CHRISTIANITY

Prepared By: Kyla J. Yarte

Zeinon Casillac
Cinky Abendan
Gio James Canoy

Christianity, major religion stemming from the life, teachings, and death of Jesus of Nazareth (the Christ, or
the Anointed One of God) in the 1st century CE. It has become the largest of the world’s religions and,
geographically, the most widely diffused of all faiths. It has a constituency of more than two billion believers. Its
largest groups are the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox churches, and the Protestant churches. The
Oriental Orthodox churches constitute one of the oldest branches of the tradition but had been out of contact with
Western Christianity and Eastern Orthodoxy from the middle of the 5th century until the late 20th century
because of a dispute over Christology (the doctrine of Jesus Christ’s nature and significance).
This article first considers the nature and development of the Christian religion, its ideas, and its institutions.
The position of Christianity in the world, the relations among its divisions and denominations, its missionary
outreach to other peoples, and its relations with other world religions are discussed. For supporting material on
various topics, see angel and demon; Bible; biblical literature; canon law; creed; Christology; doctrine and
dogma; ecumenism; eschatology; exegesis; faith; grace; heaven; hell; heresy; Jesus Christ; liturgical
movement; millennialism; miracle; monasticism; monotheism; New Testament; Old Testament; original
sin; papacy; prayer; priesthood; purgatory; sacrament; salvation; schism; scripture; theism; theology;
and worship.

Christianity began as a movement within Judaism at a period when the Jews had long been dominated culturally
and politically by foreign powers and had found in their religion (rather than in their politics or cultural
achievements) the linchpin of their community. From Amos (8th century BCE) onward the religion of Israel was
marked by tension between the concept of monotheism, with its universal ideal of salvation (for all nations), and
the notion of God’s special choice of Israel. In the Hellenistic Age (323 BCE–3rd century CE), the dispersion of
the Jews throughout the kingdoms of the eastern Mediterranean and the Roman Empire reinforced this
universalistic tendency. But the attempts of foreign rulers, especially the Syrian king Antiochus IV Epiphanes (in
168–165 BCE), to impose Greek culture in Palestine provoked zealous resistance on the part of many Jews,
leading to the revolt of Judas Maccabeus against Antiochus. In Palestinian Judaism the predominant note was
separation and exclusiveness. Jewish missionaries to other areas were strictly expected to impose the distinctive
Jewish customs of circumcision, kosher food, and Sabbaths and other festivals. Other Jews, however, were not
so exclusive, welcoming Greek culture and accepting converts without requiring circumcision. The relationship
of the earliest Christian churches to Judaism turned principally on two questions: (1) the messianic role of Jesus
of Nazareth and (2) the permanent validity of the Mosaic Law for all.

The Hebrew Scriptures presented history as the stage of a providential drama eventually ending in a triumph of
God over all present sources of frustration (e.g., foreign domination or the sins of Israel). God’s rule would be
established by an anointed prince, or Messiah (from mashiaḥ, “anointed”), of the line of David, king of Israel in
the 10th century BCE. The proper course of action leading to the consummation of the drama, however, was the
subject of some disagreement. Among the diverse groups were the aristocratic and conservative Sadducees, who
accepted only the five books of Moses (the Pentateuch) and whose lives and political power were intimately
associated with Temple worship, and the Pharisees, who accepted the force of oral tradition and were widely
respected for their learning and piety. The Pharisees not only accepted biblical books outside the Pentateuch but
also embraced doctrines—such as those on resurrection and the existence of angels—of recent acceptance in
Judaism, many of which were derived from apocalyptic expectations that the consummation of history would be
heralded by God’s intervention in the affairs of men in dramatic, cataclysmic terms. The Great Sanhedrin (central
council) at Jerusalem was made up of both Pharisees and Sadducees. The Zealots were aggressive
revolutionaries known for their violent opposition to Rome and its polytheisms. Other groups were the Herodians,
supporters of the client kingdom of the Herods (a dynasty that supported Rome) and abhorrent to the Zealots, and
the Essenes, a quasi-monastic dissident group, probably including the sect that preserved the Dead Sea Scrolls.
This latter sect did not participate in the Temple worship at Jerusalem and observed another religious calendar,
and from their desert retreat they awaited divine intervention and searched prophetic writings for signs indicating
the consummation.

Constantine the Great, declared emperor at York, Britain (306), converted to

Christianity, convened the Council of Arles (314), became sole emperor (324), virtually presided over
the ecumenical Council of Nicaea (325), founded the city of Constantinople (330), and died in 337. In the 4th
century he was regarded as the great revolutionary, especially in religion. He did not make Christianity the
religion of the empire, but he granted important concessions to the church and its bishops, and his conversion
encouraged other Roman citizens to become Christian. His foundation of Constantinople (conceived to be the
new Rome) as a Christian city untainted by pagan religion profoundly affected the future political
and ecclesiastical structure of the empire and the church. Relations with old Rome, whether in matters of church
or of state, were not to be ordial.

