Christian

:This article is about the religious people known as Christians; for the 1980s British music group, see The Christians.For other uses of the term Christian, see Christian (disambiguation).

History

Early times

Church is taken by some to refer to a single, universal community, although others contend that the doctrine of the universal church was not established until later. The doctrine of the universal, visible church was made explicit in the Apostles' Creed, while the less common Protestant notion of the universal, invisible church is not laid out explicitly until the Reformation. The universal church traditions generally espouse that the Church includes all who are baptized into her common faith, including the doctrines of the trinity, forgiveness of sins through the sacrificial action of Christ, and the resurrection of the body. These teachings are expressed in liturgy with the celebration of sacraments, visible signs of grace. They are passed down as the deposit of faith.

Related Topics:
Church - Apostles' Creed - Protestant - Reformation - Sacraments - Grace - Deposit of faith

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Some minority traditions of Christianity have maintained that the word translated "church" in scripture most often properly refers to local bodies or assemblies. "Church" is a transliteration of the Greek word "????????", meaning Lord's house, which in English translations is substituted for the word ????????, meaning assembly or congregation, which is the word that actually appears in the Greek texts. Before Christ's appropriation of the term, it was used to describe purposeful gatherings, including the assemblies of Greek democracy. Christians of this stripe maintain that a centralizing impulse in the church, present from the early days of the church through the rise of Constantine, represented a departure from true Christianity. They therefore reject the authority of the Nicene Creed, and often question the Apostles' Creed as well.

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The First Millennium

Christian spirituality blossomed in the Roman Empire between A.D. 100 and 300 in spite of official efforts to suppress it. Sometime around A.D. 200, one leader, Tertullian, is quoted as saying, ?The blood of the martyrs is the seed ? to account for this phenomenon. In A.D. 313, the "Edict of Milan" ended official persecution, and under the Emperor Constantine, Christians acquired powerful political influence, the results of which are controversial to this day.

Related Topics:
Roman Empire - Milan

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Christians developed hierarchical structures to lead the visible Church over the course of many centuries. The leaders of their clergy

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From the early formation of the Church until the Great Schism in 1054 AD, virtually all Christians subsisted within one Church as one visible organization, led locally by bishops, and regionally by patriarchs. However, minor divisions occurred over differences in doctrine as early as the Council of Chalcedon, and continued through the progression of ecumenical councils.

Related Topics:
Great Schism - Council of Chalcedon - Ecumenical councils

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Medieval times

In Medieval Europe, the Roman Catholic Church was at its peak of Apostolic flourishment and spirituality. Not only was the Church and its organizations extremely devoted to Christianity, piously spreading the word of God through missionaries and established monastaries in many countries but through its dominant spiritual influence that eventually rivalled the political power of most Monarchs for support of the population. The majority of people of this age devoted their lives to God and it showed by the donations of land, money, and possesions to the church. In time, this made the Pope an important figure in the life of the continent.

Related Topics:
Europe - Roman Catholic - Monarch - Pope - Continent

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This wealth often expressed itself in the building of beautiful cathedrals which showed their great devotion and adoration to God. The Church's monasteries were seats of learning and study which evolved into modern universities. They also provided the first hospitals for the care of the sick.

Related Topics:
Cathedrals - Monasteries - Universities - Hospitals

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Modern times

The history of the Christian faith in modern times must be studied movement by movement, such is its diversity. In the West, the Protestant Reformation led to a separation of faith from science and profoundly conditioned the relationship between church and state. Thus, bringing to the Christianity the idea of self interperatation and the denouncement of visible unity. Intellectual pressure from the Enlightenment led to a religious reaction in the North American colonies — called the Great Awakening to which Protestant North American Christians owe much of their pattern of practice.

Related Topics:
Faith - Modern - West - Protestant Reformation - Enlightenment - North America - Great Awakening

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Widespread Christian missions by Evangelicals, Protestants, Anglicans, Catholics and Orthodox (commanded by Jesus in Matthew 28:19-20) created today's situation in which Christians are to be found in almost every part of the world.

Related Topics:
Mission - Evangelicals - Protestants - Anglicans - Catholics - Orthodox

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Today many modern Christians live their lives in relation to a community of faith, usually a local church. These churches, with the exception of the Roman Catholic church, stand in a variety of man-made traditions as a result of history. Renewal is a process that restores an organization to its original purposes or values, unless during this process self interperataion is evident which would enull and void the renewal process in its form. New Christian denominations and other organizations are usually the result of these self interperated renewal movements that seek to bring back some aspect of the Christian faith but lack in the fullness through misguidance of freethought.

Related Topics:
Faith

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Some Christians try to follow only God and reject any power such as the church or state, believing this to be the true teaching of Jesus. These people also believe in nonviolence and are known as Christian anarchists. Leo Tolstoy who wrote The Kingdom of God is Within You http://www.kingdomnow.org/withinyou.html in 1894 was a notable Christian anarchist.

Related Topics:
Nonviolence - Christian anarchists - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God is Within You - 1894

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The life of a Christian is still characterized by faith in the figure of Jesus as represented in the New Testament. Sacraments aside, the concept of grace is still uniquely Christian: the idea, or as some call it a mystery, that spiritual wholeness comes only as a result of a gift.

Related Topics:
Jesus - New Testament - Sacraments - Grace

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