutherans and Anglicans, hold to the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, which affirms that baptism creates or strengthens a person's faith, and is intimately linked to salvation. Baptists and Plymouth Brethren view baptism as a purely symbolic act, an external public declaration of the inward change which has taken place in the person, but not as spiritually efficacious. Secondly, there are differences of opinion on the methodology (or mode) of the act. These modes are: by immersion; if immersion is total, by submersion; by affusion (pouring); and by aspersion (sprinkling). Those who hold the first view may also adhere to the tradition of infant baptism; the Orthodox Churches all practice infant baptism and always baptize by total immersion repeated three times in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Lutheran Church and the Catholic Church also practice infant baptism, usually by affusion, and using the Trinitarian formula.Anabaptist Christians practice believer's baptism, in which an adult chooses to receive the ordinance after making a decision to follow Jesus. Anabaptist denominations such as the Mennonites, Amish and Hutterites use pouring as the mode to administer believer's baptism, whereas Anabaptists of the Schwarzenau Brethren and River Brethren traditions baptize by immersion.
Prayer
"... 'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil'".
In the Gospel of Saint Matthew, Jesus taught the Lord's Prayer, which has been seen as a model for Christian prayer. The injunction for Christians to pray the Lord's prayer thrice daily was given in the Didache and came to be recited by Christians at 9 am, 12 pm, and 3 pm.
In the second century Apostolic Tradition, Hippolytus instructed Christians to pray at seven fixed prayer times: "on rising, at the lighting of the evening lamp, at bedtime, at midnight" and "the third, sixth and ninth hours of the day, being hours associated with Christ's Passion". Prayer positions, including kneeling, standing, and prostrations have been used for these seven fixed prayer times since the days of the early Church.Breviaries such as the Shehimo and Agpeya are used by Oriental Orthodox Christians to pray these canonical hours while facing in the eastward direction of prayer.
The Apostolic Tradition directed that the sign of the cross be used by Christians during the minor exorcism of baptism, during ablutions before praying at fixed prayer times, and in times of temptation.
Intercessory prayer is prayer offered for the benefit of other people. There are many intercessory prayers recorded in the Bible, including prayers of the Apostle Peter on behalf of sick persons and by prophets of the Old Testament in favor of other people. In the Epistle of James, no distinction is made between the intercessory prayer offered by ordinary believers and the prominent Old Testament prophet Elijah. The effectiveness of prayer in Christianity derives from the power of God rather than the status of the one praying.
The ancient church, in both Eastern and Western Christianity, developed a tradition of asking for the intercession of (deceased) saints, and this remains the practice of most Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Catholic, and some Lutheran and Anglican churches. Apart from certain sectors within the latter two denominations, other Churches of the Protestant Reformation, however, rejected prayer to the saints, largely on the basis of the sole mediatorship of Christ. The reformer Huldrych Zwingli admitted that he had offered prayers to the saints until his reading of the Bible convinced him that this was idolatrous.
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church: "Prayer is the raising of one's mind and heart to God or the requesting of good things from God". The Book of Common Prayer in the Anglican tradition is a guide which provides a set order for services, containing set prayers, scripture readings, and hymns or sung Psalms. Frequently in Western Christianity, when praying, the hands are placed palms together and forward as in the feudal commendation ceremony. At other times the older orans posture may be used, with palms up and elbows in.
Scriptures
Christianity, like other religions, has adherents whose beliefs and biblical interpretations vary. Christianity regards the biblical canon, the Old Testament and the New Testament, as the inspired word of God. The traditional view of inspiration is that God worked through human authors so that what they produced was what God wished to communicate. The Greek word referring to inspiration in 2 Timothy 3:16 is theopneustos, which literally means "God-breathed".
Some believe that divine inspiration makes present Bibles inerrant, while others claim inerrancy for the Bible in its original manuscripts, although none of those are extant. Still others maintain that only a particular translation is inerrant, such as the King James Version. Another closely related view is biblical infallibility or limited inerrancy, which affirms that the Bible is free of error as a guide to salvation, but may include errors on matters such as history, geography, or science.
The canon of the Old Testament accepted by Protestant churches, which is only the Tanakh (the canon of the Hebrew Bible), is shorter than that accepted by the Orthodox and Catholic churches which also include the deuterocanonical books which appear in the Septuagint, the Orthodox canon being slightly larger than the Catholic; Protestants regard the latter as apocryphal, important historical documents which help to inform the understanding of words, grammar, and syntax used in the historical period of their conception. Some versions of the Bible include a separate Apocrypha section between the Old Testament and the New Testament. The New Testament, originally written in Koine Greek, contains 27 books which are agreed upon by all major churches.
Some denominations have additional canonical holy scriptures beyond the Bible, including the standard works of the Latter Day Saints movement and Divine Principle in the Unification Church.
Catholic interpretation
In antiquity, two schools of exegesis developed in Alexandria and Antioch. The Alexandrian interpretation, exemplified by Origen, tended to read Scripture allegorically, while the Antiochene interpretation adhered to the literal sense, holding that other meanings (called theoria) could only be accepted if based on the literal meaning.
Catholic theology distinguishes two senses of scripture: the literal and the spiritual.
The literal sense of understanding scripture is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture. The spiritual sense is further subdivided into:
- The allegorical sense, which includes typology. An example would be the parting of the Red Sea being understood as a "type" (sign) of baptism.
- The moral sense, which understands the scripture to contain some ethical teaching.
- The anagogical sense, which applies to eschatology, eternity and the consummation of the world.
Regarding exegesis, following the rules of sound interpretation, Catholic theology holds:
- The injunction that all other senses of sacred scripture are based on the literal
- That the historicity of the Gospels must be absolutely and constantly held
- That scripture must be read within the "living Tradition of the whole Church" and
- That "the task of interpretation has been entrusted to the bishops in communion with the successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome".
Protestant interpretation
Qualities of Scripture
Many Protestant Christians, such as Lutherans and the Reformed, believe in the doctrine of sola scriptura—that the Bible is a self-sufficient revelation, the final authority on all Christian doctrine, and revealed all truth necessary for salvation; other Protestant Christians, such as Methodists and Anglicans, affirm the doctrine of prima scriptura which teaches that Scripture is the primary source for Christian doctrine, but that "tradition, experience, and reason" can nurture the Christian religion as long as they are in harmony with the Bible. Protestants characteristically believe that ordinary believers may reach an adequate understanding of Scripture because Scripture itself is clear in its meaning (or "perspicuous"). Martin Luther believed that without God's help, Scripture would be "enveloped in darkness". He advocated for "one definite and simple understanding of Scripture".John Calvin wrote, "all who refuse not to follow the Holy Spirit as their guide, find in the Scripture a clear light". Related to this is "efficacy", that Scripture is able to lead people to faith; and "sufficiency", that the Scriptures contain everything that one needs to know to obtain salvation and to live a Christian life.
Original intended meaning of Scripture
Protestants stress the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture, the historical-grammatical method. The historical-grammatical method or grammatico-historical method is an effort in Biblical hermeneutics to find the intended original meaning in the text. This original intended meaning of the text is drawn out through examination of the passage in light of the grammatical and syntactical aspects, the historical background, the literary genre, as well as theological (canonical) considerations. The historical-grammatical method distinguishes between the one original meaning and the significance of the text. The significance of the text includes the ensuing use of the text or application. The original passage is seen as having only a single meaning or sense. As Milton S. Terry said: "A fundamental principle in grammatico-historical exposition is that the words and sentences can have but one significance in one and the same connection. The moment we neglect this principle we drift out upon a sea of uncertainty and conjecture". Technically speaking, the grammatical-historical method of interpretation is distinct from the determination of the passage's significance in light of that interpretation. Taken together, both define the term (Biblical) hermeneutics. Some Protestant interpreters make use of typology.
Demographics
With around 2.8 billion adherents according to a 2022 estimation by World History Encyclopedia, split into three main branches of Catholic, Protestant, and Eastern Orthodox, Christianity is the world's largest religion. High birth rates and conversions in the global South were cited as the reasons for the Christian population growth. For the last hundred years, the Christian share has stood at around 33% of the world population. This masks a major shift in the demographics of Christianity; large increases in the developing world have been accompanied by substantial declines in the developed world, mainly in Western Europe and North America. According to a 2015 Pew Research Center study, within the next four decades, Christianity will remain the largest religion; and by 2050, the Christian population is expected to exceed 3 billion.: 60
According to some scholars, Christianity ranks at first place in net gains through religious conversion. As a percentage of Christians, the Catholic Church and Orthodoxy (both Eastern and Oriental) are declining in some parts of the world (though Catholicism is growing in Asia, in Africa, vibrant in Eastern Europe, etc.), while Protestants and other Christians are on the rise in the developing world. The so-called popular Protestantism is one of the fastest growing religious categories in the world. Nevertheless, Catholicism will also continue to grow to 1.63 billion by 2050, according to Todd Johnson of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity. Africa alone, by 2015, will be home to 230 million African Catholics. And if in 2018, the U.N. projects that Africa's population will reach 4.5 billion by 2100 (not 2 billion as predicted in 2004), Catholicism will indeed grow, as will other religious groups. According to Pew Research Center, Africa is expected to be home to 1.1 billion African Christians by 2050.
In 2010, 87% of the world's Christian population lived in countries where Christians are in the majority, while 13% of the world's Christian population lived in countries where Christians are in the minority. Christianity is the predominant religion in Europe, the Americas, Oceania, and Sub-Saharan Africa. There are also large Christian communities in other parts of the world, such as Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. In Asia, it is the dominant religion in Armenia, Cyprus, Georgia, East Timor, and the Philippines. However, it is declining in some areas including the northern and western United States, some areas in Oceania (Australia and New Zealand), northern Europe (including Great Britain, Scandinavia and other places), France, Germany, Canada, and some parts of Asia (especially the Middle East, due to the Christian emigration, and Macau).
The total Christian population is not decreasing in Brazil and the southern United States, however, the percentage of the population identifying as Christian is in decline. Since the fall of communism, the proportion of Christians has been largely stable in Central Europe, except in the Czech Republic. On the other hand, Christianity is growing rapidly in both numbers and percentages in Eastern Europe, China, other Asian countries,Sub-Saharan Africa,Latin America,North Africa (Maghreb),Gulf Cooperation Council countries, and Oceania.
Despite a decline in adherence in the West, Christianity remains the dominant religion in the region, with about 70% of that population identifying as Christian. Christianity remains the largest religion in Western Europe, where 71% of Western Europeans identified themselves as Christian in 2018. A 2011 Pew Research Center survey found that 76% of Europeans, 73% in Oceania and about 86% in the Americas (90% in Latin America and 77% in North America) identified themselves as Christians. By 2010 about 157 countries and territories in the world had Christian majorities.
There are many charismatic movements that have become well established over large parts of the world, especially Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Since 1900, primarily due to conversion, Protestantism has spread rapidly in Africa, Asia, Oceania, and Latin America. From 1960 to 2000, the global growth of the number of reported Evangelical Protestants grew three times the world's population rate, and twice that of Islam. According to the historian Geoffrey Blainey from the University of Melbourne, since the 1960s there has been a substantial increase in the number of conversions from Islam to Christianity, mostly to the Evangelical and Pentecostal forms. A study conducted by St. Mary's University estimated about 10.2 million Muslim converts to Christianity in 2015; according to the study significant numbers of Muslim converts to Christianity can be found in Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Central Asia (including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and other countries), Indonesia, Malaysia, the Middle East (including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and other countries), North Africa (including Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia), Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Western World (including Albania, Belgium, France, Germany, Kosovo, the Netherlands, Russia, Scandinavia, United Kingdom, the United States, and other western countries). It is also reported that Christianity is popular among people of different backgrounds in Africa and Asia; according to a report by the Singapore Management University, more people in Southeast Asia are converting to Christianity, many of them young and having a university degree. According to scholar Juliette Koning and Heidi Dahles of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam there is a "rapid expansion" of Christianity in Singapore, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and South Korea. According to scholar Terence Chong from the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, since the 1980s Christianity is expanding in China, Singapore, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan, South Korea, and Vietnam.
In most countries in the developed world, church attendance among people who continue to identify themselves as Christians has been falling over the last few decades. Some sources view this as part of a drift away from traditional membership institutions, while others link it to signs of a decline in belief in the importance of religion in general. Europe's Christian population, though in decline, still constitutes the largest geographical component of the religion. According to data from the 2012 European Social Survey, around a third of European Christians say they attend services once a month or more. Conversely, according to the World Values Survey, about more than two-thirds of Latin American Christians, and about 90% of African Christians (in Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa and Zimbabwe) said they attended church regularly. According to a 2018 study by the Pew Research Center, Christians in Africa and Latin America and the United States have high levels of commitment to their faith.
Christianity, in one form or another, is the sole state religion of the following nations: Argentina (Catholic),Costa Rica (Catholic), the Kingdom of Denmark (Lutheran),England (Anglican),Greece (Greek Orthodox),Iceland (Lutheran), Liechtenstein (Catholic),Malta (Catholic), Monaco (Catholic),Norway (Lutheran),Samoa,Tonga (Methodist), Tuvalu (Reformed), and Vatican City (Catholic).
There are numerous other countries, such as Cyprus, which although do not have an established church, still give official recognition and support to a specific Christian denomination.
| Tradition | Followers | % of the Christian population | % of the world population | Follower dynamics | Dynamics in- and outside Christianity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Roman Catholic Church | 1,329,610,000 | 50.1 | 15.9 |  Growing | Growing |
| Protestantism | 900,640,000 | 36.7 | 11.6 | Growing | Growing |
| Eastern Orthodox Church | 220,380,000 | 11.9 | 3.8 | Growing |  Declining |
| Other Christianity | 28,430,000 | 1.3 | 0.4 | Growing | Growing |
| Christianity | 2,382,750,000 | 100 | 31.7 | Growing |  Stable |
| Region | Christians | % Christian |
|---|---|---|
| Europe | 558,260,000 | 75.2 |
| Latin America–Caribbean | 531,280,000 | 90.0 |
| Sub-Saharan Africa | 517,340,000 | 62.9 |
| Asia–Pacific | 286,950,000 | 7.1 |
| North America | 266,630,000 | 77.4 |
| Middle East–North Africa | 12,710,000 | 3.7 |
| World | 2,173,180,000 | 31.5 |
| Christian median age in region (years) | Regional median age (years) | |
|---|---|---|
| World | 30 | 29 |
| Sub-Saharan Africa | 19 | 18 |
| Latin America–Caribbean | 27 | 27 |
| Asia–Pacific | 28 | 29 |
| Middle East–North Africa | 29 | 24 |
| North America | 39 | 37 |
| Europe | 42 | 40 |
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Countries with 50% or more Christians are colored purple; countries with 10% to 50% Christians are colored pink. -
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Nations with Christianity as their state religion are in blue. -
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Distribution of Catholics -
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Distribution of Protestants -
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Distribution of Eastern Orthodox -
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Distribution of Oriental Orthodox -
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Distribution of other Christians
Churches and denominations
World Christianity by tradition in 2024 as per World Christian Database
Christianity can be taxonomically divided into six main groups: Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, Oriental Orthodoxy, Eastern Orthodoxy, the Church of the East, and Restorationism. A broader distinction that is sometimes drawn is between Eastern Christianity and Western Christianity, which has its origins in the East–West Schism (Great Schism) of the 11th century. Recently, neither Western nor Eastern World Christianity has also stood out, for example, in African-initiated churches. However, there are other present and historical Christian groups that do not fit neatly into one of these primary categories.
There is a diversity of doctrines and liturgical practices among groups calling themselves Christian. These groups may vary ecclesiologically in their views on a classification of Christian denominations. The Nicene Creed (325), however, is typically accepted as authoritative by most Christians, including the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and major Protestant, such as Lutheran and Anglican denominations.
- (Not shown are ante-Nicene, nontrinitarian, and restorationist denominations.)
Catholic Church
The Catholic Church consists of those particular Churches, headed by bishops, in communion with the pope, the bishop of Rome, as its highest authority in matters of faith, morality, and church governance. Like Eastern Orthodoxy, the Catholic Church, through apostolic succession, traces its origins to the Christian community founded by Jesus Christ. Catholics maintain that the "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church" founded by Jesus subsists fully in the Catholic Church, but also acknowledges other Christian churches and communities and works towards reconciliation among all Christians. The Catholic faith is detailed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Of its seven sacraments, the Eucharist is the principal one, celebrated liturgically in the Mass. The church teaches that through consecration by a priest, the sacrificial bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. The Virgin Mary is venerated in the Catholic Church as Mother of God and Queen of Heaven, honoured in dogmas and devotions. Its teaching includes Divine Mercy, sanctification through faith and evangelization of the Gospel as well as Catholic social teaching, which emphasizes voluntary support for the sick, the poor, and the afflicted through the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. The Catholic Church operates thousands of Catholic schools, universities, hospitals, and orphanages around the world, and is the largest non-government provider of education and health care in the world. Among its other social services are numerous charitable and humanitarian organizations.
Canon law (Latin: jus canonicum) is the system of laws and legal principles made and enforced by the hierarchical authorities of the Catholic Church to regulate its external organisation and government and to order and direct the activities of Catholics toward the mission of the church. The canon law of the Latin Church was the first modern Western legal system, and is the oldest continuously functioning legal system in the West. while the distinctive traditions of Eastern Catholic canon law govern the 23 Eastern Catholic particular churches sui iuris.
As the world's oldest and largest continuously functioning international institution, it has played a prominent role in the history and development of Western civilization. The 2,834 sees are grouped into 24 particular autonomous Churches (the largest of which being the Latin Church), each with its own distinct traditions regarding the liturgy and the administering of sacraments. With more than 1.1 billion baptized members, the Catholic Church is the largest Christian church and represents 50.1% of all Christians as well as 16.7% of the world's population. Catholics live all over the world through missions, diaspora, and conversions.
Eastern Orthodox Church
The Eastern Orthodox Church consists of those churches in communion with the patriarchal sees of the East, such as the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. Like the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church also traces its heritage to the foundation of Christianity through apostolic succession and has an episcopal structure, though the autonomy of its component parts is emphasized, and most of them are national churches.
