We’ve already covered 1) Jesus Christ, 2) Catholicism (a term interchangeable with Christianity in the Church’s early years) and 3) the Protestant Reformation that split the Church in the 16th-17th Century. I do think it’s worth a separate entry on Christianity as a whole though, because whoever Jesus Christ was or wasn’t, the religion of Christianity is a fully human construct that evolved wholly independently of Jesus after his death. That construct has been highly effective: a third of the planet’s population remains Christian to this day.
Basics: Christianity is of course (like Judaism and Islam) an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion believing in just one God. It grew out of Judaism to become the world’s largest religion, with about 2.4 billion followers worldwide. Very much unlike Jews and Muslims, however, Christians believe Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God, both divine and human, and the saviour of humanity that had been prophesied in the Jewish Old Testament. Such has become the importance and influence of Jesus that his birth more than two thousand years ago became what the western world still regards as ‘year zero’ in our dating systems.
To refresh, Christians believe Jesus suffered, died, was buried, rose from the dead, and ascended to Heaven where he reigns alongside God the Father. Christians hold Jesus’s resurrection to be both the cornerstone of their faith and the most important event in human history. Most Christian denominations also firmly believe that Jesus will one day return (the ‘Second Coming’) to judge every soul living or dead, granting Eternal Life in Heaven to those who believe in him. Beliefs, however, vary over whether this judgement occurs immediately after death or whether such judgment only comes much later on at the end of days. We’ll come back to Judgment Day in more detail later in the blog as having a firm grasp of your religion’s end outcome is (or should be) by far the most important aspect of any belief system.
Christians adopted the Jewish Old Testament as the truth of all that came before Jesus, which has led to a special (if at times strained) relationship between the two religions ever since. The ‘Ten Commandments’ of the Jewish Old Testament set the tone for Christian principles and ethics, such as worshipping just the one God, not murdering, not stealing and not committing adultery.
It’s fair to say the religion of Christianity began as little more than a Jewish Messianic cult in the Middle East in the mid-1st century. But it spread rapidly through word of mouth via the leadership and missionary work of the Apostles throughout the wider region and soon into Europe and North Africa. Despite facing major opposition and persecution from both the Jewish and Roman authorities of the day, Christianity grew in size and influence and by the end of the 4th Century (following the conversion of Emperor Constantine) it had become the official state religion of the Roman Empire (consolidating the multitude of religions practiced under Roman rule at the time).
The now-accepted Christian concept of the ‘Trinity’ (The three aspects of God being the ‘father’, the ‘son’ – Jesus – and the ‘holy spirit’) was the subject of much argument and debate in the early Church and not agreed on in its current form until the 4th Century, hundreds of years after Jesus’s death, as a way of helping new converts understand the New Testament’s teachings and its relationship to the Old Testament – Jews and Muslims to this day consider the Trinity doctrine blasphemous and contrary to belief in one God. It’s worth noting that the exact texts to be included in the Bible’s New Testament had also been largely decided on and made ‘canon’ around the period of the 4th Century, again hundreds of years after Jesus’s death. It was Emperor Constantine’s conversion that truly entrenched the religion and helped Christianity shape western civilisation. All of Europe would essentially became Christianised and remained that way for centuries.
During the Age of Discovery (15th-18th Centuries), Christianity spread to the Americas, Australasia, sub-Saharan Africa, and the rest of the world through a combination of missionary work and colonialism. During the concurrent Age of Enlightenment (17th-18th Centuries), long-accepted Christian doctrines began to be confronted by new thinking in philosophy, science and political ideology such as socialism and liberalism. Revolutions and wars (not to mention the Protestant Reformation) led to the formation of secular European nation-states and diminished the control of the Catholic Church.
That’s not to say Christianity’s influence is on the wane, however, far from it: while religious belief in Europe may have decreased over the last few centuries, Christianity firmly remains the largest religion in the world with one third of the world’s entire population classifying themselves as Christian. 76% of Europeans remain Christian, 77% of North Americans and 90% of Latin America, with a dramatic increase of Christian beliefs in Africa in recent years too.
To learn more about the period of history when scientific scepticism went face-to-face with faith (and how faith survived), jump to Chapter 84: Age of Enlightenment – content to follow
To learn more about the written texts of Christianity, jump to Chapter 85: Christian Bible – content to follow
To learn more about the apocalyptic end times predicted by Christianity (and other religions), jump to Chapter 86: Judgment Day – content to follow
Finally, to learn more about the imperial system that enforced Christianity onto Europe in the 4th Century, jump to Chapter 87: Roman Empire – content to follow