Constantine completely altered the relationship between the church and the imperial government, thereby
beginning a process that eventually made Christianity the official religion of the empire. Many new converts
were won, including those who converted only with the hope of advancing their careers. The church was also
faced by a new form of governmental interference when Constantine presided at the Council of Nicaea, which
addressed the Arian controversy (a debate between Arius and Athanasius and their followers over the nature of
the Son of God); the council provided the definition of the relationship between God the Father and God the Son
that is still accepted by most Christians today. Although Nicaea spoke against Arianism, which maintained that
the Son is a created being and not equal to God the Father, Constantine in later life leaned toward it, and his
successor, Constantius II, was openly Arian. Despite this turmoil and the outright hostility toward Christianity of
the emperor Julian the Apostate (reigned 361–363), the church survived, and the adherents of the
traditional Roman religion relapsed into passive resistance. The quietly mounting pressure against paganism in
the 4th century culminated in the decrees of Emperor Theodosius I (reigned 379–395), who made Catholic
Christianity the official religion of the empire and who closed many pagan temples. By the end of the 4th century,
therefore, Christianity had been transformed from a persecuted sect to the dominant faith of the empire, in the
process becoming intertwined with the imperial government.

The link between church and state was expressed in the civil dignity and insignia granted to bishops, who also
began to be entrusted with ambassadorial roles. Constantine himself appointed bishops, and he and his successors
convened councils of bishops to address important matters of the faith. By 400 the patriarch of Constantinople (to
his avowed embarrassment) enjoyed precedence at court before all civil officials. The emperors issued a number
of rulings that afforded greater privilege and responsibility to the bishops, enhancing their position in both church
and society. The close relations between the empire and the church in the 4th century were reflected in the
writings of St. Ambrose (bishop of Milan, 374–397), who used “Roman” and “Christian” almost as synonyms.
After Theodosius ordered the massacre of the citizens of Thessalonica, however, Ambrose demanded that the
emperor undergo penance, thereby enforcing upon Theodosius submission to the church as its son, not its master.

A new movement took shape in the late 3rd and 4th centuries that was a response to both the tragedy of the final
persecutions and to the triumph of Constantine’s conversion. Monasticism began in the Egyptian desert in the 3rd
century in response to contemporary social conditions, but it had scriptural roots and reflected the attraction of
the ascetic life that had long been part of the Christian and philosophical traditions. The first of the Christian
monks was St. Anthony (251–356). Communal, or cenobitic, monasticism was first organized by St.
Pachomius (c. 290–346), who also composed the first monastic rule. St. Basil, bishop of Caesarea
Cappadociae (370–379), rejected the hermetic ideal, insisting on communities with a rule safeguarding the
bishop’s authority and with concrete acts of service to perform (e.g., hospital work and teaching).

Monasticism quickly spread to the West, where it was decisively shaped by St. John Cassian of Marseille
(c. 360–435) and St. Benedict of Nursia (c. 480–c. 547), recognized as the father of Western
monasticism. Benedict’s Rule, which eventually became predominant, was noted for its humanity and its balance
of prayer and work. Because the manual work of monks often consisted of the copying of manuscripts, the
monasteries became a great centre of cultural life for centuries. Benedict’s contemporary Cassiodorus (c. 490–
c. 585) had the works of Classical authors copied (e.g., Cicero and Quintilian) as well as Bibles and the works of
the early Church Fathers.

The church was significantly slow to undertake missionary work beyond the frontiers of the empire.
The Goth Ulfilas converted the Goths to Arian Christianity (c. 340–350) and translated the Bible from Greek to
Gothic—omitting, as unsuitable, warlike passages of the Old Testament. The Goths passed their Arian faith on to
other Germanic tribes, such as the Vandals. (Sometime between 496 and 508 the Franks, under their great
king Clovis, became the first of the Germanic peoples to convert to Catholic Christianity, and they were soon
followed by the Visigoths.) In the 5th century the Western provinces were overrun by Goths, Vandals, and Huns,
and the imperial succession was ended when a German leader, Odoacer, decided to rule without an emperor (476).
The position of the papacy was enhanced by the decline of state power, and this prepared the way for the popes’
temporal sovereignty over parts of Italy (which they retained from the 7th to the 19th century; Vatican City’s
independent sovereignty was recognized in 1929).

