Christianity
Christianity
© Thomas Hilgers
First Encounter
You have come to Egypt to see its great sights: the Nile River, the pyramids of Giza, and the
temples of Luxor. In front of your hotel in Cairo, near the Egyptian Museum, you arrange with a
taxi driver to take you to the pyramids late one afternoon. The traffic is slow and the horn-
blowing incessant. From the window you see a donkey pulling a cart full of metal pipes, a
woman carrying a tray of bread on her head, a boy carrying a tray of coffee cups, and an
overloaded truck full of watermelons, all competing for space with dusty old cars and shiny
black limousines.
Your taxi driver is Gurgis, a middle-aged man with a short gray beard and a kind manner. He
drives with the windows open and chats with drivers in other taxis along the way. As you near
the pyramids, he says, “If you wait till dusk, you can see the sound-and-light show. Tourists love
the green laser lights on the pyramids. I can eat my supper at Giza and take you back
afterwards.” This sounds like an experience not to be missed. You agree.
You’d thought that the pyramids were far outside the city in the lonely desert, but now they are
just beyond a Pizza Hut, a bridal shop, and blocks of shops and apartments. Apparently, the city
of Cairo swallowed up the desert some time ago.
When the light show is over, it’s hard to believe that in that huge crowd surging out you will find
Gurgis. Luckily, he finds you. “Come, hurry,” he says, and whisks you away. On the trip back
across the river, you ask about his background.
“I’m a Copt, an Egyptian Christian” he says, “and I’m named after St. George.” To verify what
he’s telling you, Gurgis holds up his left arm. In the dim light you see a little blue cross tattooed
on the inside of his wrist. Before long, you learn about his birthplace (in Alexandria) and his
relatives (in Saskatchewan). He tells you about his religion, Coptic Christianity.
“It is very old. The first bishop was St. Mark, who wrote the gospel. Our patriarchs follow him in
a long line of patriarchs. We Copts are only about 10 percent of the population in Egypt, but our
Church is strong.” Noting your interest, he tells you about other places you might like to go. He
offers to take you to the old Coptic section of Cairo. “It’s along the Nile, not very far from your
hotel,” he says by way of encouragement. You agree to meet in front of your hotel on Friday
morning.
On Friday you visit three churches. There’s a lot going on because it is Good Friday, and all of
the churches, already surprisingly crowded with worshipers, will be filled in a few hours for
special services. Inside one church, a priest stands in front of the doors to the sanctuary,
apparently explaining something to a crowd of listeners. At the last church you visit, you see a
painting outside of Mary and Jesus on a donkey. Gurgis explains that the church marks the spot
where the family of Jesus stayed when they visited Egypt. You are doubtful, but in the basement
of the church, a large sign confirms what he tells you.
As you walk along the old street, heading out of the Coptic quarter, Gurgis tells you more about
Copts. “The original Christian hermits were Copts,” he says with pride. “Our pope was a monk
once, and he’s energizing Coptic life. Now he is even sending priests and monks to your country,
too. I know there are some in New Jersey.”
Back at the entrance to your hotel, Gurgis makes another offer. Sunday he will be going to a
Eucharistic service at St. Mark’s Cathedral. “The service will be very long, but it is beautiful.
Would you like to go?”
“Wonderful,” you say. “But let’s sit near the door.” “Fine,” he says. “There is more air there.”
On Sunday you and Gurgis drive to an immense domed church behind a gate. Large men in dark-
blue suits, looking like bodyguards, stand along the walkway into the church. Inside, a huge
purple curtain hangs in front of the main sanctuary doors. It has a winged lion sewn onto it.
“That represents St. Mark,” Gurgis whispers. At the left of the sanctuary is a thronelike wooden
chair. “That is the pope’s chair, the throne of St. Mark.”
Deeper Insights: The Christian System of Chronology: BC and AD
The influence of Christianity is apparent in the European dating system, which has now
generally been adopted worldwide. The Roman Empire dated events from the foundation of
Rome (753 BCE), but a Christian monk, Dionysius Exiguus (Dennis the Little; c. 470–c. 540
CE) devised a new system that made the birth of Jesus the central event of history. Thus we have
“BC,” meaning “before Christ,” and “AD,” Latin for “in the year of the Lord,” anno Domini. The
date selected as the year of Jesus’s birth may have been incorrect, and scholars now think that
Jesus was born about 4 BCE. (The historical facts given in Matt. 2:1 and Luke 2:2 about the year
of Jesus’s birth are not compatible.) Also, the new dating system began not with the year zero
but with the year one because there is no zero in Roman numerals. Because of the Christian
orientation of this dating system, many books (including this one) now use a slightly altered
abbreviation: “BCE,” meaning “before the Common Era,” and “CE,” meaning “Common Era.”
The Eucharistic service begins, with incense and singing. There is no organ, but the choir uses
small drums and cymbals. It is the Lord’s Supper, but in a form you’ve never seen before. At
times you can only hear the priests, because the sanctuary doors are periodically closed and you
can no longer see the altar. The service ends with communion. Through it all, the people—men
on the left side, women on the right—are amazingly devout.
Shenouda III, the late Coptic patriarch of Alexandria, here celebrates a feast at St. Mark’s
Cathedral in Cairo.
© Zhang Ning/Xinhua Press/Corbis
Back in your hotel, you think about what you have seen and heard. You know that the Lord’s
Supper has something to do with the last supper of Jesus with his disciples. But what about the
incense and the cymbals? How did the rituals originate? And how did monks and hermits come
about in Christianity? You had heard of a pope in Rome, but never one in Egypt. How did this
other pope originate? What thoughts, you wonder, would Jesus have if he were with you today?
And finally, what will be the future of this Egyptian Church—and, in this changing world, of
Christianity itself?
The Life and Teachings of Jesus
Christianity, which grew out of Judaism, has had a major influence on the history of the world.
Before we discuss its growth and influence, we must look at the life of Jesus, who is considered
its originator, and at the early scriptural books that speak of his life.
Before Jesus’s birth, the land of Israel had been taken over repeatedly by stronger neighbors.
During Jesus’s time, Israel was called Palestine by the Romans and was part of the Roman
Empire—but not willingly. The region was full of unrest, a boiling pot of religious and political
factions and movements. As we discussed in Chapter 8, patriots who later became known as the
Zealots wanted to expel the Romans. The Sadducees, a group of priests in Jerusalem, accepted
the Roman occupation as inevitable, yet they kept up the Jewish temple rituals. Members of a
semimonastic movement, the Essenes, lived an austere life in the desert and provinces; for the
most part, they deliberately lived away from Jerusalem, which they thought was corrupt. The
Pharisees, a lay movement of devout Jews, preoccupied themselves with meticulously keeping
the Jewish law.
Many Jews in Jesus’s day thought that they were living in the “end times.” They expected a
period of turbulence and suffering and a final great battle, when God would destroy all the
enemies of pious Jews. God, they believed, would then inaugurate a new age of justice and love.
Some expected a new Garden of Eden, where the good people who remained after the Judgment
would eat year-round from fruit trees and women would no longer suffer in childbirth. Most
Jews shared the hope that the Romans would be expelled, that evildoers would be punished, and
that God’s envoy, the Messiah, would appear. The common expectation among the Jews of
Jesus’s day was that the Messiah would be a king or a military leader who was descended from
King David. (The name Messiah means “anointed” and refers to the ceremony of anointing a
new king with olive oil.) Many held that the Messiah had been foretold in some of their sacred
books—such as Isaiah, Micah, and Daniel—and they expected him to rule the new world.
Into this complicated land Jesus was born about two thousand years ago (Timeline 9.1).
Traditional teaching tells of a miraculous conception in Nazareth, a town of northern Israel, and
of a birth by the virginal mother Mary in Bethlehem, a town in the south not far from Jerusalem.
It tells of wise men who followed a guiding star to the baby soon after his birth. The traditional
portrait of Jesus, common in art, shows him in his early years assisting his foster father, Joseph,
as a carpenter in the northern province of Galilee. It is possible that the truth of some of these
traditional details—as it is regarding the lives of many other religious founders—may be more
symbolic than literal.
TimeLine 9.1
Timeline of significant events in the history of Christianity.
The birth of Jesus is celebrated throughout Christendom. This painting of the nativity is in an
Orthodox church in Bulgaria.
© Thomas Hilgers
There have been many attempts to find the “historical Jesus.” Although artists have portrayed
Jesus in countless ways, no portrait that we know of was ever painted of Jesus while he was
alive. Of course, we can guess at his general features, but we cannot know anything definitive
about the individual face or eyes or manner of Jesus.
Almost everything we know of Jesus comes from the four gospels of the New Testament.
(Testament means “contract” or “covenant,” and gospel means “good news.”) The gospels are
accounts, written by later believers, of the life of Jesus. The gospels, however, tell very little of
Jesus until he began a public life of teaching and healing. He probably began this public life in
his late 20s, when he gathered twelve disciples and moved from place to place, teaching about
the coming of what he called the Kingdom of God. After a fairly short period of preaching—no
more than three years—Jesus was arrested in Jerusalem at Passover time by the authorities, who
considered him a threat to public order. From the point of view of the Sadducees, Jesus was
dangerous because he might begin an anti-Roman riot. In contrast, Jewish patriots may have
found him not anti-Roman enough. From the Roman point of view, however, he was at least a
potential source of political unrest and enough of a threat to be arrested, whipped, nailed to a
cross, and crucified—a degrading and public form of execution. Death came from shock,
suffocation, and loss of blood.
Dying on a Friday, Jesus was buried quickly near the site of his crucifixion shortly before sunset,
just as the Jewish Sabbath was to begin. No work could be done on Saturday, the Sabbath. On
the following Sunday, the gospels report, the followers who went to care for his body found his
tomb empty. Some followers reported apparitions of him, and his disciples became convinced
that he had returned to life. Forty days later, the New Testament says, he ascended into the sky,
promising to return again.
This bare outline does not answer many important questions: Who was Jesus? What kind of
personality did he have? What were his teachings? For the answers to these questions, we must
turn to the four gospels. They are the core of the Christian New Testament.
Jesus in the New Testament Gospels
The four gospels are written remembrances of Jesus’s words and deeds, recorded some years
after his death by people who believed in him. All the books of the New Testament are strongly
colored by the viewpoints of their writers and by the culture of the period. Thus it is difficult to
establish the historical accuracy of New Testament statements about Jesus or the words
attributed to him. (Perhaps an analogy can clarify the problem: the gospels are like paintings of
Jesus, not photographs.) In compiling our picture of Jesus, we must also recognize that the
gospels are not a complete record of all essential information. There is a great deal we cannot
know about Jesus. Nevertheless, a definite person does emerge from the gospels.
However obvious it may seem to point this out, Jesus believed and trusted in God, just as all
contemporary Jews did. But while Jesus thought of God as creator and sustainer of the universe,
he also thought of God in a very personal way, as his father. It is Jesus’s extremely special
relationship to God that is central to Christianity.
Raised as a Jew, Jesus accepted the sacred authority of the Law and the Prophets (the Torah and
the books of history and prophecy). As a boy, he learned the scriptures in Hebrew. He kept the
major Jewish holy days common to the period, and he traveled to Jerusalem and its temple for
some of these events. He apparently kept the basic food laws and laws about Sabbath
observance, and he attended synagogue meetings on Saturdays as part of the observance of the
Jewish Sabbath (Luke 4:16). It seems he was a devout and thoughtful Jew.
Nonetheless, one striking personal characteristic of Jesus, alluded to frequently in the gospels,
was his independence of thought. He considered things carefully and then arrived at his own
opinions, which he was not hesitant to share. Jesus, the gospels say, taught differently: “unlike
the scribes, he taught them with authority” (Mark 1:22). 1
Perhaps Jesus’s most impressive characteristic was his emphasis on universal love—not just love
for the members of one’s own family, ethnic group, or religion. He preached love in many forms:
compassion, tolerance, forgiveness, acceptance, helpfulness, generosity, gratitude. When asked if
a person should forgive up to seven times, he answered that people should forgive seventy times
seven times (Matt. 18:22)—in other words, endlessly. He rejected all vengeance and even asked
forgiveness for those who killed him (Luke 23:34). He recommended that we respond to
violence with nonviolence. “But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those
who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who mistreat you. If anyone hits
you on one cheek, let him hit the other one too; if someone takes your coat, let him have your
shirt as well. Give to everyone who asks you for something, and when someone takes what is
yours, do not ask for it back. Do for others just what you want them to do for you” (Luke 6:27–
31). 2
Although Jesus’s nonviolent, loving message has often been neglected over the centuries, it is
spelled out clearly in the Sermon on the Mount sections of the New Testament (Matt. 5–7, Luke
6). In the world of Jesus’s day, which esteemed force and exacted vengeance, his message must
have been shocking.
Jesus was wary of an overly strict observance of laws that seemed detrimental to human welfare.
About keeping detailed laws regarding the Sabbath, he commented, “The sabbath was made for
man, not man for the sabbath” (Mark 2:27). 3 He did not confuse pious practices, common among
the Jews of his day, with the larger ideal of virtue. He disliked hypocrisy and pretense (Matt.
23:5–8).
From what we can see in the gospels, Jesus showed many human feelings. He had close friends
and spent time with them (John 11:5), and he was disappointed when they were less than he had
hoped for (Matt. 26:40). He wept when he heard of the death of one of his dearest friends (John
11:33–36).
Jesus urged simplicity. He recommended that people “become like little children” (Matt. 18:3).
He liked directness and strived to go beyond details to the heart of things.
This portrayal of Jesus and his followers is influenced by the Book of Revelation. The smaller
sheep represent the Apostles.
© Thomas Hilgers
Much of Jesus’s advice is good psychology, showing that he was a keen observer of human
beings. For example, we are told that as you give, so shall you receive (Matt. 7:2) and that if you
are not afraid to ask for what you want, you shall receive it (Matt. 7:7).
Jesus showed an appreciation for nature, in which he saw evidence of God’s care (Matt. 6:29).
But Jesus did not look at nature with the detached vision of a scientist. He knew scripture well
but was not a scholar. As far as we know, he was not a writer, and he left behind no written
works. He showed almost no interest in money or in business. In adulthood he probably did not
travel far from his home territory, between the Sea of Galilee and Jerusalem. While he may have
spoken some Greek in addition to his native Aramaic, he did not apparently have much interest
in the Greco-Roman culture of his day.
Whether Jesus had a sense of humor is hard to know. The four gospels never mention that he
laughed, thus giving him an image of solemnity. But some of his statements come alive when we
see them as being spoken with ironic humor and even laughter (see, for example, Matt. 15:24–
28). We do know that although he sometimes sought seclusion, Jesus seems to have enjoyed
others’ company.
Jesus had many female friends and followers. He seems to have treated women as equals, and he
spoke to them in public without hesitation. In one gospel he is shown asking a woman for a drink
of water at a well (John 4). In another gospel he speaks with a Canaanite woman, whose child he
cures (Matt. 15:21–28). We find repeated mention of the sisters Martha and Mary of Bethany as
close friends of Jesus (see John 11). The gospels also speak of other women disciples, such as
Joanna and Susanna (Luke 8:3). The gospels tell how women stood by Jesus at his crucifixion,
even when most of his male disciples had abandoned him. And the most prominent among the
female disciples was Mary Magdalene, who was the first witness of his resurrection (John.
20:11–18).
Some people would like to see Jesus as a social activist. He cared strongly about the poor and the
hungry, but he apparently was not a social activist of any specialized type. For example, the
gospels do not record words of Jesus that condemn slavery or the oppression of women. Perhaps,
like many others of his time, Jesus believed that God would soon judge the world, and this may
have kept him from working for a specific reform. Instead, he preached basic principles of
humane treatment, particularly of the needy and the oppressed (Matt. 25).
Do not judge others, and God will not judge you; do not condemn others, and God will not
condemn you; forgive others, and God will forgive you. Give to others, and God will give to
you. Indeed, you will receive a full measure, a generous helping, poured into your hands—all
that you can hold. The measure you use for others is the one that God will use for you.
Luke 6:37–38 4
For those who would turn Jesus into a protector of the family and family values, the gospels
present mixed evidence. When asked about the divorce practice of his day, Jesus opposed it
strongly. He opposed easy divorce because it meant that a husband could divorce his wife for a
minor reason, often leaving her unable to support herself or to remarry. He stated that the
marriage bond was given by God (Mark 10:1–12). And at his death, Jesus asked a disciple to
care for his mother after he was gone (John 19:26). But Jesus himself remained unmarried. If
Jesus had a wife, that fact almost certainly would have survived in tradition or been mentioned
somewhere in a gospel or other New Testament book. Moreover, there is no mention anywhere
that Jesus ever had children.
Indeed, Jesus spoke highly of those who remained unmarried “for the sake of the kingdom of
heaven” (Matt. 19:12). 5 As an intriguing confirmation of Jesus’s unmarried state, it is now
recognized that celibacy was valued by the Essenes, the semimonastic Jewish movement of that
era, which may have had some influence on him. 6 In any case, Paul—one of the most important
of the early Christians and missionaries—and generations of priests, monks, and nuns followed a
celibate ideal that was based on the way Jesus was thought to have lived. In fact, the ideal of
remaining unmarried for religious reasons remains influential in several branches of Christianity
today.
The gospels mention Jesus’s brothers and sisters (Mark 6:3). Some Christian traditions have held
that these relatives were cousins or stepbrothers and stepsisters, hoping thereby to preserve the
notion of his mother Mary’s permanent virginity. But it is now widely accepted that Jesus had
actual brothers and sisters who were children of his mother Mary and of Joseph. When we
inspect his relationship to his family members, it seems that Jesus at times was alienated from
them. They quite naturally worried about him and apparently wished he were not so unusual and
difficult. But Jesus, irritated by their claims on him, said publicly that his real family consisted
not of his blood relatives but of all those who hear the word of God and keep it (Mark 3:31–33).
After Jesus died, however, because of their blood relationship with Jesus, his family members
were influential in the early Church, and the earlier disharmony was downplayed.
The Two Great Commandments
What, then, was Jesus’s main concern? His teachings, called the Two Great Commandments,
combine two strong elements: a love for God and an ethical call for kindness toward others.
These commandments already existed in Hebrew scripture (Deut. 6:5 and Lev. 19:18), but Jesus
gave them new emphasis by reducing all laws to the law of love: Love God and love your
neighbor (Matt. 22:37–40). Being fully aware of God means living with love for all God’s
children. Like prophets before him, Jesus had a clear vision of what human society can be at its
best—a Kingdom of God in which people care about each other, the poor are looked after,
violence and exploitation are abandoned, and religious rules do not overlook human needs.
It may be that Jesus’s emphasis on morality was tied to the common belief in an imminent divine
judgment. This belief seems to have been a particularly important part of the worldview of the
Essenes, who thought of themselves as preparing for this new world. It was also essential to the
thinking of John the Baptizer (also called John the Baptist), whom the Gospel of Luke calls the
cousin of Jesus. John preached that the end of the world was near, when God would punish
evildoers. As a sign of purification, John immersed his followers in the water of the Jordan
River. Jesus allowed himself to be baptized, and when John died, Jesus had his own followers
carry on John’s practice by baptizing others. Whether Jesus shared John’s view of the coming
end of the world is debated. Some passages would seem to indicate that he did (see Mark 9:1,
13:30; Matt. 16:28). This vision of impending judgment is called apocalypticism. In the
apocalyptic view, the Kingdom of God would soon be a social and political reality.
