Christianity

Christianity emerged from the Jewish religious world of Roman-ruled Judea in the 1st century CE. Its founding figure, Jesus Christ, preached the coming reign of God, called for repentance and love of neighbor, and gathered disciples before his execution under Pontius Pilate.² Christians hold that God raised Jesus from the dead, an event understood as the foundation of salvation and the central proclamation of the early church.

The movement spread beyond Judea through missionaries including Paul, whose letters are among the earliest surviving Christian texts. Communities appeared across the eastern Mediterranean and later throughout the Roman Empire. The destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE and the gradual separation of Christian communities from rabbinic Judaism helped shape Christianity as a distinct religion.¹

Christian belief centers on one God, the person of Jesus, and the work of the Holy Spirit. Most churches confess the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct yet one God. The Hebrew Bible, read by Christians as the Old Testament, is joined to the New Testament, a collection of 27 books including the four Gospels, Acts, letters, and Revelation.³

Common themes include creation, sin, incarnation, atonement, resurrection, judgment, and eternal life, although churches interpret them differently. Baptism marks entry into the Christian community, while the Eucharist, also called Communion or the Lord’s Supper, recalls Jesus’s death and is understood variously as memorial, sacrament, or real participation in Christ. Prayer, preaching, music, charitable action, and the annual cycles of Christmas and Easter organize communal life.

Christianity contains numerous denominations, but three broad families are Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant. The Catholic Church recognizes the bishop of Rome, the pope, as its chief pastor and emphasizes Scripture and apostolic tradition. Eastern Orthodox churches are a communion of self-governing churches whose theology and worship developed in the Greek-speaking Christian East. Their separation from the Western church is conventionally associated with the East–West Schism of 1054, though the division developed over centuries.⁴

Protestant churches arose from the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century and include Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal, and many independent movements. Differences concern authority, sacraments, church governance, predestination, and worship. Ecumenical organizations such as the World Council of Churches seek cooperation among many, though not all, Christian bodies.⁵

Christianity has always been more geographically and culturally diverse than its European history alone suggests. Ancient Christian communities formed in Egypt, Syria, Ethiopia, Armenia, India, and Mesopotamia, often using languages other than Greek or Latin. The Church of Ethiopia, for example, preserves distinctive biblical, liturgical, and calendrical traditions, while the Church of the East carried Christianity along trade routes into Central Asia and China.¹

Monasticism began as an ascetic movement in late antique Egypt and Syria before influencing education, manuscript preservation, agriculture, and social welfare. Christian councils also produced creeds that defined boundaries of doctrine; the Nicene Creed, first formulated at Nicaea in 325 and expanded at Constantinople in 381, remains central in many liturgical churches.³ Modern Christianity includes growing communities in Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia, alongside declining or secularizing populations in some historically Christian regions.⁶

Atonement

The Christian idea that Jesus’s death and resurrection reconcile humanity with God.

Eucharist

A Christian rite commemorating Jesus’s Last Supper, also called Communion or the Lord’s Supper.

Incarnation

The doctrine that God became human in Jesus Christ.

Trinity

The doctrine that one God exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.