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Christianity
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.


Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as presented in the New Testament writings of his early followers. It is the world's largest religion, with an estimated 2.1 billion adherents, or about one-third of the total world population. It shares with Judaism the Hebrew Scriptures (called the Old Testament by Christians), and is sometimes called an Abrahamic religion, along with Judaism and Islam.

The names "Christian" and hence "Christianity" are first attested in Acts 11:26, "For a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people. And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians (Gr. χριστιανους)".

Christianity encompasses numerous religious traditions that widely vary by culture and place, as well as many diverse beliefs and sects. Since the Reformation, Christianity is usually represented as being divided into three main branches:

1. Catholicism -- includes the Roman Catholic Church, the largest coherent group, with over one billion baptized members, as well as certain splinter groups (e.g., the Old Catholic Church) which either reject the pope, or recognize a different pope;
2. Eastern Christianity (includes the Eastern Orthodox Churches, the Oriental Orthodox Churches and the Assyrian Church of the East), with over two hundred million baptized members;
3. Protestantism (including Anglicanism, Reformed, Lutheran, Methodist, Anabaptist, Evangelicalism, Charismatics and Pentecostalism)--numerous denominations and schools of thought, with just over five hundred million members altogether.


This leaves 158 million Independents (unaffiliated with the major streams of Christianity), as well as 31.7 million belonging to other groups with less clear status (including Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons). (Source: Adherents.com [1])

These broad divisions are not equally uniform. On the contrary, some branches encompass vast disagreements, and in other cases the division overlooks existing sympathies. But this is the convenient standard overview of distinctions, especially as Christianity has been viewed in the Western world.

A more comprehensive overview would show more complicated relationships among denominations and traditions. Among various disparate groups, this would include categorizing the Miaphysite Oriental Orthodox Churches and the Assyrian Church of the East (the so-called Nestorian Church) as branches distinct from "Chalcedonian Christianity" (including Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and most forms of Protestantism). On the other hand, grouped according to cultural similarities rather than concilar positions, the Eastern Catholic or "Unitate" churches surely belong together with all the Orthodox churches.

Groups with restorationist beliefs – including the Churches of Christ, some Anabaptists, the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), and others – sometimes regard themselves as entirely separate from Protestantism, with which they have often been included.

The Churches of the Anglican Communion speak of themselves as following a "via media," a "middle way," between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism and therefore are also often listed separately. One sometimes reads of a "liturgical family" including Anglicanism, Catholicism, and Orthodoxy. At the same time, Anglicanism encompasses "Anglo-Catholic" and "Evangelical" wings as well as what we might call "culturally Christian" members, and thus finds itself pulled in several directions simultaneously.

A number of groups hold that the branches of Christianity presented above devolved from the original church instituted and founded by Christ as a result of a Great Apostasy. These groups, although historically founded many centuries after the death of Jesus, claim direct theological descent from the original Church portrayed in the New Testament or claim a complete restoration directly from Christ of the origninal Church. Examples would include the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (also called Mormons), the Church of the New Jerusalem (Swedenborgians), Jehovah's Witnesses, the 7th day Church of God groups, the Christadelphians, and the "Jesus only" or "oneness" Pentecostals.

These groups are considered heretical or even "non-Christian" by many of the mainstream Christian groups, on account of their deviation from tenets considered basic by mainstream Christianity, such as the doctrine of the Trinity. At the same time, in some ways these groups arguably reflect the teachings and practices of Jesus and/or the early church more closely than the Christian mainstream.