Eastern Orthodox theology is based on holy tradition which incorporates the dogmatic decrees of the seven Ecumenical Councils, the Scriptures, and the teaching of the Church Fathers. The church teaches that it is the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church established by Jesus Christ in his Great Commission, and that its bishops are the successors of Christ's apostles. It maintains that it practises the original Christian faith, as passed down by holy tradition. Its patriarchates, reminiscent of the pentarchy, and other autocephalous and autonomous churches reflect a variety of hierarchical organisation. It recognizes seven major sacraments, of which the Eucharist is the principal one, celebrated liturgically in synaxis. The church teaches that through consecration invoked by a priest, the sacrificial bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. The Virgin Mary is venerated in the Eastern Orthodox Church as the Theotokos, meaning God-bearer, and is honoured in devotions.
Eastern Orthodoxy is the second largest single denomination in Christianity, with an estimated 230 million adherents, although Protestants collectively outnumber them, substantially. As one of the oldest surviving religious institutions in the world, the Eastern Orthodox Church has played a prominent role in the history and culture of Eastern and Southeastern Europe, the Caucasus, and the Near East. The majority of Eastern Orthodox Christians live mainly in Southeast and Eastern Europe, Cyprus, Georgia, and parts of the Caucasus region, Siberia, and the Russian Far East. Over half of Eastern Orthodox Christians follow the Russian Orthodox Church, while the vast majority live within Russia. There are also communities in the former Byzantine regions of Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean, and in the Middle East. Eastern Orthodox communities are also present in many other parts of the world, particularly North America, Western Europe, and Australia, formed through diaspora, conversions, and missionary activity.
Oriental Orthodoxy
The Oriental Orthodox Churches (also called "Old Oriental" churches) are those eastern churches that recognize the first three ecumenical councils—Nicaea, Constantinople, and Ephesus—but reject the dogmatic definitions of the Council of Chalcedon and instead espouse a Miaphysite christology.
The Oriental Orthodox communion consists of six groups: Syriac Orthodox, Coptic Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox, Eritrean Orthodox, Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church (India), and Armenian Apostolic churches. These six churches, while being in communion with each other, are completely independent hierarchically. These churches are generally not in communion with the Eastern Orthodox Church, with whom they are in dialogue for erecting a communion. Together, they have about 62 million members worldwide.
As some of the oldest religious institutions in the world, the Oriental Orthodox Churches have played a prominent role in the history and culture of Armenia, Egypt, Turkey, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, Iran, Azerbaijan and parts of the Middle East and India. An Eastern Christian body of autocephalous churches, its bishops are equal by virtue of episcopal ordination, and its doctrines can be summarized in that the churches recognize the validity of only the first three ecumenical councils.
Some Oriental Orthodox Churches such as the Coptic Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox, Eritrean Orthodox, places a heavier emphasis on Old Testament teachings than one might find in other Christian denominations, and its followers adhere to certain practices: following dietary rules that are similar to Jewish Kashrut, require that their male members undergo circumcision, and observes ritual purification.
Church of the East
The Church of the East, which was part of the Great Church, shared communion with those in the Roman Empire until the Council of Ephesus condemned Nestorius in 431. Continuing as a dhimmi community under the Rashidun Caliphate after the Muslim conquest of Persia (633–654), the Church of the East played a major role in the history of Christianity in Asia. Between the 9th and 14th centuries, it represented the world's largest Christian denomination in terms of geographical extent. It established dioceses and communities stretching from the Mediterranean Sea and today's Iraq and Iran, to India (the Saint Thomas Syrian Christians of Kerala), the Mongol kingdoms in Central Asia, and China during the Tang dynasty (7th–9th centuries). In the 13th and 14th centuries, the church experienced a final period of expansion under the Mongol Empire, where influential Church of the East clergy sat in the Mongol court.
The Assyrian Church of the East, with an unbroken patriarchate established in the 17th century, is an independent Eastern Christian denomination which claims continuity from the Church of the East—in parallel to the Catholic patriarchate established in the 16th century that evolved into the Chaldean Catholic Church, an Eastern Catholic church in full communion with the Pope. It is an Eastern Christian church that follows the traditional christology and ecclesiology of the historical Church of the East. Largely aniconic and not in communion with any other church, it belongs to the eastern branch of Syriac Christianity, and uses the East Syriac Rite in its liturgy.
Its main spoken language is Syriac, a dialect of Eastern Aramaic, and the majority of its adherents are ethnic Assyrians, mostly living in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, India (Chaldean Syrian Church), and in the Assyrian diaspora. It is officially headquartered in the city of Erbil in northern Iraqi Kurdistan, and its original area also spreads into south-eastern Turkey and north-western Iran, corresponding to ancient Assyria. Its hierarchy is composed of metropolitan bishops and diocesan bishops, while lower clergy consists of priests and deacons, who serve in dioceses (eparchies) and parishes throughout the Middle East, India, North America, Oceania, and Europe (including the Caucasus and Russia).
The Ancient Church of the East distinguished itself from the Assyrian Church of the East in 1964. It is one of the Assyrian churches that claim continuity with the historical Church of the East, one of the oldest Christian churches in Mesopotamia. It is officially headquartered in the city of Baghdad, Iraq. The majority of its adherents are ethnic Assyrians.
Protestantism
In 1521, the Edict of Worms condemned Martin Luther and officially banned citizens of the Holy Roman Empire from defending or propagating his ideas. This split within the Roman Catholic church is now called the Reformation. Prominent Reformers included Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli, and John Calvin. The 1529 Protestation at Speyer against being excommunicated gave this party the name Protestantism. Luther's primary theological heirs are known as Lutherans. Zwingli and Calvin's heirs are far broader denominationally and are referred to as the Reformed tradition. The Anglican churches descended from the Church of England and organized in the Anglican Communion. Some Lutherans identify as Evangelical Catholics and some but not all Anglicans consider themselves both Protestant and Catholic. Protestants have developed their own culture, with major contributions in education, the humanities and sciences, the political and social order, the economy and the arts, and many other fields.
Since the Anglican, Lutheran, and the Reformed branches of Protestantism originated for the most part in cooperation with the government, these movements are termed the "Magisterial Reformation". On the other hand, groups such as the Anabaptists, who often do not consider themselves to be Protestant, originated in the Radical Reformation, which though sometimes protected under Acts of Toleration, do not trace their history back to any state church. They are further distinguished by their rejection of infant baptism; they believe in baptism only of adult believers—credobaptism (Anabaptists include the Amish, Apostolic, Bruderhof, Mennonites, Hutterites, River Brethren and Schwarzenau Brethren groups.)
The term Protestant also refers to any churches which formed later, with either the Magisterial or Radical traditions. In the 18th century, for example, Methodism grew out of Anglican minister John Wesley's evangelical revival movement. Several Pentecostal and non-denominational churches, which emphasize the cleansing power of the Holy Spirit, in turn grew out of Methodism. Because Methodists, Pentecostals and other evangelicals stress "accepting Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior", which comes from Wesley's emphasis of the New Birth, they often refer to themselves as being born-again.
Protestantism is the second largest major group of Christians after Catholicism by number of followers, although the Eastern Orthodox Church is larger than any single Protestant denomination. Estimates vary, mainly over the question of which denominations to classify as Protestant. The total Protestant population has reached 1.17 billion in 2024, corresponding to nearly 44% of the world's Christians. The majority of Protestants are members of just a handful of denominational families, i.e. Adventism, Anabaptism (Amish, Apostolic, Bruderhof, Hutterites, Mennonites, River Brethren, and Schwarzenau Brethren), Anglicanism, Baptists, Lutheranism, Methodism, Moravianism/Hussites, Pentecostalism, Plymouth Brethren, Quakerism, Reformed Christianity (Congregationalists, Continental Reformed, Reformed Anglicans, and Presbyterians), and Waldensianism are the main families of Protestantism.Nondenominational, evangelical, charismatic, neo-charismatic, independent, and other churches are on the rise, and constitute a significant part of Protestant Christianity.
Some groups of individuals who hold basic Protestant tenets identify themselves as "Christians" or "born-again Christians". They typically distance themselves from the confessionalism and creedalism of other Christian communities by calling themselves "non-denominational" or "evangelical". Often founded by individual pastors, they have little affiliation with historic denominations.
Restorationism
The Second Great Awakening, a period of religious revival that occurred in the United States during the early 1800s, saw the development of a number of unrelated churches. They generally saw themselves as restoring the original church of Jesus Christ rather than reforming one of the existing churches. A common belief held by Restorationists was that the other divisions of Christianity had introduced doctrinal defects into Christianity, which was known as the Great Apostasy. In Asia, Iglesia ni Cristo is a known Restorationist denomination that was established during the early 1900s. Other examples of Restorationist denominations include Irvingianism and Swedenborgianism.
Some of the churches originating during this period are historically connected to early 19th-century camp meetings in the Midwest and upstate New York. One of the largest churches produced from the movement is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. American Millennialism and Adventism, which arose from Evangelical Protestantism, influenced the Jehovah's Witnesses movement and, as a reaction specifically to William Miller, the Seventh-day Adventists. Others, including the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Evangelical Christian Church in Canada,Churches of Christ, and the Christian churches and churches of Christ, have their roots in the contemporaneous Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement, which was centered in Kentucky and Tennessee. Other groups originating in this time period include the Christadelphians and the previously mentioned Latter Day Saints movement. While the churches originating in the Second Great Awakening have some superficial similarities, their doctrine and practices vary significantly.
Other
Within Italy, Poland, Lithuania, Transylvania, Hungary, Romania, and the United Kingdom, Unitarian Churches emerged from the Reformed tradition in the 16th century; the Unitarian Church of Transylvania is an example of such a denomination that arose in this era. They adopted the Anabaptist doctrine of credobaptism.
Various smaller Independent Catholic communities, such as the Old Catholic Church, include the word Catholic in their title, and arguably have more or less liturgical practices in common with the Catholic Church but are no longer in full communion with the Holy See.
Spiritual Christians, such as the Doukhobors and Molokans, broke from the Russian Orthodox Church and maintain close association with Mennonites and Quakers due to similar religious practices; all of these groups are furthermore collectively considered to be peace churches due to their belief in pacifism.
Messianic Judaism (or the Messianic Movement) is the name of a Christian movement comprising a number of streams, whose members may consider themselves Jewish. The movement originated in the 1960s and 1970s, and it blends elements of religious Jewish practice with evangelical Christianity. Messianic Judaism affirms Christian creeds such as the messiahship and divinity of "Yeshua" (the Hebrew name of Jesus) and the Triune Nature of God, while also adhering to some Jewish dietary laws and customs.
Esoteric Christians, such as The Christian Community, regard Christianity as a mystery religion and profess the existence and possession of certain esoteric doctrines or practices, hidden from the public and accessible only to a narrow circle of "enlightened", "initiated", or highly educated people.
Nondenominational Christianity or non-denominational Christianity consists of churches which typically distance themselves from the confessionalism or creedalism of other Christian communities by not formally aligning with a specific Christian denomination. Nondenominational Christianity first arose in the 18th century through the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement, with followers organizing themselves as "Christians" and "Disciples of Christ", but many typically adhere to evangelical Christianity.
Cultural influence
The history of the Christendom spans about 1,700 years and includes a variety of socio-political developments, as well as advances in the arts, architecture, literature, science, philosophy, and technology. Since the spread of Christianity from the Levant to Europe and North Africa during the early Roman Empire, Christendom has been divided in the pre-existing Greek East and Latin West. Consequently, different versions of the Christian cultures arose with their own rites and practices, centered around the cities of Rome (Western Christianity) and Carthage, whose communities were called Western or Latin Christendom, and Constantinople (Eastern Christianity), Antioch (Syriac Christianity), Kerala (Indian Christianity) and Alexandria (Coptic Christianity), whose communities were called Eastern or Oriental Christendom. The Byzantine Empire was one of the peaks in Christian history and Eastern Christian civilization. From the 11th to 13th centuries, Latin Christendom rose to the central role of the Western world.
The Bible has had a profound influence on Western civilization and on cultures around the globe; it has contributed to the formation of Western law, art, texts, and education. With a literary tradition spanning two millennia, the Bible is one of the most influential works ever written. From practices of personal hygiene to philosophy and ethics, the Bible has directly and indirectly influenced politics and law, war and peace, sexual morals, marriage and family life, toilet etiquette, letters and learning, the arts, economics, social justice, medical care and more.
Christians have made a myriad of contributions to human progress in a broad and diverse range of fields, including philosophy,science and technology,medicine,fine arts and architecture,politics, literatures, music, and business. According to 100 Years of Nobel Prizes a review of the Nobel Prizes award between 1901 and 2000 reveals that (65.4%) of Nobel Prizes Laureates, have identified Christianity in its various forms as their religious preference.
Outside the Western world, Christianity has had an influence on various cultures, such as in Africa, the Near East, Middle East, East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Indian subcontinent.Eastern Christian scientists and scholars of the medieval Islamic world (particularly Jacobite and Nestorian Christians) contributed to the Arab Islamic civilization during the reign of the Ummayyads and the Abbasids, by translating works of Greek philosophers to Syriac and afterwards, to Arabic. They also excelled in philosophy, science, theology, and medicine. Scholars and intellectuals agree Christians in the Middle East have made significant contributions to Arab and Islamic civilization since the introduction of Islam, and they have had a significant impact contributing the culture of the Mashriq, Turkey, and Iran.
Influence on Western culture
Western culture, throughout most of its history, has been nearly equivalent to Christian culture, and a large portion of the population of the Western Hemisphere can be described as practicing or nominal Christians. The notion of "Europe" and the "Western World" has been intimately connected with the concept of "Christianity and Christendom". Many historians even attribute Christianity for being the link that created a unified European identity.
Though Western culture contained several polytheistic religions during its early years under the Greek and Roman Empires, as the centralized Roman power waned, the dominance of the Catholic Church was the only consistent force in Western Europe. Until the Age of Enlightenment, Christian culture guided the course of philosophy, literature, art, music and science. Christian disciplines of the respective arts have subsequently developed into Christian philosophy, Christian art, Christian music, Christian literature, and so on.
Christianity has had a significant impact on education, as the church created the bases of the Western system of education, and was the sponsor of founding universities in the Western world, as the university is generally regarded as an institution that has its origin in the Medieval Christian setting. Historically, Christianity has often been a patron of science and medicine; many Catholic clergy,Jesuits in particular, have been active in the sciences throughout history and have made significant contributions to the development of science. Some scholars state that Christianity contributed to the rise of the Scientific Revolution. Protestantism also has had an important influence on science. According to the Merton Thesis, there was a positive correlation between the rise of English Puritanism and German Pietism on the one hand, and early experimental science on the other. The civilizing influence of Christianity includes social welfare, contribution to the medical and health care, founding hospitals, economics (as the Protestant work ethic), architecture, literature,personal hygiene (ablution), and family life. Historically, extended families were the basic family unit in the Christian culture and countries.
Cultural Christians are secular people with a Christian heritage who may not believe in the religious claims of Christianity, but who retain an affinity for the popular culture, art, music, and so on related to the religion.
Postchristianity is the term for the decline of Christianity, particularly in Europe, Canada, Australia, and to a minor degree the Southern Cone, in the 20th and 21st centuries, considered in terms of postmodernism. It refers to the loss of Christianity's monopoly on values and world view in historically Christian societies.
Ecumenism
Christian groups and denominations have long expressed ideals of being reconciled, and in the 20th century, Christian ecumenism advanced in two ways. One way was greater cooperation between groups, such as the World Evangelical Alliance founded in 1846 in London or the Edinburgh Missionary Conference of Protestants in 1910, the Justice, Peace and Creation Commission of the World Council of Churches founded in 1948 by Protestant and Orthodox churches, and similar national councils like the National Council of Churches in Australia, which includes Catholics.
The other way was an institutional union with united churches, a practice that can be traced back to unions between Lutherans and Calvinists in early 19th-century Germany. Congregationalist, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches united in 1925 to form the United Church of Canada, and in 1977 to form the Uniting Church in Australia. The Church of South India was formed in 1947 by the union of Anglican, Baptist, Methodist, Congregationalist, and Presbyterian churches.
The Christian Flag is an ecumenical flag designed in the early 20th century to represent all of Christianity and Christendom.
The ecumenical, monastic Taizé Community is notable for being composed of more than one hundred brothers from Protestant and Catholic traditions. The community emphasizes the reconciliation of all denominations and its main church, located in Taizé, Saône-et-Loire, France, is named the "Church of Reconciliation". The community is internationally known, attracting over 100,000 young pilgrims annually.
Steps towards reconciliation on a global level were taken in 1965 by the Catholic and Orthodox churches, mutually revoking the excommunications that marked their Great Schism in 1054; the Anglican Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) working towards full communion between those churches since 1970; and some Lutheran and Catholic churches signing the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in 1999 to address conflicts at the root of the Protestant Reformation. In 2006, the World Methodist Council, representing all Methodist denominations, adopted the declaration.
Criticism, persecution, and apologetics
Criticism
Criticism of Christianity and Christians goes back to the Apostolic Age, with the New Testament recording friction between the followers of Jesus and the Pharisees and scribes (e.g., Matthew 15:1–20 and Mark 7:1–23). In the 2nd century, Christianity was criticized by the Jews on various grounds, e.g., that the prophecies of the Hebrew Bible could not have been fulfilled by Jesus, given that he did not have a successful life. Additionally, a sacrifice to remove sins in advance, for everyone or as a human being, did not fit the Jewish sacrifice ritual; furthermore, God in Judaism is said to judge people on their deeds instead of their beliefs. One of the first comprehensive attacks on Christianity came from the Greek philosopher Celsus, who wrote The True Word, a polemic criticizing Christians as being unprofitable members of society. In response, the church father Origen published his treatise Contra Celsum, or Against Celsus, a seminal work of Christian apologetics, which systematically addressed Celsus's criticisms and helped bring Christianity a level of academic respectability.
By the 3rd century, criticism of Christianity had mounted. Wild rumors about Christians were widely circulated, claiming that they were atheists and that, as part of their rituals, they devoured human infants and engaged in incestuous orgies. The Neoplatonist philosopher Porphyry wrote the fifteen-volume Adversus Christianos as a comprehensive attack on Christianity, in part building on the teachings of Plotinus.
