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This article outlines the history of Christianity and provides links to relevant topics.
Christianity emerged as one of the many sects of Judaism that existed in the first century of the Common Era. Christianity brought from Judaism its scriptures (the Old Testament), its way of thinking and fundamental doctrines such as monotheism, and the belief in a moshiach (Hebrew term for messiah); this term is more commonly known as Christ (Christos in Greek). However, the Christian claim of exclusivity, that only its understanding of "Jewish" teaching is valid, led to an early rift between Christianity and first with the temple priesthood, and later with rabbinic Judaism as a whole.
The common Jewish picture both ancient and modern of the messiah is a national one - the deliverer of Israel, and has significant differences from how Christians understand the term. Christianity has a different form of the messiah, in which God himself came into history in the flesh as Jesus (the Incarnation), and became the deliverer of both Israel and of all mankind. Christians and Jews have disagreed about which of them has the truer conception of messiah from the time Christianity was born until now, often relying on different interpretations of various passages from the Old Testament (or Tanakh).
Christianity also continued many of the patterns found in Judaism at that time, such as: adapting the form of synagogue worship to church parishes; prayer; use of sacred scriptures; a priesthood; a religious calendar in which certain events and/or beliefs are specifically commemorated on certain days each year; use of music in hymns and prayer; ascetic disciplines such as fasting and almsgiving. Christians initially adopted the Greek translations of the Jewish scriptures (the Septuagint) as their own Bible, and later also canonized the books of the New Testament.
Starting with the events recorded in the Gospels and Acts, Christianity grew from the personal practice of a minority of Jews, to the dominant religious group of the Mediterranean world in little over 300 years. It also gained important extensions to the east and south of the Mediterranean. This section will examine those first 300 years.
Disputes of doctrine began early on. The newly-organised church organised councils to sort matters out. Councils representing the entire church were called ecumenical councils. Some groups were rejected as heretics.
Christianity was not the only religion seeking and finding converts in the 1st century. Modern historians of the Roman world often discern interest in what they tend to call mystery religions or mystery cults beginning in the last century of the Roman Republic and increasing during the centuries of the Roman Empire. Roman authors themselves, such as Livy, tell of the importation of "foreign gods" during times of stress in the Roman state. Judaism, too, was receiving converts and in some cases actively evangelising. The New Testament reflects a class of people referred to as 'believers in God' who are thought to be Gentile converts, perhaps those who had not submitted to circumcision; Philo of Alexandria makes explicit the duty of Jews to welcome converts.
In the second century conventionally educated converts began to produce two kinds of writings that help us understand the developing shapes of Christianity - works aimed at a broad audience of educated non-Christians and works aimed at those who considered themselves inside the Church. The writing for non-Christians is usually called apologetic in the same sense that the speech given by Socrates in his defense before the Athenian assembly is called his Apology - the word in Greek meant "speech for the defense" rather than the modern more limited denotation of "statement expressing regret". The Apologists, as these authors are sometimes known, made a presentation for the educated classes of the beliefs of Christians, often coupled with an attack on the beliefs and practices of the pagans. Other writings had the purpose of instructing and admonishing fellow Christians.
The Christological controversies include examinations of questions like the following. Was Christ divine or human or beyond simple classification into one category? Did Christ's miracles actually change physical reality or were they merely symbolic? Did Christ's body actually arise from the dead or was the resurrected Christ a supernatural being not limited to a physical frame?
Christianity was not restricted to the Mediterranean basin and its hinterlands; at the time of Jesus a large proportion of the Jewish population lived in Mesopotamia outside the Roman Empire, especially in the city of Babylon, where much of the Talmud was developed.
The Great Schism was between "Roman Catholicism" and "Eastern Orthodoxy". Both place great weight on apostolic succession, and historically both are descended from the early church. Each contends that it more correctly maintains the tradition of the early church and that the other has deviated. Roman Catholic Christians often prefer to refer to themselves simply as "catholic" which means "universal", and maintain that they are also orthodox. Eastern Orthodox Christians often prefer to refer to themselves simply as "orthodox", which means "right worship", and also call themselves catholic. Initially, the schism was primarily between East and West, but today both have congregations all over the world. They are still often referred to in those terms for historical reasons.
In many revolutionary movements the church was associated with the established repressive regimes. Thus, for example, after the French Revolution and the Mexican Revolution there was a distinct anti-clerical tone in those countries that exists to this day. On a more extreme level, Karl Marx condemned religion as the "opium of the people" and the Marxist-Leninist governments of the twentieth century were generally atheistic; of these, only Albania officially declared itself to be an atheistic state. All of these Marxist governments repressed the exercise of religion in varying degrees.
Christianity in the 20th century was characterised by accelerating fragmentation. The century saw the rise of both liberal and conservative splinter groups, as well as a general secularisation of Western society. The Roman Catholic Church instituted many reforms in order to modernise. Missionaries also made inroads in the Far East, establishing further followings in China, Taiwan, and Japan. At the same time, persecution in Communist Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union brought many Eastern Orthodox Christians to Western Europe and the United States, leading to greatly increased contact between Western and Eastern Christianity.
The persecution of Christians today has its own entry.
In Europe there has been a general move away from religious observance and belief in Christian teachings and a move towards secularism. For example the Gallup International Millennium Survey showed that only about one sixth of Europeans attend regular religious services, less than half gave God "high importance", and only about 40% believe in a "personal God". Nevertheless the large majority considered that they "belong" to a religious denomination.
In North America, South America and Australia, the other three continents where Christianity is the dominant professed religion, religious observance is much higher than in Europe.
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