Christianity

Christianity began with Jesus of Nazareth, a Jewish teacher from Galilee, then ruled by Herod Antipas under Rome. He preached the coming of the kingdom of God, healed the sick, ate with outcasts and gathered disciples. Around 30 CE he was crucified in Jerusalem on the orders of the Roman governor Pontius Pilate.

His followers proclaimed that he had risen from the dead and was the Messiah, the Christ promised in the Jewish scriptures. The apostles, above all Peter and Paul, carried the message to Jewish communities and then to non-Jews across the eastern Mediterranean. Within a generation there were churches in Antioch, Alexandria, Corinth and Rome.

For almost three centuries Christians were a minority, at times persecuted. In 313 the emperor Constantine granted them freedom, and by the end of the century Christianity had become the religion of the Roman Empire. Armenia and the Ethiopian kingdom of Aksum had already adopted it as state religions.

Missionaries later took the faith to Ireland, the Germanic and Slavic peoples, and Rus. From the 16th century European expansion carried it to the Americas, Africa and Asia, often entangled with colonial power. In the 20th century its centre of gravity shifted south: today more Christians live in Africa and Latin America than in Europe.

The conversion of the emperor Constantine changed the position of Christianity for good. After granting Christians freedom in 313, he summoned the Council of Nicaea in 325 to settle the dispute over Arius, a priest of Alexandria who taught that the Son was created; the council affirmed that the Son is of one substance with the Father. In 380 Theodosius I declared Nicene Christianity the faith of the empire, and in the 390s he banned pagan sacrifice. Bishops gained great authority, monasticism spread from the deserts of Egypt across the Roman world, and Augustine of Hippo (354–430) shaped much of later Western theology.

Debates about how Christ is both divine and human led to the councils of Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451), after which the churches of Persia, Egypt, Armenia and Syria went their own ways. In the West the Roman Empire collapsed during the 5th century, and the papacy and the monasteries kept Latin learning alive; Pope Gregory the Great sent missionaries to the English in 597. In the East the empire based at Constantinople endured, and Justinian dedicated the great church of Hagia Sophia in 537. From the 7th century Arab conquests brought Syria, Palestine, Egypt and North Africa under Muslim rule, where Christians became protected minorities whose numbers declined slowly over many centuries. In 800 Pope Leo III crowned the Frankish king Charlemagne emperor in Rome, and in the 9th century the brothers Cyril and Methodius took the faith to the Slavs.

Latin West and Greek East drifted apart over the authority of the pope, the wording of the creed and many customs, and the mutual excommunications of 1054 became the symbol of their division. In the West, reforming popes asserted the Church’s independence from kings. In 1095 Pope Urban II launched the First Crusade, and crusaders took Jerusalem in 1099; in 1204 the Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople, deepening the bitterness between the churches. The same centuries saw Gothic cathedrals, the first universities, the theology of Thomas Aquinas and the new orders of friars founded by Francis and Dominic. The Western Schism (1378–1417), when two and then three rivals claimed the papacy, weakened Rome’s prestige. In 1453 Constantinople fell to the Ottomans, and Moscow came to see itself as the protector of Orthodoxy.

Printing helped turn Martin Luther’s protest of 1517 into the Reformation. Huldrych Zwingli in Zurich and John Calvin in Geneva led the Reformed churches, radical Anabaptists rejected infant baptism, and in 1534 Henry VIII broke the Church in England away from Rome. The Catholic Church answered with its own reform: the Council of Trent (1545–1563) restated its teaching, and the Society of Jesus, founded by Ignatius of Loyola in 1540, became its leading order of teachers and missionaries. Religious wars troubled Europe until the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.

Meanwhile Spanish and Portuguese expansion carried Catholicism to the Americas, where conversion was often bound up with conquest; a few missionaries, such as Bartolomé de las Casas, protested against the treatment of Indigenous peoples. Francis Xavier reached Japan in 1549, where Christianity was later banned and persecuted, and Matteo Ricci won a hearing at the Chinese court. In the 18th century Pietism, the Methodist movement of John Wesley and the Great Awakening in America renewed Protestant devotion, while Enlightenment critics and the French Revolution challenged the churches. The 19th century was the great age of Protestant and Catholic missions in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, often in the shadow of empire, and the First Vatican Council (1869–1870) defined the infallibility of the pope.

The 20th century brought new movements and new trials. Pentecostalism, sparked by the Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles in 1906, spread around the world. Churches suffered persecution under the Soviet Union and other communist states. The search for unity produced the World Council of Churches in 1948, and the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) introduced worship in local languages and opened dialogue with other churches and religions; in 1965 Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras lifted the excommunications of 1054. As Europe became more secular and Africa and Latin America grew, most Christians came to live in the global South.

Christians believe in one God, creator of all things, who exists as three persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This is the doctrine of the TrinityTrinity The Christian belief that God is one God in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Glossary. They believe that the Son became human in Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man.

At the heart of the faith is the cross and the resurrection. Christians believe that through Jesus’ death and rising humanity is freed from sin and death and reconciled with God, a gift received through faith and baptism. They look forward to Christ’s return, the resurrection of the dead and eternal life.

Jesus summed up the law in two commandments: to love God with all one’s heart and one’s neighbour as oneself. His Sermon on the Mount, which opens with the Beatitudes, remains the classic portrait of Christian life.

Christian life begins with baptism, washing with water in the name of the Trinity. Its centre is the EucharistEucharist The rite of bread and wine recalling the Last Supper; also called Holy Communion, the Mass or the Lord’s Supper. Glossary, also called Holy Communion, the Mass or the Lord’s Supper, in which bread and wine are shared as Jesus did on the night before he died. Christians understand what happens in it in different ways.

Most Christians gather on Sundays to pray, sing, hear scripture and preaching. Worship ranges from the long, sung liturgies of the Orthodox churches, filled with icons and incense, to the plain services of Quakers and the lively praise of Pentecostal churches.

The church year follows the life of Christ, from Advent and Christmas to Lent, Holy Week and Easter. Catholics and Orthodox also honour Mary and the saints, and many Christians go on pilgrimage to holy places.

The Christian Bible has two parts. The Old Testament is the Hebrew Bible, the scripture Jesus himself knew. The New Testament, written in Greek in the 1st and early 2nd centuries, contains the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, letters and the Book of Revelation.

The list of books was settled gradually; by the late 4th century most churches agreed on the 27 books of the New Testament. Catholic and Orthodox Bibles include some Jewish writings in Greek that Protestants do not count as scripture. The Bible has been translated, in whole or in part, into more languages than any other book.