By the 12th century, the Mishneh Torah (i.e., Rabbi Moses Maimonides) was criticizing Christianity on the grounds of idol worship, in that Christians attributed divinity to Jesus, who had a physical body. In the 19th century, Nietzsche began to write a series of polemics on the "unnatural" teachings of Christianity (e.g. sexual abstinence), and continued his criticism of Christianity to the end of his life. In the 20th century, the philosopher Bertrand Russell expressed his criticism of Christianity in Why I Am Not a Christian, formulating his rejection of Christianity.
Criticism of Christianity continues to date, e.g. Jewish and Muslim theologians criticize the doctrine of the Trinity held by most Christians, stating that this doctrine in effect assumes that there are three gods, running against the basic tenet of monotheism. New Testament scholar Robert M. Price has outlined the possibility that some Bible stories are based partly on myth in The Christ Myth Theory and its problems.
Persecution
Christians are one of the most persecuted religious groups in the world, especially in the Middle-East, North Africa and South and East Asia. In 2017, Open Doors estimated approximately 260 million Christians are subjected annually to "high, very high, or extreme persecution" with North Korea considered the most hazardous nation for Christians. In 2019, a report commissioned by the United Kingdom's Secretary of State of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to investigate global persecution of Christians found persecution has increased, and is highest in the Middle East, North Africa, India, China, North Korea, and Latin America, among others, and that it is global and not limited to Islamic states. This investigation found that approximately 80% of persecuted believers worldwide are Christians.
Apologetics
Christian apologetics aims to present a rational basis for Christianity. The word "apologetic" (Greek: ἀπολογητικός apologētikos) comes from the Greek verb ἀπολογέομαι apologeomai, meaning "(I) speak in defense of". Christian apologetics has taken many forms over the centuries, starting with Paul the Apostle. The philosopher Thomas Aquinas presented five arguments for God's existence in the Summa Theologica, while his Summa contra Gentiles was a major apologetic work. Another famous apologist, G. K. Chesterton, wrote in the early twentieth century about the benefits of religion and, specifically, Christianity. Famous for his use of paradox, Chesterton explained that while Christianity had the most mysteries, it was the most practical religion. He pointed to the advance of Christian civilizations as proof of its practicality. The physicist and priest John Polkinghorne, in his Questions of Truth, discusses the subject of religion and science, a topic that other Christian apologists such as Ravi Zacharias, John Lennox, and William Lane Craig have engaged, with the latter two men opining that the inflationary Big Bang model is evidence for the existence of God.Creationist apologetics is apologetics that aims to defend creationism.
See also
- Outline of Christianity
- Christian atheism
- Christians of Saint John
- Christianity and Islam
- Christianity and Judaism
- Christianity and politics
- Christian mythology
- Christianisation
- One true church
- Prophets of Christianity
- Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary
Notes
- Christianity originated in 1st-century Judea from the Jewish Christian sect of Second Temple Judaism.
- The doctrine of the Trinity is not universally accepted among Christians. Nontrinitarian Christian groups include the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Unitarians and Jehovah's Witnesses.
- The denominations of Adventism, Anabaptism (Amish, Apostolic, Bruderhof, Hutterites, Mennonites, River Brethren, and Schwarzenau Brethren), Anglicanism, Baptists, Lutheranism, Methodism, Moravianism/Hussites, Pentecostalism, Plymouth Brethren, Quakerism, Reformed Christianity (Congregationalists, Continental Reformed, and Presbyterians), and Waldensianism are the main families of Protestantism. Other groups that are sometimes regarded as Protestant include non-denominational Christian congregations.
- The denominations of Restorationism include the Irvingians, Swedenborgians, Christadelphians, Latter Day Saints, Jehovah's Witnesses, La Luz del Mundo, and Iglesia ni Cristo.
- It appears in the Acts of the Apostles, Acts 9:2, Acts 19:9 and Acts 19:23. Some English translations of the New Testament capitalize 'the Way' (e.g. the New King James Version and the English Standard Version), indicating that this was how 'the new religion seemed then to be designated' whereas others treat the phrase as indicative—'the way', 'that way' or 'the way of the Lord'. The Syriac version reads, "the way of God" and the Vulgate Latin version, "the way of the Lord".
- The Latin equivalent, from which English trinity is derived,[better source needed] is trinitas though Latin also borrowed Greek trias verbatim.
- Frequently a distinction is made between "liturgical" and "non-liturgical" churches based on how elaborate or antiquated the worship; in this usage, churches whose services are unscripted or improvised are described as "non-liturgical".
- Often these are arranged on an annual cycle, using a book called a lectionary.
- Iesous Christos Theou Hyios Soter may be a more complete transliteration; in Koine Greek, the daseia or spiritus asper had largely ceased being pronounced and was not—commonly—marked in the majuscule script of the time.
- A flexible term, defined as all forms of Protestantism with the notable exception of the historical denominations deriving directly from the Protestant Reformation.
- The first Nondenominational Christian churches which emerged through the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement are tied to associations such as the Churches of Christ or the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
References
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...there is a core of ideas that all New Testament scholars and believers would agree are central to ancient Christian beliefs. One British scholar, James G. Dunn, for example, says they would all agree that "the Risen Jesus is the Ascended Lord." That is to say, there would have been no faith tradition and no scriptures had not the early believers thought that Jesus was "Risen," raised from the dead, and, "Ascended," somehow above the ordinary plane of mortal and temporal experience.
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The death of Jesus Christ by crucifixion, together with bhis resurrection from the dead, lies at the heart of Christianity.
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The religion based on the person and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, or its beliefs and practices.
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Protestants: 625,606,000; Independents: 421,689,000; Unaffiliated Christians: 123,508,000
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The Second Great Awakening (1790-1840) spurred a renewed interest in primitive Christianity. What is known as the Restoration Movement of the nineteenth century gave birth to an array of groups: Mormons (The Latter Day Saint Movement), the Churches of Christ, Adventists, and Jehovah's Witnesses. Though these groups demonstrate a breathtaking diversity on the continuum of Christianity they share an intense restorationist impulse.
- Spinks, Bryan D. (2 March 2017). Reformation and Modern Rituals and Theologies of Baptism: From Luther to Contemporary Practices. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-351-90583-1.
However, Swedenborg claimed to receive visions and revelations of heavenly things and a 'New Church', and the new church which was founded upon his writings was a Restorationist Church. The three nineteenth-century churches are all examples of Restorationist Churches, which believed they were refounding the Apostolic Church, and preparing for the Second Coming of Christ.
- Gao, Ronnie Chuang-Rang; Sawatsky, Kevin (7 February 2023). "Motivations in Faith-Based Organizations". Houston Christian University. Retrieved 29 August 2024.
For example, Christianity comprises six major groups: Church of the East, Oriental Orthodoxy, Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, Protestantism and Restorationism.
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The Nicene Creed, as used in the churches of the West (Anglican, Catholic, Lutheran, and others), contains the statement, "We believe [or I believe] in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son."
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- Cambridge University Historical Series, An Essay on Western Civilization in Its Economic Aspects, p. 40: Hebraism, like Hellenism, has been an all-important factor in the development of Western Civilization; Judaism, as the precursor of Christianity, has indirectly had had much to do with shaping the ideals and morality of western nations since the christian era.
- Caltron J.H Hayas, Christianity and Western Civilization (1953), Stanford University Press, p. 2: "That certain distinctive features of our Western civilization—the civilization of western Europe and of America—have been shaped chiefly by Judaeo – Graeco – Christianity, Catholic and Protestant."
- Fred Reinhard Dallmayr, Dialogue Among Civilizations: Some Exemplary Voices (2004), p. 22: Western civilization is also sometimes described as "Christian" or "Judaeo- Christian" civilization.
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- González 1984, pp. 303–307, 310ff., 384–386
- González 1984, pp. 305, 310ff., 316ff
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- González 1984, pp. 292–300
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- Simon. Great Ages of Man: The Reformation. p. 7.
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- A general overview about the English discussion is given in Coffey, Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England 1558–1689.
- Open University, Looking at the Renaissance: Religious Context in the Renaissance (Retrieved 10 May 2007)
- Some scholars and historians attribute Christianity to having contributed to the rise of the Scientific Revolution:
- Harrison, Peter (8 May 2012). "Christianity and the rise of western science". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 28 August 2014.
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- Gilley, Sheridan (2006). The Cambridge History of Christianity: Volume 8, World Christianities c. 1815 – c. 1914. Brian Stanley. Cambridge University Press. p. 164. ISBN 0-521-81456-1.
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- Pro forma candidate to Prince-Bishop of Warmia, cf. Dobrzycki, Jerzy, and Leszek Hajdukiewicz, "Kopernik, Mikołaj", Polski słownik biograficzny (Polish Biographical Dictionary), vol. XIV, Wrocław, Polish Academy of Sciences, 1969, p. 11.
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Forced Conversion under Atheistic Regimes: It might be added that the most modern example of forced "conversions" came not from any theocratic state, but from a professedly atheist government—that of the Soviet Union under the Communists.
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- Olson, The Mosaic of Christian Belief.
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- Encyclopedia of Religion, "Arianism".
- Catholic Encyclopedia, "Council of Ephesus".
- Christian History Institute, First Meeting of the Council of Chalcedon.
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- Pope Leo I, Letter to Flavian Archived 20 June 2022 at the Wayback Machine
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- Ron Rhodes, The Complete Guide to Christian Denominations, Harvest House Publishers, 2005, ISBN 0736912894
- Woodhead 2004, p. 45
- Woodhead 2004, p. n.p.
- Metzger/Coogan, Oxford Companion to the Bible, pp. 513, 649.
- Acts 2:24, 2:31–32, 3:15, 3:26, 4:10, 5:30, 10:40–41, 13:30, 13:34, 13:37, 17:30–31, Romans 10:9, 1 Cor. 15:15, 6:14, 2 Cor. 4:14, Gal 1:1, Eph 1:20, Col 2:12, 1 Thess. 11:10, Heb. 13:20, 1 Pet. 1:3, 1:21
- s:Nicene Creed
- Acts 1:9–11
- Gambero, Luigi (1999). Mary and the Fathers of the Church: The Blessed Virgin Mary in Patristic Thought. Ignatius. ISBN 978-0-89870-686-4 – via Google Books.
- Hanegraaff, Hank (2002). Resurrection: The Capstone in the Arch of Christianity. Thomas Nelson. ISBN 978-1-4185-1723-6.
- "The Significance of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus for the Christian". Australian Catholic University National. Archived from the original on 1 September 2007. Retrieved 16 May 2007.
- Jn. 19:30–31 Mk. 16:1 16:6
- 1Cor 15:6
- John 3:16, 5:24, 6:39–40, 6:47, 10:10, 11:25–26, and 17:3
- This is drawn from a number of sources, especially the early Creeds, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, certain theological works, and various Confessions drafted during the Reformation including the Thirty Nine Articles of the Church of England, works contained in the Book of Concord.
- Fuller, The Foundations of New Testament Christology, p. 11.
- A Jesus Seminar conclusion held that "in the view of the Seminar, he did not rise bodily from the dead; the resurrection is based instead on visionary experiences of Peter, Paul, and Mary."
- Funk. The Acts of Jesus: What Did Jesus Really Do?.
- Lorenzen. Resurrection, Discipl
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion professing that Jesus was raised from the dead and is the Son of God whose coming as the Messiah Christ was prophesied in the Hebrew Bible called the Old Testament in Christianity and chronicled in the New Testament It is the world s largest and most widespread religion with over 2 38 billion followers comprising around 31 2 of the world population Its adherents known as Christians are estimated to make up a majority of the population in 157 countries and territories ChristianityThe Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem a holy place of ChristianityClassificationAbrahamicScriptureBible Old and New Testament TheologyMonotheisticRegionWorldwideLanguageBiblical Hebrew Biblical Aramaic and Biblical GreekTerritoryChristendomFounderJesusOrigin1st century AD Judaea Roman EmpireSeparated fromJudaismNumber of followersest 2 38 billion referred to as Christians Christianity remains culturally diverse in its Western and Eastern branches and doctrinally diverse concerning justification and the nature of salvation ecclesiology ordination and Christology The creeds of various Christian denominations generally hold in common Jesus as the Son of God the Logos incarnated who ministered suffered and died on a cross but rose from the dead for the salvation of humankind and referred to as the gospel meaning the good news The four canonical gospels of Matthew Mark Luke and John describe Jesus s life and teachings as preserved in the early Christian tradition with the Old Testament as the gospels respected background Christianity began in the 1st century after the death of Jesus as a Judaic sect with Hellenistic influence in the Roman province of Judaea The disciples of Jesus spread their faith around the Eastern Mediterranean area despite significant persecution The inclusion of Gentiles led Christianity to slowly separate from Judaism 2nd century Emperor Constantine I decriminalized Christianity in the Roman Empire by the Edict of Milan 313 later convening the Council of Nicaea 325 where Early Christianity was consolidated into what would become the state religion of the Roman Empire 380 The Church of the East and Oriental Orthodoxy both split over differences in Christology 5th century while the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church separated in the East West Schism 1054 Protestantism split into numerous denominations from the Catholic Church in the Reformation era 16th century Following the Age of Discovery 15th 17th century Christianity expanded throughout the world via missionary work evangelism immigration and extensive trade Christianity played a prominent role in the development of Western civilization particularly in Europe from late antiquity and the Middle Ages The three main branches of Christianity are Roman Catholicism 1 3 billion people Protestantism 625 million 900 million and Eastern Orthodoxy 230 million while other prominent braches include Oriental Orthodoxy 60 million Restorationism 35 million and the Church of the East 600 000 Smaller church communities number in the thousands despite efforts toward unity ecumenism In the West Christianity remains the dominant religion even with a decline in adherence with about 70 of that population identifying as Christian Christianity is growing in Africa and Asia the world s most populous continents Christians are persecuted in some regions of the world particularly where they are in minority in the Middle East North Africa East Asia and South Asia EtymologyEarly Jewish Christians referred to themselves as The Way Koine Greek tῆs ὁdoῦ romanized tes hodou probably coming from Isaiah 40 3 prepare the way of the Lord According to Acts 11 26 the term Christian Xrῑstῐᾱnos Khristianos meaning followers of Christ in reference to Jesus s disciples was first used in the city of Antioch by the non Jewish inhabitants there The earliest recorded use of the term Christianity Christianism Xrῑstῐᾱnismos Khristianismos was by Ignatius of Antioch around 100 AD The name Jesus comes from Ancient Greek Ἰhsoῦs Iesous likely from Hebrew Aramaic י ש ו ע Yesuaʿ HistoryEarly Christianity Apostolic Age The Cenacle on Mount Zion in Jerusalem claimed to be the location of the Last Supper and Pentecost Christianity developed during the 1st century AD as a Jewish Christian sect with Hellenistic influence of Second Temple Judaism An early Jewish Christian community was founded in Jerusalem under the leadership of the Pillars of the Church namely James the Just the brother of Jesus Peter and John Jewish Christianity soon attracted Gentile God fearers posing a problem for its Jewish religious outlook which insisted on close observance of the Jewish commandments Paul the Apostle solved this by insisting that salvation by faith in Christ and participation in his death and resurrection by their baptism sufficed At first he persecuted the early Christians but after a conversion experience he preached to the gentiles and is regarded as having had a formative effect on the emerging Christian identity as separate from Judaism Eventually his departure from Jewish customs would result in the establishment of Christianity as an independent religion Ante Nicene period A folio from Papyrus 46 an early 3rd century collection of Pauline epistles This formative period was followed by the early bishops whom Christians consider the successors of Christ s apostles From the year 150 Christian teachers began to produce theological and apologetic works aimed at defending the faith These authors are known as the Church Fathers and the study of them is called patristics Notable early Fathers include Ignatius of Antioch Polycarp Justin Martyr Irenaeus Tertullian Clement of Alexandria and Origen Persecution of Christians occurred intermittently and on a small scale by both Jewish and Roman authorities with Roman action starting at the time of the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD Examples of early executions under Jewish authority reported in the New Testament include the deaths of Saint Stephen and James son of Zebedee The Decian persecution was the first empire wide conflict when the edict of Decius in 250 AD required everyone in the Roman Empire except Jews to perform a sacrifice to the Roman gods The Diocletianic Persecution beginning in 303 AD was also particularly severe Roman persecution ended in 313 AD with the Edict of Milan While Proto orthodox Christianity was becoming dominant heterodox sects also existed at the same time which held radically different beliefs Gnostic Christianity developed a duotheistic doctrine based on illusion and enlightenment rather than forgiveness of sin With only a few scriptures overlapping with the developing orthodox canon most Gnostic texts and Gnostic gospels were eventually considered heretical and suppressed by mainstream Christians A gradual splitting off of Gentile Christianity left Jewish Christians continuing to follow the Law of Moses including practices such as circumcision By the fifth century they and the Jewish Christian gospels would be largely suppressed by the dominant sects in both Judaism and Christianity Spread and acceptance in Roman Empire The Monastery of St Matthew located atop Mount Alfaf in northern Iraq is recognized as one of the oldest Christian monasteries in existence Christianity spread to Aramaic speaking peoples along the Mediterranean coast and also to the inland parts of the Roman Empire and beyond that into the Parthian Empire and the later Sasanian Empire including Mesopotamia which was dominated at different times and to varying extents by these empires The presence of Christianity in Africa began in the middle of the 1st century in Egypt and by the end of the 2nd century in the region around Carthage Mark the Evangelist is claimed to have started the Church of Alexandria in about 43 AD various later churches claim this as their own legacy including the Coptic Orthodox Church Important Africans who influenced the early development of Christianity include Tertullian Clement of Alexandria Origen of Alexandria Cyprian Athanasius and Augustine of Hippo The 7th century Khor Virap monastery in the shadow of Mount Ararat Armenia was the first state to adopt Christianity as the state religion in the early 4th century AD King Tiridates III made Christianity the state religion in Armenia in the early 4th century AD making Armenia the first officially Christian state It was not an entirely new religion in Armenia having penetrated into the country from at least the third century but it may have been present even earlier Constantine I was exposed to Christianity in his youth and throughout his life his support for the religion grew culminating in baptism on his deathbed During his reign state sanctioned persecution of Christians was ended with the Edict of Toleration in 311 and the Edict of Milan in 313 At that point Christianity was still a minority belief comprising perhaps only 5 of the Roman population Influenced by his adviser Mardonius Constantine s nephew Julian unsuccessfully tried to suppress Christianity On 27 February 380 Theodosius I Gratian and Valentinian II established Nicene Christianity as