Christianity

Introductory profiles adapted from

On Common Ground: World
Religions in America

Pluralism Project, Harvard University

Religious Literacy Project, Harvard
Divinity School

February 5, 2015

"Cristo Redentor," Mark Menzies (2009),

from Flickr Creative Commons.

Christianity 2015

Preface: How to Read These Profiles

In these religion profiles, our focus is on particular religious

traditions with an emphasis on 1) their internal diversity,
and 2) the ways that the traditions are always evolving and
changing. Though we hope these profiles provide helpful
introductions, this format is a bit misleading in that it can
reinforce the idea that religions exist and develop in
isolation from other social and historical forces, including
other religions. While reading these profiles, please
remember that religions always impact and are impacted by
political, economic, social, and historical factors. Please see
the Methods article for fuller explanation of these
intersections and the Country Profiles for a demonstration
of how to understand religious influences in particular
social and historical contexts.

A Worldwide Tradition
Table of Contents
A Worldwide Tradition

The Life and Teachings of Jesus

Birth of the Church

The Death and Resurrection of Jesus

Credo: I Believe

The Roman Catholic Church

and the Catholic Communion

10

Orthodox Christian Churches

The Protestant Movement
Mission to the World

The Modern Era

12

14

15

Religion profiles are adapted from On

Common Ground: World Religions in America,
a resource of the Pluralism Project
(www.pluralism.org/ocg).

The Pluralism Project at Harvard

University
Thetext]
Religious Literacy Project at Harvard
[Type
Divinity School
"Tigray" by Evgeni Zotov (2009) at Flickr
Creative Commons.

Christianity is a worldwide religious tradition with diverse

representations, beliefs and practices. But its common
source is one: the life, the teachings, the death, and the
resurrection of Jesus. This man, whom Christians call the
Christ, the Messiah, or the expected one, was born in
Roman-occupied Palestine about 2,000 years ago. He lived
his life as a Jew in a region ruled by Roman authorities. Like
many prophets before him, he spoke of the urgent need to
turn to God and he taught a message of love and justice. His
active ministry of teaching was, at most, about three years
long. Still in his thirties, he was charged with treason and
put to death. His followers reported that he was resurrected
from the dead and that he appeared before them.
Jesus left no writings, nor did others write about him until
decades after he died. However, the small number of
disciples that experienced his resurrection were inspired
with an energy that led to the creation of communities of
faith throughout the Mediterranean world and, eventually,
throughout the whole world. It was in Antioch, now in
modern-day Turkey, that they were first called Christians,
followers of the way of Christ. In the first three centuries,
Christianity spread throughout the Greco-Roman world,
which extended from the Iberian to the Indian coast. From

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the fifth to the seventh century, Christian outreach spread throughout northern Europe. Syrian Christians even
missionized in China during this time. In the tenth century, missionaries from Constantinople brought
Christianity to Russia.
Today Christianity has three major streams, each possessing its own internal pluralism the Catholic
Communion, the Orthodox Christian Churches, and Protestant movements. Some would now argue that
Anglicanism, which followed the course of the British Empire, and the Pentecostalism sweeping the globe
constitute other major streams of the Christian tradition. But these broad categories hardly do justice to the
hundreds of particular churches and denominations that have come into being through the centuries and that
continue to be born today. In the early twenty-first century, Christianity has more adherents than any other
religious tradition on earth. One third of all humans call themselves Christians. The Christian scriptures have
been translated into a multitude of languages in cultures throughout the world. The great diversity of
Christianity is one of its most striking characteristics.

Christianity has continued to grow and change in the twenty-first century, with the rapid multiplication of
Christian churches in Africa, including many vibrant independent churches. In Latin America, four centuries of
Roman Catholic dominance is now being challenged by the rapid growth of Pentecostalism. By the late twentieth
century, the majority of the worlds Christians lived in the southern hemisphere. While Christianity is growing
most rapidly in Africa and Latin America, it is still the dominant religious tradition of Europe and North
America.

The Life and Teachings of Jesus

Born in those who desire him," (Detail from

an wool embroidered banner in the convent of
the Dominican sisters of Stone, Staffordshire,
2008), Lawrence OP, from Flickr Creative
[Type
text]
Commons.

The story of Jesus, as Christians know and tell it, comes from that part
of the Bible called the New Testament. The first four booksMatthew,
Mark, Luke, and Johnare known as the gospels, meaning good
news. They were all written between approximately 70 and 100 CE,
about two generations after the death of Jesus, and are based on stories
of Jesus told and retold by his followers. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are
called the synoptic gospels, because they present a common view of
Jesus through many common sayings, parables, and events. Both
Matthew and Luke seem to have used Marks gospel in writing their
own accounts. Johns gospel has a distinctive voice, focusing more on
the divinity of Christ in the context of a cosmic worldview. The gospels
come out of early communities still struggling with their identity in a
Jewish context. The Gospel of Matthew, for instance, is most conscious
of the debates within Judaism after the destruction of the Temple in 70
CE, while the Gospel of John shows signs of Christians being expelled
from synagogues. Although the gospels differ in their accounts of Jesus'
life and ministry, sometimes in significant ways, the early church did not

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blend them into one account but preserved these four distinct gospels with their differences. Together they
provide four views of the life and teachings of Jesus.