Whatever Jesus’s views about the end times, his focus was on bringing about the Kingdom of
God in each human heart. This would occur when people followed the Two Great
Commandments and lived by the laws of love. Some of Jesus’s closest followers were among
those who seem to have expected him to be a political leader, wanting him to lead the fight
against the Roman overlords to establish a political kingdom of God. But Jesus refused. The
Gospel of John records him as saying, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). 7 Instead
of political violence, Jesus chose a path of nonviolence.
Early Christian Beliefs and History
The Book of Acts records that after Jesus’s ascension to heaven forty days following his
resurrection, his disciples were gathered, full of fear, wondering what to do next. The Book of
Acts then tells how the Spirit of God came upon them in the form of fire, giving them courage to
spread their belief in Jesus as the Messiah. This first preaching of the Christian message has been
called the Birthday of the Church.
The early Christian message was not complex. It is summarized in the apostle Peter’s speech in
Acts 2, which says that God is now working in a special way; Jesus was the expected Messiah,
God’s ambassador; and these are the “final days” before God’s judgment and the coming of a
new world. Early Christian practice required those who believed to be baptized as a sign of
rebirth, to share their possessions, and to care for widows and orphans.
The early Christian group that remained in Jerusalem seems to have been almost entirely Jewish
and was led by James, called the Just because of his careful observance of Jewish practice. Being
one of Jesus’s real brothers, James carried great authority. The Jewish-Christian Church, led by
Jesus’s relatives, was a strong influence for the first forty years. Its members kept the Jewish
holy days, prayed in the Jerusalem Temple, and conducted their services in Aramaic. The
Jewish-Christian Church, however, was weakened by the destruction of the temple in 70 CE, and
it seems to have disappeared over the next one hundred years. Meanwhile, the non-Jewish,
Greek-speaking branch of early Christianity, led by Paul and others like him, began to spread
throughout the Roman Empire.
Paul and Pauline Christianity
As the Jewish Christianity of Jerusalem and Israel weakened, Christianity among non-Jews grew
because of the missionary Paul. Paul’s preaching in Greek, his energetic traveling, and his
powerful letters spread his form of belief in Jesus far beyond the limits of Israel.
Originally named Saul, Paul was born of Jewish parentage in Tarsus, a town in the south of
present-day Turkey. He was earnest about traditional Judaism and went to Jerusalem for study.
At that time he was a Pharisee, and he was adamantly opposed to the new “Jesus movement,”
which he saw as a dangerous messianic Jewish cult that could divide Judaism.
Paul, however, came to a new understanding of Jesus. The Book of Galatians says that he
pondered the meaning of Jesus for three years in “Arabia” and “Damascus” (Gal. 1:17). In a
more dramatic, later account, the Book of Acts relates that while Paul was on the road from
Jerusalem to root out a cell of early Christian believers, he experienced a vision of Jesus. In it
Jesus asked, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” 8 (See Acts 9, 22, 26.) After several years of
study in seclusion, Paul became convinced that Jesus’s life and death were the major events of a
divine plan, and that Jesus was a cosmic figure who entered the world in order to renew it.
Consequently, as we will soon discuss, the focus in Paul’s thought is less on the historical Jesus
and more on the meaning of the cosmic Christ.
In this fifteenth-century fresco, Noli Me Tangere, by Fra Angelico, Jesus appears to Mary
Magdalene, the first person to see him after his resurrection.
© Arte & Immagini srl/Corbis
Paul discovered his life’s mission: to spread belief in Christ around the Mediterranean,
particularly among non-Jews, whom he found more receptive to his message. His use of the
Greco-Roman name Paul, instead of his Jewish name Saul, shows his orientation to the non-
Jewish world.
Paul’s missionary technique was the same in most towns. If the Book of Acts is correct in its
portrayal of Paul’s missionary work, he would begin by visiting the local synagogue. There, Paul
would use Jewish scriptures, such as the Book of Isaiah, to explain his own belief that Jesus was
the Messiah whom Jews had long been awaiting. He was unsuccessful with most Jews, who
generally expected a royal Messiah, not a poor man who had been publicly executed. And they
sometimes treated Paul as a traitor, especially when he said that it was unnecessary to impose
Jewish laws about diet and circumcision on non-Jewish converts to Christian belief.
Whether all Christians had to keep Jewish religious laws was a subject of intense debate in early
Christianity. Christianity had begun as a movement of Jews who believed that Jesus was the
expected Messiah, but it soon attracted followers who did not come from a Jewish background.
Questions about practice led early Christianity to differentiate itself from Judaism, to define itself
on its own terms. Did adult males who wished to be baptized also have to be circumcised?
(Needless to say, adult male converts were not always enthusiastic about the practice of
circumcision.) Did new converts have to keep the Jewish laws about diet? Did they have to keep
the Jewish Sabbath? Should they read the Jewish scriptures?
Some early Christian preachers decided not to impose Jewish rules on non-Jewish converts,
while others insisted that all Jewish laws had to be kept. The faction that insisted on upholding
all Jewish laws, however, did not prevail. Ultimately, some elements of Judaism were retained
and others were abandoned. For example, circumcision was replaced by baptism as a sign of
initiation, but Jewish scriptures and weekly services were retained.
These efforts to define what it meant to be a Christian signaled a major turning point in
Christianity. Paul’s conclusions, in particular, played a prominent role in shaping the movement.
His views on the meaning of Jesus, on morality, and on Christian practice became the norm for
most of the Christian world. This happened because of his extensive missionary activities in
major cities of the Roman Empire and because he left eloquent letters stating his beliefs. Copied
repeatedly, circulated, and read publicly, these letters have formed the basis for all later Christian
belief.
Paul’s training as a scholar of Jewish law made him acutely aware of human imperfection. He
wrote that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). 9 He came to feel, in
fact, that external written laws, such as those of Judaism, hurt more than they helped; the
imposition of laws that could not be fulfilled could only make human beings aware of their
inadequacies. For him, Jesus came from God to bring people a radical new freedom. Believers
would no longer have to rely on written laws or to feel guilty for past misdeeds. Jesus’s death
was a voluntary sacrifice to take on the punishment and guilt of everyone. Human beings thereby
found redemption from punishment. Believers need only follow the lead of the Spirit of God,
which dwells in them and directs them.
The parable of the sower and the seed is an example of Jesus the teacher. This image is from the
new St. John’s Bible, commissioned by the monks of St. John’s Abbey in Minnesota.
Sower and the Seed, Aidan Hart with contributions from Donald Jackson and Sally Mae Josephs,
Copyright 2002, The Saint John’s Bible, Saint John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota, USA
Thus Paul preached that it is no longer by the keeping of Jewish laws that a person comes into
right relationship with God (righteousness); rather, it is by the acceptance of Jesus, who shows us
God’s love and who was punished for our wrongdoing. What brings a person into good
relationship with God “is not obedience to the Law, but faith in Jesus Christ” (Gal. 2:16). 10
Despite his newfound freedom, Paul did not abandon moral rules. But his notion of morality was
no longer based on laws that were imposed externally—and kept grudgingly—but rather on an
interior force that inspired people to do good deeds spontaneously. The life of Jesus was for Paul
a proof of God’s love, because God the Father had sent Jesus into the world to tell about his love.
According to Paul, our awareness of God’s love will inspire us to live in a new and loving way.
Paul saw Jesus not only as teacher, prophet, and Messiah, but also as a manifestation of divinity.
For Paul, Jesus was a cosmic figure—the preexistent image of God, the Wisdom of God (see
Prov. 8), and the Lord of the universe. Jesus was sent into the world to begin a process of cosmic
reunion between God and his human creation. Sin (wrongdoing) had brought to human beings
the punishment of death. But Jesus’s death was an atonement for human sin, and the result was
that the punishment of death was no longer valid. Jesus’s return to life was just the beginning of
a process of eternal life for all people who have the Spirit of God within them.
The New Testament: Its Structure and Artistry
What we know of Jesus and early Christianity comes largely from the New Testament. The New
Testament, which is also at the core of Christianity, is used in religious services, read regularly,
and carried throughout the world.
God’s love has been poured into our hearts.
Rom. 5:5 11
The New Testament is divided into four parts: (1) the Gospels, (2) the Acts of the Apostles, (3)
the Epistles, and (4) Revelation. The gospels describe the life and teachings of Jesus. Although
we now know that the facts surrounding their authorship are complex, tradition has attributed the
gospels to four early followers—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, who are called evangelists
(Greek: “good news person”). The Acts of the Apostles tells of the initial spread of Christianity,
although its historical accuracy cannot be confirmed. The epistles are letters to early Christians,
primarily by Paul. The New Testament ends with a visionary book, Revelation, which foretells in
symbolic language the triumph of Christianity. Altogether, there are twenty-seven books in the
New Testament.
All the books of the New Testament were written in Greek, the language of culture and
commerce in the classical Mediterranean world of the first century of the Common Era. The
quality of the Greek varies; in the Book of Revelation the language is considered rough, while in
the Books of Luke and Acts it is considered particularly graceful.
The Gospels
We know of the life of Jesus primarily from the gospels, which are written in an extremely
pictorial way. They are filled with powerful stories and images and have been the source of great
inspiration for much later Christian art. Each of the four gospels is as unique in its artistry and
style as would be four portraits of the same person painted by four different artists. The portraits
would certainly be recognizably similar but also different in such details as choice of
background, clothing, angle of perspective, and so on. The same is true of the “portraits” of Jesus
that are painted in the gospels: each gospel writer shows Jesus in a different way.
Despite their differences, the first three gospels show a family resemblance in stories, language,
and order. They are thus called the Synoptic Gospels (synoptic literally means “together-see” in
Greek, implying a similar perspective). The synoptic writers show Jesus as a messianic teacher
and healer sent by God. It is generally thought that the Gospel of Mark was written first, since it
seems to be the primary source for the later Gospels of Matthew and Luke. The Gospel of John,
however, is recognizably different and relies on its own separate sources. It is possible that all
the gospels were originally written to be used as readings in religious services, probably in
conjunction with complementary readings from the Hebrew scriptures.
The Gospel of Matthew is thought to have been written (about 75–80 CE) for an audience with a
Jewish background. For example, it portrays Jesus as the “new Moses,” a teacher who offers a
“new Torah.” In the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5–7), Jesus delivers his teachings on a
mountain, just as Moses delivered the Ten Commandments from another mountain, Mount Sinai.
The gospel also contains many quotations from the Hebrew scriptures, showing that Jesus was
their fulfillment.
The Gospel of Mark is the shortest of the four gospels, which suggests that it is the oldest
(written around 65–70 CE). This gospel contains no infancy stories and begins instead with the
adult public life of Jesus. In the original version, it ends with an account of Jesus’s empty tomb.
The account of Jesus’s appearances after the resurrection (Mark 16:9–19) is a later addition.
The Gospel of Luke (written about 85 CE) is filled with a sense of wonder, perhaps because it
speaks repeatedly of the miraculous action of the Spirit of God at work in the world. It has been
called the “women’s gospel” because of its many accounts of women, including Jesus’s mother
Mary, her cousin Elizabeth, his follower Mary Magdalene, and disciples such as Joanna and
Susanna. This is a gospel of mercy and compassion, with a strong focus on the underdog.
Deeper Insights: The Books of the New Testament
Gospels
Synoptic Gospels
Matthew (75–80 CE)
Mark (65–70 CE)
Luke (c. 85 CE)
Non-Synoptic Gospel
John (90–100 CE)
HISTORY
Acts of the Apostles (c. 85 CE)
Epistles
Pauline Epistles (c. 50–125 CE)
Romans
1–2 Corinthians
Galatians
Ephesians
Philippians
Colossians
1–2 Thessalonians
1–2 Timothy
Titus
Philemon
Hebrews
Universal Epistles (c. 90–125 CE)
James
1–2 Peter
1–3 John
Jude
PROPHECY
Revelation (c. 100 CE)
The Gospel of John stands by itself. The time of its writing is difficult to pinpoint. Traditionally,
it has been dated quite late—about 90 to 100 CE—because of its apparent elaboration of
Christian doctrines. But details that might have come from an eyewitness suggest that parts may
have been written earlier. Because it views human life as a struggle between the principles of
light and darkness, students of the Gospel of John have wondered whether it was influenced by
one or more religious movements of the period, such as the Persian religion of Zoroastrianism
(see Chapter 10), Greek mystery religions, or Gnosticism (see Chapter 10)—a movement that
saw human life as a stage of purification to prepare the soul to return to God. 12
The discovery of
the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 near Qumran has shown many similarities between the language of
the Gospel of John and certain phrases found in the Qumran literature (for example, “sons of
light and sons of darkness”). The Jewish origins of the gospel are now clear.
In the Gospel of John, the portrayal of Jesus is full of mystery. He is the incarnation of God, the
divine made visible in human form. He speaks in cosmic tones: “I am the light of the world”
(John 9:5). “I am the bread of life” (John 6:35). “You are from below; I am from above” (John
8:23). 13
Scholars frequently question the historicity of these exact words, seeing them more as
representing the author’s vision of the heavenly origin and nature of Jesus.
On Christmas, Christians often display depictions of the birth of Jesus. Here, girls view such a
depiction inside a Myanmar church.
© Thomas Hilgers
The central aesthetic image of the gospel is a ray of divine light that descends like a lightning
bolt into our world, passing through and lighting up the darkness but ultimately returning to its
heavenly source and enabling human beings to follow. Most people, the gospel states, do not
really understand the truth; only those who have an open heart can see the true nature of Jesus as
divine light. Water, bread, the vine, the shepherd, and the door are additional symbols used in the
Gospel of John to indicate aspects of Jesus and his meaning for the believer. These symbols later
became regular features of Christian art.
The Acts of the Apostles
This book (dating from about 85 CE) is really the second part of the Gospel of Luke, and
scholars sometimes refer to the two books together as Luke-Acts. It is possible that the single
work of Luke-Acts was divided in two in order to place the Gospel of John after the Gospel of
Luke. Just as the Gospel of Luke portrays Jesus as moving inevitably toward his sacrifice in
Jerusalem, so Acts portrays Paul in a parallel journey to his final sacrifice in Rome. At the heart
of both books is a single beautiful image of a stone, dropped in a pond, that makes ever-widening
ripples. Similarly, the life of Jesus makes ever-widening ripples as it spreads in a growing circle
from its origin in Jerusalem to the ends of the earth.
The Epistles
The word epistle means “letter” and is an appropriate label for most of these works, which were
written to instruct, to encourage, and to solve problems. Several epistles are long and formal; a
few are brief and hurried. Some epistles seem to have been written to individuals; some, to
individual churches; and others, for circulation among several churches. And it appears that a
few of the epistles were originally treatises (for example, Hebrews) or sermons (1 Peter).
The wide category of works called the epistles can be divided into two groups. The first includes
those books that traditionally have been attributed to the early missionary Paul—the Pauline
Epistles. The second group includes all the other epistles—called the Universal Epistles because
they seem to be addressed to all believers. The genuine Pauline letters are the earliest works in
the New Testament, dating from about 50 to 60 CE. The dating of the other epistles is debated,
but some may have been finished as late as about 125 CE. Of the so-called Pauline Epistles, it is
now recognized that Paul did not write several of them. However, writing in the name of a
famous teacher after that person’s death was a common practice in the ancient world; it was
meant not to deceive but to honor the teacher.
Occasionally, images of the Trinity include Mary, thereby bringing a female element into the
representation of the divine. This depiction, with the Holy Spirit as a dove perched on the cross,
stands in the middle of a Czech town square.
© Thomas Hilgers
One factor that has made the epistles so much loved is their use of memorable images, many of
which come from the Pauline letters. For example, life is compared to a race with a prize given at
the end (1 Cor. 9:24); good deeds are like incense rising to God (2 Cor. 2:15); and the
community of believers is like a solid building set on secure foundations (1 Cor. 3:9–17).
Effective images also appear in the non-Pauline epistles: new Christians are compared to babies
who long for milk (1 Pet. 2:2); and the devil is like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour (1
Pet. 5:8).
The letters are also interesting in their description of roles in the early Church. Thanks are given
to many women for their help. Paul, for example, in various letters mentions quite a few: Phoebe,
Priscilla, Tryphaena, Tryphosa, Julia, Junia, Evodia, Syntyche, Nympha, and Apphia. Phoebe is
called a helper and was quite possibly an official deacon (Rom. 16:1). Nympha owned a house at
which a community of believers met (Col. 4:15). In his letter to Galatians, Paul contributed to
Christianity one of its greatest passages on equality: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor
free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). 14
The themes of the epistles vary widely, but they focus generally on proper belief, morality, and
church order. The topics include the nature and work of Jesus, God’s plan for humanity, faith,
good deeds, love, the ideal marriage, community harmony, Christian living, the conduct of the
Lord’s Supper, and the expected return of Jesus.
Revelation
This final book of the New Testament was originally written (around 100 CE) as a book of
encouragement for Christians who were under threat of persecution. Through a series of visions,
the book shows that suffering will be followed by the final triumph of goodness over evil. The
last chapters show the descent of the New Jerusalem from heaven and the adoration of Jesus,
who appears as a lamb.
The language of Revelation is highly symbolic, deliberately using numbers and images in a way
that would make the meaning clear to early Christians but obscure to others. For example, the
lamb (Rev. 14:1) is Jesus, and the dragon with seven heads (Rev. 12:3) is the empire of Rome, a
city built on seven hills. The number 666, the mark of the beast (mentioned in Rev. 13:18), may
be the name of Emperor Nero, given in the form of numbers. Although long attributed to the
author of the Gospel of John, Revelation is plainly—because of stylistic differences—by another
hand. Some of its images were seminal to the development of later Christian art—particularly the
adoration of the lamb, the four horsemen of the apocalypse, the book of life, and the vision of
heaven.
The Christian Canon
We should recognize that some of the books in the New Testament were not accepted universally
for several centuries. Agreement on which books belonged to the sacred canon of the New
Testament took several hundred years. 15
Early Christians continued for the most part to accept and read the Hebrew scriptures,
particularly those books—such as Genesis, Exodus, Isaiah, the Psalms, and the Song of Songs—
that they saw as foreshadowing the events of Christianity. The New Testament books, therefore,
were added to the Hebrew scriptures already in existence. Christians thought of the Hebrew
scriptures, which they called the Old Testament, as being fulfilled by the Christian scriptures,
which they called the New Testament. The Christian Bible thus includes both the Hebrew
scriptures and the New Testament.
There is a whole spectrum of ways in which the Christian Bible is read and interpreted by
Christians. One approach emphasizes the subjective aspect of the scriptures, interpreting them
primarily as a record of beliefs. A contrasting approach sees the Christian Bible as a work of
objective history and authoritative morality, dictated word for word by God. To illustrate, let’s
consider how the two approaches interpret the stories of creation in the Book of Genesis. The
conservative position interprets the six days of creation and the story of Adam and Eve quite
literally, as historical records, while the liberal approach interprets these stories primarily as
moral tales that express God’s power, love, and sense of justice. There are similar contrasts
between the conservative and liberal interpretations of miracles (for example, the virgin birth) in
the New Testament.
Deeper Insights: The Christian Worldview
The New Testament and later creeds help define the Christian way of looking at the world. Most
Christians agree on the following elements.