Christian doctrine - The nature and functions of doctrine, Indirectly or directly, Jesus and his Apostles left
their principal—though perhaps not their only—records in the writings of the New Testament,
the canonical texts that form the second part of the Christian Bible, which also includes the Hebrew Scriptures,
or (in the Christian view) the Old Testament. The basic meaning of the term doctrine is “teaching.”
Christian doctrine, accordingly, is the attempt to state in intellectually responsible terms the message of the
gospel and the content of the faith it elicits. The doctrine, therefore, encompasses both the substance of what is
taught and the act of setting that substance forth. While a certain reticence is appropriate in the face of
the transcendent mystery of God, Christians hold that God has revealed himself sufficiently to allow and
require truthful speech about him and his ways. Thus, Christian talk of God claims to be a response to
the divine initiative, not simply a record of humanly generated experience. As Hilary of Poitiers wrote in the
mid-4th century in his On the Trinity (IV.4), “God is to be believed when he speaks of himself, and whatever
he grants us to think concerning himself is to be followed.”

From the first, church teaching has occurred in several contexts and for several purposes: it happens when the
gospel is newly preached to people who have not heard it before (evangelism), when those who accept the
message are instructed in preparation for baptism (catechesis), when the believing and
baptized communities gather for worship (liturgy), and when application is sought to daily life (ethics).
Teaching may be specially required for the sake of clarification and consolidation, as when distortions threaten
within (aversion of heresy), when the faith is under attack from outside (apologetics), when linguistic or
epistemological shifts over time hinder intelligibility or change the terms of reference (restatement), or when
geographical expansion prompts a more local expression (inculturation). The teaching may vary in the weight
of the authority it claims and is granted, ranging from the most solemn definitions of supervisory bodies
(dogma) through a broadly prevalent but internally somewhat differentiated “common mind” (consensus) to the
works of individual thinkers (theology). The most stable and widely recognized teaching is that preserved in the
ancient creeds—the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed—that are transmitted in the worship of the churches
and expounded in their confessions (symbolics). The agreed doctrine may sometimes have been achieved only
through a period of maturing reflection and debate, and the continuation of these processes within the
established parameters is not excluded (development). In the course of history, however, differences
concerning accepted teaching sometimes became so serious that communities divided over them (schism). The
divided communities may continue their conversation in tones that range from the persuasive to the polemical
(controversy). In the 20th century, determined efforts on the part of several Christian communions were made
to overcome the doctrinal differences between them with the aim of restoring ecclesiastical unity (ecumenism).

Thus, there are many aspects to the question of Christian doctrine, and in what follows they will be treated in
the sequence just outlined: the permanent basis, the perennial functions, the levels of authority, the stable
pattern, and the institutional vicissitudes.

God as Father

What is decisively new in the Christian, New Testament faith in God lies in the fact that this faith is so closely
bound up with the person, teaching, and work of Jesus Christ that it is difficult to draw boundaries
between theology (doctrines of God) and Christology (doctrines of Christ). The special relationship of Jesus to God
is expressed through his designation of God as Father. In prayers Jesus used the Aramaic word abba (“father”) for
God, which is otherwise unusual in religious discourse in Judaism; it was usually employed by children for their
earthly father. This father–son relationship became a prototype for the relationship of Christians to God. Appeal to
the sonship of God played a crucial role in the development of Jesus’ messianic self-understanding. According to the
account of Jesus’ baptism, Jesus understood his sonship when a voice from heaven said: “This is my beloved Son,
with whom I am well pleased.” In The Gospel According to John, this sonship constitutes the basis for the
self-consciousness of Jesus: “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30).

Faith in the Son also brought about a oneness with the Father. The Son became the mediator of the glory of the
Father to those who believe in him. In Jesus’ high priestly prayer (in John, chapter 17) he says: “The glory which
thou hast given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that
they may become perfectly one.” In the Lord’s Prayer Jesus taught his disciples to address God as “our Father.”

The Father-God of Jesus after Jesus’ death and Resurrection becomes—for his disciples—the God and Father of
our Lord Jesus Christ (e.g., 2 Corinthians 1:3), who revealed his love through the sacrifice of his Son who was sent
into the world. Faithful Christians can thus become the children of God, as noted in Revelation 21:7: “I will be his
God and he shall be my son.” For Christians, therefore, faith in God is not a doctrine to be detached from the person
of Jesus Christ.

Medieval theologians often spoke of a “Beatific Vision,” a blessed vision of God. In the history
of Christian mysticism, this visionary experience of the transpersonal “Godhead” behind the personal “God” (as in
the works of the medieval German mystic Meister Eckhart)—also called an experience of the “trans-deity,” the
“divine ground,” “groundlessness,” the “abyss,” and the divine “nothingness”—constantly breaks through and is
renewed. Occasionally, this experience of transpersonal divine transcendence has directed itself against the
development of a piety that has banalized the personal idea of God so much so that the glory and holiness of God
has been trivialized. The attempt of the 20th-century theologian Paul Tillich to reduce the Christian idea of God to
the impersonal concept of “the Ground of Being,” or “Being Itself,” pointed toward an understanding of the
pre-personal depths of the transcendence of Godhood.

God the Son

Dogmatic teachings about the figure of Jesus Christ go back to the faith experiences of the early church,
whose faithful recognized the incarnate and resurrected Son of God in the person of Jesus. The disciples’
testimony served as confirmation for them that Jesus really is the exalted Lord and Son of God, who sits at the
right hand of the Father and will return in glory to consummate the kingdom.