According to the traditions of Luke and Matthew, Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judaea in the lineage of King
David. Theirs is a story in which the ordinary and the miraculous intertwine. The mother of Jesus is said to be
Mary, who conceived Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit (an act of the divine) while she was still a young
unmarried virgin; Joseph, her betrothed, was a carpenter from Nazareth. Lukes story is familiar to Christians
throughout the world: The couple traveled to Bethlehem to be counted in the census and, finding no room at the
inn, they had to stay in a stable. Jesus was born that night, his first bed a manger filled with hay. Nearby
shepherds with their flocks heard angels singing and hurried to see the newborn child. Matthew says nothing of
the stable or the shepherds, but tells of wise men or astrologers, who saw the light of a star and came from the
East bringing gifts to honor the child. Mark and John omit the birth story altogether, Mark beginning his account
with the baptism of Jesus and John with the creation of the cosmos.

There is little recorded of the childhood of Jesus, except Lukes story of how, at the age of twelve, Jesus' parents
found him teaching the rabbis in the temple in Jerusalem. All four gospels, however, speak of the critical event of
Jesus' baptism by John the Baptist. The gospels do not mention his age, but historians say that Jesus was about
thirty. Johns message was one of radical repentance and transformation. It was a time of political turmoil and
religious expectation; there were many Jewish movements that looked forward to a new age, the coming of the
Kingdom of God and the long-promised Messiah, the anointed one.
John the Baptist looked to the new age, announcing that the Kingdom
of God was near and baptizing people by the thousands in the River
Jordan as an initiation into the kingdom to come. One of those he
baptized was Jesus of Nazareth. Marks gospel begins with this
account of Jesus' baptism: When Jesus came up out of the water, the
skies were torn open and the Spirit, like a dove from heaven,
descended upon Jesus with the words, You are my beloved son;
with you I am well pleased.
Jesus baptism marks the beginning of his public ministry of
preaching, teaching, and healing. He was accompanied by a group of
followers, some of them fishermen who left their nets and their
families, and some of them women whose presence can be seen
throughout the period of Jesus' ministry. Jesus attracted large
crowds as he began to teach in Galilee. His message of repentance
and turning to God was coupled with a message of Gods generosity,
forgiveness, love and justice.

"Depiction of Baptism of Jesus by John the

Baptist," Yesus Church, Axum, Ethiopia (2013),
Adam Jones, from Flickr Creative Commons.

The gospels describe miracles performed by Jesus: healing the sick,

casting out the demons of mental illness from the tormented, and
even bringing the dead back to life. They also portray a powerful teacher whose parables made their point in
surprising ways. Yes, one should love ones neighbor, but who is the neighbor? In one parable, a man is robbed,
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beaten, and left on the road. Many pass him by without giving him help, including respected members of his own
community. The one who stops to help him is a Samaritan, a person from Samaria considered a foreigner and an
outsider. Jesus insists that the great commandment to love ones neighbor as oneself crosses all ethnic and
religious barriers.
In his ministry, Jesus crossed many social barriers as well, mingling with the tax collector, the adulterer, and the
prostitute. He warned critics to remember their own imperfections before condemning others and invited those
who were wholly without sin to cast the first stone of condemnation. The great commandment is not to judge
ones neighbor but rather to love ones neighbor, for judgment is Gods alone.

Jesus taught that the expected Kingdom of God was close at hand. It would not be an earthly political kingdom,
but rather a new reign of justice for the poor and liberation for the oppressed. Those who would be included
first in the Kingdom were not the elites and the powerful, but the poor, the rejected, the outcasts. Jesus likened
the coming of the Kingdom of God to the growth of a tiny mustard seed, growing from within to create a new
reality. His disciples and many who heard him began to speak of Jesus as the long-awaited redeemer, the
Messiah, who would make the Kingdom of God a reality. When the term Messiah was translated into Greek, the
word they used was Christos, the Christ.

The Death and Resurrection of Jesus

As Jesus traveled and preached, he angered the Roman rulers, who feared that he was provoking unrest among
the people and planning a revolution. He was also feared by Jewish leaders because of his challenges to
traditional authority and teachings. Jesus named hypocrisy where he saw it and urged his community to claim a
new prophetic vision. Those who opposed him saw him as a dangerous upstart who wanted to form a cult
around himself. Jesus was well aware of these charges against him by political and religious authorities, and he
predicted that he would be attacked and persecuted.

Good Friday observance in Barangay (barrio), San

Fernando, Pampanga, Philippines, 2011, Marco Repola
from Flickr Creative Commons.

After a teaching ministry of perhaps three years, Jesus went to

Jerusalem to observe the Jewish season of Passover. There he
warned those closest to him of his coming death and gathered
them together for a meal that would be their last supper
together. He was then betrayed to the Roman authorities by
Judas, one of his own followers, and captured. He was
denounced by the Jewish high priest as a blasphemer who
claimed to be the Messiah. Taken before the Roman authorities,
Jesus was charged with sedition and executed by the Roman
practice of crucifixion, being nailed to a cross. It was Friday and
burial rites would have to wait until the Sabbath was over.

