History of Christianity
The history of Christianity begins with Jesus, an itinerant Jewish preacher and teacher, who was crucified in Jerusalem. His followers proclaimed that he was the incarnation of God and had risen from the dead. In the two millennia since, Christianity has spread across the world, becoming the world's largest religion with over two billion adherents worldwide.
Initially, Christianity was a mostly urban grassroots movement. Its religious text was written in the first century. A formal church government developed, and it grew to over a million adherents by the third century. Constantine the Great issued the Edict of Milan legalizing it in 315. Christian art, architecture, and literature blossomed during the fourth century, but competing theological doctrines led to divisions. The Nicene Creed of 325, the Nestorian schism, the Church of the East and Oriental Orthodoxy resulted. While the Western Roman Empire ended in 476, its successor states and its eastern compatriot—the Byzantine Empire—remained Christian.
After the fall of Rome in 476, western monks preserved culture and provided social services. Early Muslim conquests devastated many Christian communities in the Middle East and North Africa, but Christianization continued in Europe and Asia and helped form the states of Eastern Europe. The 1054 East–West Schism saw the Byzantine Empire's Eastern Orthodoxy and Western Europe's Catholic Church separate. In spite of differences, the East requested western military aid against the Turks, resulting in the Crusades. Gregorian reform led to a more centralized and bureaucratic Catholicism. Faced with internal and external challenges, the church fought heresy and established courts of inquisition. Artistic and intellectual advances among western monks played a part in the Renaissance of the 12th century and the later Scientific Revolution.
In the 14th century, the Western Schism and several European crises led to the 16th-century Reformation when Protestantism formed. Reformation Protestants advocated for religious tolerance and the separation of church and state and impacted economics. Quarrelling royal houses took sides precipitating the European wars of religion. Christianity spread with the colonization of the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand. Different parts of Christianity influenced the Age of Enlightenment, American and French Revolutions, the Industrial Revolution, and the Atlantic slave trade. Some Protestants created biblical criticism while others responded to rationalism with Pietism and religious revivals that created new denominations. Nineteenth century missionaries laid the linguistic and cultural foundation for many nations.
In the twentieth century, Christianity declined in most of the Western world but grew in the Global South, particularly Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. In the twenty first century, Christianity has become the most diverse and pluralistic of the world's religions embracing over 3000 of the world's languages.
Early Christianity (c. 27 – fourth century)
First century
began with Jesus of Nazareth, a Jewish man and itinerant preacher in Galilee and the Roman province of Judea during the first century. Much about Jesus is uncertain, but his crucifixion is well attested. The religious, social, and political climate in both regions was extremely diverse and characterized by turmoil with numerous religious and political movements. One such movement, Jewish messianism, promised a messianic redeemer descended from Israel's ancient king, David, who would save Israel. Those who followed Jesus, called disciples, saw him as that Messiah.Jesus was a prophetic figure who proclaimed the coming kingdom of God. Incarnation, the belief that God was embodied in Jesus, and resurrection, the belief that after his crucifixion, he rose from the dead, were Christianity's earliest beliefs. Its earliest rituals were baptism, a rite of initiation, and the communal Eucharist, a celebration of the new covenant at Jesus' last meal before death.
The first Christians were predominantly Jewish. They gathered in small groups inside private homes where the typical setting for worship was the communal meal. Elders oversaw the small groups, providing for the economic requirements of the meal and charitable distributions. Women comprised significant numbers of Christianity's earliest members. Religion had appeal because women could attain greater freedom through religious activities than Roman customs otherwise permitted. The Pauline epistles recognize their presence in early Christian congregations. Christianity most likely began in Jerusalem with fewer than 1000 believers, which grew to approximately one hundred small household churches, each with an average of seventy members, by the year 100.
Of the original believers, Jesus kept twelve disciples close to him who became known as the Apostles. Saul of Tarsus, who became Paul the Apostle, was a Jewish Pharisee who had not known Jesus and persecuted early Christians. According to his own account, his life turned in the opposite direction after experiencing a vision of Christ on the road to Damascus. Driven by belief and characterized by passion, the twelve Apostles and Paul identified evangelism as a task to be undertaken, which prompted them to travel through foreign lands sharing their message. Christianity was largely an urban religion that spread along the trade and travel routes into the Jewish diaspora and beyond. The largest cities in the Roman Empire, such as Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Ephesus, and Carthage, all had Christian congregations by the end of the first century.