God Behind the activity of the universe is an eternal, intelligent power who created the
universe as an expression of love. Traditional Christianity holds the belief that God is
made of three “Persons”: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—together called the Trinity. The
doctrine of the Trinity is said to be a mystery beyond complete human comprehension,
but it hints that the nature of God is essentially a relationship of love.
The Father The loving and caring qualities of God are especially evident in the Father,
whom Jesus constantly addressed. Although without gender, God the Father is frequently
depicted as an elderly man, robed and bearded.
Jesus Christ Jesus is Son of the Father, but equally divine. Because he is the visible
expression of God, he is called God’s Word and Image. The life and death of Jesus on
earth are part of a divine plan to help humanity. Jesus willingly took on the punishment
that, from the perspective of justice, should fall on all human beings who have done
wrong. Some forms of Christianity also teach that Jesus’s life and death redeemed a basic
sinfulness in human beings called original sin,which is inherited by all of Adam’s
descendants. Jesus continues to live physically beyond the earth, but he will someday
return to judge human beings and to inaugurate a golden age.
The Holy Spirit The Spirit is a divine power that guides all believers. In art, the Spirit is
usually shown as a white dove.
The Bible God’s will and plan are expressed in the Bible, which was written by human
beings under God’s inspiration. The Bible consists of the books of the Hebrew Bible—
which Christians call the Old Testament—and the twenty-seven books of the New
Testament.
Human life Human beings are on earth to help others, to perfect themselves, and to
prepare for the afterlife. Suffering, when accepted, allows human beings to grow in
insight and compassion.
Afterlife Human beings possess an immortal soul. Both body and soul ultimately will be
rewarded in heaven or punished in hell. Many Christians also believe in a temporary
intermediate state called purgatory, where less worthy souls are prepared after death for
heaven.
These basic beliefs invite a variety of interpretation. In the first five centuries of Christianity,
debate was frequent until these beliefs had been clearly formulated in statements of faith. In
recent centuries, however, new and diverse interpretations of all aspects of Christian belief have
emerged.
Most contemporary Christians hold a position that is somewhere in between the conservative and
liberal poles of the spectrum. They believe that the Bible was inspired by God in its essentials,
but they see it as requiring thoughtful human interpretation. Interpretation of the Bible has been
and still is a major cause of conflict and division in Christianity; however, the debate has also
been—and still is—a great source of intellectual vitality.
The Early Spread of Christianity
Christianity is a missionary religion. The Gospel of Mark tells how Jesus sent out his disciples in
pairs to preach throughout the land of Israel (Mark 6:7). Then the Gospel of Matthew ends with
Jesus’s command, “Make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19). 16
In the following discussion, we
will see how Christianity spread in stages: from being a Jewish messianic movement in Israel,
Christianity spread around the Mediterranean; then it became the official religion of the Roman
Empire; and after the end of the empire in the West, Christianity spread to the rest of Europe.
(Later, we will see how it spread to the New World, Asia, and Africa.)
Paul’s eagerness to spread his belief in Jesus took him to Asia Minor (Turkey), Greece, and Italy.
Tradition holds that Peter, one of the original twelve apostles of Jesus, was already in Rome
when Paul arrived and that both Peter and Paul died there under the Emperor Nero about 64 CE.
At that point, early Christianity was only loosely organized, but it was clear even then that some
kind of order was necessary. Influenced by the Roman Empire’s hierarchical political
organization, Christians developed a style of Church organization that has been called
monarchical (Greek: “one ruler”). Population centers would have a single bishop (Greek:
episkopos, “overseer”), who would be in charge of lower-ranking clergy.
In those days, before easy communication, a truly centralized Christianity was impossible. The
bishops of the major cities thus played a significant role for the churches of the neighboring
regions. Besides Rome, several other great cities of the Roman Empire became centers of
Christian belief—particularly Antioch in Syria and Alexandria in Egypt (Figure 9.1). Because
the bishops of these important cities had more power than bishops of other, smaller cities, four
early patriarchates arose: Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. The word patriarch (Greek:
“father-source”) came to apply to the important bishops who were leaders of an entire region.
Figure 9.1 Historical centers of early Christianity, with Paul’s journeys.
Deeper Insights: Greek and Roman Religions and Early Christianity
If you are ever in Rome, be sure to take a walk from the Colosseum westward through the
Roman Forum, along the Via Sacra (“sacred way”). Because the large stones of the ancient road
are still there, you can easily imagine what it must have been like for a visitor to Rome in the
first century CE. At the end of the Forum rises the steep Capitoline Hill, the ancient center of
government and the location of a temple to Jupiter, the father of the Roman gods. You also will
notice that just beyond the bare pillars are bell towers and crosses—signs that many of the
Forum’s buildings were long ago turned into Christian churches.
The Forum’s Via Sacra today leads the visitor past remnants of temples dedicated to Roman
gods, often incorporated into later Christian churches.
© Thomas Hilgers
From its Middle Eastern roots, Christianity grew and spread within the Roman Empire, where it
displaced the established religions of the Greeks and the Romans—but slowly. In fact,
Christianity did not become the official state religion until the end of the fourth century. And
since Rome in classical times was the largest city of the world, religions from faraway lands had
also found their way there. (Rome in the imperial period was a great crossroads, much like
London or Los Angeles today.) Like the temples that survive as Christian churches, elements
from many of these religions were absorbed into the new religion of Christianity.
Since some of their gods came from the same source, the classical religions of the Greeks and the
Romans show many similarities. But their religions were made of layers and were constantly
evolving. The earliest layers, existing before recorded history, came from the veneration of local
gods and nature spirits—often worshiped at sacred wells, groves, and roadside shrines. The next
layer came from an array of sacred figures that were brought to Europe about 2000 BCE. The
same pantheon appears in the Vedas, and some of these gods are still worshiped by Hindus
today. Other layers were added when both the Greeks and the Romans absorbed gods from
neighboring cultures. Great heroes of the past could be declared to be gods. Later, so could
emperors. (One, when he thought that he was dying, is said to have amusingly remarked, “I think
that I am becoming a god.”)
There were occasional attempts at creating a complete system of deities. We find one such
attempt, for example, in the works of Homer. The Iliad and the Odyssey placed the major Greek
gods on Mount Olympus, living in a kind of extended family under the care of the sky god Zeus.
Later, the Romans borrowed those ideas from the Greeks. There were also attempts to bring
statues of major gods together for worship in the same place. The Athenians put statues of their
most important gods at the Acropolis—a fact that Paul noticed and mentioned when he preached
in Athens (Acts 17:19–23). The Romans placed multiple temples in the region of the Forum, and
then the emperor Hadrian created the circular Pantheon (Greek: pan, “all”; theos, “god”), which
had altars for the deities that he thought most important. (Today the Pantheon—perhaps the most
beautiful of all classical Roman buildings—is a Catholic church.)
Despite their speculative forays, Greek and Roman religions involved practices as much as
doctrine. In the days when medicine was undeveloped, charms and auspicious ceremonies were
highly valued. Hence ritual, carefully performed, was essential. Ceremonies were held on festival
days throughout the year. Romans had about thirty major festivals and many lesser ones—most
with specific purposes, such as defense, fertility, and good harvest. These were largely acts of
public religion, performed for the welfare of the nation. Thus, it is not surprising that Christianity
continued such practices in developing its liturgical year, anchored in Christmas (the winter
festival) and Easter (the spring rite of new birth). Saints’ feast days, which were marked by
special blessings and rituals, were similar to earlier veneration of the many gods.
Of great importance to the formation of Christianity were the Greek and Roman “mystery
religions,” so named because initiates vowed not to disclose the details of their initiations and
practices. These typically involved instruction, a purification rite, a sharing of sacred food or
drink, and a revelatory experience. We see clear echoes in the early training of would-be
Christians (the “catechumens”), in baptism, and in eucharistic rites.
As the Roman Empire expanded during the time of Jesus and early Christianity, it imported the
exotic worship of gods from Asia Minor (Turkey), Persia, and Egypt. Among the first religious
imports was worship of the goddess Cybele, “the Great Mother,” and Isis, a mother figure from
Egypt. Such worship of goddesses undoubtedly influenced the growing Christian cult of Mary.
From Persia came worship of the sun god Mithras, which practiced baptism in the blood of a bull
and a ritual sacred meal. Evidence of worship involving Mithras has been found as far away
from Rome as London.
As you end your walk along the Roman Forum, you may think of other parallels. Early images of
a beardless Jesus, found in Christian burial chambers, resemble images of Apollo and Dionysus.
The tendency to treat Zeus or Jupiter as the supreme god—as was shown by the great Temple of
Jupiter that crowned the Capitoline Hill—may have helped convert the Roman Empire to
monotheism. The ritual meal of Mithraism has echoes in the Christian Lord’s Supper—in fact,
the ancient church of San Clemente in Rome is built upon a Mithraeum, a Mithraic place of
worship.
The exact amount of Greco-Roman religious influence on Christianity’s evolution will never be
entirely clear. But the influences we’ve reviewed remind us that all world religions were once
new religions that were built, in many different ways, upon what came before them. At the same
time, the ability of a new religion to adapt existing religions could help the new religion to be
accepted and understood—as we see so well in the case of Christianity.
However, when serious questions arose about doctrine and practice, the early Church leaders
needed some way to answer them. On the one hand, they could seek a consensus from all other
bishops by calling a Church council—an approach that the churches in the eastern part of the
Roman Empire held to be the only correct practice. On the other hand, they could designate one
bishop as the final authority. The bishop of Rome seemed to be a natural authority and judge for
two reasons. First, until 330 CE Rome was the capital of the empire, so it was natural to think of
the Roman bishop as a kind of spiritual ruler, like his political counterpart, the emperor. Second,
according to tradition, Peter, the head of the twelve apostles, had lived his last days in Rome and
had died there. He could thus be considered the first bishop of Rome. The special title pope
comes from the Greek and Latin word papa (“father”), a title once used for many bishops but
now applied almost exclusively to the bishop of Rome. (It is also, however, a term still used for
the Coptic patriarch of Alexandria.)
The desert monasteries at Wadi Natrun, outside of Alexandria in Egypt, date back as far as the
fourth century. Some monks live in solitude as hermits in the desert, but each hermit must return
to his monastery once a week.
© Thomas Hilgers
The nature of papal authority and the biblical basis for it (Matt. 16:18–19) have been debated.
Nonetheless, this hierarchical model of Christianity became common in western Europe.
Although the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, which we will discuss later,
weakened the acceptance of papal authority, the Catholic bishops of Rome have continued to
claim supremacy over all Christianity, and the Roman Catholic Church maintains this claim.
Christianity in eastern Europe, however, as we will see later in the chapter, developed and has
maintained a different, less centralized form of organization.
The Roman Empire made many contributions to Christianity. In the first two centuries of the
Common Era, Christianity was often persecuted because it was associated with political
disloyalty. But when Constantine became emperor, he saw in Christianity a glue that would
cement the fragments of the entire empire. In his Edict of Toleration, Constantine decreed that
Christianity could function publicly without persecution, and he supported the religion by asking
its bishops to meet and define their beliefs. This they did at the first major Church council, the
Council of Nicaea, held in Asia Minor in 325 CE. By the end of the fourth century, Christianity
had been declared the official religion of the Roman Empire.
Thus the partnership of Christianity with the Roman Empire marked an entirely new phase and a
significant turning point for the religion. Christianity formalized its institutional structure of
bishops and priests, who had responsibilities within the set geographical units—based on
imperial political units—of dioceses and parishes. And because it now had the prestige and
financial support that came with government endorsement, Christianity could enthusiastically
adopt imperial Roman architecture, art, music, clothing, ceremony, administration, and law.
Most important, through church councils and creeds, Christianity clarified and defined its
worldview. And just as historians had written about the history of Rome, so writers such as
Eusebius (c. 260–c. 339) came to record the history of Christianity.
Because Christianity in western Europe spread from Rome, much of it was distinctively Roman
in origin—especially its language (Latin). Latin was the language of church ritual and
scholarship in the West. The Bible had also been translated into Latin. Indeed, scholars often say
that though the Roman Empire disintegrated in the late fifth century, it actually lived on in
another form in the Western Church. The pope replaced the emperor of Rome, but the language,
laws, architecture, and thought patterns of Rome would continue fairly undisturbed in the West
for more than a thousand years.
Influences on Christianity at the End of the Roman Empire
As the Roman Empire was collapsing in the West (it would end in 476 CE), new sources of
energy and direction influenced the next stage in the development of Christianity. Two
individuals who had a great impact on Christianity were a bishop, Augustine, and a monk,
Benedict.
Augustine
Augustine (354–430 CE) was born in North Africa in the later days of the Roman Empire of the
West. Although we think of North Africa today as being quite different and separate from
Europe, in Augustine’s day it was still a vital part of the Roman Empire.
As a young adult, Augustine left his home in North Africa for Italy to make his name as a teacher
of rhetoric. After a short time in Rome, he acquired a teaching position in Milan. He became
seriously interested in Christianity as a result of his acquaintance with Ambrose, the bishop of
the city. While in his garden one day, Augustine thought he heard a child’s singsong voice
repeating the phrase, Tolle, lege (“pick up, read”). 17
Augustine, who had been studying the letters
of Paul, picked up a copy of the epistles that lay on a nearby table. When he opened the book,
what he read about the need for inner change pierced him to the heart, and he felt that he must
totally reform his life. Augustine sought out Ambrose and asked to be baptized.
Augustine returned to North Africa to devote himself to church work. Ordained first as a priest
and then as a bishop, he decided to live a monastic style of life in the company of other priests.
Although he had a child with a mistress before his conversion, Augustine now preached an
attitude toward sex and marriage that encouraged a growing Christian suspicion of the body. A
reversal of those attitudes would begin only a thousand years later with the thought and work of
the reformer Martin Luther, who had been a celibate member of the Augustinian order but who
later married and rejected its idealization of celibacy.
In the years after his conversion, Augustine wrote books that were influential in the West for
centuries. His Confessions was the first real autobiography in world literature, and it details
Augustine’s growth and conversion. The City of God was a defense of Christianity, which some
people in his day blamed for the decline of the Roman Empire. The Trinity was Augustine’s
explanation of the relationship between God the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. He also wrote
to oppose the priest Pelagius, a thinker who held a more optimistic view of human nature than
Augustine did.
Augustine had incalculable influence on Western Christianity. He was the authority in Christian
theology until the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century; he was an influence, as well,
on Reformation thinkers such as Martin Luther and John Calvin. In short, Western Christianity
was basically Augustinian Christianity for over a thousand years.
Benedict and the Monastic Ideal
As mentioned earlier, Augustine, after his conversion, chose to become a priest and live with
other priests and monks in a life devoted to prayer and study. This monastic way of life became a
significant part of Christianity. It is important to remember that monastic life was not just a
religious choice. In the days when life was less secure, when work options were severely limited,
and when marriage inevitably brought many children (of whom up to half might die young), the
life of a monk offered extraordinary freedom. The monastic life provided liberation from daily
cares, leisure time to read and write, a wealth of friendships with interesting people, and a strong
sense of spiritual purpose. In fact, monks and nuns are found in many religious traditions today,
and monasticism, far from being odd or rare, is a fairly universal expression of piety.
Monasticism appears not only in Christianity but also in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Daoism; and
in Judaism, the celibate monastic life was carried on among the Essenes for approximately two
hundred years.
A monk is not necessarily a priest, nor need a priest be a monk. A monk is simply any male who
chooses to leave society to live a celibate life of religious devotion; a priest is a person
authorized to lead public worship. In the early days of Christianity, priests were often married
and thus were not monks. However, under the influence of monasticism, Western priests were
gradually expected to resemble monks and to be unmarried.
Christian monasticism probably sprang from a number of influences. One may have been the
Essene movement and another may have been the fact that Jesus had never married. We might
recall that he praised those who do not marry “for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” (Matt.
19:12). 18
Paul also was without a wife and recommended that state heartily for others (1 Cor.
7:32–35). Another influence on Christian monasticism came from Egypt, where hermits had
been living in caves even before Jesus’s time. Lastly, once the government stopped persecuting
Christians, becoming a monk or nun was an important way for a Christian to show special
religious fervor.
Benedict’s Rule for Monks still shapes monastic life around the world. Here, twenty-first-century
monks in Poland chant psalms and prayers.
© Thomas Hilgers
The first Christian monks that we know of are called the Desert Fathers: Paul the Hermit, Antony
of Egypt, Paphnutius, Pachomius, and Simon the Stylite. There were also women (of apparently
shady backgrounds) among them: Saint Pelagia the Harlot and Saint Mary the Harlot. These
individuals all turned away from the world to live what they thought of as a more perfect type of
life. The movement may have shown a lack of interest in the needs of the world, but the
movement also expressed a longing for the life of paradise—for joy, lack of conformity,
individuality, and love of God. In fact, the monastic style of life was often called “the life of the
angels.”
The monastic movement in the West was greatly influenced and spread by a Latin translation of
the Life of Antony, the Egyptian hermit. The movement took root in southern France and Italy.
The real founder of Western monasticism was Benedict of Nursia (c. 480–c. 547 CE). Benedict
was born into a wealthy family near Rome but fled to live in a cave, where he began to attract
attention and followers who joined him in the monastic life. Eventually, Benedict and his
followers built a permanent monastery on the top of Monte Cassino, south of Rome. From there
the movement spread and became known as the Benedictine order.
Benedict’s influence came from his Rule for Monks. Based on the earlier Regula Magistri (“rule
of the master”) and on the New Testament, the Rule gave advice about how monks should live
together throughout the year. It stipulated that monks should pray each week the entire group of
150 psalms (biblical poems), spend time in manual labor, and remain at one monastery. It
opposed excess in any way, yet it was sensible; for example, it allowed wine because, as it
lamented, the monks could not be persuaded otherwise. The Rule became the organizing
principle for all Western monasticism and is still followed today by Benedictines. 19
Benedictine monks became the missionary force that spread Christianity—and Roman
architecture and culture—throughout western Europe. 20
Among the great Benedictine
missionaries were Augustine (d. 604 CE), who was sent as a missionary to England by Pope
Gregory I, and Boniface (c. 675–754 CE), who spread Christianity in Germany.
What can be sweeter to us, dear brethren, than this voice of the Lord inviting us? Behold, in His
loving kindness the Lord shows us the way of life.
Saint Benedict’s Rule for Monks 21
The Eastern Orthodox Church
Up to this point, we have focused on Christianity in western Europe. But another form of
Christianity, known as the Eastern Orthodox Church, developed and spread in Russia, Bulgaria,
the Ukraine, Romania, Greece, and elsewhere. These were regions that learned their Christianity
from missionaries sent out from Constantinople, which Constantine had established as his
imperial capital in 330 CE. Orthodox, meaning “correct belief,” is used to designate Christianity
in much of the East. The name’s Greek roots— orthos, “straight,” and doxa, “opinion,”
“thought”—reflect Eastern Christianity’s desire to define its beliefs and keep them unchanged.
Early Development
In the earliest centuries of Christianity, when communication was slow and authority was rather
decentralized, the bishops of Jerusalem, Antioch, Rome, and Alexandria, though often at odds in
their theology, were looked to for guidance and authority. They were eclipsed, however, when
Constantine made the small fishing village of Byzantion (Byzantium) the new capital of the
Roman Empire. He officially named it New Rome, but it was soon called Constantinople—
“Constantine’s City.” (Today it is Istanbul.) The large population of Constantinople, its
importance as a governmental center, and its imperial support of Christianity all united to elevate
the status of the bishop of Constantinople. Now called a patriarch, he became the most influential
of all the bishops in the East.