God the Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit is one of the most elusive and difficult themes in Christian theology, because it refers to one
of the three persons in the Godhead but does not evoke concrete images the way “Father” or “Creator” and
“Son” or “Redeemer” do. A characteristic view of the Holy Spirit is sketched in The Gospel According to John:
the outpouring of the Holy Spirit takes place only after the Ascension of Christ; it is the beginning of a new
time of salvation, in which the Holy Spirit is sent as the Paraclete (Counsellor) to the church remaining behind
in this world. The phenomena described in John, which are celebrated in the church at Pentecost, are
understood as the fulfillment of this promise. With this event (Pentecost), the church entered into the period of
the Holy Spirit.

The essence of the expression of the Holy Spirit is free spontaneity. The Spirit blows like the wind, “where it
wills,” but where it blows it establishes a firm norm by virtue of its divine authority. The spirit of prophecy and
the spirit of knowledge (gnōsis) are not subject to the will of the prophet; revelation of the Spirit in the
prophetic word or in the word of knowledge becomes Holy Scripture, which as “divinely breathed” “cannot be
broken” and lays claim to a lasting validity for the church.

The Spirit, which is expressed in the various officeholders of the church, likewise founds the authority
of ecclesiastical offices. The laying on of hands, as a sign of the transference of the Holy Spirit from one person
to another, is a characteristic ritual that visibly represents and guarantees the continuity of the working of the
Spirit in the officeholders chosen by the Apostles. It is, in other words, the sacramental sign of the succession
of the full power of spiritual authority of bishops and priests. The Holy Spirit also creates the sacraments and
guarantees the constancy of their action in the church. All the expressions of church life—doctrine, office,
polity, sacraments, power to loosen and to bind, and prayer—are understood as endowed by the Spirit.

The Holy Spirit, however, is also the revolutionizing, freshly creating principle in church history. All the
reformational movements in church history, which broke with old institutions, have appealed to the authority of
the Holy Spirit. Opposition to the church—through appeal to the Holy Spirit—became noticeable for the first
time in Montanism, in the mid-2nd century. Montanus, a Phrygian prophet and charismatic leader, understood
himself and the prophetic movement sustained by him as the fulfillment of the promise of the coming of the
Paraclete. In the 13th century a spiritualistic countermovement against the institutional church gained attention
anew in Joachim of Fiore, who understood the history of salvation in terms of a continuing self-realization of
the divine Trinity in the three times of salvation: (1) the time of the Father, (2) the time of the Son, and (3) the
time of the Holy Spirit. He promised the speedy beginning of the period of the Holy Spirit, in which the
institutional papal church, with its sacraments and its revelation hardened in the letter of scripture, would be
replaced by a community of charismatic figures, filled with the Spirit, and by the time of “spiritual knowledge.”
This promise became the spiritual stimulus of a series of revolutionary movements within
the medieval church—e.g., the reform movement of the radical Franciscan spirituals. Their effects extended to
the Hussite reform movement led by Jan Hus in 15th-century Bohemia and to the 16th-century radical
reformer, Thomas Müntzer, who substantiated his revolution against the princes and clerical hierarchs with a
new outpouring of the Spirit. Quakerism represents the most radical mode of rejection—carried out in the name
of the freedom of the Holy Spirit—of all institutional forms, which are regarded as shackles and prisons of the
Holy Spirit. In the 20th century a revival of charismatic forms of Christianity, called Pentecostalism and the
charismatic movement, centred on the recovery of the experience of the Holy Spirit and necessitated some fresh
theological inquiry about the subject.

The Holy Trinity

The central Christian affirmations about God are condensed and focused in the classic doctrine of the Trinity,
which has its ultimate foundation in the special religious experience of the Christians in the first communities.
This basis of experience is older than the doctrine of the Trinity. It consisted of the fact that God came to meet
Christians in a threefold figure: (1) as Creator, Lord of the history of salvation, Father, and Judge, as revealed
in the Old Testament; (2) as the Lord who, in the figure of Jesus Christ, lived among human beings and was
present in their midst as the “Resurrected One”; and (3) as the Holy Spirit, whom they experienced as the
power of the new life, the miraculous potency of the Kingdom of God. The question as to how to reconcile the
encounter with God in this threefold figure with faith in the oneness of God, which was the Jews’ and
Christians’ characteristic mark of distinction from paganism, agitated the piety of ancient Christendom in the
deepest way. In the course of history, it also provided the strongest impetus for a speculative theology, which
inspired Western metaphysics for many centuries. In the first two centuries of the Christian Era, however, a
series of different answers to this question developed.