the State church of the Roman Empire As soon as it became connected to the state Christianity grew wealthy the Church solicited donations from the rich and could now own land Constantine was also instrumental in the convocation of the First Council of Nicaea in 325 which sought to address Arianism and formulated the Nicene Creed which is still used by in Catholicism Eastern Orthodoxy Lutheranism Anglicanism and many other Protestant churches Nicaea was the first of a series of ecumenical councils which formally defined critical elements of the theology of the Church notably concerning Christology The Church of the East did not accept the third and following ecumenical councils and is still separate today by its successors Assyrian Church of the East In terms of prosperity and cultural life the Byzantine Empire was one of the peaks in Christian history and Christian civilization and Constantinople remained the leading city of the Christian world in size wealth and culture There was a renewed interest in classical Greek philosophy as well as an increase in literary output in vernacular Greek Byzantine art and literature held a preeminent place in Europe and the cultural impact of Byzantine art on the West during this period was enormous and of long lasting significance The later rise of Islam in North Africa reduced the size and numbers of Christian congregations leaving in large numbers only the Coptic Church in Egypt the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church in the Horn of Africa and the Nubian Church in the Sudan Nobatia Makuria and Alodia Middle Ages Early Middle Ages Christendom by AD 600 after its spread to Africa and Europe from the Middle East With the decline and fall of the Roman Empire in the West the papacy became a political player first visible in Pope Leo s diplomatic dealings with Huns and Vandals The church also entered into a long period of missionary activity and expansion among the various tribes While Arianists instituted the death penalty for practicing pagans see the Massacre of Verden for example Catholicism also spread among the Hungarians the Germanic the Celtic the Baltic and some Slavic peoples Around 500 Christianity was thoroughly integrated into Byzantine and Kingdom of Italy culture and Benedict of Nursia set out his Monastic Rule establishing a system of regulations for the foundation and running of monasteries Monasticism became a powerful force throughout Europe and gave rise to many early centers of learning most famously in Ireland Scotland and Gaul contributing to the Carolingian Renaissance of the 9th century In the 7th century Muslims conquered Syria including Jerusalem North Africa and Spain converting some of the Christian population to Islam including some of the Christian populations in pre Islamic Arabia and placing the rest under a separate legal status Part of the Muslims success was due to the exhaustion of the Byzantine Empire in its decades long conflict with Persia Beginning in the 8th century with the rise of Carolingian leaders the Papacy sought greater political support in the Frankish Kingdom The Middle Ages brought about major changes within the church Pope Gregory the Great dramatically reformed the ecclesiastical structure and administration In the early 8th century iconoclasm became a divisive issue when it was sponsored by the Byzantine emperors The Second Ecumenical Council of Nicaea 787 finally pronounced in favor of icons In the early 10th century Western Christian monasticism was further rejuvenated through the leadership of the great Benedictine monastery of Cluny High and Late Middle Ages An example of Byzantine pictorial art the Deesis mosaic at the Hagia Sophia in ConstantinoplePope Urban II at the Council of Clermont where he preached the First Crusade Illustration by Jean Colombe from the Passages d outremer c 1490 In the West from the 11th century onward some older cathedral schools became universities see for example University of Oxford University of Paris and University of Bologna Previously higher education had been the domain of Christian cathedral schools or monastic schools Scholae monasticae led by monks and nuns Evidence of such schools dates back to the 6th century AD These new universities expanded the curriculum to include academic programs for clerics lawyers civil servants and physicians The university is generally regarded as an institution that has its origin in the Medieval Christian setting Accompanying the rise of the new towns throughout Europe mendicant orders were founded bringing the consecrated religious life out of the monastery and into the new urban setting The two principal mendicant movements were the Franciscans and the Dominicans founded by Francis of Assisi and Dominic respectively Both orders made significant contributions to the development of the great universities of Europe Another new order was the Cistercians whose large isolated monasteries spearheaded the settlement of former wilderness areas In this period church building and ecclesiastical architecture reached new heights culminating in the orders of Romanesque and Gothic architecture and the building of the great European cathedrals Christian nationalism emerged during this era in which Christians felt the desire to recover lands in which Christianity had historically flourished From 1095 under the pontificate of Urban II the First Crusade was launched These were a series of military campaigns in the Holy Land and elsewhere initiated in response to pleas from the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I for aid against Turkish expansion The Crusades ultimately failed to stifle Islamic aggression and even contributed to Christian enmity with the sacking of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade The Christian Church experienced internal conflict between the 7th and 13th centuries that resulted in a schism between the Latin Church of Western Christianity branch the now Catholic Church and an Eastern largely Greek branch the Eastern Orthodox Church The two sides disagreed on a number of administrative liturgical and doctrinal issues most prominently Eastern Orthodox opposition to papal supremacy The Second Council of Lyon 1274 and the Council of Florence 1439 attempted to reunite the churches but in both cases the Eastern Orthodox refused to implement the decisions and the two principal churches remain in schism to the present day However the Catholic Church has achieved union with various smaller eastern churches In the thirteenth century a new emphasis on Jesus suffering exemplified by the Franciscans preaching had the consequence of turning worshippers attention towards Jews on whom Christians had placed the blame for Jesus death Christianity s limited tolerance of Jews was not new Augustine of Hippo said that Jews should not be allowed to enjoy the citizenship that Christians took for granted but the growing antipathy towards Jews was a factor that led to the expulsion of Jews from England in 1290 the first of many such expulsions in Europe Beginning around 1184 following the crusade against Cathar heresy various institutions broadly referred to as the Inquisition were established with the aim of suppressing heresy and securing religious and doctrinal unity within Christianity through conversion and prosecution Modern era Protestant Reformation and Counter Reformation Martin Luther initiated the Reformation with his Ninety five Theses in 1517 The 15th century Renaissance brought about a renewed interest in ancient and classical learning During the Reformation Martin Luther posted the Ninety five Theses 1517 against the sale of indulgences Printed copies soon spread throughout Europe In 1521 the Edict of Worms condemned and excommunicated Luther and his followers resulting in the schism of the Western Christendom into several branches Other reformers like Zwingli Oecolampadius Calvin Knox and Arminius further criticized Catholic teaching and worship These challenges developed into the movement called Protestantism which repudiated the primacy of the pope the role of tradition the seven sacraments and other doctrines and practices The Reformation in England began in 1534 when King Henry VIII had himself declared head of the Church of England Beginning in 1536 the monasteries throughout England Wales and Ireland were dissolved Thomas Muntzer Andreas Karlstadt and other theologians perceived both the Catholic Church and the confessions of the Magisterial Reformation as corrupted Their activity brought about the Radical Reformation which gave birth to various Anabaptist denominations Michelangelo s 1498 99 Pieta in St Peter s Basilica the Catholic Church was among the patronages of the Renaissance Partly in response to the Protestant Reformation the Catholic Church engaged in a substantial process of reform and renewal known as the Counter Reformation or Catholic Reform The Council of Trent clarified and reasserted Catholic doctrine During the following centuries competition between Catholicism and Protestantism became deeply entangled with political struggles among European states Meanwhile the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus in 1492 brought about a new wave of missionary activity Partly from missionary zeal but under the impetus of colonial expansion by the European powers Christianity spread to the Americas Oceania East Asia and sub Saharan Africa Throughout Europe the division caused by the Reformation led to outbreaks of religious violence and the establishment of separate state churches in Europe Lutheranism spread into the northern central and eastern parts of present day Germany Livonia and Scandinavia Anglicanism was established in England in 1534 Calvinism and its varieties such as Presbyterianism were introduced in Scotland the Netherlands Hungary Switzerland and France Arminianism gained followers in the Netherlands and Frisia Ultimately these differences led to the outbreak of conflicts in which religion played a key factor The Thirty Years War the English Civil War and the French Wars of Religion are prominent examples These events intensified the Christian debate on persecution and toleration In the revival of neoplatonism Renaissance humanists did not reject Christianity quite the contrary many of the greatest works of the Renaissance were devoted to it and the Catholic Church patronized many works of Renaissance art Much if not most of the new art was commissioned by or in dedication to the Church Some scholars and historians attribute Christianity to having contributed to the rise of the Scientific Revolution Many well known historical figures who influenced Western science considered themselves Christian such as Nicolaus Copernicus Galileo Galilei Johannes Kepler Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle Post Enlightenment A depiction of Madonna and Child in a 19th century Kakure Kirishitan Japanese woodcut In the era known as the Great Divergence when in the West the Age of Enlightenment and the scientific revolution brought about great societal changes Christianity was confronted with various forms of skepticism and with certain modern political ideologies such as versions of socialism and liberalism Events ranged from mere anti clericalism to violent outbursts against Christianity such as the dechristianization of France during the French Revolution the Spanish Civil War and certain Marxist movements especially the Russian Revolution and the persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union under state atheism Especially pressing in Europe was the formation of nation states after the Napoleonic era In all European countries different Christian denominations found themselves in competition to greater or lesser extents with each other and with the state Variables were the relative sizes of the denominations and the religious political and ideological orientation of the states Urs Altermatt of the University of Fribourg looking specifically at Catholicism in Europe identifies four models for the European nations In traditionally Catholic majority countries such as Belgium Spain and Austria to some extent religious and national communities are more or less identical Cultural symbiosis and separation are found in Poland the Republic of Ireland and Switzerland all countries with competing denominations Competition is found in Germany the Netherlands and again Switzerland all countries with minority Catholic populations which to a greater or lesser extent identified with the nation Finally separation between religion again specifically Catholicism and the state is found to a great degree in France and Italy countries where the state actively opposed itself to the authority of the Catholic Church The combined factors of the formation of nation states and ultramontanism especially in Germany and the Netherlands but also in England to a much lesser extent often forced Catholic churches organizations and believers to choose between the national demands of the state and the authority of the Church specifically the papacy This conflict came to a head in the First Vatican Council and in Germany would lead directly to the Kulturkampf Ordination of new pastors in Cameroon 2014 Christian commitment in Europe dropped as modernity and secularism came into their own particularly in the Czech Republic and Estonia while religious commitments in America have been generally high in comparison to Europe Changes in worldwide Christianity over the last century have been significant since 1900 Christianity has spread rapidly in the Global South and Third World countries The late 20th century has shown the shift of Christian adherence to the Third World and the Southern Hemisphere in general with the West no longer the chief standard bearer of Christianity Approximately 7 to 10 of Arabs are Christians most prevalent in Egypt Syria and Lebanon BeliefsWhile Christians worldwide share basic convictions there are differences of interpretations and opinions of the Bible and sacred traditions on which Christianity is based Creeds Wikisource has original text related to this article Apostles Creed Wikisource has original text related to this article Nicene Creed An Eastern Christian icon depicting Emperor Constantine and the Fathers of the First Council of Nicaea 325 as holding the Niceno Constantinopolitan Creed of 381 Concise doctrinal statements or confessions of religious beliefs are known as creeds They began as baptismal formulae and were later expanded during the Christological controversies of the 4th and 5th centuries to become statements of faith Jesus is Lord is the earliest creed of Christianity and continues to be used as with the World Council of Churches The Apostles Creed is the most widely accepted statement of the articles of Christian faith It is used by a number of Christian denominations for both liturgical and catechetical purposes most visibly by liturgical churches of Western Christian tradition including the Latin Church of the Catholic Church Lutheranism Anglicanism and Western Rite Orthodoxy It is also used by Presbyterians Methodists and Congregationalists This particular creed was developed between the 2nd and 9th centuries Its central doctrines are those of the Trinity and God the Creator Each of the doctrines found in this creed can be traced to statements current in the apostolic period The creed was apparently used as a summary of Christian doctrine for baptismal candidates in the churches of Rome Its points include Belief in God the Father Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the Holy Spirit The death descent into hell resurrection and ascension of Christ The holiness of the Church and the communion of saints Christ s second coming the Day of Judgement and salvation of the faithful The Nicene Creed was formulated largely in response to Arianism at the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople in 325 and 381 respectively and ratified as the universal creed of Christendom by the First Council of Ephesus in 431 The Chalcedonian Definition or Creed of Chalcedon developed at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 though rejected by the Oriental Orthodox taught Christ to be acknowledged in two natures inconfusedly unchangeably indivisibly inseparably one divine and one human and that both natures while perfect in themselves are nevertheless also perfectly united into one person The Athanasian Creed received in the Western Church as having the same status as the Nicene and Chalcedonian says We worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity neither confounding the Persons nor dividing the Substance Most Christians Catholic Eastern Orthodox Oriental Orthodox and Protestant alike accept the use of creeds and subscribe to at least one of the creeds mentioned above Certain Evangelical Protestants though not all of them reject creeds as definitive statements of faith even while agreeing with some or all of the substance of the creeds Also rejecting creeds are groups with roots in the Restoration Movement such as the Christian Church Disciples of Christ the Evangelical Christian Church in Canada and the Churches of Christ 14 15 123 Jesus Various depictions of Jesus The central tenet of Christianity is the belief in Jesus as the Son of God and the Messiah Christ Christians believe that Jesus as the Messiah was anointed by God as savior of humanity and hold that Jesus s coming was the fulfillment of messianic prophecies of the Old Testament The Christian concept of messiah differs significantly from the contemporary Jewish concept The core Christian belief is that through belief in and acceptance of the death and resurrection of Jesus sinful humans can be reconciled to God and thereby are offered salvation and the promise of eternal life While there have been many theological disputes over the nature of Jesus over the earliest centuries of Christian history generally Christians believe that Jesus is God incarnate and true God and true man or both fully divine and fully human Jesus having become fully human suffered the pains and temptations of a mortal man but did not sin As fully God he rose to life again According to the New Testament he rose from the dead ascended to heaven is seated at the right hand of the Father and will ultimately return to fulfill the rest of the Messianic prophecy including the resurrection of the dead the Last Judgment and the final establishment of the Kingdom of God According to the canonical gospels of Matthew and Luke Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born from the Virgin Mary Little of Jesus s childhood is recorded in the canonical gospels although infancy gospels were popular in antiquity In comparison his adulthood especially the week before his death is well documented in the gospels contained within the New Testament because that part of his life is believed to be most important The biblical accounts of Jesus s ministry include his baptism miracles preaching teaching and deeds Death and resurrection Crucifixion representing the death of Jesus on the Cross painting by Diego Velazquez c 1632 Christians consider the resurrection of Jesus to be the cornerstone of their faith see 1 Corinthians 15 and the most important event in history Among Christian beliefs the death and resurrection of Jesus are two core events on which much of Christian doctrine and theology is based According to the New Testament Jesus was crucified died a physical death was buried within a tomb and rose from the dead three days later The New Testament mentions several post resurrection appearances of Jesus on different occasions to his twelve apostles and disciples including more than five hundred brethren at once before Jesus s ascension to heaven Jesus s death and resurrection are commemorated by Christians in all worship services with special emphasis during Holy Week which includes Good Friday and Easter Sunday The death and resurrection of Jesus are usually considered the most important events in Christian theology partly because they demonstrate that Jesus has power over life and death and therefore has the authority and power to give people eternal life Christian churches accept and teach the New Testament account of the resurrection of Jesus with very few exceptions Some modern scholars use the belief of Jesus s followers in the resurrection as a point of departure for establishing the continuity of the historical Jesus and the proclamation of the early church Some liberal Christians do not accept a literal bodily resurrection seeing the story as richly symbolic and spiritually nourishing myth Arguments over death and resurrection claims occur at many religious debates and interfaith dialogues Paul the Apostle an early Christian convert and missionary wrote If Christ was not raised then all our preaching is useless and your trust in God is useless Salvation For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life John 3 16 NIV The Law and the Gospel by Lucas Cranach the Elder 1529 Moses and Elijah point the sinner to Jesus for salvation Paul the Apostle like Jews and Roman pagans of his time believed that sacrifice can bring about new kinship ties purity and eternal life For Paul the necessary sacrifice was the death of Jesus Gentiles who are Christ s are like Israel descendants of Abraham and heirs according to the promise The God who raised Jesus from the dead would also give new life to the mortal bodies of Gentile Christians who had become with Israel the children of God and were therefore no longer in the flesh Modern Christian churches tend to be much more concerned with how humanity can be saved from a universal condition of sin and death than the question of how both Jews and Gentiles can be in God s family According to Eastern Orthodox theology based upon their understanding of the atonement as put forward by Irenaeus recapitulation theory Jesus death is a ransom This restores the relation with God who is loving and reaches out to humanity and offers the possibility of theosis c q divinization becoming the kind of humans God wants humanity to be According to Catholic doctrine Jesus death satisfies the wrath of God aroused by the offense to God s honor caused by human s sinfulness The Catholic Church teaches that salvation does not occur without faithfulness on the part of Christians converts must live in accordance with principles of love and ordinarily must be baptized In Protestant theology Jesus death is regarded as a substitutionary penalty carried by Jesus for the debt that has to be paid by humankind when it broke God s moral law Christians differ in their views