Early Sunday morning, according to all the gospel accounts,

some of the women who had followed and loved Jesus went to
his tomb to prepare his body for a proper burial. When they
arrived, they discovered that the stone at the entry to the tomb had been rolled away and the tomb was empty.
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According to the synoptic gospels, a figure in dazzling white appeared and told the women that Jesus had been
raised from the dead. In Johns account, a man who seemed to be the gardener appeared to Mary Magdalene (a
follower of Jesus) and spoke to her by name. It was Jesus. Although their accounts differ, the gospels report that
in the following days, many of the disciples saw Jesus and experienced his presence. This experience of the
living Christ is at the heart of the Christian faith.
Those who have adopted the Christian faith through the centuries have understood the life, death, and
resurrection of Jesus as a profound affirmation of Gods presence in the midst of humanity. The Christ event,
according to many Christians, cannot be understood in the context of the first century alone: It is as much a
twenty-first century event, repeated and renewed daily in the lives of those who take this as the story of their
own faith.

Birth of the Church

Fifty days after the resurrection of Jesus, the disciples were together in
Jerusalem. It was then at the time of the spring harvest festival of
Shavuot, seven weeks after the feast of Passover, that they experienced
the empowerment that would make them a new community. That day
became known as Pentecost in the Christian church and celebrated as
the birthday of the Church. In the New Testament, the Acts of the
Apostles, written toward the end of the first century by the author of
the Gospel of Luke, tells the story of the early church, beginning with
this event. There in Jerusalem, where people gathered from many
lands for the festival, the new community experienced the outpouring
of the Holy Spirit, described as tongues of fire settling on their heads
and enabling them to speak the good news of Jesus in all the languages
on earth (Acts 2:4). It was an experience of empowerment which
transformed a fearful and somewhat confused group of disciples into
apostles, those who literally are sent to give testimony to their faith.
The expansion of the early church was also given energy by the
conversion of a Jewish tentmaker named Saul. According to the Acts of
the Apostles, Saul had been a persecutor of Christians until he
experienced the blinding light of Gods presence as he traveled on the
road from Jerusalem to Damascus. He became baptized as a Christian.
For the rest of his life, he traveled the Mediterranean world nurturing
small communities of Christians until he finally brought the gospel to
Rome. He spoke in synagogues and to communities of Jews, affirming
his faith in Christ as Messiah. However, he also spoke to Gentilesto
those who were not Jewsconvinced that the message of new life in
Christ was not for his people alone, but for men and women
everywhere. As an apostle to the Gentiles, he is known by the Roman
form of his name, Paul.
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"Pentecost," El Greco (1596), from WikiArt.

Adapted from On Common Ground (www.pluralism.org/christianity)

Christianity 2015

Pauls controversy with Peter and the community in Jerusalem was of utmost importance for early Christianity,
as it gradually became differentiated from its Jewish roots. While Peter believed that Gentiles needed first to be
circumcised and convert to Judaism before becoming Christian, Paul insisted that new Greek converts could
become Christian directly. The Council of Jerusalem (about 50 CE) decided, with Paul, that Gentiles could
become Christians without becoming Jews first. With this, the door was open for a new kind of Christian
community. Pauls letters to the new churches of the Hellenistic world have become an integral part of the New
Testament.

"Communion during Assembly 2014 in Louisville" Paul Jeffrey for United

Methodist Women, from Flickr Creative Commons.

The Christian community is called the church.

The word in Greek was ecclesia, those who
were called out. They were called out of their
former lives into a new community. The Book
of Acts (2:44-47) describes the life of the first
Christian community: All who believed were
together and shared all things in common, sold
their possessions and goods and distributed
them to all, as any had need. And day by day
attending temple together, breaking bread in
their homes, they partook of food with glad and
generous hearts, praising God and having favor
with all the people. And the Lord added to their
number day by day those who were being
saved.

In its largest sense, the church is universalthe

community of all people who profess faith in Christ. This is what is meant by the term catholic, which simply
means universal. In its most intimate sense, the church is wherever two or three are gathered in the name of
Christ (Matthew 18:20). Whether universal or a gathering of two or three, the church is a community of people.
The images of community in the New Testament are powerful, organic images of belonging. Most important, the
church is described as the body of Christ. As Paul puts it, For just as the body is one and has many members,
and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. (I Corinthians 12:12). Not all
parts of the body of Christ, the church, have the same function but all parts are connected and all suffer and
rejoice together. This powerful metaphor is extended through the central ritual of the community, the blessing
and sharing of bread and wine. The bread is called the body of Christ, and the wine the cup of the new
covenant. As the bread and wine are one, so do those who share them affirm their oneness (I Corinthians
11:23-25). (See The Christian Experience for more information on this ritual.
Through the preaching of Paul and other missionaries, the new Christian faith grew quickly, spreading
throughout the Mediterranean world. Its primary competitor was not the sects nor the mystery religions of
ancient Greece and Rome, but the cult of the emperor, to whom all were required to do honor. For Christians,
the Lord was Christ alone, and worshipping the emperor as Lord was impossible. The new Christian
community was seen as subversive because of its refusal to participate in the cult of the emperor. Christians
were persecuted and martyred for their faith throughout the Roman empire. Thus, it was a new day entirely
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when the Emperor Constantine himself became a Christian early in the fourth century. Beginning with his reign,
Christianity was not only made legal, but would become the official religion of the Empire.