Constantine had hoped to strengthen the Roman Empire by placing its capital—now
Constantinople—closer to the northern frontier. From there, soldiers could be sent quickly to
protect the frontier against the many barbarian tribes that lived in the north. But Constantine had
in fact planted the seeds for an inevitable division of Christianity into Eastern and Western
churches. For a time there were two emperors—of East and West—although this did not work
well. The Latin-speaking Western empire, as we have seen, ended in the fifth century, and
Western Christianity developed independently. The Greek-speaking Eastern empire, centered in
Constantinople, spread its own form of Christianity and continued until its fall in the Muslim
conquest of 1453.
The Orthodox Church is generally divided along ethnic and linguistic lines—Russian, Greek,
Serbian, Bulgarian, and Romanian. But all these churches accept the statements of faith of the
first seven Church councils, particularly those of Nicaea (325 CE) and Chalcedon (451 CE). The
Orthodox Church has always held to a decentralized, consensus-based model. Although it does
accept in theory that the bishop of Rome has a “primacy among equals,” it holds that decisions
concerning all of Christianity should be made collectively, in consultation with all patriarchs and
bishops; thus, only Church councils are of ultimate authority.
Monasticism in the Eastern Church
As in the West, the monastic movement was an important aspect of the Eastern Church. It spread
northward from Egypt and Syria into Asia Minor, where its greatest practitioners were the
fourth-century Church leaders, Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335–394), Gregory Nazianzen (c. 329–389),
and Basil of Caesarea (c. 330–379), who set the pattern for the monastic movement in
Orthodoxy. Basil wrote recommendations for monastic living that are still followed today in
Orthodox Christianity. Greek-speaking monks of the eastern part of the Roman Empire carried
Christianity from Constantinople into Russia and eastern Europe. The ninth-century brothers
Cyril and Methodius are the most famous of these missionary monks, because they or their
disciples are said to have authored the Cyrillic alphabet, based on the Greek alphabet, which is in
common use in eastern Europe and Russia today.
During this Sunday morning Orthodox service, the priest walks from the altar down the middle
of the church. Devout congregants are blessed when the communion cup is placed atop their
heads.
© Thomas Hilgers
Eastern Orthodoxy has created great monastic centers. The most famous is on Mount Athos in
Greece, the current center of monasticism in that region. All Orthodox branches have sent
representatives there for monastic training, and to visit or study there is considered a great
honor. 22
Other monastic centers grew up in Romania, Bulgaria, the Ukraine, and Russia. Many of
these monasteries still exist and may be visited today.
Eastern Orthodox Beliefs
Debate over several questions helped define and differentiate the Orthodox churches in their
early development. One issue was the nature of Jesus Christ: How is Jesus related to God? Is
God the Father greater than Jesus? If Jesus is divine as well as human, is he two persons or one
person? And how did Jesus exist before his human life began? Some believers stressed the
human nature of Jesus, while others stressed his divinity. The controversies eventually led to the
creation and adoption in the fourth century of the Nicene Creed, which is accepted not only by
the Eastern Orthodox but also by all traditional Western Christians. Because the creed was
created to overcome several heresies, it speaks of the divine nature of Jesus in some detail:
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible. And in
one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, the only-begotten; that is, of the
essence of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made,
being of one essence with the Father; by whom all things were made, both in heaven and on
earth; who for us men, and for our salvation, came down and was incarnate and was made man. 23
Even after the Nicene Creed, one school held that the divine and human natures of Christ were
two separate persons, not one. Others argued that Jesus had only one nature, not two. The
Council of Chalcedon (in 451 CE) declared that Jesus had two natures—divine and human—that
were united in only one person.
After the major Church councils of the fourth and fifth centuries, certain groups of Christians,
with differing views about the nature of Jesus, were labeled heretical. They continued to exist,
however, though not in communion with the mainstream. Among those churches that did not
accept the formulations of some early Church councils were the Church of the East, existing in
Syria and the Middle East, and the Coptic Church of Egypt and Ethiopia. The variety of these
early churches exemplifies the diversity of thought that existed among Christian groups in the
first few centuries of the Common Era.
Another defining controversy, which has had lasting influence, occurred over the use of images
for religious practice. We might recall that one of the Ten Commandments prohibits the making
of images (Exod. 20:4), and Jews, as a result, have generally refrained from creating any
religious images. Islam has a similar prohibition, as do some forms of Protestant Christianity
today. The argument over making and using images reached a crisis when the Byzantine
Emperor Leo III (680–740 CE) commanded the destruction of all images of Jesus, Mary, and the
angels. It is possible that he did this for political as well as religious reasons, hoping to build
bridges to Islam. But John of Damascus (c. 676–749), a monk and writer, came strongly to the
defense of religious images—or icons, as they are often called (the Greek term eikon means
“image”). John argued that images served the same purpose for the illiterate as the Bible did for
those who could read. He also argued that God, by becoming incarnate in Jesus, did not disdain
the material world. Icons, he said, were simply a continuation of that manifestation of divine love
shown through the physical world. Church councils later affirmed the use of images, thus putting
an indelible stamp on the practices of the Eastern Orthodox Church, which glories in the
veneration of religious paintings.
Deeper Insights: Inside a Greek Orthodox Church
In his book Eleni, Nicholas Gage documents his childhood in Greece during World War II and
the civil war that followed it. His memories include this description of the Greek Orthodox
church in his native village of Lia. The church was destroyed by the Nazis.
For seven centuries the Church of the Virgin had nourished the souls of the [villagers of
Lia]. Its interior was their pride and their Bible. No one needed to be literate to know the
Holy Scriptures, for they were all illustrated here in the frescoes painted by the hand of
monks long vanished into anonymity. In the soaring vault of the cupola, Christ the All-
Powerful, thirty times the size of a mortal man, scrutinized the congregation below, his
Gospel clasped in his hand. In the spaces between the windows, the prophets and
apostles, painted full-length with bristling beards and mournful eyes, made their eternal
parade toward the altar.
The villagers of Lia never tired of staring at the wonders of the Church of the Virgin: the walls
glowed with every saint and martyr, the twelve feast days, the Last Supper, the life of the Virgin,
and as a final warning, on the wall near the door, the Last Judgment, where bizarre dragons and
devils punished every sort of evil, with the priests in the front rank of the sinners.
The jewel of the church was the magnificent golden carved iconostasis, the shimmering screen
which hid the mysteries of the sanctuary until the priest emerged from the Royal Doors carrying
the blood and body of Christ. The iconostasis held four tiers of icons, splendid with gold leaf and
jewels, and between the sacred pictures the native wood-carvers had allowed their imagination to
create a fantasy of twining vines and mythical birds and beasts perched in the lacy fretwork. 24
Cracks in the unity of Christianity appeared early, but the first great division occurred in 1054,
when disagreements brought the bishops of Rome and Constantinople to excommunicate each
other. Despite the fact that the excommunications at last have been revoked, there remains a
strong sense of separation.
Although cultural differences assisted the separation, there were small doctrinal differences, as
well. The most famous concerned the doctrine of the Trinity. Did the Holy Spirit come from the
Father or the Son or from both? The oldest and traditional position held that the Father generated
the Spirit, but it became common in the West to attribute the generation of the Spirit to both
Father and Son together. The Latin word filioque (“and from the Son”) was added to creeds in
the West from an early period. The Eastern Church rejected the notion as an improper addition to
the Nicene Creed and cited it as a main reason for splitting off from the Western Church.
Another dividing issue was the growing power of the pope and the claim that the bishop of Rome
was the head of all Christians. Scholars today, however, point out the inevitability of separation
because of many factors, such as distance, differences of language, and the political growth of
northern and eastern Europe.
Orthodox belief is, in summary, quite similar to that which emerged in the West and eventually
became mainstream Christianity. The doctrinal differences are quite small, but the Orthodox
Church differs in emphasis. Mainstream Western Christianity (Catholicism and Protestantism)
has focused on the death of Jesus as an atonement for sin. Some scholars have said that that
focus indicates a more “legal” emphasis: God is viewed as a judge, and punishment and
repentance are paramount. Eastern Christianity has put more emphasis on a mystical self-
transformation that human beings can experience through contact with Christ. As a consequence,
Orthodox Christian art and literature focus less on the crucifixion of Jesus and more on the
resurrection.
With the collapse of communism in Russia and eastern Europe, the Orthodox Church has
regained some of its earlier strength. Church buildings that were banned from religious use have
been transferred back to Church ownership and restored. It is notable that after the fall of
communism, Russian authorities decided to rebuild the Cathedral of the Holy Savior in Moscow,
which Stalin had destroyed and replaced with a swimming pool. The Russian Orthodox Church
was also successful in having laws passed in 1997 that affirmed its special status, thereby giving
it assistance against the missionary efforts of some other religious groups.
Relatives and friends attend a special service forty days after a death. Orthodox Christians
believe that atonement for a dead person’s sins can be partially achieved through the prayers and
good works of the living.
© Thomas Hilgers
Personal Experience: Inside the Monasteries on Mount
Athos
Mount Athos is a finger of rocky land jutting into the Aegean Sea in the far north of Greece. The
peninsula is a monastic state, where monks and hermits have lived for at least a thousand years.
Although politically it is part of Greece, it is semi-independent and conducts its own affairs
through a monastic council. At the center of the peninsula is a high mountain, and scattered
around it, close to the shore, are twenty large monasteries. One spring, after getting proper
approval from the government, I spent the week of Orthodox Easter at Athos.
From Athens I went to Thessaloníki, and from there I took a bus filled with people going back
home to celebrate the festival. After staying the night in the village of Ouranopolis, I got on a
ferryboat to Athos before dawn the next morning. In the small capital of Karyes, where monks
run the shops, I received my passport. Over its Greek words was a picture of the peninsula and of
Mary, appearing protectively over its mountain. This passport allowed me to stay overnight in
any monastery I visited.
Each day I walked from one monastery to the next, a hike lasting about four hours, and was
received graciously everywhere. One day I even hitched a ride on the back of one of three
donkeys that were being used to carry supplies to several monasteries for the Easter celebration.
The two drivers of the animals gave me brandy and Easter candy as the donkeys ambled along.
Spring flowers blossomed everywhere next to innumerable streams, which were fed by water
from snow melting on the mountain. At one point the drivers, no longer sober, began arguing
with each other. They jumped off their donkeys and began to fight, and the donkeys fled. A
monk in a small rowboat came ashore, scrambled up the hill, and stopped the fighting. We
recaptured the donkeys, which were feeding placidly farther up on the green hillside, and went
on our way, as if nothing had happened.
This view of Vatopedi Monastery gives a good sense of the design of the great monasteries of
Mount Athos.
© Maynard Owen Williams/National Geographic Society/Corbis
The monasteries have high walls designed to protect the monks from the pirates who once
roamed the coast. The lower half of each monastery is generally without windows, rising about
70 feet (21 meters) in height, and above that are as many as seven stories of wooden balconies.
In the center of each monastery is a separate church building in the shape of a Greek cross,
usually painted a reddish-brick color. Each arm of the church building is equal in size, and at the
intersection of all the arms is the large central dome.
I can never forget the services of Easter, celebrated in those mysterious spaces. Being inside the
churches felt like being in a group of caves. The floors were covered with sweet-smelling laurel
leaves, an ancient symbol of victory. Chandeliers full of candles hung from the domes,
illuminating the darkness like stars. For the predawn Easter service, monks used long sticks to
make the chandeliers swing back and forth. As the chandeliers swayed, they lit up the murals and
mosaics on the walls. I could see images of the prophet Elijah in his cave and the prophet Isaiah
speaking with a six-winged angel. Jesus stood on a mountaintop, surrounded by an almond-
shaped, rainbow-colored halo. Mary held her child and looked at me serenely. Above them all,
an austere cosmic Christ held his hand up in blessing. Below him, each holding a lighted, orange
beeswax candle that smelled like honey, monks on one side of the church began the Easter
greeting. “Christos anesti,” they sang. “Christ is risen.” Then monks on the other side answered
back, “Alithos anesti”—“Truly, he is risen.” They sang these two phrases back and forth for
minutes. At last they stopped—except for one monk. He had a long white beard and was singing
with his eyes closed. “Christos anesti,” he continued to sing loudly. “Christos anesti.” The
monks looked at each other in confusion, then smiled as a middle-aged monk came out and
tapped the old monk on the shoulder. The old monk opened his eyes and there was silence.
Christianity in the Middle Ages
From its earliest days, when it was just another exotic “Eastern” religion in the Roman Empire,
Christianity had made astonishing leaps—at first facing persecution, then becoming the official
religion of the empire, and finally rising as the religion of all Europe. Christianity also existed on
a smaller scale and in varied forms in Ethiopia, the Middle East, and India.
There were many reasons for the growth of Christianity. It preached a gospel of mercy and hope,
offered divine help, promised an afterlife, treated the sick, and aided the poor. It taught skills in
agriculture and architecture, introduced books, and spread use of the technology of the time.
Imagine how a candlelit church at Easter—with its music, incense, candles, jeweled books, glass
windows, and gorgeously robed priests—must have appeared to people who were not yet
Christians. The effect must have been intoxicating. A legendary story tells of Russian ministers
who attended a service at Saint Sophia’s Cathedral in Constantinople about 988 CE. When they
returned home to Kiev, they said that during the cathedral service they had not known whether
they were on earth or in heaven.
Although many of the religious practices in both Rome and Constantinople were Roman in
origin, the two centers, as we have seen, eventually split over differences. The existence of
several patriarchates in the East kept any one of them from becoming a single ruling power. But
the Roman Church in the West had no competitors for power in its region and thus grew in
authority and strength. The pope, as the bishop of Rome, asserted his dominion over all
Christians, an assertion that was not widely opposed in the West until the Protestant Reformation
of the sixteenth century. The long-term effect was that the practices of the Roman Church would
set the standard for language, practice, doctrine, church calendar, music, and worship throughout
western Europe and then beyond, wherever European influence traveled. (To get a sense of the
far-reaching impact of Roman culture, consider the fact that the book you are now reading—long
after the Roman Empire has ended and probably thousands of miles from Rome—is written in
the Latin alphabet: the capital letters come from the classical Latin of Rome; the lowercase
letters were created by Christian monks and clerics.)
The growing size of the Christian population and the increasing cultural dominance of
Christianity created a climate for a wide variety of religious expression: devotional and mystical
movements, the founding of new religious communities, the Crusades and the Inquisition, reform
movements, and new interpretations of the Christian ideal. Over time, traditional Church
authority was questioned, giving rise to a search for new sources of authority.
Christian Mysticism
The word mysticism in theistic religions indicates a direct experience of the divine and a sense of
oneness with God. Although not always approved of by Church authorities, this sort of
transcendent experience is nevertheless an important part of Christianity. Christian mystics have
spoken of their direct contact with God, sometimes describing a dissolution of all boundaries
between themselves and God. Accounts of their experiences speak of intriguing states of
consciousness.
The fact that Jesus felt an intimate relationship with God, whom he called Father, provided a
basis for seeing Jesus as a role model for all Christian mystics. The Gospel of John, which has a
strong mystical tendency, sees Jesus in this light. We also see mysticism in some letters of Paul.
For example, Paul describes himself as having been taken up to “the third heaven” and having
heard there things that could not be put into words (2 Cor. 12:1–13). Many monks and nuns from
the earliest days of Christianity yearned to experience God, and mystical passages are common
in the writings of Origen, Augustine, and Gregory of Nyssa. 25
Origen (c. 185–254) was the first
of many Christians who would interpret the biblical Song of Songs mystically. He saw the young
lover as Jesus and his beloved as a symbol of the mystic, “who burned with a heavenly love for
her bridegroom, the Word of God.” 26
In this fresco, Giotto portrays Saint Francis receiving the wounds of Jesus. Some in the Middle
Ages saw this as the ultimate mystical experience.
© Louvre, Paris, France/The Bridgeman Art Library
Mystical experience was especially prized in the West during the Middle Ages and early
Renaissance. Francis of Assisi (1182–1226 CE) is possibly the best-known medieval mystic.
Originally a playboy and son of a wealthy trader, Francis embraced a life of poverty in order to
imitate the life of Jesus. He also showed a joyful love of nature, calling the sun and moon his
brother and sister. One of the greatest Christian mystics was Meister Eckhart (c. 1260–1328), a
German priest whose description of God as being beyond time and space, as “void,” and as
“neither this nor that” 27
has captured the interest of Hindus and Buddhists as well as Christians.
Many mystics were women. In recent years, the mystical songs of the medieval Benedictine nun
Hildegard of Bingen (c. 1098–1179) have become popular through the availability of numerous
recordings. An Englishwoman, known as Julian (or Juliana) of Norwich (c. 1342–1416), had a
series of mystical experiences, which she later described in her book Revelations of Divine Love.
She wrote of experiencing the feminine side of God. “God is as really our Mother as he is our
Father. He showed this throughout, and particularly when he said that sweet word, ‘It is I.’ In
other words, ‘It is I who am the strength and goodness of Fatherhood; I who am the wisdom of
Motherhood.’” 28
One of the most famous female mystics was Teresa of Avila (1515–1582), a
Spanish nun who wrote in her autobiography about her intimacy with God. A dramatic statue by
Bernini at the Roman church of Santa Maria della Vittoria shows Teresa lost in ecstasy.
The mystical approach to Christianity was counterbalanced by Christian attempts to offer
reasoned, philosophical discussion of primary beliefs. The religious communities of Franciscans
and Dominicans (discussed later in this chapter) were especially active in this work. Thomas
Aquinas (1225–1274), a Dominican priest, is the best known. In two major works, the Summa
Theologica and Summa Contra Gentiles, he blended the philosophical thought of Aristotle with
Christian scripture and other Christian writings to present a fairly complete Christian worldview.
Even he, however, was swayed by the appeal of mystical experience. At the end of his life, after
a particularly profound experience of new understanding brought on by prayer, he is said to have
remarked that all he had written was “like straw” in comparison to the reality that could be
understood directly through mystical experience.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there
is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is
darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy.
Prayer attributed to Francis of Assisi 29
The Crusades, the Inquisition, and Christian Control
During the fourth and fifth centuries and thereafter, Christians all over Europe made pilgrimages
to the lands where Jesus had lived and died, and the Emperors Constantine and Justinian had
built churches there to encourage this practice. But Muslims took control of Jerusalem in the
seventh century, and by the eleventh century, Christian pilgrimage had become severely
restricted. To guarantee their own safety in pilgrimage and their access to the “Holy Land,” some
Europeans felt they had a right to seize control over the land of Israel and adjacent territory.
Attempts to take over the Holy Land were called the Crusades—military expeditions that today
might be described as religious enthusiasm gone badly astray.
The First Crusade began in 1095, and Jerusalem was taken after a bloody battle in 1099.
Europeans took control of Israel and kept it for almost two hundred years, until they lost their
last bit of Israel, at Acre near the port of Haifa, in 1291. The suffering inflicted on Muslims and
Christians alike was appalling, and most crusaders died not of wounds but of illness. Many
Eastern Christians, too, died at the hands of crusaders because they were mistaken for Muslims.
The Crusades also did ideological damage, for they injured Christianity in their promotion of the
ideal of a soldier who kills for religious reasons—something quite foreign to the commandments
of Jesus. The romantic notion of the Christian soldier, “marching as to war,” has remained in
some forms of Christianity ever since.