The diversity in interpretation of the Trinity was conditioned especially through the understanding of the
figure of Jesus Christ. According to the theology of The Gospel According to John, the divinity of Jesus
Christ constituted the departure point for understanding his person and efficacy. The Gospel According to Mark,
however, did not proceed from a theology of incarnation but instead understood the baptism of Jesus Christ as
the adoption of the man Jesus Christ into the Sonship of God, accomplished through the descent of the Holy
Spirit. The situation became further aggravated by the conceptions of the special personal character of
the manifestation of God developed by way of the historical figure of Jesus Christ; the Holy Spirit was viewed
not as a personal figure but rather as a power and appeared graphically only in the form of the dove and thus
receded, to a large extent, in the Trinitarian speculation.

Religious images are an important aspect in every Christian’s daily life. They bring meaning to their lives
because they show their religion to others and remind them of their faith every day of their life. The main
reason Christians find religious images meaningful is because they help them to remember their faith daily, and
they protect them in their homes and in their journeys through life. From the beginning of time, Christian
images have been used to reach into culture in order to make the Christian message meaningful for not only
Christians, but for diverse peoples and cultures.
 There are several pictures that portrayed the Christian religion back then and continue to portray it now. One
of these pictures is the Head of Christ. The Head of Christ is a picture of Jesus’ head. Christians usually hang
this picture in their dining room to make it known to guests that they are a Christian family and that Christ is
always welcome at their table. It is usually placed at the head of the table to show that Christ is the ultimate
head of their dining table. Another picture that is used to show Christianity to others is the picture of the lamb
that has his blood pouring into a cup to show that Jesus gave his blood for us. This image is a great example of
figurative language. The dictionary definition of figurative is: departing from a literal use of words;
metaphorical. Figurative language is used in religion all the time. Religious metaphors are also used in
describing Christianity. Metaphors help us to articulate experiences that defy everyday language. They are used
to explain activities that happen throughout the day that cannot be described using regular words.

These activities need to be described using metaphors and comparisons in order to be understood by outsiders.
Metaphors also make the unknown familiar by creating a bridge that relates the known and unknown. By using
metaphors to describe experiences, outsiders can have their eyes opened to the unknown and they will be able
to understand the religion better if they can see it through a comparison. Metaphors are also a lens through
which we can view mystery and they help us grasp ultimate order and meaning. Metaphors are used as a lens
because the help us to focus on what we really need to learn. Metaphors also help us represent the ideals and
aspirations of ourselves and our communities, while also fostering spiritual growth. They help foster spiritual
growth because they open a door into the religion and they enable us to understand the religion deeper, which
fosters spiritual growth. The last work that is done by religious metaphors is building connections between
persons and among communities. Metaphors relate certain aspects of life to religion and help create a bond
between members of the community. One metaphor that is very important to Christianity is the photo of Our
Lady of Guadalupe. She is important to the Mexican Christians because she represents them and how they were
being treated by the Spaniards. The Spaniards wanted to share a religion with the Mexicans, but they were
raping and disrespecting their women, so the Mexicans did not want anything to do with the Spaniards. Our
Lady of Guadalupe closed the gap between the two peoples because she was not European, she was a victim of
rape and could understand what the women were going through, she knew what it was like to be pregnant out
of wedlock.

She had an aura around her that portrayed Aztec religion, she enabled them to grow in their faith, and she was
not dressed fancy like all the other photos of religious people. She was dressed in clothes that looked like the
material a potato sack was made out of, and that comforted them because they could relate more to her because
she looked like them, based on what she was wearing. The specific picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe was a
very important religious image or object in their lives. My religious object is associated with the ritual of prayer,
mostly. It is a cross that is found on the wall of our dining room. It is associated with prayer, along with a bible
usually. The cross is about a foot long, weighs about 5 pounds, and is brown. It is made of metal, and the
making of it is not part of a ritual. The object is either held between the hands during prayer or looked at during
prayer. The person performing the ritual usually looks at the cross before and after the ritual, to make sure that
it is in their brain that they are praying to God.

The cross is in the custody of me, and it is kept on the wall of the dining room. There are not really any uses
that would profane it, besides throwing it around and disrespecting it. It does not have to be in one particular
position. It could be hanging on the wall or sitting on a dresser. It just needs to be in plain sight of the person
using it. The object symbolizes Jesus dying on the cross for our sins, and it also symbolizes the relationship
between us and God, and us and the others around us. The object became special because of Jesus being nailed
to the cross by Pontius Pilot, and dying for our sins by hanging on the cross.
 The story that is told about the cross is Jesus being forced to carry the cross up a mountain, and then being
nailed to it, after being beaten and scorned by the Romans. They shoved a crown of thorns into his head,
whipped him, and pierced his side with a sword. After beating him, they nailed him to the cross in between two
criminals. If it were missing, there would not be anything to remind the people about their faith or whom they
are praying to. The power is resident in the object. It is always there, no matter what you do with it or where
you place it. The power within the object is personified. It represents Jesus. The object does not have a specific
name, and its efficacy does not require the presence of other objects. The cross is valued more for what it
means, rather than what it does. The object is never considered dangerous. The object could be considered
valuable, but not to outsiders because they do not understand the meaning and importance of the object. The
object could be inherited, given away, replaced, or sold. The cross can be found in a lot of different places. The
object could be viewed as a work of art, but only to certain people who understand the meaning of it. It does
not have a “home spot”. It is worn a lot as jewelry. It can be found on necklaces, earrings, bracelets, and rings.
Many people get the cross tattooed on their body in order to have a permanent reminder of their faith and what
Jesus did for them on the cross. The placement of the object in the home or on your body has a different
meaning depending where it is found. David Morgan did research on the different religious objects found in the
different rooms of the home. There are several different reasons that a religious object could be found in the
bedroom, dining room, living room, entranceway, or next to family portraits. Our object could be found in any
of these rooms, so we will discuss what it would mean in each separate room of the home.

