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Christianity
is a monotheistic, broadly trinitarian religion, encompassing
many religious traditions that trace their origins to Jesus
Christ. Christians believe that Jesus is the Son
of God,
and the Lord and sole Savior of all humanity as the Jewish
Messiah.
Over the past two millennia, Christianity has diverged into
three main branches: Catholicism,
Protestantism,
and Eastern
Orthodox. Collectively, it is the world's largest
single religion, with over two billion followers.
History
Christianity originated in the first century AD. According
to Acts 11:19 and 11:26 in the Christian New
Testament, Jesus's followers were first called
Christians by non-Christians in the city of Antioch,
where they had fled and settled after early persecutions in
Judea.
After Jesus'
death, early Christian doctrine was taught by Paul
of Tarsus and the apostles. The term Christian
derives from Greek
''Khrists'' (Christ), and means "belonging to Christ." Relative
peace and good roads throughout the Roman
Empire allowed Christianity to spread quickly over
the next three centuries, but more important was the conversion
of Emperor Constantine
in 312.
Combined with his Edict
of Milan in 313,
Constantine's conversion effectively made Christianity the
favored religion of the Empire, and he organized the first
of several ecumenical councils for resolving doctrinal issues.
Between the first century and 1050,
missionaries from Constantinople,
Ireland
(from about 450),
and elsewhere evangelized Christianity throughout Europe,
Asia
and Africa,
translating the Bible
into local languages and sometimes incorporating elements
of native culture into Christian custom (see for example
Easter:
Symbolism of Easter, Halloween: Alleged Christianizing
the Celtic Samhain).
In the second millennium, Christianity spread worldwide but
experienced accelerating fragmentation. The Great
Schism of 1054
split the universal Church into Western and Eastern branches:
the Western branch gradually consolidated into the Catholic
Church under the central authority of Rome (see Catholicism),
while the Eastern branch became known as the Orthodox Church
with the Patriarch
of Constantinople as the most honored bishop among its autocephalous
churches (see Eastern
Orthodoxy). In the European Reformation
of the 1520s,
Protestants
and numerous similar churches arose in objection to perceived
abuses of growing Papal authority and to perceived doctrinal
error and novelty in Rome. This sparked a vigorous struggle
for the hearts and minds of Europeans. Disputes between Catholics
and Protestants sparked persecution and were part of the motivations
for various wars, both civil and foreign.
Catholicism and Protestantism arrived in North
America (and later Australasia)
with European settlement. Lacking any central authority in
either Rome or national governments, Protestants worshipped
in hundreds, and later thousands, of independent denominations
(see Restorationism).
Christianity was taken to South
America and Africa by European colonists, especially
in the 16th
to 19th
centuries.
In the 19th and 20th
centuries many Christian-dominated nations, especially
in Western
Europe, became more secular as science advanced.
Most communist states were governed by avowed atheists, though
only Albania
was officially atheistic. Adherents to Fundamentalist
Christianity, particularly in the United
States, also perceived threats from new scientific
findings about the age of the Earth and the evolution of life.
For more, see:
Christianity
today
As of 2004, Christianity is the world's most widely practiced
religion, with 2.0 billion adherents (followed by Islam
with 1.2 billion, Hinduism
with 841 million, and the nonreligious with 774 million).
Christianity has many branches, including 1.1 billion Roman
Catholics, 367 million Protestants
in a number of traditions, 216 million Orthodox,
84 million Anglicans,
414 million Independents (unaffiliated with the major streams
of Christianity), and 31.7 million "marginals" (Jehovah's
Witnesses, Latter
Day Saints (Mormons),
etc.), these last being denominations which describe themselves
as Christian but are not standardly recognized as such by
other denominations.
Although Christianity is the largest religion in the world
and there are massive missionary efforts under way, as a whole
it is declining in terms of the overall population. While
the population of the world grows at roughly 1.25% per year,
Christianity is growing at about 1.12% per year. By contrast,
Islam is growing at 1.76% per year. Christianity in certain
geographic sectors (Africa, Asia) and certain parts of groups
(evangelicals, marginals) are, however, growing rapidly. This
is due to the fact that countries where Christianity is the
dominant religion tend to be more developed countries with
lower birth rates. Thus the character and nature of Christianity
is changing.