One significant development in Christianity was the founding of nonmonastic religious
communities, called religious orders. An order is a religious organization of men or women who
live communal celibate lives, follow a set of written rules (Latin: ordo), and have a special
purpose, such as teaching or nursing. The most famous medieval order was the Franciscan order,
begun by Francis of Assisi, who idealized poverty and worked to help the poor. Other orders
were the Dominicans, who became teachers and scholars, and the Knights Templar, who
protected the pilgrimage sites and routes. Most orders also accepted women, who formed a
separate division of the order.
In another development of the times, as western Europe became almost fully Christianized, Jews,
Muslims, and heretics were considered to be religiously and politically dangerous. Jews were
forced to live a life entirely separate from Christians; nontraditional Christians who had emerged
in southern France were destroyed; and an effort began that would rid Spain and Sicily of
Muslim influence.
The Inquisition received its name from its purpose—to “inquire” into a person’s religious beliefs.
Church authorities set up an organization to guarantee the purity of Christian belief, and its aim
was to root out variant forms of Christianity that were considered heretical (divisive and
dangerous to public order). Heretics were ferreted out, questioned, tortured, and, if found guilty,
burned to death.
The Inquisition was first active in southern France in the thirteenth century, and the same
inquisitorial procedures were later employed in Spain. We might recall that in the fifteenth
century there was a large-scale attempt by Christian rulers to “reconquer” all of Spain. When all
Spanish territory had been taken over by Christian rulers, Jews and Muslims were forced to
convert to Christianity or to leave Spain, and many did leave, particularly for Morocco and
Egypt. Those who stayed had to accept baptism and to publicly practice Christianity. Some of
these new converts continued, however, to practice their old religions in private. The Inquisition
attempted to discover who these “false Christians” were, and the religious order of Dominicans
was especially active in this pursuit.
Tomás de Torquemada (c. 1420–1498), a Spanish Dominican, was appointed first inquisitor
general by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in 1483 and grand inquisitor by Pope Innocent
VIII in 1487. As he oversaw the Inquisition in Spain, he became notorious for his cruelty. The
Reconquista, as the Christian movement was called, took over all Spanish territory in 1492. After
this date, the Inquisition acted as a religious arm of the Spanish government both in Spain and in
Spanish colonies in the New World.
The Late Middle Ages
The complete ousting of the crusaders from Israel (1291) marked the end of the Christian
optimism that had been typical of the earlier Middle Ages. The loss was widely viewed as some
kind of divine punishment for religious laxity. The feeling of pessimism deepened a half century
later, when an epidemic of bubonic plague—called the Black Death for the black swellings that
appeared on people’s bodies—began to spread throughout Europe. The first major outbreak of
disease occurred largely between 1347 and 1351. Beginning in France and Italy, the plague
swept throughout western Europe; whole towns were emptied, with no one left to bury the
corpses. Priests often fled, refusing to attend the dying—a neglect that brought the Church into
great disrepute. Between a quarter and a third of the population died, and the plague continued to
break out in many places for years afterward.
We now know that the disease was bacterial, caused by a bacillus found in fleas, which carried
the disease to human beings. Rats that carried the fleas had arrived on ships that came from the
Black Sea to ports in southern France and Italy. But the medical origin of the plague was not
understood at the time, and people saw it instead as punishment from God. Some blamed the
Jews, who were accused of poisoning wells or of angering God by their failure to accept
Christianity. Others saw the plague as punishment for the lax behavior of Church authorities.
It is natural for a successful institution to take its authority for granted, and by the late Middle
Ages it was common for bishops and abbots to be appointed to their positions purely for
financial or family reasons. Some even lived away from their monasteries or dioceses. Indeed,
for most of the fourteenth century, the popes lived not in Rome but in southern France. This
papal dislocation led to a weakening of Church authority, until two and then finally three factions
claimed the papacy.
The Middle Ages saw many changes in European society, as travelers to the Middle East and
Asia returned home with new goods and ideas. New forms of trade and economy developed.
Imagination and independence grew.
By far the greatest development of the late Middle Ages was the invention of printing with
movable type. Before that time, all writing had to be done, laboriously, by hand, making the
Bible and other works available only to scholars and clergy. Although the first book to be printed
(c. 1450) was a Latin Bible, translations were soon necessary. Printing also made possible the
spread in modern languages of new and revolutionary ideas. As a result, a multitude of vital new
forms of Christianity would emerge.
The Protestant Reformation
As institutions age, they naturally lose some of their earnestness and purity, prompting attempts
at reform. The Eastern Church, weakened by the Muslim invasions and its own decentralization,
had less need for reform. In contrast, the Roman Church in the West had been enormously
successful, spreading throughout western Europe and building a centralized power structure that
had not been seriously challenged in the first thousand years of its growth.
By the late medieval period, people resented the lands and wealth of the Church and its
monasteries. Thoughtful people also were troubled by what seemed to be a multitude of
superstitious practices—particularly the veneration of relics of saints. Significant relics included
the bones of saints and any object supposedly touched by Jesus or Mary or the saints, such as
Mary’s veil and the nails used at Jesus’s crucifixion. Many of these items were not genuine.
Earlier attempts at reform had not been successful. John Wycliffe (c. 1320–1384), an English
priest, preached against papal taxation and against the special authority of the clergy. He labeled
as superstition the doctrine of transubstantiation (the notion that the sacrament of bread and
wine, when blessed at the Mass, literally turned into Jesus’s flesh and blood). He also oversaw
the first translation of the Latin Bible into English. Accused of heresy by Pope Gregory XI in
1377, he was forbidden to teach. He died of a stroke, and after the Council of Constance (1414–
1418) condemned his teachings, his body was dug up and burned and the ashes were thrown into
a river.
Jan Hus (c. 1370–1415), rector of the University of Prague, kept alive many of Wycliffe’s
criticisms. Excommunicated in 1410 and condemned by the same council that condemned
Wycliffe, Hus was burned at the stake in 1415.
Reform was inevitable. Soon another great turning point would occur in Christianity. The north
and south of Europe would painfully split along religious lines, and Western Christianity would
divide into Protestantism and Catholicism.
Martin Luther
Martin Luther (1483–1546), a German priest, was the first reformer to gain a large following and
to survive, and his success encouraged others who also sought reforms. Their joint influence
ultimately created the Protestant branch of Christianity, so called because the reformers protested
some of the doctrines and practices of the Roman Church and affirmed their own biblical
interpretations of Christian belief.
Luther, convinced of his own personal sinfulness, entered religious life (the Augustinian order)
as a young man because of a vow made during a lightning storm. To enter religious life, he had
to disobey his father, who wanted him to be a lawyer. 30
But after ordination as a priest, Luther
still did not experience the inner peace he had sought.
Luther became a college professor in the university town of Wittenberg, teaching courses in the
Bible with a focus on the New Testament—particularly the Pauline Epistles. At a time when he
felt overwhelmed by his own sinfulness, he was struck by Paul’s words at the beginning of the
Epistle to the Romans: “The just shall live by faith” (Rom. 1:17). 31
Luther admitted that upon
reading this epistle he felt as if he had been “born anew” and sensed that now “the gates of
heaven” were open to him.
What Luther came to believe was that no matter how great the sinfulness of a human being, the
sacrifice of Jesus was enough to make up for all wrongdoing. An individual’s good deeds could
never be enough; to become sinless in God’s eyes, a person could rely on the work of
Jesus. 32
Luther also recognized the importance of his reading of the Bible as the primary
inspiration for his new spiritual insight. Luther’s main focuses have sometimes been summarized
by the Latin phrases sola scriptura (“scripture alone”) and sola fides (“faith alone”).
Luther’s writings provide a sense of his personality, here conveyed in Lucas Cranach’s portraits
of Luther and his wife Katharina.
© Scala/Art Resource, NY
Luther’s teaching came at a time when the papacy was asking for contributions for the building
of the new Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome. In return, donors were promised an indulgence, which
would shorten the period after death that an individual would spend in purgatory, a preparatory
state before the soul could attain heaven. Luther opposed the idea that anything spiritual could be
sold.
To show his opposition and to stir debate, in 1517 Luther posted on the door of the castle church
of Wittenberg his demands for change and reformation in the form of Ninety-Five Theses.
Despite reprimands, Luther was unrepentant, and in 1521 Pope Leo X excommunicated him.
Luther’s efforts at reform might have failed—and he also might have been burned at the stake—
if he had not received the support of and been hidden by the prince of his region, Frederick III of
Saxony. During this period of refuge, Luther translated the New Testament into German, and he
soon translated the Old Testament, as well. Luther’s translation of the Christian Bible was to
become for the Germans what the King James Bible became for the English-speaking world—it
had an incalculable influence on German language and culture.
After his insight into the sufficiency of faith, Luther firmly rejected celibacy and the monastic
style of life. He married a former nun, Katharina von Bora, had six children, and opened his
home to a wide range of visitors interested in his work on church reform.
Deeper Insights: Emphases of Protestant Christianity
Protestantism seeks to find—and live by—what is essential to the Christian experience. It places
great emphasis on the individual’s own ability to establish a personal relationship with God.
Return to simple Christianity The New Testament outlines the essentials of Christianity,
both in belief and in practice. Christians should imitate the early tradition and avoid
unnecessary, later alterations.
Centrality of Jesus Jesus is the one way to God the Father. Devotion to Mary and the
saints has distracted believers from their faith in Jesus and should be de-emphasized or
even abandoned. Trust in relics of Mary and the saints borders on superstition.
Guidance of the Bible The Bible is a divinely inspired guide for human lives. Believers
should read it regularly, and ministers should explain it in sermons.
Importance of faith One’s deeds alone cannot bring salvation. Faith in Jesus brings
righteousness in God’s eyes.
Direct relation to God Although ministers assist in religious services, they are not
necessary as intermediaries between God and the individual. Every individual has a direct
relationship with God.
Individual judgment The Holy Spirit helps each believer make decisions about the
meaning of biblical passages and about how to apply Christian principles to everyday
life. (The ability of each individual to radically question and rethink accepted
interpretation is sometimes called the Protestant Principle.)
Forms of Protestantism
The right of every individual to radically question and reinterpret Christian belief and practice is
at the heart of Protestant Christianity. This so-called Protestant Principle has been responsible for
the generation of major branches of mainstream Protestantism, a multitude of smaller sects, and
many thousands of independent churches, which continue to proliferate miraculously. Their
styles of organization and worship run the spectrum—from ritualistic and structured to informal,
emotional, and highly individualistic. Some Protestant denominations emphasize emotional
conversion of individuals, while others stress broad social welfare. Some exclude people who are
not in their denominations, while others are strongly inclusive, even inviting non-Christians to
share in their services. Some have retained traditional ritual and an episcopal structure (that is,
involving bishops and priests), while others have rejected all ritual and clergy. We must keep this
variety in mind as we read about these denominations.
Lutheranism
Martin Luther’s version of the reform emphasized faith and the authority of the Bible. To
encourage greater participation, Luther called for services to be conducted in German as well as
in Latin. He also wrote hymns that were to be sung in German by the entire congregation, thus
beginning a strong musical tradition in Lutheranism, which has particularly valued choral and
organ music.
Luther’s version of the Protestant reform spread throughout central and northern Germany and
then into Scandinavia and the Baltic states. It came to the United States with German and
Scandinavian immigrants, who settled primarily in the upper Midwest. Over the years,
Lutheranism has retained Luther’s original enthusiasm for the Bible, a trust in God, and excellent
church music.
Calvinism
Once the notion of reform was accepted, it was adopted and reinterpreted by others who also
sought change. Among them was the French theologian John Calvin (1509–1564). Calvin’s
thought is sometimes said to be darker than Luther’s because he saw human nature as being
basically sinful and almost irresistibly drawn to evil. He also took the notion of God’s power to
its logical end: if God is all-powerful and all-knowing, then God has already decreed who will be
saved and who will be damned (a doctrine known as predestination). One’s deeds do not cause
one’s salvation or damnation; rather, they are a sign of what God has already decreed.
Calvin’s view of God as judge may have been influenced by his study of law at the university.
Eager for reform, when he was only 26 he published a summary of his ideas in The Institutes of
the Christian Religion. Persecuted in France, he was forced to flee and eventually settled in
Geneva, Switzerland. Because of the work of the reformer priest Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531),
the Swiss were already considering reforms. Calvin’s great success in Geneva made the city a
center for the expansion of the reform movement.
Glide Memorial Methodist Church in downtown San Francisco opened in 1931. Today the
congregation works extensively with people who are sick, homeless, and socially marginalized.
Its Sunday services attract supporters from a broad variety of economic and religious
backgrounds.
© Thomas Hilgers
Where Luther had allowed much latitude in preserving elements of the Mass and other traditional
Catholic practices, Calvin had a more austere view. Looking exclusively to the Bible for what
might be approved, he encouraged the removal of all statues and pictures from the churches and
the adoption of a style of congregational singing that had no organ accompaniment. The focus of
the Calvinist service was on the sermon.
Ministers were not appointed by bishops—there were to be none in Calvinism—but were
“called” by a council from each congregation. This practice, being highly democratic, threatened
the political and religious leaders of the time, and believers of Calvinism were often forced into
exile. Among such believers were the Puritans, who immigrated to New England, and the
Huguenots (French Protestants), who were forced out of France in 1685 and settled in several
areas of North America. Calvinism spread to Scotland through the efforts of John Knox (1514–
1572), who had studied with Calvin in Geneva. It was in Scotland that a Church structure
without bishops was refined, providing a pattern for Calvinism in other countries. Calvinism
ultimately became important in Holland, Scotland, Switzerland, and the United States. Later, in
the nineteenth century, it became influential in sub-Saharan Africa, Korea, China, and the
Pacific. The Presbyterian Church is the best-known descendant of Calvinism. It gets its name
from the Greek word presbyter, meaning “elder” or “leader.”
The Church of England (Anglican Church)
Another form of Protestantism, which originated in England under King Henry VIII (1491–
1547), unites elements of the Reformation with older traditional practices. Some see the
Anglican Church as a compromise between Catholicism and Protestantism.
Henry maintained the traditional Church structure of bishops and priests. (It is called an
episcopal structure, from the Greek word episkopos, meaning “bishop” or “overseer.”) He also
kept the basic structure of religious services much as before, initially in Latin. He even
maintained priestly celibacy, although this was abolished soon after he died. As a concession to
reformers, Henry had an English translation of the Bible placed in each church for all to read.
The Church of England had a shaky beginning, but Henry’s daughter Elizabeth, when she finally
became queen, established it firmly.
The Church of England produced several works of great significance in its first century of
existence. The Book of Common Prayer, with all major prayers in English for church use, was
issued in 1559. Its rhythmic sentences set a standard by which other works in English have been
measured. Throughout the sixteenth century, composers were commissioned to write choral
music in English for religious services. The result was a wonderful body of music, still in use
today. In 1611 the King James Bible was published, named for its sponsor, James I, who had
succeeded Queen Elizabeth I. It became the single greatest influence on the English language.
The Church of England has been deliberately tolerant of a wide spectrum of interpretation and
practice. Some churches have buildings and services of great simplicity (their style is called Low
Church), while others use incense, statues of Mary, and stately ritual (called High Church).
Furthermore, in spite of great opposition, the Church of England has generally accepted the
ordination of women as priests and bishops.
Sectarianism
The powerful notion that every individual can interpret the Bible has encouraged—and still
encourages—the development of an abundance of independent churches or sects. Most have
been formed by a single, charismatic individual, and many have been small. Some have
interpreted the Bible with literal seriousness, thus producing special emphases—among them, the
rejection of the outside world and its technology, the adoption of an extremely simple lifestyle,
total pacifism (rejection of war and violence), complete celibacy, and the expectation of the
imminent end of the world. As a loosely defined group, this branch of Protestantism is called
Sectarianism. Following are the most prominent sects:
The Anabaptists(meaning “baptize again”), a pious movement that developed during the
sixteenth century, stressed the need for believers to be baptized as a sign of their inner
conversion—even if they had been baptized as children. Their worship was simple. From
this general movement arose several Mennonite and Amish sects, some communities of
which maintain a simple, agricultural lifestyle without the use of cars or electricity. (The
movie Witness is set against a background of Amish life.)
The Baptists, a denomination that began in England, have grown up as a major force in
the United States. Baptists espouse some of the Anabaptist principles, including the need
for inner conversion, baptism of adults only, simplicity in ritual, independence of
personal judgment, and freedom from government control.
The Quakers were founded by George Fox (1624–1691) in England. Those who came to
the United States settled primarily in Pennsylvania. Quakers are ardent pacifists; they
have no clergy; and they originated a type of church service conducted largely in silence
and without ritual. Their official name is Society of Friends, but the name Quaker came
about from George Fox’s belief that people should “quake” at the Word of the Lord.
The Shakers grew out of the Quaker movement. Founded by “Mother” Ann Lee (1736–
1784), who came from England to New York State, the Shakers accepted both women
and men but preached complete celibacy. Their religious services were unusual because
they included devotional dance, from which their name derives. Settling in New York
State and New England, the Shakers founded communities primarily dependent on
farming. Although there are only a handful of Shakers today, their vision of Christian
simplicity lives on in their architecture and furniture, which is unadorned but elegant.
The Pentecostal movement, although it has ancient roots, has been especially active in the
last one hundred years. It emphasizes the legitimate place of emotion in Christian
worship. At Pentecostal services one might encounter “speaking in tongues”
(glossolalia), crying, fainting, and other forms of emotional response, which are thought
of as gifts brought by the presence of the Holy Spirit.
The Methodist Church at first was simply a devotional movement within the Church of
England. It was named for the methodical nature of prayer and study followed by Charles
Wesley (1707–1788) and his followers at Oxford. But under the strong guidance of John
Wesley (1703–1791), Charles’s brother, Methodism took on an independent identity.
Charles Wesley wrote more than six thousand hymns, which helped spread the
movement.
The Development of Christianity Following the Protestant
Reformation
The Catholic Reformation (Counter Reformation)
Although the Protestant Reformation was a powerful movement, Roman Catholicism not only
withstood its challenges but also grew and changed in response to it. That response, in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—called the Catholic Reformation or the Counter
Reformation—strongly rejected most of the demands of the Protestant reformers. Protestants
rejected the authority of the pope; Catholics stressed it. Protestants demanded the use of native
languages; Catholics retained the use of Latin. Protestants emphasized simplicity in architecture
and music; Catholics created churches of flamboyant drama.
Reformers were infuriated by the sale of indulgences to pay for the building of St. Peter’s
Basilica in Rome. The basilica was completed during the Counter Reformation and remains a
monument to Roman Catholicism.
© Nico de Pasquale Photography/Flickr/Getty Images
Nevertheless, the Catholic Church recognized that some institutional reform was necessary. The
church’s first response was a long council, primarily held in the northern Italian town of Trent
between 1545 and 1563. The council set up a uniform seminary system for the training of priests,
who had sometimes in the past learned their skills simply by being apprenticed to older priests; it
made the Roman liturgy a standard for Catholic services; and it defended traditional teachings
and practices (see the box “Emphases of Catholic Christianity”). This council took a defensive
posture that erected symbolic walls around Catholic belief and practice.