If the cross is found in the bedroom, it is to give comfort and protection to the person sleeping in the room. It
creates a rhythm for daily religious life because the person wakes up looking at that particular religious image
every day. It is used to start your day with Jesus and end your day with Jesus. Another positive thing that
comes with having a religious image in the bedroom is that the person who lives in that room could have their
prayer life or devotional life strengthened by having that reminder everyday.

If the cross is found in the dining room, it shows guests that the family they are visiting is a Christian family.
It communicates religious beliefs to others, and shows that Jesus is important in their lives. In the dining room,
it protects the family while they eat. Normally, the religious image is placed at the head of the table to show
that Jesus is the ultimate head of the family, even though the father of the family sits at the head of the table.
David Morgan’s research showed that having the image in the room made the family members more respectful
of each other because they were in the presence of Christ. The cross could also be found in the living room. If it
is in the living room, it is used to show the family Christian identity. Some families place their religious object
above the fireplace, and use that location to be able to have devotion or pray around it as a family. Wealthier
families had parlors in their houses, and they often had religious images in their parlors, but they were mainly
to show their class status, instead of portraying their faith. They bought expensive paintings and images that
were not printed more than once, to show how wealthy they are.

The images found in the living room are cheaper and mass-produced images. They are used to show their
religious identity instead of their class identity. The cross can be found in the entrance hall as well. This is
mainly to protect the members of the home as they are leaving and to make sure they take Christ with them
when they leave the house. When the members of the home come back inside, the image is there to remind
them that they are under the protection of Christ while they are inside the house.
 One specific reason to have a religious image in the entrance hall is to show anyone that comes to the door
that this is a Christian family. It can make unwanted guests go away, such as thieves or people who are trying
to convince you to be Christian. If the cross is found next to a family portrait, it is used to show that the family
is a Christian family. It is also used to portray the fact that Christianity is intergenerational in this specific
family. Other reasons to place a cross next to a family portrait is to have stability in the family, to have a highly
mobile generation, and to show Christian identity. Christian objects and activities are key things that strengthen
faith. Many people do not talk about what they believe, but they always act on their beliefs. People need several
things to be engaged in a topic. If we can see a religious image, our senses are involved and we instantly
become more engaged. Objects trigger memories, and that will also cause us to be more engaged. Having
religious objects in the home makes it so the home is the key sacred sight in members of the family’s eyes.
Religious objects force us to be engaged in religion because they force us to see the meaning behind images.

Christianity and world religions

The global spread of Christianity through the activity of European and American churches in the 18th, 19th,
and 20th centuries brought it into contact with all other existing religions. Meanwhile, since the beginning of
the 19th century, the close connection between Christian world missions and political, economic, technical, and
cultural expansion was, at the same time, loosened. Meanwhile, as the study of religion emerged as an
academic discipline, scholarship on non-Christian and non-Western religious traditions developed.
Philosophers and writers in both Europe and the United States (particularly the New
England Transcendentalists) drew from an increasing body of scholarly and missionary writing on Indian and
Chinese traditions, incorporating some Eastern ideas—or at least their interpretations of them—into their
own idiosyncratic religious visions of a reformed or reinvigorated Christianity. The World Parliament of
Religions, held at the World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893, increased the visibility in the West of
traditions from South and East Asia in particular.

After World War II the former mission churches were transformed into independent churches in the
newly autonomous Asian and African states. The concern for responsible cooperation between the members of
Christian minority churches and their non-Christian fellow citizens became more urgent with a renaissance of
the Asian higher religions in numerous Asian states.