on the extent to which individuals salvation is pre ordained by God Reformed theology places distinctive emphasis on grace by teaching that individuals are completely incapable of self redemption but that sanctifying grace is irresistible In contrast Catholics Orthodox Christians and Arminian Protestants believe that the exercise of free will is necessary to have faith in Jesus Trinity The Trinity is the belief that God is one God in three persons the Father the Son Jesus and the Holy Spirit Trinity refers to the teaching that the one God comprises three distinct eternally co existing persons the Father the Son incarnate in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit Together these three persons are sometimes called the Godhead although there is no single term in use in Scripture to denote the unified Godhead In the words of the Athanasian Creed an early statement of Christian belief the Father is God the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God and yet there are not three Gods but one God They are distinct from another the Father has no source the Son is begotten of the Father and the Spirit proceeds from the Father Though distinct the three persons cannot be divided from one another in being or in operation While some Christians also believe that God appeared as the Father in the Old Testament it is agreed that he appeared as the Son in the New Testament and will still continue to manifest as the Holy Spirit in the present But still God still existed as three persons in each of these times However traditionally there is a belief that it was the Son who appeared in the Old Testament because for example when the Trinity is depicted in art the Son typically has the distinctive appearance a cruciform halo identifying Christ and in depictions of the Garden of Eden this looks forward to an Incarnation yet to occur In some Early Christian sarcophagi the Logos is distinguished with a beard which allows him to appear ancient even pre existent The Trinity is an essential doctrine of mainstream Christianity From earlier than the times of the Nicene Creed 325 Christianity advocated the triune mystery nature of God as a normative profession of faith According to Roger E Olson and Christopher Hall through prayer meditation study and practice the Christian community concluded that God must exist as both a unity and trinity codifying this in ecumenical council at the end of the 4th century According to this doctrine God is not divided in the sense that each person has a third of the whole rather each person is considered to be fully God see Perichoresis The distinction lies in their relations the Father being unbegotten the Son being begotten of the Father and the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and in Western Christian theology from the Son Regardless of this apparent difference the three persons are each eternal and omnipotent Other Christian religions including Unitarian Universalism Jehovah s Witnesses and Mormonism do not share those views on the Trinity The Greek word trias is first seen in this sense in the works of Theophilus of Antioch his text reads of the Trinity of God and of His Word and of His Wisdom The term may have been in use before this time its Latin equivalent trinitas appears afterwards with an explicit reference to the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit in Tertullian In the following century the word was in general use It is found in many passages of Origen Trinitarianism Trinitarianism denotes Christians who believe in the concept of the Trinity Almost all Christian denominations and churches hold Trinitarian beliefs Although the words Trinity and Triune do not appear in the Bible beginning in the 3rd century theologians developed the term and concept to facilitate apprehension of the New Testament teachings of God as being Father Son and Holy Spirit Since that time Christian theologians have been careful to emphasize that Trinity does not imply that there are three gods the antitrinitarian heresy of Tritheism nor that each hypostasis of the Trinity is one third of an infinite God partialism nor that the Son and the Holy Spirit are beings created by and subordinate to the Father Arianism Rather the Trinity is defined as one God in three persons Nontrinitarianism Nontrinitarianism or antitrinitarianism refers to theology that rejects the doctrine of the Trinity Various nontrinitarian views such as adoptionism or modalism existed in early Christianity leading to disputes about Christology Nontrinitarianism reappeared in the Gnosticism of the Cathars between the 11th and 13th centuries among groups with Unitarian theology in the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century in the 18th century Enlightenment among Restorationist groups arising during the Second Great Awakening of the 19th century and most recently in Oneness Pentecostal churches Eschatology The end of things whether the end of an individual life the end of the age or the end of the world broadly speaking is Christian eschatology the study of the destiny of humans as it is revealed in the Bible The major issues in Christian eschatology are the Tribulation death and the afterlife mainly for Evangelical groups the Millennium and the following Rapture the Second Coming of Jesus Resurrection of the Dead Heaven for liturgical branches Purgatory and Hell the Last Judgment the end of the world and the New Heavens and New Earth Christians believe that the second coming of Christ will occur at the end of time after a period of severe persecution the Great Tribulation All who have died will be resurrected bodily from the dead for the Last Judgment Jesus will fully establish the Kingdom of God in fulfillment of scriptural prophecies Death and afterlife Most Christians believe that human beings experience divine judgment and are rewarded either with eternal life or eternal damnation This includes the general judgement at the resurrection of the dead as well as the belief held by Catholics Orthodox and most Protestants in a judgment particular to the individual soul upon physical death In the Catholic branch of Christianity those who die in a state of grace i e without any mortal sin separating them from God but are still imperfectly purified from the effects of sin undergo purification through the intermediate state of purgatory to achieve the holiness necessary for entrance into God s presence Those who have attained this goal are called saints Latin sanctus holy Some Christian groups such as Seventh day Adventists hold to mortalism the belief that the human soul is not naturally immortal and is unconscious during the intermediate state between bodily death and resurrection These Christians also hold to Annihilationism the belief that subsequent to the final judgement the wicked will cease to exist rather than suffer everlasting torment Jehovah s Witnesses hold to a similar view PracticesChristmas Eve Midnight Mass at a Catholic parish church in Woodside New York City U S Old Order Anabaptist and Conservative Anabaptist women for modesty wear cape dresses and head coverings the latter of which is taught as a church ordinance Depending on the specific denomination of Christianity practices may include baptism the Eucharist Holy Communion or the Lord s Supper prayer including the Lord s Prayer confession confirmation burial rites marriage rites and the religious education of children Most denominations have ordained clergy who lead regular communal worship services Christian rites rituals and ceremonies are not celebrated in one single sacred language Many ritualistic Christian churches make a distinction between sacred language liturgical language and vernacular language The three important languages in the early Christian era were Latin Greek and Syriac Communal worship Services of worship typically follow a pattern or form known as liturgy Justin Martyr described 2nd century Christian liturgy in his First Apology c 150 to Emperor Antoninus Pius and his description remains relevant to the basic structure of Christian liturgical worship And Sundays all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read as long as time permits then when the reader has ceased the president verbally instructs and exhorts to the imitation of these good things Then we all rise together and pray and as we before said when our prayer is ended bread and wine and water are brought and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings according to his ability and the people assent saying Amen and there is a distribution to each and a participation of that over which thanks have been given and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons And they who are well to do and willing give what each thinks fit and what is collected is deposited with the president who succours the orphans and widows and those who through sickness or any other cause are in want and those who are in bonds and the strangers sojourning among us and in a word takes care of all who are in need Thus as Justin described Christians assemble for communal worship typically on Sunday the day of the resurrection though other liturgical practices often occur outside this setting Scripture readings are drawn from the Old and New Testaments but especially the gospels Instruction is given based on these readings in the form of a sermon or homily There are a variety of congregational prayers including thanksgiving confession and intercession which occur throughout the service and take a variety of forms including recited responsive silent or sung Psalms hymns worship songs and other church music may be sung Services can be varied for special events like significant feast days Nearly all forms of worship incorporate the Eucharist which consists of a meal It is reenacted in accordance with Jesus instruction at the Last Supper that his followers do in remembrance of him as when he gave his disciples bread saying This is my body and gave them wine saying This is my blood In the early church Christians and those yet to complete initiation would separate for the Eucharistic part of the service Some denominations such as Confessional Lutheran churches continue to practice closed communion They offer communion to those who are already united in that denomination or sometimes individual church Catholics further restrict participation to their members who are not in a state of mortal sin Many other churches such as Anglican Communion and the Methodist Churches such as the Free Methodist Church and United Methodist Church practice open communion since they view communion as a means to unity rather than an end and invite all believing Christians to participate Sacraments or ordinances 2nd century description of the Eucharist And this food is called among us Eukharistia the Eucharist of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins and unto regeneration and who is so living as Christ has enjoined For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Savior having been made flesh by the Word of God had both flesh and blood for our salvation so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh Justin Martyr In Christian belief and practice a sacrament is a rite instituted by Christ that confers grace constituting a sacred mystery The term is derived from the Latin word sacramentum which was used to translate the Greek word for mystery Views concerning both which rites are sacramental and what it means for an act to be a sacrament vary among Christian denominations and traditions The most conventional functional definition of a sacrament is that it is an outward sign instituted by Christ that conveys an inward spiritual grace through Christ The two most widely accepted sacraments are Baptism and the Eucharist however the majority of Christians also recognize five additional sacraments Confirmation Chrismation in the Eastern tradition Holy Orders or ordination Penance or Confession Anointing of the Sick and Matrimony see Christian views on marriage Taken together these are the Seven Sacraments as recognized by churches in the High Church tradition notably Catholic Eastern Orthodox Oriental Orthodox Independent Catholic Old Catholic some Lutherans and Anglicans Most other denominations and traditions typically affirm only Baptism and Eucharist as sacraments while some Protestant groups such as the Quakers reject sacramental theology Certain denominations of Christianity such as Anabaptists use the term ordinances to refer to rites instituted by Jesus for Christians to observe Seven ordinances have been taught in many Conservative Mennonite Anabaptist churches which include baptism communion footwashing marriage anointing with oil the holy kiss and the prayer covering In addition to this the Church of the East has two additional sacraments in place of the traditional sacraments of Matrimony and the Anointing of the Sick These include Holy Leaven Melka and the sign of the cross The Schwarzenau Brethren Anabaptist churches such as the Dunkard Brethren Church observe the agape feast lovefeast a rite also observed by Moravian Church and Methodist Churches Liturgical calendar Catholics Eastern Christians Lutherans Anglicans and other traditional Protestant communities frame worship around the liturgical year The liturgical cycle divides the year into a series of seasons each with their theological emphases and modes of prayer which can be signified by different ways of decorating churches colors of paraments and vestments for clergy scriptural readings themes for preaching and even different traditions and practices often observed personally or in the home Western Christian liturgical calendars are based on the cycle of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church and Eastern Christians use analogous calendars based on the cycle of their respective rites Calendars set aside holy days such as solemnities which commemorate an event in the life of Jesus Mary or the saints and periods of fasting such as Lent and other pious events such as memoria or lesser festivals commemorating saints Christian groups that do not follow a liturgical tradition often retain certain celebrations such as Christmas Easter and Pentecost these are the celebrations of Christ s birth resurrection and the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Church respectively A few denominations such as Quaker Christians make no use of a liturgical calendar Symbols An early circular ichthys symbol created by combining the Greek letters IX8YS into a wheel Ephesus Asia Minor Most Christian denominations have not generally practiced aniconism the avoidance or prohibition of devotional images even if early Jewish Christians invoking the Decalogue s prohibition of idolatry avoided figures in their symbols The cross today one of the most widely recognized symbols was used by Christians from the earliest times Tertullian in his book De Corona tells how it was already a tradition for Christians to trace the sign of the cross on their foreheads Although the cross was known to the early Christians the crucifix did not appear in use until the 5th century Among the earliest Christian symbols that of the fish or Ichthys seems to have ranked first in importance as seen on monumental sources such as tombs from the first decades of the 2nd century Its popularity seemingly arose from the Greek word ichthys fish forming an acrostic for the Greek phrase Iesous Christos Theou Yios Soter Ἰhsoῦs Xristos 8eoῦ Yἱos Swthr Jesus Christ Son of God Savior a concise summary of Christian faith Other major Christian symbols include the chi rho monogram the dove and olive branch symbolic of the Holy Spirit the sacrificial lamb representing Christ s sacrifice the vine symbolizing the connection of the Christian with Christ and many others These all derive from passages of the New Testament Baptism Infant baptism by effusion in a Catholic Church in VenezuelaBeliever s baptism of adult by immersion Northolt Park Baptist Church in Greater London Baptist Union of Great Britain Baptism is the ritual act with the use of water by which a person is admitted to membership of the Church Beliefs on baptism vary among denominations Differences occur firstly on whether the act has any spiritual significance Some such as the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches as well as Lutherans and Anglicans hold to the doctrine of baptismal regeneration which affirms that baptism creates or strengthens a person s faith and is intimately linked to salvation Baptists and Plymouth Brethren view baptism as a purely symbolic act an external public declaration of the inward change which has taken place in the person but not as spiritually efficacious Secondly there are differences of opinion on the methodology or mode of the act These modes are by immersion if immersion is total by submersion by affusion pouring and by aspersion sprinkling Those who hold the first view may also adhere to the tradition of infant baptism the Orthodox Churches all practice infant baptism and always baptize by total immersion repeated three times in the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit The Lutheran Church and the Catholic Church also practice infant baptism usually by affusion and using the Trinitarian formula Anabaptist Christians practice believer s baptism in which an adult chooses to receive the ordinance after making a decision to follow Jesus Anabaptist denominations such as the Mennonites Amish and Hutterites use pouring as the mode to administer believer s baptism whereas Anabaptists of the Schwarzenau Brethren and River Brethren traditions baptize by immersion Prayer Our Father in heaven hallowed be your name Your kingdom come Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven Give us today our daily bread Forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil The Lord s Prayer Matthew 6 9 13 EHV In the Gospel of Saint Matthew Jesus taught the Lord s Prayer which has been seen as a model for Christian prayer The injunction for Christians to pray the Lord s prayer thrice daily was given in the Didache and came to be recited by Christians at 9 am 12 pm and 3 pm In the second century Apostolic Tradition Hippolytus instructed Christians to pray at seven fixed prayer times on rising at the lighting of the evening lamp at bedtime at midnight and the third sixth and ninth hours of the day being hours associated with Christ s Passion Prayer positions including kneeling standing and prostrations have been used for these seven fixed prayer times since the days of the early Church Breviaries such as the Shehimo and Agpeya are used by Oriental Orthodox Christians to pray these canonical hours while facing in the eastward direction of prayer The Apostolic Tradition directed that the sign of the cross be used by Christians during the minor exorcism of baptism during ablutions before praying at fixed prayer times and in times of temptation Intercessory prayer is prayer offered for the benefit of other people There are many intercessory prayers recorded in the Bible including prayers of the Apostle Peter on behalf of sick persons and by prophets of the Old Testament in favor of other people In the Epistle of James no distinction is made between the intercessory prayer offered by ordinary believers and the prominent Old Testament prophet Elijah The effectiveness of prayer in Christianity derives from the power of God rather than the status of the one praying The ancient church in both Eastern and Western Christianity developed a tradition of asking for the intercession of deceased saints and this remains the practice of most Eastern Orthodox Oriental Orthodox Catholic and some Lutheran and Anglican churches Apart from certain sectors within the latter two denominations other Churches of the Protestant Reformation however rejected prayer to the saints largely on the basis of the sole mediatorship of Christ The reformer Huldrych Zwingli admitted that he had offered prayers to the saints until his reading of the Bible convinced him that this was idolatrous According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church Prayer is the raising of one s mind and heart to God or the requesting of good things from God The Book of Common Prayer in the Anglican tradition is a guide which provides a set order for services containing set prayers scripture readings and hymns or sung Psalms Frequently in Western Christianity when praying the hands are placed palms together and forward as in the feudal commendation ceremony At other times the older orans posture may be used with palms up and elbows in ScripturesThe Bible is the sacred book in Christianity Christianity like other religions has adherents whose beliefs and biblical interpretations vary Christianity regards the biblical canon the Old Testament and the New Testament as the inspired word of God The traditional view of inspiration is that God worked through human authors so that what they produced was what God wished to communicate The Greek word referring to inspiration in 2 Timothy 3 16 is theopneustos which literally means God breathed Some believe that divine inspiration makes present Bibles inerrant while others claim inerrancy for the Bible in its original manuscripts although none of those are extant Still others maintain that only a particular translation is inerrant such as the King James Version Another closely related view is biblical infallibility or limited inerrancy which affirms that the Bible is free of error as a guide to salvation but may include errors on matters such as history geography or science The canon of the Old Testament accepted by Protestant churches which is only the Tanakh the canon of the Hebrew Bible is shorter than that accepted by the Orthodox and Catholic churches which also include the deuterocanonical books which appear in the Septuagint the Orthodox canon being slightly larger than the Catholic Protestants regard the latter as apocryphal important historical documents which help to inform the understanding of words grammar and syntax used in the historical period of their conception Some versions of the Bible include a separate Apocrypha section between the Old Testament and the New Testament The New Testament originally written in Koine Greek contains 27 books which are agreed upon by all major churches Some denominations have additional canonical holy scriptures beyond the Bible including the standard works of the Latter Day Saints movement and Divine Principle in the Unification Church Catholic interpretation St Peter s Basilica Vatican City the largest church in the world and a symbol of the Catholic