World Religion

I . Introduction

Christianity is the religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ . It began in the Palestine and was proclaimed the fulfillment of Jewish teaching regarding the coming of the Messiah , promised by God to redeem man from sin . Christianity has been not only a religious force but also a social and political one . Often it has been imposed by military power that hardly seems in keeping with the precepts of the gentle Jesus . Nevertheless , the moral lessons taught by Christianity have had a profound effect in teaching man

to ha deal justly with his fellows and to observe the pleas of Jesus to love thy neighbor as thyself (Matthew 19 :19

Christianity is the religion of Christians . They follow the teachings of a preacher and healer , called Jesus Christ , who lived about 2 ,000 years ago in Palestine in the Middle East . Christians believe that Jesus was the Son of God who came to Earth to save people from their sins After Jesus ' death , his followers spread his teachings far and wide Today , Christianity is the world 's largest religion , with some 2 billion followers , living all over the world . Most Christians share the same basic beliefs but they have different ways of understanding and expressing them . The three main Christian groups are Orthodox Christians , Roman Catholics and Protestants (Noll others , 2003

About one-fourth of the world 's people are Christians . Christian churches have an estimated world membership of more than 1 .6 billion - more than twice the membership of any other religion . Of this number 900 million are Protestants and about 70 million members of eastern Orthodox churches

Jesus Christ was a Palestinian Jew who believed himself to be the Messiah appointed to reveal God 's will , redeem the people , and establish the Kingdom of God (a society ruled by God . The Jewish authorities refused to accept him as the Messiah and , at their instigation , the Roman governor , Pontius Pilate , had him crucified as a political troublemaker . His small band of followers , headed by the Apostles , won many converts from the ranks of the ordinary people by preaching the doctrine of redemption and salvation through Christ (Wiggins , 1999

Eventually Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire , and Christians became fairly numerous in Rome itself . The government persecuted them there , and they had to take refuge in underground burial vaults called catacombs . Their lot was hardest in a 10-year period after the Emperor Diocletian has issued an edict against them in 303 . Emperor Constantine I called a half to the persecution and proclaimed religious freedom by a decree , called the edict of Milan , in 313 (Wiggins , 1999

The heresy of Arianism , which denied Jesus as the son of God , caused Constantine to call the first ecumenical (universal ) council at Niceae (325 , to formulate a more precise statement of beliefs . The Nicene Creed resulted

Invasions by barbarians began to hamper the work of the Western church about 400 . During the sixth and seventh centuries the eastern and Western...