Missionaries of Asian world religions moved into Europe, the Americas, and Australia.
Numerous Vedanta centres were established to introduce Hindu teachings within the framework of the
Ramakrishna and Vivekananda missions. In the United States the passage of the Immigration and Nationality
Act of 1965 dramatically increased the number of legal immigrants from East, Southeast, and South Asia, the
vast majority of whom were not Christians. In that year the Hare Krishna movement (formally the International
Society for Krishna Consciousness [ISKCON]) was founded in the United States, attracting followers to its
version of Vaishnavism, one of the main branches of Hinduism. Followers of South
Asian Theravada Buddhism; Mahayana Buddhism, particularly that of Japan (largely Pure
Land, Nichiren [especially Sōka-gakkai], and Zen); and Tibetan Vajrayana (Tantric) Buddhism founded
temples (some of which were called “churches”), meditation centres, community centres, and other spiritual
retreats. This influence penetrated Europe and North America on several fronts, whether in the form of a
spontaneously received flow of religious ideas and methods of meditation through literature and philosophy,
through developments in psychology and psychotherapy, or through institutions within which individuals could
develop a personal practice of meditation and participate in the life of the sangha (community). As a result,
Christianity in the latter part of the 20th century found itself forced to enter into a factual discussion with
non-Christian religions.
 There has also been a general transformation of religious consciousness in the West since the middle of the
19th century. Until about 1900, intimate knowledge of non-Western world religions was still the privilege of a
few specialists. During the 20th century, however, a wide range of people studied translations of source
materials from the non-Christian religions. The dissemination of the religious art of India and East Asia through
touring exhibitions and the prominence of the 14th Dalai Lama as a political and religious figure have created a
new attitude toward the other religions in the broad public of Europe and North America. In recognition of this
fact, numerous Christian institutions for the study of non-Christian religions were founded: e.g., in Bengaluru
(Bangalore), India; in Yangon, Myanmar (Rangoon, Burma); in Bangkok, Thailand; in Kyōto, Japan; and
in Hong Kong, China.

The readiness of encounter or even cooperation of Christianity with non-Christian religions is a phenomenon
of modern times. Until the 18th century, Christians showed little inclination to engage in a serious study of
other religions. Even though contacts with Islam had existed since its founding, the first translation of
the Qurʾān (the Islamic holy book) was issued only in 1141 in Toledo by Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny.
Four hundred years later, in 1542/43, Theodor Bibliander, a theologian and successor of the Swiss
reformer Zwingli, edited the translation of the Qurʾān by Peter the Venerable. He was subsequently arrested,
and he and his publisher could be freed only through the intervention of Luther.

Christian exposure to Asian religions also was delayed. Although the name Buddha is mentioned for the first
time in Christian literature—and there only once—by St. Clement of Alexandria about 200 CE, it did not
appear again for some 1,300 years. Pali, the language of the Theravada Buddhist canon (see also Pali literature),
remained unknown in the West until the early 19th century, when the modern Western study of Buddhism
began.

The reasons for such reticence toward contact with foreign religions were twofold: (1) The ancient church was
significantly influenced by the Jewish attitude toward contemporary pagan religions. Like Judaism, it viewed
the pagan gods as “nothings” next to the true God; they were offsprings of human error that were considered to
be identical with the wooden, stone, or bronze images that were made by humans. (2) Beside this, there was the
tendency to identify the pagan gods as evil demonic forces engaged in combat with the true God. The
conclusion of the history of salvation, according to the Christian understanding, was to be a final struggle
between Christ and his church on one side and Antichrist and his minions on the other, culminating with the
victory of Christ.

Christianity faced greater challenges when it encountered Islam and the religions of East Asia. When Islam
was founded in the 7th century, it considered the revelations of the Prophet Muhammad to be superior to those
of the Old and New Testaments. Christianity also fought Islam as a Christian heresy and saw it as the
fulfillment of the eschatological prophecies of the Apocalypse concerning the coming of the “false prophet,” as
portrayed in the Revelation to John. The religious and political competition between Christianity and Islam led
to the Crusades, which influenced the self-consciousness of Western Christianity in the Middle Ages and later
centuries. In China and Japan, however, missionaries saw themselves forced into an argument
with indigenous religions that could be carried on only with intellectual weapons. The old Logos theory
prevailed in a new form founded on natural law, particularly among the Jesuit theologians who worked at the
Chinese emperor’s court in Beijing. The Jesuits also sought to adapt indigenous religious traditions to Christian
rituals but were forbidden from doing so by the pope during the Chinese Rites Controversy.

Philosophical and cultural developments during the Enlightenment brought changes in the understanding of
Christianity and other world religions. During the Enlightenment the existence of the plurality of world
religions was recognized by the educated in Europe, partly—as in the case of the German philosopher Gottfried
Wilhelm Leibniz—in immediate connection with the theories of natural law of the Jesuit missionaries in China.
Only in the philosophy of the Enlightenment was the demand of tolerance, which thus far in Christian Europe
had been applied solely to the followers of another Christian denomination, extended to include the followers
of different religions.