Church In antiquity two schools of exegesis developed in Alexandria and Antioch The Alexandrian interpretation exemplified by Origen tended to read Scripture allegorically while the Antiochene interpretation adhered to the literal sense holding that other meanings called theoria could only be accepted if based on the literal meaning Catholic theology distinguishes two senses of scripture the literal and the spiritual The literal sense of understanding scripture is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture The spiritual sense is further subdivided into The allegorical sense which includes typology An example would be the parting of the Red Sea being understood as a type sign of baptism The moral sense which understands the scripture to contain some ethical teaching The anagogical sense which applies to eschatology eternity and the consummation of the world Regarding exegesis following the rules of sound interpretation Catholic theology holds The injunction that all other senses of sacred scripture are based on the literal That the historicity of the Gospels must be absolutely and constantly held That scripture must be read within the living Tradition of the whole Church and That the task of interpretation has been entrusted to the bishops in communion with the successor of Peter the Bishop of Rome Protestant interpretation Qualities of Scripture Many Protestant Christians such as Lutherans and the Reformed believe in the doctrine of sola scriptura that the Bible is a self sufficient revelation the final authority on all Christian doctrine and revealed all truth necessary for salvation other Protestant Christians such as Methodists and Anglicans affirm the doctrine of prima scriptura which teaches that Scripture is the primary source for Christian doctrine but that tradition experience and reason can nurture the Christian religion as long as they are in harmony with the Bible Protestants characteristically believe that ordinary believers may reach an adequate understanding of Scripture because Scripture itself is clear in its meaning or perspicuous Martin Luther believed that without God s help Scripture would be enveloped in darkness He advocated for one definite and simple understanding of Scripture John Calvin wrote all who refuse not to follow the Holy Spirit as their guide find in the Scripture a clear light Related to this is efficacy that Scripture is able to lead people to faith and sufficiency that the Scriptures contain everything that one needs to know to obtain salvation and to live a Christian life Original intended meaning of Scripture Protestants stress the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture the historical grammatical method The historical grammatical method or grammatico historical method is an effort in Biblical hermeneutics to find the intended original meaning in the text This original intended meaning of the text is drawn out through examination of the passage in light of the grammatical and syntactical aspects the historical background the literary genre as well as theological canonical considerations The historical grammatical method distinguishes between the one original meaning and the significance of the text The significance of the text includes the ensuing use of the text or application The original passage is seen as having only a single meaning or sense As Milton S Terry said A fundamental principle in grammatico historical exposition is that the words and sentences can have but one significance in one and the same connection The moment we neglect this principle we drift out upon a sea of uncertainty and conjecture Technically speaking the grammatical historical method of interpretation is distinct from the determination of the passage s significance in light of that interpretation Taken together both define the term Biblical hermeneutics Some Protestant interpreters make use of typology DemographicsWith around 2 8 billion adherents according to a 2022 estimation by World History Encyclopedia split into three main branches of Catholic Protestant and Eastern Orthodox Christianity is the world s largest religion High birth rates and conversions in the global South were cited as the reasons for the Christian population growth For the last hundred years the Christian share has stood at around 33 of the world population This masks a major shift in the demographics of Christianity large increases in the developing world have been accompanied by substantial declines in the developed world mainly in Western Europe and North America According to a 2015 Pew Research Center study within the next four decades Christianity will remain the largest religion and by 2050 the Christian population is expected to exceed 3 billion 60 A Christian procession in Brazil the country with the largest Catholic population in the worldTrinity Sunday in Russia the Russian Orthodox Church has experienced a great revival since the dissolution of the Soviet Union a country that had a policy of state atheism Show on the life of Jesus at City Church in Sao Jose dos Campos affiliated with the Brazilian Baptist Convention According to some scholars Christianity ranks at first place in net gains through religious conversion As a percentage of Christians the Catholic Church and Orthodoxy both Eastern and Oriental are declining in some parts of the world though Catholicism is growing in Asia in Africa vibrant in Eastern Europe etc while Protestants and other Christians are on the rise in the developing world The so called popular Protestantism is one of the fastest growing religious categories in the world Nevertheless Catholicism will also continue to grow to 1 63 billion by 2050 according to Todd Johnson of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity Africa alone by 2015 will be home to 230 million African Catholics And if in 2018 the U N projects that Africa s population will reach 4 5 billion by 2100 not 2 billion as predicted in 2004 Catholicism will indeed grow as will other religious groups According to Pew Research Center Africa is expected to be home to 1 1 billion African Christians by 2050 In 2010 87 of the world s Christian population lived in countries where Christians are in the majority while 13 of the world s Christian population lived in countries where Christians are in the minority Christianity is the predominant religion in Europe the Americas Oceania and Sub Saharan Africa There are also large Christian communities in other parts of the world such as Central Asia the Middle East and North Africa East Asia Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent In Asia it is the dominant religion in Armenia Cyprus Georgia East Timor and the Philippines However it is declining in some areas including the northern and western United States some areas in Oceania Australia and New Zealand northern Europe including Great Britain Scandinavia and other places France Germany Canada and some parts of Asia especially the Middle East due to the Christian emigration and Macau The total Christian population is not decreasing in Brazil and the southern United States however the percentage of the population identifying as Christian is in decline Since the fall of communism the proportion of Christians has been largely stable in Central Europe except in the Czech Republic On the other hand Christianity is growing rapidly in both numbers and percentages in Eastern Europe China other Asian countries Sub Saharan Africa Latin America North Africa Maghreb Gulf Cooperation Council countries and Oceania Despite a decline in adherence in the West Christianity remains the dominant religion in the region with about 70 of that population identifying as Christian Christianity remains the largest religion in Western Europe where 71 of Western Europeans identified themselves as Christian in 2018 A 2011 Pew Research Center survey found that 76 of Europeans 73 in Oceania and about 86 in the Americas 90 in Latin America and 77 in North America identified themselves as Christians By 2010 about 157 countries and territories in the world had Christian majorities There are many charismatic movements that have become well established over large parts of the world especially Africa Latin America and Asia Since 1900 primarily due to conversion Protestantism has spread rapidly in Africa Asia Oceania and Latin America From 1960 to 2000 the global growth of the number of reported Evangelical Protestants grew three times the world s population rate and twice that of Islam According to the historian Geoffrey Blainey from the University of Melbourne since the 1960s there has been a substantial increase in the number of conversions from Islam to Christianity mostly to the Evangelical and Pentecostal forms A study conducted by St Mary s University estimated about 10 2 million Muslim converts to Christianity in 2015 according to the study significant numbers of Muslim converts to Christianity can be found in Afghanistan Azerbaijan Central Asia including Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan and other countries Indonesia Malaysia the Middle East including Iran Saudi Arabia Turkey and other countries North Africa including Algeria Morocco and Tunisia Sub Saharan Africa and the Western World including Albania Belgium France Germany Kosovo the Netherlands Russia Scandinavia United Kingdom the United States and other western countries It is also reported that Christianity is popular among people of different backgrounds in Africa and Asia according to a report by the Singapore Management University more people in Southeast Asia are converting to Christianity many of them young and having a university degree According to scholar Juliette Koning and Heidi Dahles of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam there is a rapid expansion of Christianity in Singapore China Hong Kong Taiwan Indonesia Malaysia and South Korea According to scholar Terence Chong from the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies since the 1980s Christianity is expanding in China Singapore Indonesia Japan Malaysia Taiwan South Korea and Vietnam In most countries in the developed world church attendance among people who continue to identify themselves as Christians has been falling over the last few decades Some sources view this as part of a drift away from traditional membership institutions while others link it to signs of a decline in belief in the importance of religion in general Europe s Christian population though in decline still constitutes the largest geographical component of the religion According to data from the 2012 European Social Survey around a third of European Christians say they attend services once a month or more Conversely according to the World Values Survey about more than two thirds of Latin American Christians and about 90 of African Christians in Ghana Nigeria Rwanda South Africa and Zimbabwe said they attended church regularly According to a 2018 study by the Pew Research Center Christians in Africa and Latin America and the United States have high levels of commitment to their faith Christianity in one form or another is the sole state religion of the following nations Argentina Catholic Costa Rica Catholic the Kingdom of Denmark Lutheran England Anglican Greece Greek Orthodox Iceland Lutheran Liechtenstein Catholic Malta Catholic Monaco Catholic Norway Lutheran Samoa Tonga Methodist Tuvalu Reformed and Vatican City Catholic There are numerous other countries such as Cyprus which although do not have an established church still give official recognition and support to a specific Christian denomination Demographics of major traditions within Christianity Pew Research Center 2020 data Tradition Followers of the Christian population of the world population Follower dynamics Dynamics in and outside ChristianityRoman Catholic Church 1 329 610 000 50 1 15 9 Growing GrowingProtestantism 900 640 000 36 7 11 6 Growing GrowingEastern Orthodox Church 220 380 000 11 9 3 8 Growing DecliningOther Christianity 28 430 000 1 3 0 4 Growing GrowingChristianity 2 382 750 000 100 31 7 Growing StableChristians self described by region Pew Research Center 2010 data Region Christians ChristianEurope 558 260 000 75 2Latin America Caribbean 531 280 000 90 0Sub Saharan Africa 517 340 000 62 9Asia Pacific 286 950 000 7 1North America 266 630 000 77 4Middle East North Africa 12 710 000 3 7World 2 173 180 000 31 5Regional median ages of Christians compared with overall median ages Pew Research Center 2010 data Christian median age in region years Regional median age years World 30 29Sub Saharan Africa 19 18Latin America Caribbean 27 27Asia Pacific 28 29Middle East North Africa 29 24North America 39 37Europe 42 40The global distribution of Christians Countries colored a darker shade have a higher proportion of Christians Countries with 50 or more Christians are colored purple countries with 10 to 50 Christians are colored pink Nations with Christianity as their state religion are in blue Distribution of Catholics Distribution of Protestants Distribution of Eastern Orthodox Distribution of Oriental Orthodox Distribution of other ChristiansChurches and denominations The template Pie chart is being considered for merging World Christianity by tradition in 2024 as per World Christian Database Catholic 48 6 Protestant 39 8 Orthodox 11 1 Other 0 5 Christianity can be taxonomically divided into six main groups Roman Catholicism Protestantism Oriental Orthodoxy Eastern Orthodoxy the Church of the East and Restorationism A broader distinction that is sometimes drawn is between Eastern Christianity and Western Christianity which has its origins in the East West Schism Great Schism of the 11th century Recently neither Western nor Eastern World Christianity has also stood out for example in African initiated churches However there are other present and historical Christian groups that do not fit neatly into one of these primary categories There is a diversity of doctrines and liturgical practices among groups calling themselves Christian These groups may vary ecclesiologically in their views on a classification of Christian denominations The Nicene Creed 325 however is typically accepted as authoritative by most Christians including the Catholic Eastern Orthodox Oriental Orthodox and major Protestant such as Lutheran and Anglican denominations Major denominational families in Christianity This box viewtalkedit Western Christianity Eastern Christianity Protestantism Anabaptism Anglicanism Lutheranism Reformed Latin Church Catholic Church Eastern Catholic Churches Eastern Orthodox Church Oriental Orthodox Churches Church of the East Schism 1552 Assyrian Church of the East Ancient Church of the East Protestant Reformation 16th century Great Schism 11th century Council of Ephesus 431 Council of Chalcedon 451 Early Christianity Great Church Full communion Not shown are ante Nicene nontrinitarian and restorationist denominations Catholic Church Pope Francis the current leader of the Catholic Church The Catholic Church consists of those particular Churches headed by bishops in communion with the pope the bishop of Rome as its highest authority in matters of faith morality and church governance Like Eastern Orthodoxy the Catholic Church through apostolic succession traces its origins to the Christian community founded by Jesus Christ Catholics maintain that the one holy catholic and apostolic church founded by Jesus subsists fully in the Catholic Church but also acknowledges other Christian churches and communities and works towards reconciliation among all Christians The Catholic faith is detailed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church Of its seven sacraments the Eucharist is the principal one celebrated liturgically in the Mass The church teaches that through consecration by a priest the sacrificial bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ The Virgin Mary is venerated in the Catholic Church as Mother of God and Queen of Heaven honoured in dogmas and devotions Its teaching includes Divine Mercy sanctification through faith and evangelization of the Gospel as well as Catholic social teaching which emphasizes voluntary support for the sick the poor and the afflicted through the corporal and spiritual works of mercy The Catholic Church operates thousands of Catholic schools universities hospitals and orphanages around the world and is the largest non government provider of education and health care in the world Among its other social services are numerous charitable and humanitarian organizations Canon law Latin jus canonicum is the system of laws and legal principles made and enforced by the hierarchical authorities of the Catholic Church to regulate its external organisation and government and to order and direct the activities of Catholics toward the mission of the church The canon law of the Latin Church was the first modern Western legal system and is the oldest continuously functioning legal system in the West while the distinctive traditions of Eastern Catholic canon law govern the 23 Eastern Catholic particular churches sui iuris As the world s oldest and largest continuously functioning international institution it has played a prominent role in the history and development of Western civilization The 2 834 sees are grouped into 24 particular autonomous Churches the largest of which being the Latin Church each with its own distinct traditions regarding the liturgy and the administering of sacraments With more than 1 1 billion baptized members the Catholic Church is the largest Christian church and represents 50 1 of all Christians as well as 16 7 of the world s population Catholics live all over the world through missions diaspora and conversions Eastern Orthodox Church St George s Cathedral in Istanbul It has been the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople whose leader is regarded as the primus inter pares in the Eastern Orthodox Church The Eastern Orthodox Church consists of those churches in communion with the patriarchal sees of the East such as the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Like the Catholic Church the Eastern Orthodox Church also traces its heritage to the foundation of Christianity through apostolic succession and has an episcopal structure though the autonomy of its component parts is emphasized and most of them are national churches Eastern Orthodox theology is based on holy tradition which incorporates the dogmatic decrees of the seven Ecumenical Councils the Scriptures and the teaching of the Church Fathers The church teaches that it is the one holy catholic and apostolic church established by Jesus Christ in his Great Commission and that its bishops are the successors of Christ s apostles It maintains that it practises the original Christian faith as passed down by holy tradition Its patriarchates reminiscent of the pentarchy and other autocephalous and autonomous churches reflect a variety of hierarchical organisation It recognizes seven major sacraments of which the Eucharist is the principal one celebrated liturgically in synaxis The church teaches that through consecration invoked by a priest the sacrificial bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ The Virgin Mary is venerated in the Eastern Orthodox Church as the Theotokos meaning God bearer and is honoured in devotions Eastern Orthodoxy is the second largest single denomination in Christianity with an estimated 230 million adherents although Protestants collectively outnumber them substantially As one of the oldest surviving religious institutions in the world the Eastern Orthodox Church has played a prominent role in the history and culture of Eastern and Southeastern Europe the Caucasus and the Near East The majority of Eastern Orthodox Christians live mainly in Southeast and Eastern Europe Cyprus Georgia and parts of the Caucasus region Siberia and the Russian Far East Over half of Eastern Orthodox Christians follow the Russian Orthodox Church while the vast majority live within Russia There are also communities in the former Byzantine regions of Africa the Eastern Mediterranean and in the Middle East Eastern Orthodox communities are also present in many other parts of the world particularly North America Western Europe and Australia formed through diaspora conversions and missionary activity Oriental Orthodoxy Holy Trinity Cathedral in Addis Ababa the seat of the Ethiopian Orthodox the largest of the Oriental Orthodox Churches The Oriental Orthodox Churches also called Old Oriental churches are those eastern churches that recognize the first three ecumenical councils Nicaea Constantinople and Ephesus but reject the dogmatic definitions of the Council of Chalcedon and instead espouse a Miaphysite christology The Oriental Orthodox communion consists of six groups Syriac Orthodox Coptic Orthodox Ethiopian Orthodox Eritrean Orthodox Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church India and Armenian Apostolic churches These six churches while being in communion with each other are completely independent hierarchically These churches are generally not in communion with the Eastern Orthodox Church with whom they are in dialogue for erecting a communion Together they have about 62 million members worldwide As some of the oldest religious institutions in the world the Oriental Orthodox Churches have played a prominent role in the history and culture of Armenia Egypt Turkey Eritrea Ethiopia Sudan Iran Azerbaijan and parts of the Middle East and India An Eastern Christian body of autocephalous churches its bishops are equal by virtue of episcopal ordination and its doctrines can be summarized in that the churches recognize the validity of only the first three ecumenical councils Some Oriental Orthodox Churches such as the Coptic Orthodox Ethiopian Orthodox Eritrean Orthodox places a heavier emphasis on Old Testament teachings than one might find in other Christian denominations and its followers adhere to certain practices following dietary rules that are similar to Jewish Kashrut require that their male members undergo circumcision and observes ritual purification Church of the East A 6th century Nestorian church St John the Arab in the Assyrian village of Geramon in Hakkari southeastern Turkey The Church of the East which was part of the Great Church shared communion with those in the Roman Empire until the Council of Ephesus condemned Nestorius in 431 Continuing as a dhimmi community under the Rashidun Caliphate after the Muslim conquest of Persia 633 654 the Church of the East played a major role in the history of Christianity in Asia Between the 9th and 14th