Not all people identified as Christians accept all, or even
most, of the theological positions held by their particular
churches. Like the Jewish people, Christians in the West were
greatly affected by The
Enlightenment in the late 17th
and early 18th
centuries. Perhaps the most significant change for them was
total or effective separation of church and state, thus ending
the state-sponsored Christianity that existed in so many European
countries. Now one could be a free member of society and disagree
with one's church on various issues, and one could even be
free to leave the church altogether. Many did leave, developing
belief systems such as Deism,
Unitarianism,
and Universalism,
or becoming atheists,
agnostics,
or humanists.
Others created liberal wings of Protestant Christian theology.
Modernism
in the late 19th
century encouraged new forms of thought and expression
that did not follow traditional lines.
Reaction to "The Enlightenment" and Modernism triggered the
development of literally thousands of Christian Protestant
denominations, traditionalist
splinter groups of the Catholic Church that do not recognize
the legitimacy of many reforms the Catholic Church has undertaken,
and the growth of hundreds of fundamentalist groups that interpret
the entire Bible in a characteristically literal fashion.
In the United
States and Europe,
liberalism also led to secularism. Some Christians have long
since stopped participating in traditional religious duties,
attending churches only on a few particular holy days per
year or not at all. Many of them recall having highly religious
grandparents, but grew up in homes where Christian theology
was no longer a priority. They have developed ambivalent feelings
towards their religious duties. On the one hand they cling
to their traditions for identity reasons; on the other hand,
the influence of the secular Western mentality, the demands
of daily life, and peer pressure tear them away from traditional
Christianity. Marriage
between Christians of different denominations, or between
a Christian and a non-Christian, was once taboo, but has become
commonplace. Traditionally Catholic countries such as France
have largely become agnostic, and similar trends are reflected
in various degrees in Western Europe.
Liberal Christianity grew rapidly during the early 20th
century in Europe and North America, by the 1960s
gaining the leadership of many of the larger US and Canadian
denominations. However, this trend has reversed. At the turn
of the 21st
century, though secular society tends to consider
the more accommodating liberals as the representatives and
spokesmen of Christianity, the "mainline" liberal churches
are shrinking. This is partly due to a loss of evangelistic
zeal, partly due to drift of their membership to conservative
denominations, and partly due to the failure of one generation
to pass on Christianity to the next. Among the larger Protestant
denominations in the USA, only the conservative Southern
Baptist is growing. Evangelical para-church organizations
have grown rapidly in the last half of the 20th century. The
liberal Christian
Century magazine has shrunk, while being replaced
by its challenger, the rapidly growing evangelical Christianity
Today.
The Enlightenment had much less impact on the Eastern Churches
of Eastern and Oriental Orthodoxy. Having to face a much more
hostile secular society, especially during the rise of Communism,
the church clung to ancient beliefs, even as its membership
eroded.
Today in Eastern
Europe and Russia,
a renewing trend is taking place. After decades of Communism
and atheism,
there is widespread interest in Christianity, as well as religion
in general. Many Orthodox churches and monasteries are being
rebuilt and restored, filled beyond capacity; Protestants
of many denominations are pouring in to evangelize and plant
churches; and the Catholic church is revealing once secret
dioceses and undertaking other steps to support Catholic churches
more openly.
In South
America and Africa,
Evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity form rapidly growing
movements that are increasingly sending missionaries to Europe
and North America. This is also true of Asia
where many of the underground house churches intend to send
hundreds of thousands of missionaries out over the next decade.
As Modernism developed into Consumerism
during the second half of the 20th
century the Megachurch
phenomenon developed – catering for skeptical non-Christians
by providing "seeker sensitive" presentations of Christian
belief. The Alpha
Course can be viewed as an example one such presentation
of Christianity.
Since the development of Postmodernism
with its rejection of universally accepted belief structures
in favour of more personalized and experiential truth, organized
Christianity has increasingly found itself at odds with the
desire many people have to express faith and spirituality
in a way that is authentic to them. What has thus far been
known as the Emerging
Church is a by-product of this trend, as many people
who broadly accept Christianity seek to practice that faith
while avoiding established Church institutions.
A large and growing movement within the Christian church,
especially in the West and most visible in the United States,
is the evangelical movement. Most mainstream protestant denominations
have a significantly active evangelical minority, and, in
some cases, a dominant majority (see Confessing
Movement). Evangelicals are "trans-denominational"
and are more willing to have formal and informal relationships
with evangelicals from outside their denomination than to
have the same sort of relationship with non-evangelicals within
their denomination.