Some missionaries of the late 18th and19th centuries, however, ignored this knowledge or consciously fought
against it. Simple lay Christianity of revivalist congregations demanded that a missionary denounce all pagan
“idolatry.” The spiritual and intellectual argument with non-Christian world religions simply did not exist for
this simplified theology, and in this view a real encounter of Christianity with world religions did not, on the
whole, occur in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Contemporary views

The 20th century experienced an explosion of publicly available information concerning the wider religious
life of humanity, as a result of which the older Western assumption of the manifest superiority of Christianity
ceased to be plausible for many Christians. Early 20th-century thinkers such as Rudolf Otto, who saw religion
throughout the world as a response to the Holy (or the Sacred), and Ernst Troeltsch, who showed that,
socioculturally, Christianity is one of a number of comparable traditions, opened up new ways of regarding the
other major religions.

During the 20th century most Christians adopted one of three main points of view. According to exclusivism,
there is salvation only for Christians. This theology underlay much of the history outlined above, expressed
both in the Roman Catholic dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus (“outside the church no salvation”) and in the
assumption of the 18th- and 19th-century Protestant missionary movements. The exclusivist outlook was
eroded within advanced Roman Catholic thinking in the decades leading up to the Second Vatican Council and
was finally abandoned in the council’s pronouncements. The pope St. John Paul II’s outreach to the world’s
religions may be seen as the practical application of the decisions of Vatican II. Within Protestant Christianity
there is no comparable central authority, but most Protestant theologians, except within the
extreme fundamentalist constituencies, have also moved away from the exclusivist position.

Since the mid-20th century many Roman Catholics and Protestants have moved toward inclusivism—the view
that, although salvation is by definition Christian, brought about by the atoning work of Christ, it is
nevertheless available in principle to all human beings, whether Christian or not. The Roman Catholic
theologian Karl Rahner expressed the inclusivist view by saying that good and devout people of other faiths
may, even without knowing it, be regarded as “anonymous Christians.” Others have expressed in different
ways the thought that non-Christians also are included within the universal scope of Christ’s salvific work and
their religions fulfilled in Christianity.

The third position, which appealed to a number of individual theologians, was pluralism. According to this
view, the great world faiths, including Christianity, are valid spheres of a salvation that takes characteristically
different forms within each—though consisting in each case in the transformation of human existence from
self-centredness to a new orientation toward the Divine Reality. The other religions are not
secondary contexts of Christian redemption but independent paths of salvation. The pluralist position is
controversial in Christian theology, because it affects the ways in which the doctrines of the person of
Christ, atonement, and the Trinity are formulated.
 Christians engage in dialogue with the other major religions through the World Council of Churches’
organization on Dialogue with People of Living Faiths and Ideologies and through the Vatican’s Secretariat for
Non-Christians, as well as through a variety of extra-ecclesiastical associations, such as the World Congress of
Faiths. There is a National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States, and practically every U.S. state
has its own similar state-level organization. A multitude of interreligious encounters have taken place
throughout the world, many initiated by Christian and others by non-Christian individuals and groups. A
Parliament of the World’s Religions was held in Chicago in 1993 to celebrate the centennial anniversary of the
original parliament; it has been held every three or four years since then.

In conclucion, Europeans and North Americans have begun to realize the importance of world Christianity.
This realization is transforming our understanding of Christian history, the future of Christianity, and the role
it has played in shaping the world. Christianity has endured longer than the greatest empires and had more
influence than the grandest cultural achievements. Its texts still shape lives and many of its institutions still
function. The Conclusion shows that a major reason for this success is the religion’s variety and potential for
adaptation. The confluences and divergences between Church, Biblical, and Mystical Christianity are one
aspect of Christian history, their interrelations with varied social contexts the other. In our contemporary
world, Christianity is as vibrant—and as deeply divided—as at any point in its history. Attempts to forge
unity between its various parts have largely been abandoned. Only in christianity worldview are our needs,
desires, problems and solutions met. Only in christianity do we have a man named JESUS who was fulfilled
prophecies and performs miracle, Only in christianity do we have have eyewitness’s to the most amazing
event in human history (the resurrection) proving his claim to be divine. Christianity is the only form in
which the Creator has made himself. Faith in God has to make sense and stand up to investigation. This does
not mean that we have to be able to understand God, but if we believe that God made this world then we
should not be afraid to engage in debate with science, history or whatever. Faith should make sense of this
world in which we live and enable us to live in a better way. Yet the purpose of faith in God is to trust and
serve God to know his will and love him. Being a Christian will not be the end of all your problems, even
Jesus found himself killed and hated. However I do believe that faith in God causes us to think and behave in
ways that work with the grain of the universe. We were made to know and serve God and there can be no
better way for us to live than what we were made for. To ignore God is like running a car on the petrol, when
we open ourselves to God’s ideas then it is like suddenly finding the right fuel. We might still have to go up
mountains but we know that God is with us co-operating with us no matter what problems we face. For me,
the different religions are beautiful flowers from the same garden, or they are branches of the same majestic
tree. Therefore, they are equally true, though being received and interpreted through human instruments
equally imperfect.