Credo: I Believe

One of the distinctive features of Christianity is its emphasis on a creed, a summary statement of faith. The
term credo is often translated today as I believe... but it is important to remember that its literal meaning is, I
give my heart... It is language of the heart, a profound expression of commitment, not simply a list of statements
to which one gives intellectual assent. When the early church was being persecuted, commitment to the way of
Christ was often dangerous, requiring real courage.

Creeds came into use as part of the rite of baptism. In this rite of initiation, a man or woman would take off old
clothes, put on new white baptismal clothing, and become a Christian by a ritual bath and the affirmation of
commitment to the Christian faith. The credo or creed expressed that commitment. Among the oldest creeds of
the church is the Apostles' Creed, composed about 150 CE and used ritually at the time of Christian baptism,
beginning, I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only
Son, Our Lord... Through baptism, one was spiritually born again. While the term born again has acquired
the resonance of a dramatic and often emotion-laden conversion in modern American Christianity, it has a much
wider and older significance for the church. To be born again is what it means to be a baptized Christian.

Christians in the early church had to answer for themselves the

question Christ asked his disciples, Who do you say that I am?
In the councils of the early church, leaders met to come to a
common mind about their faith. The Council of Nicaea, called by
the Emperor Constantine in 325, was the most important of
these early councils. In the previous centuries, some had
proposed that Jesus Christ was not really human at all, but was
God appearing to be human; others had proposed that he was
not really divine, but only a human being. The early church
rejected these views as it worked together to articulate its faith:
that Jesus Christ was fully God and fully human. The council also
worked to express the meaning of God as threefold, a trinity,
encompassing three aspects or personsthe Father, the Son
Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. At Nicaea, the church
articulated the complexity of the divine mystery: that the One
God is the transcendent Creator, the fully human Christ, and the
indwelling energy, fire, and breath of the Spirit. This
understanding was represented in the Nicene Creed.

Apostles Creed, Plaque on the wall of St. Just in

Roseland, Cornwall, John Kroll, Flickr Creative Commons.

[Type text]

While the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed are the oldest
and most universal creeds of the church, the process of
articulating what it means to give ones heart to Christ has

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continued to the present. New creeds are written in each new era. For example, the United Church of Christ in
the U.S.A. puts its belief in Christ this way: In Jesus Christ, the man of Nazareth, our crucified and risen Lord,
you have come to us and shared our common lot, conquering sin and death, and reconciling the world to
yourself. In El Salvador, Christians affirm their faith in Christ, tested in the fires of economic and political
struggle: We believe in Christ, crucified again and again in the suffering of the poor... Mormons affirm thirteen
articles of faith, including: We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also
believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God.
Through the ages, there have been many doctrinal controversies, but the act of confessing ones faith has
remained constant. For Christians to say I believe... is not only an articulation of fundamental doctrines, but
also a personal commitment to the way of Christ.

Orthodox Christian Churches

The Eastern family of churches, today called the Oriental Orthodox and
Eastern Orthodox churches, go back to the very earliest days of
Christianity. During the first four centuries of the Common Era,
Christianity had spread not only into the Roman and Byzantine Empires,
but also into the present-day Middle East, North Africa, and India. They
were united through a pentarchy that revered patriarchal sees in Antioch,
Alexandria, Constantinople, Jerusalem and Rome. Following the Council of
Chalcedon in 451, however, the Christological controversies led by
Nestorius and Cyril influenced the first major schism in the Church. A
group of communities that eventually became known as comprising the
Oriental Orthodox Church rejected the decree that the nature of Christ was
united as one and instead promoted the idea that Christs human and
divine natures remained distinct. Christians of Egypt, Ethiopia, Syria,
Armenia, India, Iraq, and Iran either formally followed these men into
schism or quietly fell off the Greco-Roman radar due to vast distances and
difficult terrain. Furthermore, in the centuries that followed, the growing
estrangement between the Roman and Greek Christians eventually led to
the second major schism of 1054, which culminated in a crisis as the Pope
of Rome and the Patriarch of Constantinople excommunicated each other.
The institutions headed by each became known respectively as the
(Roman) Catholic Church and the (Eastern) Orthodox Churches.

Russian Orthodox Archbishop Ambrose

of Peterhof visited the Holy Mount
Athos, 2014, St. Petersburg Orthodox
Seminary, Flickr Creative Commons

The distinctive theologies and liturgies of the Orthodox churches have continued to develop into the twentyfirst century. One particularly characteristic theological stance of the Christ event from an Orthodox perspective
is the emphasis on the incarnation of Christ as a means to raise human nature to the Divine. As Athanasius put it
in the fourth century, the Son of God became man so that man might become God. This emphasis on theosis,
becoming divine, stands in contrast to the heavy emphasis on human sinfulness present in much of the
theology of the Western churches.
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Christianity 2015

St. Anthony of Egypt, Burgos Cathedral, Burgos,

Spain. Lawrence OP, Flickr Creative Commons.