Some evangelicals have been schismatic within various church
organisations, leaving to form their own denominations. More
often they are forced out. It was only by dint of sheer determination
that John Wesley, founder of Methodism, was able to remain
an Anglican priest against intense opposition. His followers
separated in America, and in England after his death. Evangelicals
claim that their beliefs are no less than true Christianity
itself and that those within the church who differ from them
may not be true believers. This attitude has led to much disunity
amongst churches, especially those with a large modernist
influence. Evangelicals cannot be easily categorised, but
almost all will believe in the necessity of a personal conversion
and acceptance of Jesus as saviour and Lord, the eventual
literal return
of Christ, a more conservative understanding of
the Bible and a belief in the miraculous. There are many different
types of Evangelicals including Dispensationists,
Reformed
Christians, Pentecostals,
Charismatics
and Fundamentalists.
For more, see: Doctrine
Christians continued many ideas and practices from the Hebrew
faith, including monotheism,
the belief in a Messiah
(or Christ from the Greek cristos, which means "anointed
one"), certain forms of worship (such as prayer, and reading
from religious texts), a priesthood, and the idea that worship
on Earth is modelled on worship in Heaven.
The central belief of Christianity is that by faith in the
sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ, individuals are saved from death - both
spiritual and physical - by redemption from their sins (i.e.
faults, misdeeds, disobedience, rebellion against God). Through
God's grace, by faith, repentance, and obedience, men and
women are reconciled to God through sanctification or theosis
and returned to their place with God in Heaven.
Crucial beliefs in Christian teaching are Jesus' incarnation,
atonement, crucifixion, death and resurrection to redeem humankind
from sin and death; the belief that the New
Testament is a new part of the Bible;
and supersessionism. Supersessionism is the belief that the
Jews' chosenness found its ultimate fulfillment through the
message of Jesus: Jews who remain non-Christian are no longer
considered to be chosen, since they reject Jesus as the messiah
and son of God, although in the spirit of Christian-Jewish
Reconciliation this position has been softened by most major
churches and Jews are still recognized to have a special status
due to their covenant with God.
The emphasis on God giving his son, or the Son (who is God)
coming down to earth for the sake of humanity, is an essential
difference between Christianity and most other religions,
where the emphasis is instead placed solely on humans working
for salvation.
The most uniform and broadly accepted tradition of doctrine,
with the longest continuous representation, repeatedly reaffirmed
by official Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant definitions
(although not without dissent, as noted below) asserts that
specific beliefs are essential to Christianity, including
but not limited to:
- God
is a Trinity,
a single eternal being existing in three persons: Father,
Son (Divine Logos), and Holy
Spirit.
- Jesus
is both fully God and fully human, two "natures" in one
person.
- Mary,
the mother of Jesus, bore in her womb and gave
birth to the Son of God (who is, Himself, likewise God),
who although eternally existent was formed in her womb
by the Spirit of God. From her humanity he received in
his person a human intellect and will, and all else that
a child would naturally receive from its mother.
- Jesus
is the Messiah hoped for by the Jews, the heir to the
throne of David.
He reigns at the right hand of The Father with all authority
and power. He is the hope of all mankind, their advocate
and judge. Until he returns at the end of the age, the
Church has the authority and obligation to preach the
Gospel
and to gather new disciples.
- Jesus
was innocent of any sin. Through the death and resurrection
of Jesus, believers are forgiven of sins and reconciled
to God. Believers are baptized into the resurrection and
new life (or death in some groups) of Christ. Through
faith, they live by the promise of resurrection from death
to everlasting life through Christ. The Holy Spirit is
sent to them by Christ, to bring hope and lead mankind
into true knowledge of God and His purposes, and help
them grow in holiness.
- Jesus
will return personally, and bodily, to receive the faithful
to himself, so they will live forever in the intimate
presence of God.
Western
Christians believe that the Bible is the word of God.
Many Eastern
Christians balk at this terminology as too close
to the title Word
of God, an epithet for Jesus
Christ. Nevertheless they do not question the authority
of the Bible as such. However, some Christians disagree to
varying degrees about how accurate the Bible is and how it
should be interpreted.