Deeper Insights: Emphases of Catholic christianity
Catholicism accepts all traditional Christian beliefs, such as belief in the Trinity, the divine
nature of Jesus, and the authority of the Bible. In addition, particularly as a result of the
Protestant Reformation, it defends the following beliefs and practices.
Importance of good works The Christian must accompany faith with good works to
achieve salvation.
Value of tradition Along with the Bible, Church tradition is an important guide for belief
and practice.
Guided interpretation of the Bible Individual interpretation of the Bible must be guided
by Church authority and tradition.
Hierarchical authority The pope, the bishop of Rome, is the ultimate authority of the
Church, and bishops are the primary authorities in their dioceses (regions of authority).
Veneration of Mary and the saints Believers are encouraged to venerate not only Jesus
but also Mary and the saints, who reside in heaven. As an aid to faith, believers may also
honor relics (the bodies of saints and the objects that they used while alive).
Sacraments There are seven sacraments(essential rituals), not just two—as most
Protestant reformers held. They are baptism, confirmation, the Eucharist(the Lord’s
Supper, Mass), matrimony, holy orders (the ordination of priests), reconciliation (the
confession of sins to a priest), and the anointing of the sick (unction).
Several new religious orders came into existence to defend and spread Catholic teaching. The
most influential of these orders was the Society of Jesus, or the Jesuits. The Spanish founder of
the Jesuits, Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556), was a former soldier, and with this background he
brought a military discipline to the training and life of his followers. Ultimately, Jesuits made a
lasting contribution through their establishment of high schools and colleges for the training of
young Catholics, and many continue this work today.
Because of the varied interpretations of the Bible and of Christian doctrine that began to emerge
as a result of the Protestant Reformation, a major part of the Catholic Church’s response was to
stress discipline and centralized authority. The First Vatican Council (1869–1870) upheld this
emphasis when it declared that the pope is infallible when he speaks officially (that is, ex
cathedra, “from the chair” of authority) on doctrine and morals.
The International Spread of Christianity
The New Testament contains the injunction to “baptize all nations” (Matt. 28:19). As a result of
this order, powerful missionary and devotional movements arose within all branches and
denominations of Christianity (Figure 9.2). Over the past five hundred years, these movements
have spread Christianity to every continent and turned it into a truly international religion.
Figure 9.2 Branches and denominations of Christianity.
The Catholic Church conducted an early wave of missionary work. Wherever Spanish,
Portuguese, and French colonists took power, their missionaries took Catholic Christianity. The
Jesuit Père Jacques Marquette (1637–1675) propagated Catholicism in Canada and the
Mississippi River valley, and the Franciscan Padre Junípero Serra (1713–1784) spread
Catholicism by establishing missions in California. In Asia, early Catholic missionaries at first
had little success. Jesuit missionaries were sent out from such missionary centers as Goa in India
and from Macau, an island off of southeastern China, to convert the Chinese and Japanese. The
Spanish Jesuit Francis Xavier (1506–1552) and Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) were
industrious, but their attempts in China and Japan were repressed by the government authorities,
who feared that conversion would bring European political control. Catholicism was, however,
successful in the Philippines and Guam, where Spanish colonization contributed to the
widespread acceptance of the religion. In the nineteenth century, French Catholic missionaries
worked in Southeast Asia and the Pacific region. Tahiti, after being taken over by the French,
became heavily Catholic; Vietnam, too, now has a sizable Catholic population. In sub-Saharan
Africa, wherever France, Portugal, and Belgium established colonies, Catholicism also took
hold.
Catholicism in Latin America frequently blended with native religions. In Brazil and the
Caribbean, African religions (especially of the Yoruba peoples) mixed with Catholic veneration
of saints to produce Santería, Voodoo, and Candomblé (see Chapter 11). In the southwestern
United States, Mexico, Central America, and Spanish-speaking South America, Catholic practice
incorporated cults of local deities. The cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe arose at the place where
an Aztec goddess had been worshiped, and nature deities of the Mayans—gods and goddesses of
the earth, maize, sun, and rain—are still venerated under the guise of Christian saints. Jesus’s
death on the cross was easy to appreciate in Mayan and Aztec cultures, in particular, in whose
native religions offerings of human blood were an important part. Native worship of ancestors
easily took a new form in the Día de los Muertos (“day of the dead”), celebrated yearly on
November 2, when people bring food to graves and often stay all night in cemeteries lit with
candles.
Protestant Christian missionaries and British conquests also spread their faith throughout the
world. Protestant settlers who came to North America represented the earliest wave. The Church
of England (the Anglican Church) traveled everywhere the English settled; although in the
United States at the time of the American Revolution the name of the Church was changed to the
Episcopal Church, to avoid the appearance of disloyalty to the new United States. The Anglican
Church is widespread in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and other former British colonies. It
has also been a major force in South Africa—as demonstrated by its campaign against apartheid
(the former government policy of racial segregation) headed by Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu
in the late 1980s.
Protestant churches in the United States have played a large role in the lives of African
Americans. When slaves were brought to the English colonies of North America, the slaves were
(sometimes forcibly) converted to Christianity, usually Protestantism. Most African Americans
became members of the Methodist, Baptist, and smaller sectarian denominations. In the
nineteenth century, Protestant denominations split over the issue of segregation and slavery, and
churches were divided along racial lines. In 1816 the African Methodist Episcopal (AME)
Church emerged from Methodism to serve African Americans exclusively and to save them from
having to sit in segregated seating at the services of other denominations. At the same time, some
New England Protestant churches became active in the abolitionist (antislavery) movement,
helping runaway slaves to escape to Canada and changing public opinion about the morality of
slavery. Later, southern Protestant churches played a large role in the movement that fought
segregation, and their pastors (such as Martin Luther King Jr.) became its leaders.
The missionary movement gave both women and men new opportunities to spread Christianity,
as well as to lead unusual lives. One example involves three women who worked together for
years. Called the China Trio, they were two sisters (Eva and Francesca French) and a friend
(Mildred Cable). Much of their time was spent traveling to towns of western China and to oases
in the Gobi desert. They worked in China for more than thirty years, distributing Bibles and
Christian literature and publishing colorful accounts of their work. They left China in 1936 but
continued to write about their work for years afterward.
Methodist and Presbyterian missionaries have spread their vision of Christianity to Asia and the
South Pacific. About half of South Koreans are now Christian. Protestant Chinese have been
active in Taiwan, where they are politically prominent, and in mainland China, where today there
are many “underground” house-churches that are not authorized by the government.
Contemporary Issues: Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1929. The fact that both his father and
grandfather were Baptist ministers led him naturally to religion. As a young man, he was
troubled deeply by segregation and racism, and his studies in college and graduate school
convinced him that Christian institutions had to work against racial inequality. His reading of
Henry David Thoreau’s essay “Civil Disobedience” and his study of the work of Mahatma
Gandhi led him to believe in the power of nonviolent resistance. In Montgomery, Alabama, in
1959, King led a boycott of the city’s bus system, following Rosa Parks’s refusal to move from
the white section to the back of a public bus. Ultimately, the Supreme Court declared that laws
imposing segregation on public buses were unconstitutional. As founder of the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference, King mobilized black churches to oppose segregation. In 1964
he won the Nobel Peace Prize. He was assassinated four years later. 33
King’s powerful preaching and writing relied heavily on images taken from the Bible. His “I
Have a Dream” speech is inspired by the stories of Joseph’s dreams in the Book of Genesis
(37:1–10). His “I Have Seen the Promised Land” speech is based on the story of Moses in the
Book of Deuteronomy (34:1–4).
Martin Luther King of Georgia by Br. Robert Lentz OFM. Courtesy of Trinity Stores,
www.trinitystores.com, 800–699–4482 FREE
Martin Luther King Jr. is portrayed here with a halo, a traditional symbol of holiness and
sainthood. Robert Lentz painted this contemporary icon.
Missionaries have also spread Orthodox Christianity across Russia to Siberia and even into
Alaska, where 40,000 Aleuts (Eskimo) belong to the Orthodox Church. (A noted Russian
Orthodox church is located in Sitka, Alaska.) The Orthodox Church also spread to North
America through emigration from Russia, Greece, and eastern Europe.
Christianity has been less successful in China, Japan, Southeast Asia (except Vietnam and the
Philippines), the Middle East, and North Africa. But elsewhere it is either the dominant religion
or a powerful religious presence.
Nontraditional Christianity
Because Christianity is a fairly old religion and has flourished in cultures far from where it
originally developed, it has produced some significant offshoots. These denominations differ
significantly from traditional Christianity, and although they are not usually considered a part of
the three traditional branches of Christianity—Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Eastern
Orthodox—they all sprang from Protestant origins. They differ in their beliefs, particularly
regarding the Trinity, the divinity of Jesus, the timing of the end of the world, and the role of
healing. Because the fastest-spreading of these religions is Mormonism, it is described in some
detail. Other nontraditional groups include the Unitarians, Unification Church, and Jehovah’s
Witnesses (see the box “Examples of Nontraditional Christianity”).
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as the Mormon Church, is
one of the fastest-growing religious denominations in the world. Although Mormons consider
themselves to be Christians who belong to a perfect, restored Christianity, mainstream Christian
groups point out major differences between Mormonism and traditional Christianity.
Joseph Smith (1805–1844), the founder of the movement, was born in New York State. As a
young man he was troubled by the differences and conflicts between Christian groups. When he
was 14, he had a vision of God the Father and of Jesus Christ, who informed him that no current
Christian denomination was correct, because true Christianity had died out with the death of the
early apostles.
When Smith was 17, he had another vision. An angel named Moroni showed the young man to a
hill and directed him to dig there. Mormonism teaches that Smith eventually unearthed several
long-buried objects of great religious interest. The objects were golden tablets inscribed with
foreign words, a breastplate, and mysterious stones that Smith was able to use to translate the
words written on the tablets. Smith began the translation work, dictating from behind a curtain to
his wife Emma and to friends Oliver Cowdery and Martin Harris. The result of his work was the
Book of Mormon. Later, John the Baptist and three apostles—Peter, James, and John—appeared
to Smith and Cowdery, initiating them into two forms of priesthood—the Aaronic and
Melchizedek priesthoods.
Hoping to be free to practice their religion, Smith and his early followers began a series of
moves—to Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois. Opposition from their neighbors resulted from the new
Church’s belief in the divine inspiration of the Book of Mormon and its practice of polygamy,
which Smith defended as biblically justified. At each new location the believers were persecuted
and forced to leave. In Illinois, Smith and his brother were imprisoned and then killed by a mob
that broke into the jail.
At this point, the remaining believers nominated Brigham Young (1801–1877) as their next
leader. Young organized a move to Utah, where he founded Salt Lake City. Prior to the move, a
split had developed within the Church—in part over the matter of polygamy. Leadership of the
smaller group, which did not travel to Utah, was taken over by Smith’s son.
Deeper Insights: Examples of Nontraditional Christianity
Christianity is capable of taking on new shapes, sometimes as a result of blending with other
religions. Here are some important examples:
Unification Church Founded in South Korea, this Church blends elements of Christianity,
Buddhism, and Confucianism. Reverend Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012), who called
himself the Jesus of the Second Coming, founded the religion in 1954. The Church hopes
to establish God’s kingdom on earth. Promoting its vision of society as a harmonious
family, the Unification Church arranges marriages between its followers and frequently
performs joint wedding ceremonies involving hundreds of couples.
African Independent Churches (AICs) Christianity has been immensely successful in sub-
Saharan Africa over the last one hundred years. Although the majority of Christians
belong to mainstream traditional churches, thousands of independent churches exist.
Some manifest distinctively African characteristics and interests, including a focus on
faith healing, prophecy, and charismatic experience. The Harrist Church, for example,
was begun in the Ivory Coast by a messianic leader who claimed to have received
revelations from the angel Gabriel; and the Mai Chaza Church in Zimbabwe was founded
by a woman who claimed to have died and come back to life. These churches also have
often adopted elements from African culture, particularly music, dress, and ritual. The
Kimbanguist Church of Central Africa, for example, uses sweet potatoes and honey,
rather than bread and wine, in its services. 34
Jehovah’s Witnesses Members of this religion take biblical passages literally and expect
the imminent end of the world. The religion does not allow blood transfusions because of
the biblical prohibition against ingesting blood. Its members do not believe in the Trinity,
the divinity of Jesus, or a permanent hell—all of which, they say, are not found in the
Bible. For the same reason, they do not celebrate Christmas (or birthdays). Giving
allegiance only to God, they are strongly nonpolitical, refusing to salute a flag or show
allegiance to any country.
Christian Science and Unity The Christian Science Church and Unity Church began in
the movement called New Thought, which emphasized the role of positive affirmations.
Christian Science puts emphasis on the power of thought to bring about physical healing.
In its services it uses the Bible and the book Science and Health with Key to the
Scriptures, written by its founder Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910). Unity Church is based
in Christianity, but it also uses passages from many other religions among its readings. Its
services include guided meditations, hymns, and positive affirmations.
Unitarian Church The Unitarian Church rejects the doctrine of the Trinity and prides
itself on having no creed. Instead, it imitates the prophetic role of Jesus by emphasizing
acts of social justice. The writers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were
Unitarians.
In Utah the Church faced regular opposition but grew in numbers. In 1890, the fourth president
of the Church delivered a new command that disavowed polygamy. This rejection of polygamy
(sometimes called the Great Accommodation) led to social acceptance of Mormonism. And in
1896, the Utah Territory won statehood.
The Mormon Church has always been a missionary Church, and it made its way very early to
England and Hawai`i. The Mormon Church has spread so far through missionary efforts that it is
now found worldwide. It has been particularly successful in the South Pacific.
Mormons accept as inspired the Christian Bible, which they usually use in the King James
Version. They also believe that several other works are equally inspired. Most important is the
Book of Mormon. Another inspired work is the Doctrine and Covenants, a list of more than one
hundred revelations that were given by God to Joseph Smith and, later, to the heads of the
Church. A last inspired work is The Pearl of Great Price, containing further revelations and a
compilation of the articles of faith. These three additional works are all thought of as
complements to the Christian Bible. More than 100 million copies of the Book of Mormon have
been distributed.
The Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City glitters in the Christmas season.
© Thomas Hilgers
The Mormon notion of the afterlife includes a belief in hell and in several higher levels of
reward: the telestial, terrestrial, and celestial realms. At the peak of the highest realm are
Mormons who have performed all the special ordinances in one of the more than one hundred
Mormon temples around the world. Couples who have had their marriages “sealed” in a temple
service will continue as a married couple in the celestial realm and can become godlike,
producing spiritual children there.
The Book of Mormon adds details to traditional biblical history. It teaches that some descendants
of the people who produced the tower of Babel (Gen. 11:1–9) settled in the Americas but
eventually died out. It also teaches that a group of Israelites came to North America about 600
BCE. They divided into two warring factions, the Nephites and Lamanites, and Jesus, after his
resurrection, came to preach to them. The Book of Mormon tells how in the fourth century CE
the Nephites were wiped out in battles with the Lamanites, who are considered to be the
ancestors of Native Americans.
While Mormons follow the Christian practice of using baptism as a ritual of initiation, they are
unusual in that they also practice baptism by proxy for deceased relatives, as was practiced by
some early Christians (1 Cor. 15:29). This—along with a general interest in family life—is a
major reason for Mormon interest in genealogy. In fact, Mormons maintain the largest source of
genealogical records in the world.
Devout Mormons meet for study and worship each Sunday. Their Sunday meetings include a
sacrament service (Lord’s Supper), which is performed with bread and water, rather than wine.
Because they view the body’s health as a religious concern, devout Mormons do not smoke or
use tobacco, drink alcohol, take illicit drugs, or consume several beverages, primarily coffee and
tea.
Because the Mormon Church emphasizes different gender roles for men and women, its
hierarchy is male. Women, however, exercise leadership roles in their own organizations, which
focus on domestic work, child rearing, and social welfare. Mormons are well known for the
importance they place on harmonious family life. Mormons also support the tradition of setting
aside one night each week for all family members to stay at home to enjoy their life as a family.
At the top of the Church hierarchy is the church president, who is called the Prophet (as well as
Seer and Revelator), because he is considered capable of receiving new revelations from God.
Below him is a group of men called the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and below that group
are the first and second Quorums of the Seventies, who act as general authorities. Below them
are area authorities and stake presidents (a stake is the equivalent of a diocese). Pastors are called
bishops, and the males in their wards (parishes), when they reach the appropriate age, are
ordained in various offices of the Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthoods. Young men are
expected to give two years to preaching the religion, often in foreign countries. Young women
are also invited to do missionary work, but the length of their missionary work is slightly less
(usually a year and a half). At any one time, about 60,000 missionaries are active. Today the
Mormon Church has about fourteen million members, half of whom live outside the United
States. The headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is in Salt Lake City,
Utah.
Mormonism has a strong choral tradition. Hymns and solo works are sung at services, and the
Mormon Tabernacle Choir, which gives regular concerts in Salt Lake City, performs a traditional
repertory of hymns, oratorios, and other music.
In addition to the Mormons, who form the largest branch of the movement begun by Joseph
Smith, there are at least a dozen offshoots. The most important is the Community of Christ,
formerly known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (RLDS). It
changed its name in 2001 in order to emphasize its closeness to mainstream Christianity. Smaller
groups exist—some of them continuing the early practice of polygamy—primarily in Utah and
western Canada. The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS) is the
largest of the groups practicing polygamy and has received much government scrutiny and media
coverage in recent years.
Christian Practice
Christianity is very much a religion of doctrines, but it is also a religion of ritual, and after more
than two thousand years, these rituals have become rich and complex.
Sacraments and Other Rituals
The most important rituals are thought of as active signs of God’s grace and usually are called
sacraments. The rituals that are considered essential to the practice of Christianity are the
following:
Baptism This ritual cleansing with water is universally used in Christianity as an
initiation rite. The ritual originally involved complete immersion of the body, but some
forms of Christianity require that only the head be sprinkled with water. Baptism came to
Christianity from Judaism, where ritual bathing was an ancient form of purification (see,
for example, Lev. 14:8). It was also commonly used to accept converts to Judaism, and
the Essenes practiced daily ritual bathing. John the Baptizer, whom the Gospel of Luke
calls the cousin of Jesus, used baptism as a sign of repentance, and Jesus himself was
baptized and had his followers baptize others. Early Christians continued the practice as a
sign of moral purification, new life, and readiness for God’s kingdom. In early
Christianity, because baptism was done by immersion in water, the act helped recall
vividly the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. Although early Christians were
normally baptized as adults, the practice of infant baptism became common within the
first few hundred years. Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and the more ceremonial forms of
Protestantism practice infant baptism. Other forms of Protestantism, insisting that the
ritual be done only as a voluntary sign of initiation, reserve baptism for adults only.
Christians see baptism as a purification that signifies one’s formal entry into God’s
kingdom. Many denominations, including the Romanian Orthodox Church, practice
infant baptism.
© Thomas Hilgers
Eucharist Another sacrament is the Eucharist (Greek: “good gift”), or Lord’s Supper.
Early Christians, particularly Paul’s converts, met weekly to imitate the Last Supper,
which was probably a Passover meal. At this meal of bread and wine, they prayerfully
recalled Jesus’s death and resurrection. Sharing the Lord’s Supper is a symbolic sharing
of Jesus’s life and death, but beliefs about it are quite varied. Some denominations see the
bread and wine as quite literally the body and blood of Jesus, which the believer
consumes; other groups interpret the bread and wine symbolically. All Christian
denominations have some form of this meal, but they vary greatly in style and frequency.