Monasticism was an important part of the early church tradition, as

devout men and women left urban life and the growing institutions of
the church for a life of devotion to God in prayer and simplicity.
Monastic life began as early as the fourth century, with St. Anthony
and the Desert Fathers of Egypt, in whom both Eastern and Western
traditions of monasticism find their source and inspiration. As Eastern
monasticism developed, it included both communal and solitary
religious life and emphasized physical austerity. From these early
centuries onward, the Eastern traditions also developed practices of
inner contemplative prayer called the prayer of the heart or the
Jesus prayer. These forms of concentration and breath-centered
prayer have been preserved in the spiritual treasury of the church to
the present day.

As part of a rich spiritual and liturgical tradition, the Orthodox churches also
developed the distinctive use of pictorial icons of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the
saints. These icons were understood to be windows into the sacred meaning and
presence of these figures, not mere representations of them. The second council
of Nicaea in 787 affirmed the role of icons in the face of virulent criticism from
those who objected to any visual images in worship.
During the seventh century, Christianity encountered the challenge of Islam, a
new religious tradition which gained ground in Palestine, Syria and Egypt, and
from Anatolia to Spain. The great Dome of the Rock mosque was completed in
Jerusalem in 692. Eight centuries later, the Byzantine Empire, centered at
Constantinople, fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. The great centers of
Orthodoxy, including Constantinople, became centers of Islamic rule, and its
great churches became mosques. For hundreds of years, the encounter with
Islam has been of significance and immediacy for Oriental Orthodox and Eastern
Orthodox churches.

,
2012, Michael Hadjimichael, Flickr
Creative Commons.

Today, the Eastern Orthodox churches constitute a family of related churches,

including the Greek, Russian, Bulgaria, Romanian, and Syrian churches, each with a rich history and distinctive
liturgical forms. Oriental Orthodox churches include the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Coptic Church of Egypt,
the Ethiopian Church, the Eritrean Church, the Church of St. Thomas in India, and the Jacobite Syrian Church of
Antioch. In 2001, a council of bishops representing both the Eastern Orthodox and the Oriental Orthodox
churches declared their Christologies effectively consistent, citing linguistic and political factors for the
historical disagreement. While the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental churches are not yet fully reconciled they, like
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the Eastern Catholic churches (those who are in communion with Rome but who follow Eastern traditions of
worship) share very similar theology and practices. Reconciliation efforts continue today.

The Roman Catholic Church and the Catholic Communion

The early church spoke of its fellowship of believers as catholic, a word which
means universal. Today, the whole Christian church still affirms one holy,
catholic, and apostolic church in the Nicene Creed. However, the term Catholic
with a capital C also applies in common parlance to the Churches within the
Catholic Communion, centered in Rome. The Church of Rome is one of the oldest
Christian communities, tracing its history to the apostles Peter and Paul in the first
century. As it developed, it emphasized the central authority and primacy of the
bishop of Rome, who became known as the Pope. By the eleventh century, the
Catholic Church broke with the Byzantine Church of the East over issues of both
authority and doctrine. Particularly in response to this division, several attempts
were made to restore union and to heal the wounds of division between the
Churches.
Pope Francis, 2013, Catholic

Church England, Flickr Creative

Commons.

During the early 15th century, many in the Roman Church regarded the
impending Turkish invasion of the Byzantine Empire as a work of Providence to bind divided Christianity
together. In response, the Council of Florence envisioned union on a grandiose scale not only with the Greek
Byzantine churches, but also with the Copts, Ethiopians, Armenians and Nestorians. Despite the presence of
nearly 700 Eastern representatives and 360 Latin representatives and the energetic debates that ensued,
reunion was not achieved.

Though disappointed with the failure of the Council of Florence, the Roman Church began to pursue an
attractive alternative inspired by the unexpected union with the Maronite Church in the twelfth century. This
alternative consisted in the creation of Uniate churches Eastern in ritual and law but Roman in religious
allegiance. Though the term uniate has some derogatory connotations, the reconciliation that this term
signifies is an important historical development.

[Type text]
Detail of Benedictine Monks, Giovanni Antonio Bazzi (d. 1549),
Tuscany, Italy, Jacqueline Poggi, Flickr Creative Commons.