centuries it represented the world s largest Christian denomination in terms of geographical extent It established dioceses and communities stretching from the Mediterranean Sea and today s Iraq and Iran to India the Saint Thomas Syrian Christians of Kerala the Mongol kingdoms in Central Asia and China during the Tang dynasty 7th 9th centuries In the 13th and 14th centuries the church experienced a final period of expansion under the Mongol Empire where influential Church of the East clergy sat in the Mongol court The Assyrian Church of the East with an unbroken patriarchate established in the 17th century is an independent Eastern Christian denomination which claims continuity from the Church of the East in parallel to the Catholic patriarchate established in the 16th century that evolved into the Chaldean Catholic Church an Eastern Catholic church in full communion with the Pope It is an Eastern Christian church that follows the traditional christology and ecclesiology of the historical Church of the East Largely aniconic and not in communion with any other church it belongs to the eastern branch of Syriac Christianity and uses the East Syriac Rite in its liturgy Saint Mary Church an ancient Assyrian church located in the city of Urmia Iran Its main spoken language is Syriac a dialect of Eastern Aramaic and the majority of its adherents are ethnic Assyrians mostly living in Iran Iraq Syria Turkey India Chaldean Syrian Church and in the Assyrian diaspora It is officially headquartered in the city of Erbil in northern Iraqi Kurdistan and its original area also spreads into south eastern Turkey and north western Iran corresponding to ancient Assyria Its hierarchy is composed of metropolitan bishops and diocesan bishops while lower clergy consists of priests and deacons who serve in dioceses eparchies and parishes throughout the Middle East India North America Oceania and Europe including the Caucasus and Russia The Ancient Church of the East distinguished itself from the Assyrian Church of the East in 1964 It is one of the Assyrian churches that claim continuity with the historical Church of the East one of the oldest Christian churches in Mesopotamia It is officially headquartered in the city of Baghdad Iraq The majority of its adherents are ethnic Assyrians Protestantism In 1521 the Edict of Worms condemned Martin Luther and officially banned citizens of the Holy Roman Empire from defending or propagating his ideas This split within the Roman Catholic church is now called the Reformation Prominent Reformers included Martin Luther Huldrych Zwingli and John Calvin The 1529 Protestation at Speyer against being excommunicated gave this party the name Protestantism Luther s primary theological heirs are known as Lutherans Zwingli and Calvin s heirs are far broader denominationally and are referred to as the Reformed tradition The Anglican churches descended from the Church of England and organized in the Anglican Communion Some Lutherans identify as Evangelical Catholics and some but not all Anglicans consider themselves both Protestant and Catholic Protestants have developed their own culture with major contributions in education the humanities and sciences the political and social order the economy and the arts and many other fields Since the Anglican Lutheran and the Reformed branches of Protestantism originated for the most part in cooperation with the government these movements are termed the Magisterial Reformation On the other hand groups such as the Anabaptists who often do not consider themselves to be Protestant originated in the Radical Reformation which though sometimes protected under Acts of Toleration do not trace their history back to any state church They are further distinguished by their rejection of infant baptism they believe in baptism only of adult believers credobaptism Anabaptists include the Amish Apostolic Bruderhof Mennonites Hutterites River Brethren and Schwarzenau Brethren groups The term Protestant also refers to any churches which formed later with either the Magisterial or Radical traditions In the 18th century for example Methodism grew out of Anglican minister John Wesley s evangelical revival movement Several Pentecostal and non denominational churches which emphasize the cleansing power of the Holy Spirit in turn grew out of Methodism Because Methodists Pentecostals and other evangelicals stress accepting Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior which comes from Wesley s emphasis of the New Birth they often refer to themselves as being born again Protestantism is the second largest major group of Christians after Catholicism by number of followers although the Eastern Orthodox Church is larger than any single Protestant denomination Estimates vary mainly over the question of which denominations to classify as Protestant The total Protestant population has reached 1 17 billion in 2024 corresponding to nearly 44 of the world s Christians The majority of Protestants are members of just a handful of denominational families i e Adventism Anabaptism Amish Apostolic Bruderhof Hutterites Mennonites River Brethren and Schwarzenau Brethren Anglicanism Baptists Lutheranism Methodism Moravianism Hussites Pentecostalism Plymouth Brethren Quakerism Reformed Christianity Congregationalists Continental Reformed Reformed Anglicans and Presbyterians and Waldensianism are the main families of Protestantism Nondenominational evangelical charismatic neo charismatic independent and other churches are on the rise and constitute a significant part of Protestant Christianity Some groups of individuals who hold basic Protestant tenets identify themselves as Christians or born again Christians They typically distance themselves from the confessionalism and creedalism of other Christian communities by calling themselves non denominational or evangelical Often founded by individual pastors they have little affiliation with historic denominations Historical chart of the main Protestant branches Restorationism A 19th century drawing of Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery receiving the Aaronic priesthood from John the Baptist Latter Day Saints believe that the Priesthood ceased to exist after the death of the apostles and therefore needed to be restored The Second Great Awakening a period of religious revival that occurred in the United States during the early 1800s saw the development of a number of unrelated churches They generally saw themselves as restoring the original church of Jesus Christ rather than reforming one of the existing churches A common belief held by Restorationists was that the other divisions of Christianity had introduced doctrinal defects into Christianity which was known as the Great Apostasy In Asia Iglesia ni Cristo is a known Restorationist denomination that was established during the early 1900s Other examples of Restorationist denominations include Irvingianism and Swedenborgianism Some of the churches originating during this period are historically connected to early 19th century camp meetings in the Midwest and upstate New York One of the largest churches produced from the movement is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints American Millennialism and Adventism which arose from Evangelical Protestantism influenced the Jehovah s Witnesses movement and as a reaction specifically to William Miller the Seventh day Adventists Others including the Christian Church Disciples of Christ Evangelical Christian Church in Canada Churches of Christ and the Christian churches and churches of Christ have their roots in the contemporaneous Stone Campbell Restoration Movement which was centered in Kentucky and Tennessee Other groups originating in this time period include the Christadelphians and the previously mentioned Latter Day Saints movement While the churches originating in the Second Great Awakening have some superficial similarities their doctrine and practices vary significantly Other Unitarian Church of Transylvania in Cluj Napoca Within Italy Poland Lithuania Transylvania Hungary Romania and the United Kingdom Unitarian Churches emerged from the Reformed tradition in the 16th century the Unitarian Church of Transylvania is an example of such a denomination that arose in this era They adopted the Anabaptist doctrine of credobaptism Various smaller Independent Catholic communities such as the Old Catholic Church include the word Catholic in their title and arguably have more or less liturgical practices in common with the Catholic Church but are no longer in full communion with the Holy See Spiritual Christians such as the Doukhobors and Molokans broke from the Russian Orthodox Church and maintain close association with Mennonites and Quakers due to similar religious practices all of these groups are furthermore collectively considered to be peace churches due to their belief in pacifism Messianic Judaism or the Messianic Movement is the name of a Christian movement comprising a number of streams whose members may consider themselves Jewish The movement originated in the 1960s and 1970s and it blends elements of religious Jewish practice with evangelical Christianity Messianic Judaism affirms Christian creeds such as the messiahship and divinity of Yeshua the Hebrew name of Jesus and the Triune Nature of God while also adhering to some Jewish dietary laws and customs Esoteric Christians such as The Christian Community regard Christianity as a mystery religion and profess the existence and possession of certain esoteric doctrines or practices hidden from the public and accessible only to a narrow circle of enlightened initiated or highly educated people Nondenominational Christianity or non denominational Christianity consists of churches which typically distance themselves from the confessionalism or creedalism of other Christian communities by not formally aligning with a specific Christian denomination Nondenominational Christianity first arose in the 18th century through the Stone Campbell Restoration Movement with followers organizing themselves as Christians and Disciples of Christ but many typically adhere to evangelical Christianity Cultural influenceChristian cultureClockwise from top Sistine Chapel ceiling Notre Dame cathedral in Paris Eastern Orthodox wedding Christ the Redeemer statue Nativity scene The history of the Christendom spans about 1 700 years and includes a variety of socio political developments as well as advances in the arts architecture literature science philosophy and technology Since the spread of Christianity from the Levant to Europe and North Africa during the early Roman Empire Christendom has been divided in the pre existing Greek East and Latin West Consequently different versions of the Christian cultures arose with their own rites and practices centered around the cities of Rome Western Christianity and Carthage whose communities were called Western or Latin Christendom and Constantinople Eastern Christianity Antioch Syriac Christianity Kerala Indian Christianity and Alexandria Coptic Christianity whose communities were called Eastern or Oriental Christendom The Byzantine Empire was one of the peaks in Christian history and Eastern Christian civilization From the 11th to 13th centuries Latin Christendom rose to the central role of the Western world The Bible has had a profound influence on Western civilization and on cultures around the globe it has contributed to the formation of Western law art texts and education With a literary tradition spanning two millennia the Bible is one of the most influential works ever written From practices of personal hygiene to philosophy and ethics the Bible has directly and indirectly influenced politics and law war and peace sexual morals marriage and family life toilet etiquette letters and learning the arts economics social justice medical care and more Christians have made a myriad of contributions to human progress in a broad and diverse range of fields including philosophy science and technology medicine fine arts and architecture politics literatures music and business According to 100 Years of Nobel Prizes a review of the Nobel Prizes award between 1901 and 2000 reveals that 65 4 of Nobel Prizes Laureates have identified Christianity in its various forms as their religious preference Outside the Western world Christianity has had an influence on various cultures such as in Africa the Near East Middle East East Asia Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent Eastern Christian scientists and scholars of the medieval Islamic world particularly Jacobite and Nestorian Christians contributed to the Arab Islamic civilization during the reign of the Ummayyads and the Abbasids by translating works of Greek philosophers to Syriac and afterwards to Arabic They also excelled in philosophy science theology and medicine Scholars and intellectuals agree Christians in the Middle East have made significant contributions to Arab and Islamic civilization since the introduction of Islam and they have had a significant impact contributing the culture of the Mashriq Turkey and Iran Influence on Western culture Western culture throughout most of its history has been nearly equivalent to Christian culture and a large portion of the population of the Western Hemisphere can be described as practicing or nominal Christians The notion of Europe and the Western World has been intimately connected with the concept of Christianity and Christendom Many historians even attribute Christianity for being the link that created a unified European identity Though Western culture contained several polytheistic religions during its early years under the Greek and Roman Empires as the centralized Roman power waned the dominance of the Catholic Church was the only consistent force in Western Europe Until the Age of Enlightenment Christian culture guided the course of philosophy literature art music and science Christian disciplines of the respective arts have subsequently developed into Christian philosophy Christian art Christian music Christian literature and so on Christianity has had a significant impact on education as the church created the bases of the Western system of education and was the sponsor of founding universities in the Western world as the university is generally regarded as an institution that has its origin in the Medieval Christian setting Historically Christianity has often been a patron of science and medicine many Catholic clergy Jesuits in particular have been active in the sciences throughout history and have made significant contributions to the development of science Some scholars state that Christianity contributed to the rise of the Scientific Revolution Protestantism also has had an important influence on science According to the Merton Thesis there was a positive correlation between the rise of English Puritanism and German Pietism on the one hand and early experimental science on the other The civilizing influence of Christianity includes social welfare contribution to the medical and health care founding hospitals economics as the Protestant work ethic architecture literature personal hygiene ablution and family life Historically extended families were the basic family unit in the Christian culture and countries Cultural Christians are secular people with a Christian heritage who may not believe in the religious claims of Christianity but who retain an affinity for the popular culture art music and so on related to the religion Postchristianity is the term for the decline of Christianity particularly in Europe Canada Australia and to a minor degree the Southern Cone in the 20th and 21st centuries considered in terms of postmodernism It refers to the loss of Christianity s monopoly on values and world view in historically Christian societies EcumenismBishop John M Quinn of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Winona and Bishop Steven Delzer of Evangelical Lutheran Southeastern Minnesota Synod leading a Reformation Day service 2017 Christian groups and denominations have long expressed ideals of being reconciled and in the 20th century Christian ecumenism advanced in two ways One way was greater cooperation between groups such as the World Evangelical Alliance founded in 1846 in London or the Edinburgh Missionary Conference of Protestants in 1910 the Justice Peace and Creation Commission of the World Council of Churches founded in 1948 by Protestant and Orthodox churches and similar national councils like the National Council of Churches in Australia which includes Catholics The other way was an institutional union with united churches a practice that can be traced back to unions between Lutherans and Calvinists in early 19th century Germany Congregationalist Methodist and Presbyterian churches united in 1925 to form the United Church of Canada and in 1977 to form the Uniting Church in Australia The Church of South India was formed in 1947 by the union of Anglican Baptist Methodist Congregationalist and Presbyterian churches The Christian Flag is an ecumenical flag designed in the early 20th century to represent all of Christianity and Christendom The ecumenical monastic Taize Community is notable for being composed of more than one hundred brothers from Protestant and Catholic traditions The community emphasizes the reconciliation of all denominations and its main church located in Taize Saone et Loire France is named the Church of Reconciliation The community is internationally known attracting over 100 000 young pilgrims annually Steps towards reconciliation on a global level were taken in 1965 by the Catholic and Orthodox churches mutually revoking the excommunications that marked their Great Schism in 1054 the Anglican Catholic International Commission ARCIC working towards full communion between those churches since 1970 and some Lutheran and Catholic churches signing the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in 1999 to address conflicts at the root of the Protestant Reformation In 2006 the World Methodist Council representing all Methodist denominations adopted the declaration Criticism persecution and apologeticsCriticism The monument to Giordano Bruno in the place he was executed in Rome Criticism of Christianity and Christians goes back to the Apostolic Age with the New Testament recording friction between the followers of Jesus and the Pharisees and scribes e g Matthew 15 1 20 and Mark 7 1 23 In the 2nd century Christianity was criticized by the Jews on various grounds e g that the prophecies of the Hebrew Bible could not have been fulfilled by Jesus given that he did not have a successful life Additionally a sacrifice to remove sins in advance for everyone or as a human being did not fit the Jewish sacrifice ritual furthermore God in Judaism is said to judge people on their deeds instead of their beliefs One of the first comprehensive attacks on Christianity came from the Greek philosopher Celsus who wrote The True Word a polemic criticizing Christians as being unprofitable members of society In response the church father Origen published his treatise Contra Celsum or Against Celsus a seminal work of Christian apologetics which systematically addressed Celsus s criticisms and helped bring Christianity a level of academic respectability By the 3rd century criticism of Christianity had mounted Wild rumors about Christians were widely circulated claiming that they were atheists and that as part of their rituals they devoured human infants and engaged in incestuous orgies The Neoplatonist philosopher Porphyry wrote the fifteen volume Adversus Christianos as a comprehensive attack on Christianity in part building on the teachings of Plotinus By the 12th century the Mishneh Torah i e Rabbi Moses Maimonides was criticizing Christianity on the grounds of idol worship in that Christians attributed divinity to Jesus who had a physical body In the 19th century Nietzsche began to write a series of polemics on the unnatural teachings of Christianity e g sexual abstinence and continued his criticism of Christianity to the end of his life In the 20th century the philosopher Bertrand Russell expressed his criticism of Christianity in Why I Am Not a Christian formulating his rejection of Christianity Criticism of Christianity continues to date e g Jewish and Muslim theologians criticize the doctrine of the Trinity held by most Christians stating that this doctrine in effect assumes that there are three gods running against the basic tenet of monotheism New Testament scholar Robert M Price has outlined the possibility that some Bible stories are based partly on myth in The Christ Myth Theory and its problems Persecution Christians fleeing their homes in the Ottoman Empire c 1922 Many Christians were persecuted and killed during the Armenian genocide Greek genocide and Assyrian genocide Christians are one of the most persecuted religious groups in the world especially in the Middle East North Africa and South and East Asia In 2017 Open Doors estimated approximately 260 million Christians are subjected annually to high very high or extreme persecution with North Korea considered the most hazardous nation for Christians In 2019 a report commissioned by the United Kingdom s Secretary of State of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office FCO to investigate global persecution of Christians found persecution has increased and is highest in the Middle East North Africa India China North Korea and Latin America among others and that it is global and not limited to Islamic states This investigation found that approximately 80 of persecuted believers worldwide are Christians Apologetics A copy of the Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas Christian apologetics aims to present a rational basis for Christianity The word apologetic Greek ἀpologhtikos apologetikos comes from the Greek verb ἀpologeomai apologeomai meaning I speak in defense of Christian apologetics has taken many forms over the centuries starting with Paul the Apostle The philosopher Thomas Aquinas presented five arguments for God s existence in the Summa Theologica while his Summa contra Gentiles was a major apologetic work Another famous apologist G K Chesterton wrote in the early twentieth century about the benefits of religion and specifically Christianity Famous for his use of paradox Chesterton explained that while Christianity had the most mysteries it was the most practical religion He pointed to the advance of Christian civilizations as proof of its practicality The physicist and priest John Polkinghorne in his Questions of Truth discusses the subject