Despite martyrs such as Stephen, the movement grew, reaching Antioch where converts were first called Christian by non-Christians. From Antioch, Barnabas and Paul went to Cyprus, then Asia Minor, where the gospel was received by both Jewish and non-Jewish people. The conversion of Gentiles led to disputes with a group who desired observance of Mosaic law including circumcision. James, brother of Jesus, called the Council of Jerusalem which determined that converts should avoid "pollution of idols, fornication, things strangled, and blood" but should not be required to follow other aspects of Jewish Law. As Christianity grew in the Gentile world, it underwent a gradual separation from Judaism. Disagreements over Jewish law, progenitors of Rabbinic Judaism, and insurrections against Rome, contributed to this separation. Nevertheless, Jewish Christianity remained influential in Palestine, Syria, and Asia Minor into the second and third centuries.
In the early centuries, the languages most used to spread Christianity were Greek, Syriac, and Latin. Christian writings in Koine Greek, including the four gospels, letters of Paul, and letters attributed to other early Christian leaders, were written in the first century and had considerable authority, even in the formative period. Letters sent by Paul the Apostle to Christian communities were circulating in collected form by the end of the first century.
Ante-Nicene period (100–312)
The Christian faith spread east into Syria and Mesopotamia where the population spoke Aramaic, not Greek. Aramaic Christians were in Adiabene by the second century. By the second century Christianity was in North Africa, and by the third century, it had spread across the Mediterranean region, from Greece and Anatolia into the Balkans in the East, and as far as Roman Britain in the northwest.Christianity's ideology, combined with its social impact, were pivotal to this growth. Christianity offered people new ways of thinking. For example, the idea that the power of God was manifested through Jesus in a reversal of power challenged Roman concepts of hierarchy. In sociologist Rodney Stark's view, Christianity grew because it constituted an "intense community" which provided a unique "sense of belonging". However, early Christianity demonstrates both inclusion and exclusion. Belief in Jesus was the crucial and defining characteristic for becoming a Christian, and early Christianity was highly inclusive toward anyone who expressed such belief. Ancient philosophy Professor Danny Praet writes that believers were also highly exclusive; they were separated from unbelievers by a strong social boundary based on belief rather than ritual in the traditional Roman fashion.
Women are prominent in the Pauline epistles and early Christian art. Church rolls from the second century list groups of women "exercising the office of widow".
Much of the most virulent anti-Christian criticism of this period was linked to "female initiative", which may have contributed to the sporadic but increasing persecution.
Christians were persecuted by the Roman empire because they did not uphold fundamental beliefs of Roman society and their withdrawal from public religion made them targets of suspicion and rumor. For most of its early centuries, Christianity was tolerated, and episodes of persecution were local. Emperor Nero's persecution of Christians during the mid-1st century was confined to Rome. There were no empire-wide persecutions until the 250s. Official persecution reached its height under Diocletian in 303–311.
By 200, Christian numbers had grown to over 200,000 people, and communities with an average size of 500–1000 people existed in approximately 200–400 towns. By 250, Christianity had grown to over a million. House churches were then succeeded by buildings designed to be churches, complete with assembly rooms, classrooms, and dining rooms. A more formal church government developed at different times in different locations. Bishops were essential to this development, and they rose in power and influence as they began to preside over larger areas with multiple churches.
Christian sects, cults, and movements rose during the second and third centuries. Gnostic texts challenged the physical nature of Jesus, Montanism suggested that the apostles could be superseded, and Monarchianism emphasized the unity of God over the Trinity. The four gospels and the letters of Paul were generally regarded as authoritative, but other writings, such as the Book of Revelation and the epistles to the Hebrews, James, and 1 John, were assigned different degrees of authority. In the face of such diversity, unity was provided by the shared scriptures and bishops.
The fluidity of the New Testament in the first century does not seem to have affected belief in the Trinity as it connected to Christology and salvation. Christianity's central mystery, the Trinity, defines the Holy Spirit, Father, and Son as one God in three persons. However, there is an evolution of thought in the Patristic writings, then the development of the canon, and later in the theological controversies of the fourth century, that shaped the concept's development and gradually created a more technical Trinitarian vocabulary.
There are few remnants of early Christian art, but the oldest, dated between 200 and 400, have been found in the catacombs of Rome. It typically fused Graeco-Roman style and Christian symbolism: the most common image was Jesus as the good shepherd.