Catholic, Orthodox, and traditional Protestant churches have a Lord’s Supper service
every Sunday. Less ceremonial churches prefer to focus their Sunday service on
preaching and Bible study, but they usually have the Lord’s Supper once a month.
Virtually all churches use bread, but some use grape juice or water in place of wine.
In addition to these two main sacraments, accepted by all Christians, some churches count the
following rituals as full sacraments:
Confirmation The sacrament of confirmation (“strengthening”) is a blessing of believers
after baptism. In the Orthodox Church, confirmation is often administered with baptism,
but in Catholicism and in some Protestant churches, it is commonly administered in the
believer’s early teen years.
Reconciliation The sacrament of reconciliation (or penance) takes place when a repentant
person admits his or her sins before a priest and is absolved.
Marriage This is the sacrament in which two people publicly commit themselves to each
other for life. The two individuals administer the sacrament to each other while the priest
or minister simply acts as a public witness of the commitment.
Ordination This sacrament involves the official empowerment of a bishop, priest, or
deacon for ministry. (Some denominations ordain ministers but do not consider the action
to be sacramental.)
Anointing of the sick In this sacrament (formerly called extreme unction), a priest anoints
a sick person with oil—an ancient symbol of health—and offers prayers (see James 5:14).
The Christian Year
The most important festivals are Christmas and Easter. Other festivals developed around these
two focal points (see Figure 9.3 on p. 389). Traditionalist churches mark more festivals, and
Orthodox churches often use the older Julian calendar to determine festival dates. The Church
year begins with Advent (Latin: “approach”), which is a month of preparation for Christmas.
Although the actual birth date of Jesus is unknown, Christmas is kept on December 25, using a
festival date common in classical Rome. (Some Orthodox and Eastern churches use a later date,
particularly January 7.) The Christmas holiday ends with Epiphany (Greek: “showing”), which
recalls the visit of the three Magi to the Christ child.
Figure 9.3 The Christian Church year.
Deeper Insights: Signs and Symbols
In addition to the sacraments, many smaller devotional rituals have arisen over the two thousand
years of Christianity. Making the sign of the cross—in which the fingers of the right hand touch
the forehead, the chest, and the two shoulders—is used to begin and end prayer and to call for
divine protection. Genuflection—the bending of the right knee—which originated as a sign of
submission to a ruler, is a ritual performed by Catholics and some Anglicans on entering and
leaving a church. Christians in general often pray on both knees as a sign of humility before God.
Devotional objects are also widely used in Christianity. Blessed water (holy water) reminds one
of baptism; it is used in the blessing of objects and in conjunction with making the sign of the
cross on entering a Catholic church. Oil and salt are used in blessings as symbols of health.
Lighted candles symbolize new understanding. Ashes placed on the forehead at the beginning of
Lent(a time of preparation before Easter) recall the inevitability of death. Palms are carried in a
procession on the Sunday before Easter to recall Jesus’s triumphal procession into Jerusalem.
Incense is burned to symbolize prayer and reverence. Statues and pictures of Jesus, Mary, angels,
and saints are common in traditionalist forms of Christianity.
In addition to devotional rituals and objects, Christianity is a source of much religious
symbolism. The fish is an ancient symbol of the Christian believer. It probably began as a
reference to Jesus’s desire that his followers go out “as fishers of men” (Luke 5:10), seeking
converts. It was also used to represent the Greek word ichthus(“fish”), which could be read as an
acronym for the Greek words that mean “Jesus Christ, God’s son, savior.” The cross is used to
recall Jesus’s death; when Jesus is pictured hanging on this cross, the cross is called a crucifix.
Letters of the Greek alphabet are frequently found in Christian art. Alpha (A) and Omega (Ω),
the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, symbolize God as the beginning and end of all
things (Rev. 1:17). The logo IHS (from the Greek letters iota, eta, and sigma) represents the first
three letters of the name Jesus. The logo XP (usually written as a single unit and called “chi-
rho”— pronounced kai-roh) represents the first two letters of the name Christ in Greek. (It is
also the basis for the abbreviation of Christmas as Xmas.)
Preparation for Easter is long and solemn. Called Lent (Old English: “lengthening”), it is marked
by fasting and giving up pleasures. In the Western churches, Lent begins with Ash Wednesday,
when the faithful receive ashes on their foreheads to remind themselves of death. Frequently they
pray or attend church regularly during Lent. A week before Easter, Palm Sunday recalls Jesus’s
entry into Jerusalem before his death. Holy Thursday recounts Jesus’s last supper, and Good
Friday remembers his death. When Easter finally arrives, it is marked by great rejoicing.
On Thursday of Holy Week, Christians recall the last supper of Jesus and his disciples. That
supper began when Jesus washed the feet of the disciples, an act today recalled in the liturgy.
© Thomas Hilgers
The feast of the Ascension tells of Jesus’s departure from earth, and Pentecost marks the birth of
the Church. Over time, festivals of Mary and the saints were added to this calendar. A few saints’
days, such as Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day, found their way into public life.
Devotion to Mary
Devotion to Mary, the mother of Jesus, appeared in Christianity quite early. In the Eastern
Church, its strength was evidenced in the fifth century by arguments concerning the titles that
could be given to Mary. For example, although some objected, Mary was called theotokos (“God
bearer”). In the West, Roman Catholic devotion to Mary began to flourish in the Middle Ages.
Many of the new churches built after 1100 CE in the Gothic style in France were named for
notre dame (“our lady”), and statues of Mary, often tenderly holding her child on her hip,
appeared in almost every church. A large number of feasts in honor of Mary came to be
celebrated in the Church year. Praying the rosary became common in the West after 1000 CE. A
rosary is a circular chain of beads used to count prayers, with the prayer Ave Maria (“Hail,
Mary”) said on most of the beads. (The use of rosaries for counting prayers is also found in other
religions, such as in Hinduism, Islam, and Buddhism.)
Deeper Insights: Color Symbolism
Western Christianity has developed a symbolic system of colors, used in many churches and
ministers’ clothing, to mark festivals and to convey emotions:
white—joy, resurrection; Christmas and Easter
red—love, Holy Spirit, blood of martyrdom; Pentecost
green—hope, growth; Sundays after Pentecost
violet—sorrow, preparation; Advent and Lent
blue—sometimes Advent and feasts of Mary
black—death (now often replaced by white)
Although this system weakened after the Reformation, it is still apparent in weddings (white) and
funerals (black).
Protestant reformers in the sixteenth century in the West criticized the devotion to Mary as a
replacement for a devotion to Jesus. For this reason, devotion to Mary is less common in
Protestant Christianity. But devotion to Mary remains strong in Orthodox and Catholic branches
of Christianity.
The death of Mary, although never mentioned in the New Testament, is celebrated as a major
holy day in the Orthodox churches. Here, the child in the arms of Jesus symbolizes Mary’s soul
being taken to heaven.
© Thomas Hilgers
Catholics believe that Mary appears in the world when her help is needed. The three most
important sites where Mary is officially believed to have appeared are Lourdes (in southern
France), Fatima (in Portugal), and Tepeyac (near Mexico City). Lourdes, famous for its
springwater, is a center for healing, and people hoping for a cure go there to bathe in its waters.
Fatima, where Mary is believed to have appeared to three children, is another center of healing.
And Tepeyac is the center of the veneration of Our Lady of Guadalupe, who is an important part
of Hispanic Catholicism. Mary is believed to have appeared to a native peasant, Juan Diego, and
to have left her picture on his cloak. The site is particularly crowded on December 12, the feast
day of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The festival is celebrated widely with Masses and processions in
many cities and towns.
Aztec dancers perform for pilgrims at the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City. The main
celebration for the Virgin of Guadalupe is December 12, the date on which the image of Mary is
said to have appeared on the cloak of Juan Diego in 1531.
© Ann Johansson/Corbis
Christianity and the Arts
Particularly because of its ritual needs, Christianity has contributed much to architecture, the
visual arts, and music. This artistic legacy is one of the greatest gifts of Christianity to world
culture—a gift that can be experienced easily by traveling, visiting the great churches and
museums of major cities, and listening to Christian music.
Architecture
When Christianity began, its services were first held in private homes. As it grew in popularity,
larger buildings were needed to accommodate the larger groups, particularly for rituals such as
the Lord’s Supper. For their public services, early Christians adapted the basilica, a rectangular
building used in the Roman Empire as a court of law. In larger Roman basilicas, interior pillars
and thick walls helped support the roofs. Windows could be numerous but not too large, because
large windows would have weakened the walls. Rounded arches were placed at the tops of
windows and doors and between the rows of pillars. This style—known as Romanesque because
of its Roman origins—spread throughout Europe as a practical church design.
Eastern Orthodox Christianity used the basilica shape but also developed another shape: the
model, a perfect square covered by a large dome, was based on the design of the Roman
Pantheon. Mosaics with gold backgrounds help to magnify the sometimes dim light.
In the West, probably as a result of contact with Islamic architecture, a new style arose after
1140, known as Gothic style. (The designation Gothic was applied to this new style of
architecture by a later age, which considered this style primitive and thus named it after
barbarian Gothic tribes. The Gothic style, however, is neither primitive nor a product of Goths. It
seems to have developed first in Persia, between 600 and 800 CE, and elements of it may have
been carried to Europe by Europeans returning from Syria and Israel.) The first example of
Gothic architecture appeared in France; the cathedral of Saint Denis, near Paris, is still open to
visitors today.
Gothic architecture is light and airy; it leaps upward toward the sky. Typical of Gothic style are
pointed arches, high ceilings, elongated towers, and delicate stone carving. The walls and roofs
are held up externally by stone supports (called flying buttresses) that extend outward from the
walls and down to the ground. Because these supports do much of the work of holding up the
roof, they allow the walls to be filled with large windows, frequently of colored glass.
Gothic churches began springing up everywhere; any town of importance wanted to have a
church built in the new style. This was especially true in towns that featured a cathedral. (A
cathedral is a bishop’s church and takes its name from the bishop’s special chair, the cathedra,
which symbolizes his teaching authority.) The great Gothic cathedrals were so impressive that
Gothic style remains the style associated with Western Christianity.
The detail of this angelic orchestra atop Dominican friars’ choir stalls demonstrates Christian
attention to expression through art.
© Thomas Hilgers
The architectural style of Saint John’s Abbey Church in Minnesota, completed in 1961, stands in
stark contrast to Gothic and Baroque styles.
© Thomas Hilgers
In addition to the Gothic style, other styles have been influential in the West. The Catholic
Reformation popularized the theatrical Baroque style. The word baroque is thought to come
from the Portuguese name for an irregular pearl, barroco. Baroque style uses contrasts of light
and dark, rich colors, elegant materials (such as marble), twisting pillars, multiple domes, and
other dramatic elements to create a sense of excitement and wonder.
While Catholicism was adopting the Baroque style with enthusiasm, Protestantism generally
moved in a more sober direction. With the focus of worship placed on hearing the Bible read
aloud and listening to a sermon, new churches were built with pews, clear-glass windows, high
pulpits, and second-floor galleries to bring people closer to the preacher. In larger churches,
classical Greco-Roman architecture was drawn upon to produce the Neoclassical style.
Mormon temples are architecturally interesting in that they are deliberately unlike older styles,
such as Romanesque or Gothic or Byzantine. Instead, the building designs reflect an imaginative
style that has been called Temple Revival. Elements of the style include large, flat building
surfaces that are ornamented with elaborate grillwork and decorated with tall, narrow spires.
Art
Christianity has made immense contributions to art, despite the fact that it emerged from
Judaism, which generally forbade the making of images. Mindful of the biblical prohibition
against image-making (Exod. 20:4), a few Christian groups still oppose religious images as a
type of idolatry. But because Christianity first began to flourish in the Greco-Roman world, it
abandoned the prohibition of images and quickly embraced the use of statues, frescoes, and
mosaics, which were common art forms there. By the second century, statues and pictures of
Jesus had begun to appear, based on Greco-Roman models.
Benedictine monk Jerome Tupa says that all monastics are on journeys and find various means—
for example, poems, letters, photos—to reflect on their journeys. He paints paths to sacred
shrines.
© Thomas Hilgers
Orthodox Christianity has tended to avoid statues but has concentrated instead on frescoes,
mosaics, and icons (paintings on wood). Icons play a special part in Orthodoxy. Churches
usually have a high screen that separates the altar area from the body of the church. This screen
is called an iconostasis (“image stand”) because it is covered with icons. Individual icons also
stand around the church, and during services worshipers may kiss them and place candles
nearby. Many homes also display icons.
In western Europe, new directions appeared in Christian art in the later Middle Ages. Statues and
paintings of Mary began to show her less like a goddess and more like a human mother, and
representations of Jesus began to emphasize his bodily suffering. During the Baroque era,
painting and sculpture tended toward the dramatic and showy. Paintings of saints often showed
the saints’ eyes lifted to the skies, the robes blown by wind, and sunlit clouds parted in the
background.
Many Protestant groups rejected religious painting and sculpture as being unnecessarily sensual,
wasteful, or idolatrous, and because artists in Protestant countries were not greatly patronized by
churches, their subjects tended to be secular, often depicting home life, civic leaders, and
landscapes. Christian art, however, has begun to flourish again, particularly because it has
increasingly been influenced by non-Western traditions and cultures.
Music
From the beginning, Christianity has been a religion of music. Jesus himself is recorded as
having sung a psalm hymn (Matt. 26:30; Mark 14:26). Because of its early musical involvement,
Christianity has contributed much to the development of both theory and technique in music. A
Benedictine monk, Guido of Arezzo (c. 991–1050), worked to help monks sing the notes of
religious chants correctly; he is thought to have systematized the basic Gregorian musical
notation system of lines, notes, and musical staffs, from which modern musical notation derives.
For the first thousand years, both Eastern and Western church music was chant—a single line of
melody usually sung in unison without instrumental accompaniment. The origins of chant are
uncertain, but it probably emerged from both Jewish devotional songs and folk music. Music in
the Orthodox Church is sung without accompaniment, thus remaining closer to ancient church
music and to its origins in the synagogue and the Near East.
The crucifixion of Jesus is perhaps the most frequent subject of Christian art. This painting, at
the center of the Despenser Reredos in England’s Norwich Cathedral, dates from the late
fourteenth century.
© Thomas Hilgers
The ancient Greeks were familiar with the principles of harmony as they related to mathematics.
But the use of harmony in terms of musical composition (called organum) seems to have first
developed in Paris, around 1100, in the cathedral of Notre Dame. In the West, initial experiments
with harmonized singing eventually led to the introduction of instruments, such as the flute,
violin, or organ, which could easily be used to substitute for a human voice or to accompany the
chant. Even though it is now considered a primarily religious instrument, the organ at first was
opposed for use in some churches because it was considered a secular instrument.
The most important early pattern for Western religious music was the Catholic Mass 35
(Lord’s
Supper). A variant of the regular Mass is the Requiem (“rest”) Mass, the Mass for the dead.
Psalms and other short biblical passages were also put to music for the services. These relatively
short works, usually in Latin, are called motets.
The Protestant Reformation greatly expanded the variety of religious music, as each branch
created its own musical traditions. Luther, we might recall, wrote hymns in German, and
although he encouraged some church use of Latin, he recommended that services be conducted
primarily in the language of the people. The Lutheran tradition also supported the use of the
organ, both on its own and to accompany hymns. The supreme genius of the Lutheran tradition
was Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750). A church organist and choirmaster for most of his
career, Bach composed many beautiful musical pieces for church use, both solo organ music and
choir music. His Saint Matthew Passion, a musical reflection on the last days of Jesus, is one of
the world’s most complex and moving religious compositions. Bach also wrote in forms that
derived from the Roman Catholic tradition, producing a Magnificat in Latin and his Mass in B-
minor, which has been compared to a voyage in a great ship across an ocean. 36
Rituals and Celebrations: The Mass
The Mass is a form of the Lord’s Supper that evolved in the Western tradition. Five parts of the
Latin Mass have been regularly put to music by composers. They are:
Kyrie(Kyrie, eleison—Greek: “Lord, have mercy”)
Gloria(Gloria in excelsis Deo—Latin: “Glory to God on high”)
Credo(Credo in unum Deum—Latin: “I believe in one God”)
Sanctus(Sanctus—Latin: “holy”)
Agnus Dei(Agnus Dei—Latin: “Lamb of God”)
Renaissance composers, such as Giovanni da Palestrina and William Byrd, composed Masses for
voice alone. Later composers (such as Franz Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz
Schubert, and Ludwig van Beethoven) all made use of organ or orchestra in their Masses. The
dramatic style of church music reached an artistic peak in the luminous Masses of Mozart. Two
Requiem Masses of extraordinary beauty are those by Gabriel Fauré and Maurice Duruflé.
Rather than emphasizing divine judgment, they radiate joy and peace.
One of Christianity’s greatest contributions to the arts is music. Here, a choir performs at an
Episcopal church.
© Thomas Hilgers
After the Church of England decreed that services be held in English, a body of church music
began to develop in England. Much of this music was written for choirs, which traditionally have
been supported by Anglican cathedrals.
Other forms of Protestant Christianity have been cautious about the types of music used in
church services. Wanting to keep the music popular and simple, Protestant churches have
supported the writing and singing of hymns but often have avoided more complex compositions.
They have allowed use of the organ and piano but until recently have generally discouraged the
use of other instruments. In recent decades, however, a liberalization of practice has brought
about great experimentation in both Protestant and Catholic church music.
Christianity Faces the Modern World
Christianity—in spite of the strength of its varied interpretations and its international influence—
faces obstacles that arise from new nonreligious worldviews.
The Challenges of Science and Secularism
One of the greatest intellectual challenges to Christianity has been the growth of science, and it
will remain so. Christianity speaks regularly of miracles—the virgin birth of Jesus, the healings
performed by Jesus, his resurrection and ascension, and innumerable later miracles performed by
apostles and saints. But critical approaches to the study of nature and modern study of the
scriptures have questioned many of these miracles. Modern critical approaches view reality from
a naturalistic point of view, and scientific discoveries can produce new challenges to traditional
beliefs.
The theory of evolution, a prominent example of scientific criticism, emerged in the nineteenth
century. It explained the multiplicity of species as the product of natural selection rather than
divine plan. At first, this theory of evolution created consternation—and it still does in certain
quarters. Although many denominations have accepted some form of evolution as compatible
with their beliefs, certain Christians want the theory of Intelligent Design taught as a scientific
alternative to evolution. This theory argues that an intelligent designer lies behind the
multiplicity of species. Critics, though, say that the theory of Intelligent Design is merely
religion disguised as science.
Another challenge is less theoretical. It is the rising focus on material realities—money and
possessions. At one time, religion was considered the means for increasing one’s personal
wealth. This belief has diminished over the last century. Financial success, people increasingly
believe, comes from studying business, not theology. It comes from compound interest, not
prayer.
Some forms of Christianity, however, have now adjusted, teaching what they call “Prosperity
Christianity.” This form of Christianity teaches that God will repay in a very precise way those
who contribute “love offerings.” Defenders argue that this form of Christianity simply continues
many of those practical features that have long distinguished Christianity, including care for the
poor, attention to education, and a building up of God’s kingdom in this world.
Contemporary Influences and Developments
Mainstream Christian denominations prefer to emphasize similar ideals rather than differences.