Meanwhile, the predominantly Roman church

continued to develop strong traditions of monasticism
that began with Benedict (480-550) who wrote the
Rule of St. Benedict where he described the principles
of prayer, work, and study essential to the monastic
life. Even in the early 21st century, this document
continues to be foundational for the life of Benedictine
communities all over the world. Many of the
missionaries of the church were monks, such as the
Venerable Bede (673-735) who brought spiritual

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leadership to the early church in England and Boniface (680-754) who was the apostle of Germany. In the
early Middle Ages, Benedictine monasteries became large landholders and powerful forces in the local economy.
Through the chaos of the Middle Ages, after the fall of the Roman Empire, they played an essential role in
preserving the spiritual, artistic, and intellectual life of the church.
In the twelfth century, other orders developed that rejected the cloistered and sometimes wealthy life of the
monastery, set apart from society, preferring more engaged models of Christian community. Francis of Assisi
(1182-1226) and the Franciscan order emphasized both individual and communal poverty, simplicity, and
servicenot apart from the people, but among them. Dominic (1170-1221) and the Dominican order
emphasized education, preaching, and teaching. Members of these orders were often reformers as well, calling
for a renewal of monasticism and the church as a whole.
In the sixteenth century, one of those reformers, the Augustinian friar Martin
Luther (1483-1546), broke with the church entirely and launched the
Protestant Reformation. The Council of Trent (15451563) followed with its
own reform of corrupt practices within the Catholic Church. Part of a
movement known as the Catholic Reformation or the CounterReformation, the Council of Trent reasserted the visible, hierarchical, and
structured authority of the Roman Catholic Church. This period of Catholic
renewal reinvigorated the educational and missionary zeal of the church with
the establishment of the Society of Jesus, also called the Jesuits, founded by
Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556). Especially with the colonization and conversion
of Latin America and with its missions to Asia and Africa, the Roman Catholic
Church became a worldwide church. Unfortunately, the strong reaction to the
Protestant movement would have a negative impact upon the Eastern
Catholic churches as conformity to the Roman standard became the norm.
Only the Second Vatican Council would begin the process of correcting this
mentality.

Catholic woman in Indonesia, Henri

Ismail, 2007, from Flickr Creative
Commons.

Today, the Catholic Communion is centered at the Vatican in Rome, but its
synods, councils of bishops, and local parishes carry on the life and work of the church on every continent. More
than half of the worlds Christians are Catholic. The Second Vatican Council considered seriously the new role of
the church in the modern world. Among the many decisions of the Council was to abandon the predominantly
Latin mass in favor of worship in the language and in the cultural forms of the local community. Another focus
was on a new openness to other religious traditions as represented in the document Nostra Aetate (In Our
Time). A third focus was on how the church should emphasize not only preaching and sacraments, but a
vigorous mission to the poor and those in need.

This emphasis helped give rise to a movement known as liberation theology that began in Latin America in the
1970s and spread throughout many parts of the world. Liberation theologians such as the Peruvian Domincan
Gustavo Gutirrez were initially focused on economic injustices. He interpreted the Gospels as promoting a
preferential option for the poor and declared structures of oppression that perpetuated cycles of poverty and
despair as sinful. This movement spread throughout much of the global south and eventually inspired other
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emancipation theologies in the United States and elsewhere such as Black Liberation Theology, Feminist
Liberation Theology, and Womanist Theology. These latter movements were often led by Protestants and
included members from many other religious traditions (and none).

The Protestant Movement

The sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation was sparked by Martin

Luther, a German monk whose studies of the Bible led him to attack the
leadership of the Catholic Church in his day. First, Luther insisted that
religious authority lay not primarily in church traditions, nor in the
hierarchy of bishops and popes, but in the Bible alone. The teaching of
the church and its leaders must be judged by the standard and teaching
of the Bible, which is the sole authoritative source of the Christian faith.
Further, Luther insisted that the Bible and the worship life of the
church be translated from Latin into the language of the people, so that
all might hear and understand it.

From his reading of the New Testament, Luther also concluded that
salvation is by Gods grace alone, not by virtue of anything one might do
to merit it. And salvation is by faith alone, by the disposition of the
Portrait of Martin Luther by Lucas Cranach the
Elder, 1527 from Wikimedia Commons.
heart, not by any penance a priest may prescribe. Luther especially
objected to what were known as indulgences sold by the church to
assure ones own well-being in the afterlife or the well-being of those who had already died. Luther preached
that salvation cannot be earned, much less bought, for it is a gift. In his break with Rome, Martin Luther left the
monastic life and married, thus establishing the precedent for married clergy in the Protestant churches. He
emphasized the faith of the laity, the Christian life within society, and the priesthood of all believers. Luther
was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church in 1521.
The Protestant Reformation marked the
beginning of what would become a new
movement in the Christian tradition. Its leaders
and forms were many, but the spirit of the
Protestant tradition continued to emphasize the
importance of personal faith, the gift of grace, and
the authority of the Bible. In Germany, the
Lutheran tradition built on Martin Luthers
heritage. Lutheran national churches also
developed in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and
Finland. The Lutheran churches of America today
include descendants from all of these churches.
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Quaker witness for peace & justice in front of the San Francisco Federal
Building, Steve Rhodes (2008), Flickr Creative Commons.
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The Reformed churches have their roots in Switzerland, where Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531) launched a
movement of church reform in Zurich in 1522. At the same time in Geneva, John Calvin (1509-1564) led a
movement that helped found Reformed churches in the Netherlands, Hungary, England, and Scotland. The
Presbyterian churches are also part of this Reformed tradition, and developed initially under the leadership of
the sixteenth-century Scottish reformer, John Knox (1514-1572). Todays Baptists and Congregationalists trace
their lineage back to the ideas of Zwingli and Calvin as well.