These beliefs are stated in a number of creeds, of which the
most important and widely used are probably the Apostles'
Creed and the Nicene
Creed. These statements of belief were written
in the first few centuries after Christ to reject certain
heresies. Although there are arguments about specific parts
of these creeds, they are still used by mainstream Christians
to state their basic beliefs. (See also: Athanasian
Creed) Christianity is considered by mainstream
Christians to be the continuation or fulfilment of the Jewish
faith. However, many self-proclaimed Christian
organizations throughout history have had varying ideas about
the basic tenets of the Christian faith, from ancient sects
such as Arians
and Gnostics
to modern groups who have different understandings of fundamental
Christian ideas. Some of these groups are the Jehovah's Witnesses
who have a different theological understanding of Jesus, God
and the Bible; The
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who
believe that in 1829 God restored the apostolic priesthood
to their leader Joseph
Smith, Jr., making possible continuing revelation
(including additional teachings and scripture), and the Unification
Church. While various groups may differ in their
approach to the specifics of Christ's role, ministry, and
nature (some calling him a god or Gods, and others calling
him a man), Christ is generally assumed to have cosmic importance.
Some of these groups number themselves among the Christian
churches, or believe themselves to be the only true Christian
church. Furthermore, present-day liberal Protestant Christians
do not define Christianity as necessarily including belief
in the deity of Jesus, the virgin
birth, the Trinity,
miracles, the resurrection, the ascension of Christ, or the
personality or deity of the Holy Spirit. Liberals may or may
not recommend belief in such things, but differentiate themselves
from conservative Christians by defining as included within
genuine Christianity anyone who explains their views or teachings
principally by appeal to Jesus. It is common for those who
hold the more traditional tenets of faith described in the
paragraph above to assert that some or all of these groups
are not true Christians.
Christianity's
relationship with other faiths
For
more information on the relationship between Christianity
and other world religions over the years, see Christianity
and World Religions. Christianity and Judaism
Since the Holocaust,
there has been much to note in the way of reconciliation between
some Christians groups and the Jewish people; the article
on Christian-Jewish
reconciliation studies this issue.
Messianic
Judaism refers to a group of evangelical Christian
religious movements, self-identified as Jewish, who believe
that Jesus
is the Messiah.
Contrary to Judaism,
they are trinitarians, professing that Jesus is God, incarnate.
Even though many Messianic Jews are ethnically Jewish, they
are not considered part of the Jewish community by mainstream
Jewish groups. They are not to be confused with the many Christian
believers of Jewish ethnic background who are members not
of these religious movements, but rather of regular Christian
churches.
For more, see:
Christianity
and persecution
Christians
have been both the victims and the perpetrators of persecution
(see Persecution
of Christians).
In spite of the widely held belief that such violence is antithetical
to Christ's teachings, Christian adherents have at times persecuted,
tortured and killed others for refusing to believe in their
type of Christianity.
Conflicts within Christianity itself have led to persecutions
of one Christian group by another. Protestants,
Catholics
and other Christians have persecuted each other in the name
of Jesus.
In the second half of the 20th
century Roman Catholics and Protestants have been
killing each other in Northern
Ireland.
The concept of religious tolerance -- that Christians
in political authority should permit persons of differing
faith to practice their own religions -- has risen and fallen
many times in history. At times, church leaders have considered
tolerance itself to be a heresy. Modern Christianity appears,
for the most part, to have adopted a position of tolerance
-- though exceptions exist, such as American Christian
Reconstructionism which calls for the persecution
of dissenting faiths.
An example was Father Lawrence
Jenco, whose health was nearly broken by almost
two years held as a hostage in Lebanon.
When asked about his feelings toward his Hezbollah
captors, he replied that he had to forgive them. However,
differing interpretations of actions by Christians exist.
For example, when a military coalition of mostly-Christian
countries conducted the 2003
invasion of Iraq, some observers considered it
was a Christian coalition deliberately attacking a country
because it was Islamic, while most Christians argued it was
done for secular reasons, with religion having nothing to
do with it.
Christian
churches worldwide
For a list of the various kinds of culturally different Christian
churches around the world today see the List
of Christian denominations. For information about
the various "super-bodies" of churches which many individual
congregations or in some cases bishoprics of these churches
associate under see full communion. The ancient Christian-Jewish
nasrani tradition today survives in South
India.
See
also
External
links
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