of religion and science a topic that other Christian apologists such as Ravi Zacharias John Lennox and William Lane Craig have engaged with the latter two men opining that the inflationary Big Bang model is evidence for the existence of God Creationist apologetics is apologetics that aims to defend creationism See alsoOutline of Christianity Christian atheism Christians of Saint John Christianity and Islam Christianity and Judaism Christianity and politics Christian mythology Christianisation One true church Prophets of Christianity Jamieson Fausset Brown Bible CommentaryNotesChristianity originated in 1st century Judea from the Jewish Christian sect of Second Temple Judaism The doctrine of the Trinity is not universally accepted among Christians Nontrinitarian Christian groups include the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints Unitarians and Jehovah s Witnesses The denominations of Adventism Anabaptism Amish Apostolic Bruderhof Hutterites Mennonites River Brethren and Schwarzenau Brethren Anglicanism Baptists Lutheranism Methodism Moravianism Hussites Pentecostalism Plymouth Brethren Quakerism Reformed Christianity Congregationalists Continental Reformed and Presbyterians and Waldensianism are the main families of Protestantism Other groups that are sometimes regarded as Protestant include non denominational Christian congregations The denominations of Restorationism include the Irvingians Swedenborgians Christadelphians Latter Day Saints Jehovah s Witnesses La Luz del Mundo and Iglesia ni Cristo It appears in the Acts of the Apostles Acts 9 2 Acts 19 9 and Acts 19 23 Some English translations of the New Testament capitalize the Way e g the New King James Version and the English Standard Version indicating that this was how the new religion seemed then to be designated whereas others treat the phrase as indicative the way that way or the way of the Lord The Syriac version reads the way of God and the Vulgate Latin version the way of the Lord The Latin equivalent from which English trinity is derived better source needed is trinitas though Latin also borrowed Greek trias verbatim Frequently a distinction is made between liturgical and non liturgical churches based on how elaborate or antiquated the worship in this usage churches whose services are unscripted or improvised are described as non liturgical Often these are arranged on an annual cycle using a book called a lectionary Iesous Christos Theou Hyios Soter may be a more complete transliteration in Koine Greek the daseia or spiritus asper had largely ceased being pronounced and was not commonly marked in the majuscule script of the time A flexible term defined as all forms of Protestantism with the notable exception of the historical denominations deriving directly from the Protestant Reformation The first Nondenominational Christian churches which emerged through the Stone Campbell Restoration Movement are tied to associations such as the Churches of Christ or the Christian Church Disciples of Christ References Global Christianity A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World s Christian Population PDF Pew Research Center Archived PDF from the original on 1 August 2019 Ehrman Bart D 2005 2003 At Polar Ends of the Spectrum Early Christian Ebionites and Marcionites Lost Christianities The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew Vol 74 Oxford University Press pp 95 112 doi 10 1017 s0009640700110273 ISBN 978 0 19 518249 1 S2CID 152458823 Retrieved 20 January 2021 a href wiki Template Cite book title Template Cite book cite book a journal ignored help Hurtado Larry W 2005 How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God Approaches to Jesus Devotion in Earliest Christianity How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God Historical Questions about Earliest Devotion to Jesus Grand Rapids and Cambridge Wm B Eerdmans pp 13 55 ISBN 978 0 8028 2861 3 Retrieved 20 July 2021 Freeman Charles 2010 Breaking Away The First Christianities A New History of Early Christianity New Haven and London Yale University Press pp 31 46 doi 10 12987 9780300166583 ISBN 978 0 300 12581 8 JSTOR j ctt1nq44w S2CID 170124789 Retrieved 20 January 2021 Wilken Robert Louis 2013 Beginning in Jerusalem The First Thousand Years A Global History of Christianity New Haven and London Yale University Press pp 6 16 ISBN 978 0 300 11884 1 JSTOR j ctt32bd7m S2CID 160590164 Retrieved 20 January 2021 Lietaert Peerbolte Bert Jan 2013 How Antichrist Defeated Death The Development of Christian Apocalyptic Eschatology in the Early Church In Krans Jan Lietaert Peerbolte L J Smit Peter Ben Zwiep Arie W eds Paul John and Apocalyptic Eschatology Studies in Honour of Martinus C de Boer Novum Testamentum Supplements Vol 149 Leiden Brill pp 238 255 doi 10 1163 9789004250369 016 ISBN 978 90 04 25026 0 ISSN 0167 9732 S2CID 191738355 Retrieved 13 February 2021 Jan Pelikan Jaroslav 13 August 2022 Christianity Christianity Definition Origin History Beliefs Symbols Types amp Facts Britannica Encyclopaedia Britannica there is a core of ideas that all New Testament scholars and believers would agree are central to ancient Christian beliefs One British scholar James G Dunn for example says they would all agree that the Risen Jesus is the Ascended Lord That is to say there would have been no faith tradition and no scriptures had not the early believers thought that Jesus was Risen raised from the dead and Ascended somehow above the ordinary plane of mortal and temporal experience Young Frances M 2006 Prelude Jesus Christ foundation of Christianity In Mitchell M Young F eds The Cambridge History of Christianity Vol 1 Cambridge University Press pp 1 34 doi 10 1017 CHOL9780521812399 002 ISBN 978 1 139 05483 6 The death of Jesus Christ by crucifixion together with bhis resurrection from the dead lies at the heart of Christianity Christianity The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable Oxford Reference Oxford University Press 2005 Retrieved 6 August 2024 The religion based on the person and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth or its beliefs and practices World s largest religion by population is still Christianity Pew Research Center 5 April 2017 Retrieved 1 January 2020 Perry Marvin 2012 Western Civilization A Brief History Volume I To 1789 Cengage p 33 ISBN 978 1 111 83720 4 Bokenkotter 2004 Preface Hayes Carlton J H 1954 Christianity and Western Civilization Stanford University Press p 2 ISBN 978 0 7581 3510 0 Melton J Gordon 2005 Encyclopedia of Protestantism Infobase p 398 ISBN 978 0 8160 6983 5 Status of Global Christianity 2024 in the Context of 1900 2050 PDF Center for the Study of Global Christianity Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary Retrieved 23 May 2024 Protestants 625 606 000 Independents 421 689 000 Unaffiliated Christians 123 508 000 Kim Hyun Sook Osmer Richard R Schweitzer Friedrich 2018 The Future of Protestant Religious Education in an Age of Globalization Waxmann Verlag p 8 ISBN 978 3 8309 8876 2 Walsham Alexandra Cummings Brian Law Ceri Riley Karis 4 June 2020 Remembering the Reformation Routledge p 18 ISBN 978 0 429 61992 2 Lewis Paul W Mittelstadt Martin William 27 April 2016 What s So Liberal about the Liberal Arts Integrated Approaches to Christian Formation Wipf amp Stock ISBN 978 1 4982 3145 9 The Second Great Awakening 1790 1840 spurred a renewed interest in primitive Christianity What is known as the Restoration Movement of the nineteenth century gave birth to an array of groups Mormons The Latter Day Saint Movement the Churches of Christ Adventists and Jehovah s Witnesses Though these groups demonstrate a breathtaking diversity on the continuum of Christianity they share an intense restorationist impulse Spinks Bryan D 2 March 2017 Reformation and Modern Rituals and Theologies of Baptism From Luther to Contemporary Practices Routledge ISBN 978 1 351 90583 1 However Swedenborg claimed to receive visions and revelations of heavenly things and a New Church and the new church which was founded upon his writings was a Restorationist Church The three nineteenth century churches are all examples of Restorationist Churches which believed they were refounding the Apostolic Church and preparing for the Second Coming of Christ Gao Ronnie Chuang Rang Sawatsky Kevin 7 February 2023 Motivations in Faith Based Organizations Houston Christian University Retrieved 29 August 2024 For example Christianity comprises six major groups Church of the East Oriental Orthodoxy Eastern Orthodoxy Roman Catholicism Protestantism and Restorationism Gao and Sawatsky refer to Ellwood Robert S The Encyclopedia of World Religions New York Infobase Publishing 2008 as their source for this taxonomy Acts 19 Jamieson Fausset Brown Bible Commentary biblehub com Retrieved 8 October 2015 Jubilee Bible 2000 American King James Version Douai Rheims Bible Online Bible Study Suite Gill J Gill s Exposition of the Bible commentary on Acts 19 23 Retrieved 8 October 2015 E Peterson 1959 Christianus In Fruhkirche Judentum und Gnosis publisher Herder Freiburg pp 353 72 Elwell amp Comfort 2001 pp 266 828 Evodius of Antioch Antioch Church of Evodius of Antioch Antioch Church of Brill Encyclopedia of Early Christianity Online 2018 doi 10 1163 2589 7993 eeco dum 00001220 Cory Catherine 2015 Christian Theological Tradition Routledge p 20 and forward ISBN 978 1 317 34958 7 Benko Stephen 1984 Pagan Rome and the Early Christians Indiana University Press p 22 and forward ISBN 978 0 253 34286 7 McGrath Alister E 2006 Christianity An Introduction Wiley Blackwell p 174 ISBN 1 4051 0899 1 Seifrid Mark A 1992 Justification by Faith and The Disposition of Paul s Argument Justification by Faith The Origin and Development of a Central Pauline Theme Novum Testamentum Leiden Brill pp 210 211 246 247 ISBN 9004095217 ISSN 0167 9732 Wylen Stephen M The Jews in the Time of Jesus An Introduction Paulist Press 1995 ISBN 0809136104 pp 190 192 Dunn James D G Jews and Christians The Parting of the Ways A D 70 to 135 Wm B Eerdmans Publishing 1999 ISBN 0802844987 pp 33 34 Boatwright Mary Taliaferro amp Gargola Daniel J amp Talbert Richard John Alexander The Romans From Village to Empire Oxford University Press 2004 ISBN 0195118758 p 426 Acts 7 59 Acts 12 2 Martin D 2010 The Afterlife of the New Testament and Postmodern Interpretation Archived 8 June 2016 at the Wayback Machine lecture transcript Archived 12 August 2016 at the Wayback Machine Yale University Monastere de Mor Mattai Mossul Irak in French Archived from the original on 3 March 2014 Michael Whitby et al eds Christian Persecution Martyrdom and Orthodoxy 2006 online edition Archived 24 June 2011 at the Wayback Machine Eusebius of Caesarea the author of Ecclesiastical History in the 4th century states that St Mark came to Egypt in the first or third year of the reign of Emperor Claudius i e 41 or 43 AD Two Thousand years of Coptic Christianity Otto F A Meinardus p 28 Lettinga Neil A History of the Christian Church in Western North Africa Archived from the original on 30 July 2001 Allaboutreligion org Allaboutreligion org Archived from the original on 16 November 2010 Retrieved 19 November 2010 Armenia The World Factbook 2025 ed Central Intelligence Agency Retrieved 8 October 2011 Archived 2011 edition Brunner Borgna 2006 Time Almanac with Information Please 2007 New York Time Home Entertainment p 685 ISBN 978 1 933405 49 0 van Lint Theo Maarten 2009 The Formation of Armenian Identity in the First Millennium Church History and Religious Culture 89 1 3 269 Harris Jonathan 2017 Constantinople Capital of Byzantium 2nd ed Bloomsbury Academic p 38 ISBN 978 1 4742 5467 0 Chidester David 2000 Christianity A Global History HarperOne p 91 Ricciotti 1999 Theodosian Code XVI i 2 Archived 14 August 2014 at the Wayback Machine in Bettenson Documents of the Christian Church p 31 Burbank Jane Copper Frederick 2010 Empires in World History Power and the Politics of Difference Princeton University Press p 64 McTavish T J 2010 A Theological Miscellany 160 Pages of Odd Merry Essentially Inessential Facts Figures and Tidbits about Christianity Thomas Nelson ISBN 978 1 4185 5281 7 The Nicene Creed as used in the churches of the West Anglican Catholic Lutheran and others contains the statement We believe or I believe in the Holy Spirit the Lord the giver of life who proceeds from the Father and the Son Our Common Heritage as Christians The United Methodist Church Archived from the original on 14 January 2006 Retrieved 31 December 2007 McManners Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity pp 37ff Cameron 2006 p 42 Cameron 2006 p 47 Browning 1992 pp 198 208 Browning 1992 p 218 Gonzalez 1984 pp 238 242 Chadwick 1995 pp 60 130 Harari Yuval Noah 2015 Sapiens A Brief History of Humankind Translated by Harari Yuval Noah Purcell John Watzman Haim London Penguin Random House pp 243 247 ISBN 978 0 09 959008 8 Mullin 2008 p 88 Mullin 2008 pp 93 94 Religions in Global Society p 146 Peter Beyer 2006 Cambridge University Historical Series An Essay on Western Civilization in Its Economic Aspects p 40 Hebraism like Hellenism has been an all important factor in the development of Western Civilization Judaism as the precursor of Christianity has indirectly had had much to do with shaping the ideals and morality of western nations since the christian era Caltron J H Hayas Christianity and Western Civilization 1953 Stanford University Press p 2 That certain distinctive features of our Western civilization the civilization of western Europe and of America have been shaped chiefly by Judaeo Graeco Christianity Catholic and Protestant Fred Reinhard Dallmayr Dialogue Among Civilizations Some Exemplary Voices 2004 p 22 Western civilization is also sometimes described as Christian or Judaeo Christian civilization Gonzalez 1984 pp 244 47 Gonzalez 1984 p 260 Gonzalez 1984 pp 278 281 Riche Pierre 1978 Education and Culture in the Barbarian West From the Sixth through the Eighth Century Columbia University of South Carolina Press ISBN 0872493768 pp 126 127 282 298 Rudy The Universities of Europe 1100 1914 p 40 Verger Jacques in French 1999 Culture enseignement et societe en Occident aux XIIe et XIIIe siecles in French 1st ed Presses universitaires de Rennes in Rennes ISBN 978 2868473448 Retrieved 17 June 2014 Verger Jacques The Universities and Scholasticism in The New Cambridge Medieval History Volume V c 1198 c 1300 Cambridge University Press 2007 257 Ruegg Walter Foreword The University as a European Institution in A History of the University in Europe Vol 1 Universities in the Middle Ages Cambridge University Press 1992 ISBN 0521361052 pp xix xx Gonzalez 1984 pp 303 307 310ff 384 386 Gonzalez 1984 pp 305 310ff 316ff Gonzalez 1984 pp 321 323 365ff Parole de l Orient Vol 30 Universite Saint Esprit 2005 p 488 Gonzalez 1984 pp 292 300 Riley Smith The Oxford History of the Crusades The Great Schism The Estrangement of Eastern and Western Christendom Orthodox Information Centre Archived from the original on 29 June 2007 Retrieved 26 May 2007 Duffy Saints and Sinners 1997 p 91 MacCulloch Diarmaid 2011 Christianity The First Three Thousand Years Penguin ISBN 978 1 101 18999 3 Telushkin Joseph 2008 Jewish Literacy HarperCollins pp 192 193 ISBN 978 0 688 08506 3 Gonzalez 1984 pp 300 304 305 Gonzalez 1984 pp 310 383 385 391 Simon Great Ages of Man The Reformation pp 39 55 61 Simon Great Ages of Man The Reformation p 7 Schama A History of Britain pp 306 310 National Geographic 254 Jensen De Lamar 1992 Renaissance Europe ISBN 0395889472 Levey Michael 1967 Early Renaissance Penguin Bokenkotter 2004 pp 242 244 Simon Great Ages of Man The Reformation pp 109 120 A general overview about the English discussion is given in Coffey Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England 1558 1689 Open University Looking at the Renaissance Religious Context in the Renaissance Retrieved 10 May 2007 Some scholars and historians attribute Christianity to having contributed to the rise of the Scientific Revolution Harrison Peter 8 May 2012 Christianity and the rise of western science Australian Broadcasting Corporation Retrieved 28 August 2014 Noll Mark Science Religion and A D White Seeking Peace in the Warfare Between Science and Theology PDF The Biologos Foundation p 4 archived from the original PDF on 22 March 2015 retrieved 14 January 2015 Lindberg David C Numbers Ronald L 1986 Introduction God amp Nature Historical Essays on the Encounter Between Christianity and Science Berkeley and Los Angeles University of California Press pp 5 12 ISBN 978 0 520 05538 4 Gilley Sheridan 2006 The Cambridge History of Christianity Volume 8 World Christianities c 1815 c 1914 Brian Stanley Cambridge University Press p 164 ISBN 0 521 81456 1 Lindberg David 1992 The Beginnings of Western Science University of Chicago Press p 204 Pro forma candidate to Prince Bishop of Warmia cf Dobrzycki Jerzy and Leszek Hajdukiewicz Kopernik Mikolaj Polski slownik biograficzny Polish Biographical Dictionary vol XIV Wroclaw Polish Academy of Sciences 1969 p 11 Sharratt Michael 1994 Galileo Decisive Innovator Cambridge University Press pp 17 213 ISBN 0 521 56671 1 Because he would not accept the Formula of Concord without some reservations he was excommunicated from the Lutheran communion Because he remained faithful to his Lutheranism throughout his life he experienced constant suspicion from Catholics John L Treloar Biography of Kepler shows man of rare integrity Astronomer saw science and spirituality as one National Catholic Reporter 8 October 2004 p 2a A review of James A Connor Kepler s Witch An Astronomer s Discovery of Cosmic Order amid Religious War Political Intrigue and Heresy Trial of His Mother Harper San Francisco Richard S Westfall Indiana University The Galileo Project Rice University Retrieved 5 July 2008 The Boyle Lecture St Marylebow Church Archived from the original on 22 December 2017 Retrieved 18 February 2022 Novak Michael 1988 Catholic social thought and liberal institutions Freedom with justice Transaction p 63 ISBN 978 0 88738 763 0 Mortimer Chambers The Western Experience vol 2 chapter 21 Religion and the State in Russia and China Suppression Survival and Revival by Christopher Marsh p 47 Continuum International Publishing Group 2011 Inside Central Asia A Political and Cultural History by Dilip Hiro Penguin 2009 Adappur Abraham 2000 Religion and the Cultural Crisis in India and the West Intercultural Publications ISBN 978 8185574479 Forced Conversion under Atheistic Regimes It might be added that the most modern example of forced conversions came not from any theocratic state but from a professedly atheist government that of the Soviet Union under the Communists Geoffrey Blainey 2011 A Short History of Christianity Viking p 494 Altermatt Urs 2007 Katholizismus und Nation Vier Modelle in europaisch vergleichender Perspektive In Altermatt Urs Metzger Franziska eds Religion und Nation Katholizismen im Europa des 19 und 20 Jahrhundert in German Kohlhammer Verlag pp 15 34 ISBN 978 3 17 019977 4 Heimann Mary 1995 Catholic Devotion in Victorian England Clarendon pp 165 173 ISBN 978 0 19 820597 5 The Oxford Handbook of Modern German History Helmut Walser Smith p 360 OUP Oxford 2011 Religion may become extinct in nine nations study says BBC News 22 March 2011 図録 世界各国の宗教 in Japanese ttcn ne jp Archived from the original on 18 August 2012 Retrieved 17 August 2012 Jenkins Philip 2011 The Rise of the New Christianity The Next Christendom The Coming of Global Christianity Oxford University Press pp 101 133 ISBN 978 0 19 976746 5 Kim Sebastian Kim Kirsteen 2008 Christianity as a World Religion London Continuum p 2 Hanciles Jehu 2008 Beyond Christendom Globalization African Migration and the Transformation of the West Orbis ISBN 978 1 60833 103 1 Fargues Philippe 1998 A Demographic Perspective In Pacini Andrea ed Christian Communities in the Middle East Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 829388 0 Johnson Todd 26 February 2020 Christianity in the Middle East Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary Retrieved 13 December 2024 Olson The Mosaic of Christian Belief Tayviah Frederick K D 1995 Why Do Bad Things Keep on Happening CSS Publishing p 29 ISBN 978 1 55673 979 8 Pelikan Hotchkiss Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition We Believe in One God The Nicene Creed and Mass Catholics United for the Fath February 2005 Archived from the original on 19 August 2014 Retrieved 16 June 2014 Encyclopedia of Religion Arianism Catholic Encyclopedia Council of Ephesus Christian History Institute First Meeting of the Council of Chalcedon Peter Theodore Farrington February 2006 The Oriental Orthodox Rejection of Chalcedon Glastonbury Review 113 Archived from the original on 19 June 2008 Pope Leo I Letter to Flavian Archived 20 June 2022 at the Wayback Machine Catholic Encyclopedia Athanasian Creed White Howard A The History of the Church Archived 30 November 2017 at the Wayback Machine Cummins Duane D 1991 A handbook for Today s Disciples in the Christian Church Disciples of Christ Revised ed St Louis MO Chalice ISBN 978 0 8272 1425 5 Ron Rhodes The Complete Guide to Christian Denominations Harvest House Publishers 2005 ISBN 0736912894 Woodhead 2004 p 45 Woodhead 2004 p n p Metzger Coogan Oxford Companion to the Bible pp 513 649 Acts 2 24 2 31 32 3 15 3 26 4 10 5 30 10 40 41 13 30 13 34 13 37 17 30 31 Romans 10 9 1 Cor 15 15 6 14 2 Cor 4 14 Gal 1 1 Eph 1 20 Col 2 12 1 Thess 11 10 Heb 13 20 1 Pet 1 3 1 21 s Nicene Creed Acts 1 9 11 Gambero Luigi 1999 Mary and the Fathers of the Church The Blessed Virgin Mary in Patristic Thought Ignatius ISBN 978 0 89870 686 4 via Google Books Hanegraaff Hank 2002 Resurrection The Capstone in the Arch of Christianity Thomas Nelson ISBN 978 1 4185 1723 6 The Significance of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus for the Christian Australian Catholic University National Archived from the original on 1 September 2007 Retrieved 16 May 2007 Jn 19 30 31 Mk 16 1 16 6 1Cor 15 6 John 3 16 5 24 6 39 40 6 47 10 10 11 25 26 and 17 3 This is drawn from a number of sources especially the early Creeds the Catechism of the Catholic Church certain theological works and various Confessions drafted during the Reformation including the Thirty Nine Articles of the Church of England works contained in the Book of Concord Fuller The Foundations of New Testament Christology p 11 A Jesus Seminar conclusion held that in the view of the Seminar he did not rise bodily from the dead the resurrection is based instead on visionary experiences of Peter Paul and Mary Funk The Acts of Jesus What Did Jesus Really Do Lorenzen Resurrection Discipl