The more radical Anabaptists took issue with Zwingli and the reformers in Zurich over two issues: the
establishment of a state church and infant baptism. They held that Christian faith is a conscious and voluntary
commitment of the heart. Thus, they rejected the coercion of any state church and also rejected infant baptism
in favor of the baptism of adult believers. The Anabaptists also shaped the formation of the Baptists churches as
well as the historic peace churches, such as the Quakers and the Mennonites.

The English Reformation began in the sixteenth century when King Henry VIII declared the independence of the
Church of England from the authority of the Pope. Some Protestants in England went even further than Henry
and called for a complete purification of the church. Later known as Puritans, these radical dissenters in the
Church of England set out for North America in the early 1600s. They envisioned establishing a Christian
community, a holy commonwealth in the new world. In the 1700s, John Wesley (1703-1791), a priest of the
Church of England, launched an energetic devotional reform movement, emphasizing the forgiveness and grace
of a loving God. This movement eventually became known as Methodism. Those who remained within the
Church of England spread their version of Christianity as the British Empire encircled the world. After the
Empires dissolution, those churches banded together as the Worldwide Anglican Communion.
Evangelicals have also played a key role in ongoing reformation efforts.
Originally, the term was used to describe the 18th-19th century religious
reform movements and denominations that resulted from the revivals
that swept the North Atlantic Anglo-American world. These revivals were
led by figures like John Wesley, the itinerant English evangelist George
Whitefield (1715-1770), and American preacher and theologian Jonathan
Edwards (1703-1758). By the 1820s, Evangelicals dominated the
American Protestant scene, and played a major role in reform movements
such as abolitionism and prohibition. In the early twentieth century,
conservative Evangelicals (known as Fundamentalists) who rejected
Darwinism and modern biblical criticism would retreat from public life
after the Scopes Trial in 1925, only to re-emerge on the national political
and social scenes decades later.

In the 1960s and up to the present day, emancipation movements

Jerry Falwell, founder of the Moral
Majority, Wikimedia Commons.
throughout the globe have been and continue to be heavily influenced by
Protestants. Sometimes linked to liberation theology movements and
other times independent of them, figures who are motivated by their faith to promote human rights include
Desmond Tutu (1931-) in South Africa, Naim Stifan Ateek (1937-) in Palestine, Hisaku Kinakawa in Japan, and
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Ella Baker (1903-1986), Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968), Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz (1943-2012) and Beverly
Harrison (1932-2012) in the United States.

During the Reagan era in the United States, conservative organizations like the Moral Majority and Concerned
Women for America were motivated by what they perceived as a loss of traditional family values. As a result,
many Evangelicals focused on issues such as homosexuality, abortion, and the direction of mass media. Other
movements within Evangelicalism included Sojourners, a group committed to promoting peace and social
justice since the 1970s and intentional communities like the Simple Way in Philadelphia which seeks to reform
the faith by adapting traditional monastic practices for a modern context. The Simple Way focused on issues
like environmental sustainability and challenging systems that oppressed the poor and marginalized.
The Protestant Reformation, therefore, launched not a Protestant Church, but a Protestant movementa
dynamic movement of many churches, engaged in energetic and ongoing reformation, even today.

Mission to the World

The history of Christian missions is as old as the church, inspired by the commission Christ left his followers to
make disciples of all nations. Such zeal was seen in the early Syrian Christians who missionized as far as India
and China in the early third to seventh centuries. It was also the mission of early Roman monks that first planted
churches in Ireland and England, Germany and Northern Europe, Russia and Eastern Europe. However, the
sixteenth century, which saw both the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation, was also
the beginning of European colonial expansion and with it, church expansion. The Spanish conquered and
colonized in the lands of South America, Mexico, and the Philippines. The Portuguese planted colonies in Brazil,
Africa, India, and China. The British Empire included territories in India, Ceylon, Burma, Africa, Australia, and
North America. The Dutch were in Indonesia and Africa. The French had colonies in Africa, Southeast Asia, and
North America.
The spread of Christian churches followed in the tracks of empire, trade, and colonization. At times, the
churches and missionaries were involved or complicit in the exploitation and oppression of colonized people. It
is also true, however, that missionaries were among the strongest critics of colonial excesses. Many were the
first scholars to study the religious and cultural traditions of the peoples among whom they worked. Especially
in Asia, missionaries were also the first to challenge the exclusivist teachings of the church, for they saw what
they understood to be evidence of Gods living presence in non-Christian faiths.
The order of Jesuits or the Society of Jesus, founded in the
sixteenth century, was influential as a Catholic missionary
order, sending Jesuits to such places as India and China.
Later, Protestant missionary societies were formed to link
the Protestant churches of Europe, and later the United
States, with the new churches established in Asia and Africa.
With the end of the colonial era, the mission churches began
to develop strong voices and leadership of their own. Today,
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"Chennai: Tamil Nadu," Mat McPherson (2014), Flickr

Creative Commons.