On the one hand, they accept that there are denominational differences in belief and practice. On
the other hand, they are influenced by the movement called ecumenism—from the Greek word
for “household.” This modern movement encourages dialogue and work between denominations.
On the institutional level, the World Council of Churches includes representatives from the
major Protestant denominations and Orthodox churches. It also includes non-voting
representatives from the Catholic Church. On the individual level, ecumenism encourages people
from various denominations to work together, especially on social issues.
At the same time, the Christian churches have seen a growing polarization over important topics,
especially gender roles, Bible interpretation, and the role of religion in political life. Two great
wings have emerged—conservative and liberal.
Mainstream Protestantism has largely accepted the principles of female equality, at least in
theory. Female ministers, priests, and bishops are now an accepted part of some denominations
(although with disagreement from some sections). Female preachers are also common, especially
on television. However, Catholicism and the Orthodox and Eastern churches do not accept the
ordination of females. Whether eventually these churches will change their practice is still
unknown. Right now, they remain highly resistant.
Biblical interpretation is another area of disagreement. Conservative denominations tend to retain
an older literalist interpretation. They assume that the entire Bible is inerrant and presents
“gospel truth.” They therefore hold that biblical descriptions of creation, history, people, and
miracles are literally true. Liberal denominations do not agree, but argue that the biblical
accounts are a mixture of fact and devotion. Sometimes separating the two is not easy.
The majority of Christians today live in the Southern Hemisphere. This painting of one of Jesus’s
miracles adapts a biblical story to the Mafa people of northern Cameroon.
Courtesy Vie de Jesus Mafa/jesusmafa.com
Because of the difficulties of correct biblical interpretation, the movement of fundamentalism
has provided one practical answer. Christian fundamentalism argues that there are essential
truths—fundamentals—that are central to Christianity. Among these are the virgin birth of Jesus,
the physical reality of his resurrection, and the inspired nature of the Bible. Fundamentalism is
also often allied with political activism, providing Christians who want to influence society with
answers to difficult questions. Christianity has always proclaimed the need to help others. But
who are the others? Should they be only Christians or everyone else as well? What kind of help
should be given, and what demands should be enshrined in laws? These questions have become
all the more urgent as the modern world presents other, more secular views of reality.
The liberal-conservative division has resulted in coexistence among Protestants. Mainstream
Protestant churches have tended to become liberal, while evangelical denominations have more
strongly held onto conservative positions.
The Catholic Church has had more difficulty in finding central positions on which all can agree.
The Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) was generally liberal, in that it permitted liturgy in
native languages, endorsed ecumenism, and opened the Church to respectful contact with other
religions. However, the council members rejected many other liberal possibilities, such as
allowing women to become priests. They also upheld traditional positions on marriage, birth
control, and divorce. This meant that the discussion of many important topics would continue
after the council, with both liberal and conservative wings battling for supremacy. The papacy of
John Paul II (1920–2005) was largely conservative, and this tendency has continued in his
successor, Benedict XVI (b. 1927).
In the political realm, John Paul II was recognized for his pivotal role in the downfall of
communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. It was during his papacy that the Berlin
Wall came down. Eastern European states abandoned communism, and the Soviet Union
dissolved into many separate countries. These political changes have allowed Catholic and
Orthodox forms of Christianity to reassert themselves in those regions.
Congregants are overcome with emotion as they pray during an evangelical worship service in
southern California. Evangelical Christianity is growing worldwide.
© Sandy Huffaker/Corbis
Contemporary Issues: Creation Care
Creation Care is an emerging environmental movement within Christianity that cuts across many
of its denominations. Until recently, Christianity did not give much emphasis to the
environment—possibly because of its orientation toward heaven as the true home of human
beings. But a new, still-evolving theology has sprung up within the faith that critically examines
the relationship between humanity and the environment. This theology, drawn from biblical
roots, bases itself on the notion that the world is a manifestation of God’s love and that, as a
result, humanity has an obligation to protect the environment—to give it “care after its creation.”
To support its view, this theology cites the stewardship assigned to Adam and Eve over the
Garden of Eden (Gen. 3), Noah’s preservation of animal species in his wooden ark (Gen. 7–9),
and Jesus’s attention to the birds of the air and lilies of the field (Matt. 6:26–30).
Biblical stories may inform the movement’s theology, but a major impetus for the development
of Creation Care has been the widespread public acknowledgment in recent years that human
activity is leading to climate change, including rising temperatures around the world that threaten
to cause untold damage to the environment in the next century. In response to such a threat, a
number of Protestant ministers have signed an Evangelical Climate Initiative, which insists on
responsible human action against global warming. The Patriarch of Istanbul, Bartholomew I, has
declared that acts that harm the environment are sinful. And Pope Benedict XVI has been called
the Green Pope because he devotes so many sermons and speeches to the environmental cause.
He has reforested thirty-seven acres of land in Hungary to offset the carbon “footprint” of the
Vatican, and he even directed that solar panels be placed on top of Vatican buildings to provide
electricity for the city-state. At the grassroots level, some conservative Christian leaders—not
long ago associated with biblical fundamentalism—have even begun to emphasize biblical
injunctions for Christian stewardship of the planet. Responses such as these suggest that the
emerging Creation Care movement will do for environmentalism what Christianity has long
succeeded in doing for education and in caring for the sick.
One of the great developments in contemporary Christianity is its spread in Africa. While
northern Africa remains primarily Muslim, sub-Saharan Africa has adopted Christianity in many
forms. Former British colonies—such as Nigeria and Zimbabwe—have large congregations of
Anglicans, and former colonies of Catholic powers have large Catholic denominations. African
Independent Churches also have emerged widely. Though their churches and robes are often
traditional in appearance, these new churches incorporate much indigenous practice, such as faith
healing and dance.
Christianity is also spreading in Asia. Although the great majority of people in Myanmar and
Thailand are Buddhist, many tribal groups have taken up Christianity, especially in the north of
the two countries. In China, Christianity comes in many forms. Both Protestant and Catholic
churches have denominations that are approved by the State—although there is occasional
dissension with state officials, especially over the approval of bishops. Parallel forms of
Christianity that do not have state approval are growing, nonetheless; these groups often meet in
believers’ homes and are frequently called “house-churches.” The population of Christians in
China is unknown, but it is estimated at about 100 million. The numbers are expected to
increase.
The growth of Christianity will have an impact not only on Africa and Asia but also eventually
on the West, when ministers from newly Christian areas will be sent to staff European and North
American churches. In the long run, these ministers will take on important roles in their
denominations. Some will find their way into the World Council of Churches and other
interdenominational groups. Their interests will then become a part of world Christianity.
In summary, traditionalists have much to worry about. But optimists see great vitality in
Christianity. They especially appreciate its respect for the individual, its ethic of practical
helpfulness, its support for the arts, and even its openness to debate.
Reading: Revelations of Divine Love *
* From REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE by Julian of Norwich, translated by Elizabeth
Spearing, introduction and notes by A. C. Spearing (Penguin Classics, 1998). Translation
copyright © Elizabeth Spearing, 1998. Introduction and Notes © A. C. Spearing, 1998. Used
with permission.
In 1373, the Englishwoman known as Julian of Norwich received revelations. She first wrote
them up in short form and then, much later, in long form. This passage is from chapter 32 of the
long text, put into modern English. The author says that God insists that, despite the evils in the
world, all will be well.
On one occasion the good Lord said, “Everything is going to be all right.” On another, “You will
see for yourself that every sort of thing will be all right.” In these two sayings the soul discerns
various meanings.
One is that he wants us to know that not only does he care for great and noble things, but equally
for little and small, lowly and simple things as well. This is his meaning: “Every thing will be all
right.” We are to know that the least thing will not be forgotten.
Another is this: we see deeds done that are so evil, and injustices inflicted that are so great, that it
seems to us quite impossible that any good can come of them. As we consider these, sorrowfully
and mournfully, we cannot relax in the blessed contemplation of God as we ought. This is caused
by the fact that our reason is now so blind, base, and ignorant that we are unable to know that
supreme and marvelous wisdom, might, and goodness which belong to the blessed Trinity. This
is the meaning of his word, “You will see for yourself that every sort of thing will be all right.” It
is as if he were saying, “Be careful now to believe and trust, and in the end you will see it in all
its fullness and joy.” 37
Test Yourself
1. Christianity grew out of _________________
1. Hinduism 2. Judaism
3. Islam 4. Buddhism
2. Almost everything we know about Jesus comes from the four gospels of the New
Testament. The word gospel means “.” __________
1. vision 2. good news 3. enlightenment 4. covenant
3. The Two Great Commandments of Jesus combine two elements: ______________.
1. love for God and an ethical call for kindness toward others 2. missionary activity and prayer five times a day 3. love for God and annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem 4. refraining from immoral activities and giving to the poor
4. ____________ is occasionally called the cofounder of Christianity because of the way that
Jesus’s teachings and his interpretation of them blended to form a viable religion with
widespread appeal.
1. Peter 2. James 3. Paul 4. John
5. In the Gospel of John, the portrayal of Jesus is full of mystery. He is the ______________
of God, the divine made visible in human form.
1. inspiration 2. transcendence 3. incarnation 4. spirit
6. When __________ became emperor, he saw in Christianity a glue that could cement the
fragments of his entire empire.
1. Herod 2. Constantine 3. Antiochus 4. Hyrcanus
7. _________ was the dominant authority in Christian theology from the fifth century until the
Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century.
1. Hector 2. Herodotus 3. John Calvin 4. Augustine
8. , a Dominican priest, blended the philosophical thoughts of Aristotle with Christian
scripture through writings such as the Summa Theologica and Summa Contra Gentiles.
1. John Calvin 2. Francis of Assisi 3. Tertullian 4. Thomas Aquinas
9. _______________, a German priest of the late Middle Ages, was the first reformer of
Western Christianity to gain a large following and to survive. The movement he founded
ultimately created the Protestant branch of Christianity.
1. John Wycliffe 2. Martin Luther 3. John Calvin 4. Huldrych Zwingli
10. In 1962, Pope John XXIII convened a council of bishops that proceeded to make the first
major changes in Catholicism since the Council of Trent. The allowed, among other things,
the use of native languages in ordinary church services.
1. Council of Nicaea 2. Council of Jamnia 3. Second Vatican Council 4. Third Council of Churches
11. Consider the following statement: Despite the tremendous importance of Jesus in
Christianity, Paul played an even more important role than Jesus in shaping Christian
beliefs and practices. Using the information from this chapter, explain why you agree or
disagree.
12. Review the descriptions of the different forms of Protestantism. Which one do you think is
most unusual? Which one do you think is most similar to Roman Catholicism? Explain
your answers.
Resources
Books
Beard, Steve, Chad Bonham, Jason Boyett, Scott Marshall, and Denise Washington. Spiritual
Journeys: How Faith Has Influenced Twelve Music Icons. Orlando: Relevant Books, 2003. A
study of the role of Christianity in shaping several singers and groups, including Wyclef Jean,
Moby, Johnny Cash, Al Green, Bob Dylan, Lauryn Hill, and Lenny Kravitz.
Borg, Marcus. The Heart of Christianity. New York: HarperOne, 2004. A reevaluation of
Christianity by a scholarly believer.
Hale, Robert. Love on the Mountain. Trabuco Canyon, CA: Source Books, 1999. An insider’s
account of daily life as a hermit-monk.
Ingersoll, Julie. Evangelical Christian Women: War Stories in the Gender Battles. New York:
New York University Press, 2003. A look at conservative Christian evangelical women who
challenge the gender norms of their faith.
Jenkins, John Philip. The Lost History of Christianity. New York: HarperOne, 2009. A
description of the little-known forms of Christianity that grew up in the Middle East, Asia, and
Africa, and a reflection on their decline.
Keller, Thomas. The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. New York: Dutton, 2008.
A defense of Christian belief, written by the founding pastor of New York’s Redeemer
Presbyterian Church, who argues that skepticism and cynicism about religion are themselves
alternate forms of belief.
MacCulloch, Diarmaid. Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. New York: Penguin,
2011. A thorough and well-regarded history of the strands of Christianity.
Meyer, Marvin. The Gospels of Mary: The Secret Tradition of Mary Magdalene, the Companion
of Jesus. New York: HarperCollins, 2004. A new examination of the Gospels of Mary
Magdalene, an early Christian figure who has received renewed interest.
Norris, Kathleen. The Cloister Walk. New York: Putnam, 1996. A personal account by a
Protestant writer who describes her discovery of monastic life and its rituals.
Pagels, Elaine. Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas. New York: Random House, 2003.
An exploration of the textual battles of the early Christian Church.
Tutu, Desmond. No Future Without Forgiveness. New York: Image, 2000. A description of
participation in South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, by an Anglican archbishop
and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
White, Michael L. From Jesus to Christianity. New York: HarperCollins, 2004. The story of
how early Christianity developed its identity and sacred texts.
Film/TV
The Agony and the Ecstasy.(Director Carol Reed; Twentieth Century Fox.) A classic Hollywood
film about Michelangelo’s creation of the Sistine Chapel murals.
Brother Sun, Sister Moon.(Director Franco Zeffirelli; Paramount.) A movie about the life of
Francis of Assisi.
Kingdom of Heaven.(Director Ridley Scott; Twentieth Century Fox.) A mainstream film about
the Crusades.
The Mission. (Director Roland Joffe; Warner.) The tragic story of an eighteenth-century Spanish
Jesuit who built a mission in the South American wilderness to convert the indigenous people.
The Robe. (Director Henry Koster; Twentieth Century Fox.) A classic film that tells the fictional
story of a Roman soldier who helped kill Jesus but who was then transformed after winning
Christ’s robe.
Sister Rose’s Passion. (Director Oren Jacoby; Docurama.) A documentary chronicling a nun’s
struggles against anti-Semitism within the Catholic Church. Witness. (Director Peter Weir;
Paramount.) A Hollywood film set in Amish culture.
Music/Audio
Following are religious works, listed by their composers. Especially approachable compositions
are starred.
Bach: *Magnificat, Mass in B-minor, *motets
Britten: * A Ceremony of Carols
Byrd: Masses
Distler: Christmas Story
Duruflé: *Requiem, Mass “Cum Jubilo,”*motets
Fauré: * Requiem
Handel: * Messiah
Hildegard of Bingen: Hymns and antiphons
Mozart: * Coronation Mass, Requiem,*motets
Palestrina: Masses
Pärt, Arvo: Fratres, Te Deum, *Magnificat
Rachmaninoff: Evening Vigil (other Orthodox music is available in collections)
Saint-Saens: Christmas Oratorio
Vaughan Williams: * Mass in G-minor, *Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis
Vivaldi: * Gloria
Zelenka: Missa Dei Patris, Missa Dei Filii
Following are some specific recordings of traditional religious music performed around the
world.
Beautiful Beyond: Christian Songs in Native Languages. (Smithsonian Folkways.) Christian
hymns and songs sung by Native Americans and Hawaiians.
Chant. (Angel Records.) A best-selling compilation of Gregorian chant by the Benedictine
Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos.
Christmas Vespers.(Smithsonian Folkways.) A performance by a Russian Orthodox cathedral
choir of evening prayers.
Gospels, Spirituals, and Hymns. (Sony.) An annotated set of Christian gospel songs, sung by
Mahalia Jackson.
Praise to the Lord: Favourite Hymns From St. Paul’s Cathedral.(Hyperion UK.) A collection of
hymns sung at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.
Wade in the Water: African American Spirituals.(Smithsonian Folkways.) A two-volume
collection of African American spirituals.
Internet
King James Bible Online: http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/. An unabridged, annotated
online version of the classic English translation of the Bible.
Religions—Christianity: http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/index.shtml. The
BBC’s online encyclopedic Web site on Christianity, with sections on beliefs, history, holy days,
rituals, ethics, texts, women, and more.
The Vatican: http://www.vatican.va/. The official Web site of the Vatican, the headquarters of
the Roman Catholic Church.
Key Terms
apocalypticism
The belief that the world will soon come to an end; this belief usually includes the notion
of a great battle, final judgment, and reward of the good.
apostle (ah-paw’-sul)
One of Jesus’s twelve disciples; also, any early preacher of Christianity.
baptism
The Christian rite of initiation, involving immersion in water or sprinkling with water.
Bible (Christian)
The scriptures sacred to Christians, consisting of the books of the Hebrew Bible and the
New Testament.
bishop
“Overseer” (Greek); a priest and church leader who is in charge of a large geographical
area called a diocese.
canon (kaa’-nun)
“Measure,” “rule” (Greek); a list of authoritative books or documents.
ecumenism (eh-kyoo’-men-ism)
Dialogue between Christian denominations.
Eucharist (yoo’-kah-rist)
“Good gift” (Greek); the Lord’s Supper.
evangelical
Emphasizing the authority of scripture; an adjective used to identify certain Protestant
groups.
evangelist (ee-van’-jeh-list)
“Good news person” (Greek); one of the four “authors” of the Gospels—Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John.
filioque (fee-lee-oh’-kway)
“And from the Son”; a Latin word added to the creeds in the Western Church to state that
the Holy Spirit arises from both Father and Son. The notion, which was not accepted by
Orthodox Christianity, contributed to the separation between the Western and Eastern
churches.
gospel
“Good news” (Middle English); an account of the life of Jesus.
icon (ai’-kahn)
“Image” (Greek); religious painting on wood, as used in the Orthodox Church; also
spelled ikon.
incarnation
“In flesh” (Latin); a belief that God became visible in Jesus.
indulgence
“Kindness-toward” (Latin); remission of the period spent in purgatory (a state of
temporary punishment in the afterlife); an aspect of Catholic belief and practice.
Lent
“Lengthening day,” “spring” (Old English); the preparatory period before Easter, lasting
forty days.
Messiah
“Anointed” (Hebrew); a special messenger sent by God, foretold in the Hebrew scriptures
and believed by Christians to be Jesus.
original sin
An inclination toward evil, inherited by human beings as a result of Adam’s
disobedience.
orthodox
“Straight opinion” (Greek); correct belief.
Orthodoxy
The major Eastern branch of Christianity.
patriarch
“Father source” (Greek); the bishop of one of the major ancient sites of Christianity
(Jerusalem, Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople, and Moscow).
pope
“Father” (Latin and Greek); the bishop of Rome and head of the Roman Catholic Church;
the term is also used for the Coptic patriarch of Alexandria.
predestination
The belief that because God is all-powerful and all-knowing, a human being’s ultimate
reward or punishment is already decreed by God; a notion emphasized in Calvinism.
Protestant Principle
The right of each believer to radically rethink and interpret the ideas and values of
Christianity, apart from any church authority.
redemption
“Buy again,” “buy back” (Latin); the belief that the death of Jesus has paid the price of
justice for all human wrongdoing.
righteousness
Being sinless in the sight of God; also called justification.
sacrament
“Sacred action” (Latin); one of the essential rituals of Christianity.
sin
Wrongdoing, seen as disobedience to God.
Testament
“Contract”; the Old Testament and New Testament constitute the Christian scriptures.
Trinity
The three “Persons” in God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Religion Beyond the Classroom
Visit the Online Learning Center at www.mhhe.com/molloy6e for additional exercises and
features, including “Religion beyond the Classroom” and “For Fuller Understanding.”
Experiencing the Worlds Religions. Tradition, Challenge, and Change, Sixth Edition
Chapter 9: Christianity
ISBN: 9780078038273 Author: Michael Molloy
Copyright © McGraw-Hill Company (6)
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