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much of the dynamism and energy of the Christian churches worldwide comes from the churches of Africa, Asia,
and Latin America. The last few decades have seen a renewed emphasis on the expression of the gospel in every
culture and language. In the post-colonial era, churches in all parts of the world have moved away from
European or American expressions of Christianity and have claimed their own culture, music, and arts in order
to shape their own forms of Christian worship and community.

Today, many of these new cultural and ethnic expressions have come to America with the new immigration. As
with first-generation immigrants in the past, these immigrants have maintained their own congregations
Korean, Samoan, Ethiopian, South Indian, or Chineseand have brought an astounding new diversity to the face
of American Christianity.

The Modern Era

The modern period, heralded by what is known as the Enlightenment, began in the West in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries with the end of the religious wars that had torn Europe apart. In the wake of years of
bloodshed over religious doctrine, eighteenth-century Enlightenment thinkers emphasized religious toleration
and the need to separate religious life from political power. The role of reason in religious thinkingthat people
should be free to use their intellect to make up their own minds about what they believedwas reaffirmed. A
current of thought called Deism, for example, stressed natural religion, a creator God, and a common moral
and ethical ethos, without many of the supernatural elements that, they believed, confounded the principles of
reason. Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, so prominent in framing the American Constitution, were
influenced by this movement. During the last two centuries, the role of reason in the realm of faith has
continued to inspire Christian thinkers.
The Enlightenment was also influenced by the scientific revolution that began to transform assumptions about
the natural world, beginning with Isaac Newton in the seventeenth century. In the nineteenth century, the work
of Charles Darwin challenged the biblical story of creation with his theories about the development and
evolution of species as published in The Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871). In the modern
era, Christian thinkers of each succeeding generation have had to claim and articulate their faith anew in the
light of a wider worldview, informed by the expansion of science. Does faith today occupy the shrinking area of
mystery diminished by the growing body of scientific knowledge? Or is faith an orientation to all of life that is
not threatened by science but rather consonant with it?

Biblical scholarship has also posed challenges to faith in the modern era. The text of the Bible has been laid open
to study by methods of critical and historical analysis. What is the Bible? How did this particular collection of
writings come into being? Is each word the revelation of God or is it a collection of inspired writings that may be
studied and interpreted as products of particular historical contexts, with their own historical concerns? In the
early twentieth century, a movement known as Fundamentalism arose in opposition to many trends in modern
biblical scholarship. Fundamentalist Christians have been concerned with protecting the literal interpretation of
the Bible from what they consider to be the undermining effects of Biblical scholarship. More liberal Christians,
on the other hand, generally do not find the intensive scholarly study of the Bible a threat to their faith, but
rather an enhancement of their understanding of it.
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The second half of the twentieth century saw new currents of confluence, bringing together once again the
divided streams that have characterized Christianity for nearly a thousand years. This trend is called the
ecumenical movement, from the Greek term oikoumene which means the whole inhabited earth. The most
prominent expression of this ecumenical movement is the World Council of Churches (WCC), formed in 1948.
Today it is a fellowship of over three hundred Protestant and Orthodox churches committed to growing
together in faith and working together on shared issues of justice, peace, education, and emergency relief. In the
1960s, the Second Vatican Council also made far-reaching contributions to Christian ecumenism, opening the
door to closer cooperation between the Roman Catholic and other Christian churches. Toward the end of the
Second Vatican Council, the Pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople removed their one thousand year old
mutual excommunication and embraced.
The convergence of churches today is visible in many ways. National, regional,
and local councils of churches throughout the world are another expression of
the ecumenical movement. While old divisions are beginning to heal, new
areas of tension and fission are opening in the Christian churches of the early
twenty-first century. The interpretation of the Bible, the ordination of women,
attitudes toward gays and lesbians, and the ethics of abortion and
reproduction are all issues that have opened new fissures both between and
within denominations.

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the resurgence of evangelical

Christianity worldwide is sometimes called a third force in the Christian
ecumenical movement, along with the Vatican and the World Council of
Churches. The National Association of Evangelicals, founded in 1942, describes
itself as being a united voice for evangelicals. Despite their differences,
evangelicals today base their theology on a strong commitment to the Bible as
"First Ordained Woman," Messiah
the only infallible and authoritative word of God. There is also emphasis placed
Lutheran Church, Flickr Creative
on personal faith, expressed by accepting Christ into ones own life, and on
Commons.
evangelism, or the sharing of that faith with others in mission. The worldwide
ministry of Billy Graham (1918-), with his huge rallies and revivals, is an example of how mid-twentieth century
evangelists made effective use of the television communications revolution. Graham was also the first to help
steer a new evangelical movement away from the stricter dogmatic line of the early fundamentalists.
The soaring growth of pentecostalism is a significant
part of the new evangelical wave of the late twentieth
and early twenty-first centuries. Pentecostal worship
emphasizes the gifts of the Holy Spirit, including
speaking in tongues, reliving, in a sense, the
experience of the early church on the first Pentecost.
This movement is especially strong in the growing
cities of Latin America, Africa, and the U.S. where the
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pentecostal style of spirit-filled worship has created vibrant new Christian communities.

"School for midwives in El-Daien," Sudan, UNAMID, 2012, Flickr

Creative Commons.

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