Day 15: Christianity—An Overview

Okay, so I probably should have given you this basic intro to Christianity about two weeks ago, but between the trip to Texas and the “plague,” things just didn’t work out like I planned. This won’t be exciting—dry recountings of general religious history rarely are—but let’s suck it up, okay? A little knowledge won’t kill us.

Christianity started off as nothing more than a tiny sect of believers in Palestine during the first century A.D. (I would go with the more politically correct “C.E.”, but hey, we’re talking about Jesus here, so I think it’s appropriate to do this old school, don’t you?).

In the beginning, Christianity was a type of Judaism. After all, Jesus himself was a devout Jew. Over time, though, the notion that Jesus was the Messiah promised to the Jews in the Old Testament led the early Christians to split from other Jews and begin their own, unique faith.

The Romans—who were pretty much in charge of a big chunk of the world at the time—weren’t thrilled with the Christians, whom they viewed as disloyal to the Roman Empire and possibly immoral. So the Romans did what any reasonable person would do when confronted by somebody they don’t like: They started killing them.

That didn’t stop the Christians, though. They just hid out and kept up with their new religion.

It was pretty easy for a lot of them to stay below the radar anyway, since most early Christians weren’t exactly part of high society. Most of them were members of the poor, lower classes, the kind of people who didn’t get a whole lot of respect or attention to begin with—which is probably why Christianity, with its emphasis on love and kindness to everyone and inner spirituality, was so appealing to them.

It was only when the Roman emperor Constantine lifted the decrees that allowed Christians to be persecuted that upper-class people started taking a serious look at the new religion. And apparently, they liked what they saw, because Christianity went on to become one of the world’s biggest religions—with perhaps more adherents throughout history than any other faith.

As Rome grew weaker politically, the Christian Church—and the popes who ran it—were right there to step in and fill the power vacuum. By the time Christianity was a thousand years old, it had become the foremost social and political force in the Western world. Not bad for a fringe movement started by a wandering Jewish carpenter.

The Church wasn’t as cohesive as it was powerful, however, and in 1054, it split in two. In a great schism, the Western (Latin-speaking) church, based in Rome, broke off ties with the Eastern (Greek-speaking) church of the East, where the Byzantine Empire was in charge. From that division, Christianity got its first two branches: the Western, or Roman Catholic, Church and the Eastern, or Orthodox, Church.

But that wasn’t the end of Christianity’s development or its problems—not by a long shot. By the early 16^th century, a lot of people were getting fed up with the way the Catholic Church was handling things. The leaders of the Church seemed to be less concerned with bringing people closer to God and more concerned with making money, putting their friends and family members in cushy church jobs, and having not-so-secret love affairs, despite the fact that they were supposed to have taken vows of celibacy.

So a few scholars—notably Martin Luther and later John Calvin—demanded reform, launching what became known as (surprise, surprise!) the Reformation. Although most of the early reformers, including Luther, didn’t originally intend to break away from the Catholic Church and start a new faith, resistance from the Church and (perhaps) their own stubbornness eventually led to a formal split.

And so, the Protestant branch of Christianity was born—and it became by far the most diverse of the three forms of Christianity. From what started as a push for fewer abuses and less corruption among church officials grew a whole slew of new churches, all with their own take on the basic beliefs of Christianity.

Protestants, in general, are different from Catholics and Orthodox Christians in a few key ways: They believe that all people—not just priests—can communicate directly with God. They believe that the Bible is a book of “received truth,” given to us by God, and as a result, it is infallible. They also believe that Christians obtain salvation simply by having faith in Jesus, not necessarily by doing good deeds or by getting forgiveness for their sins from a priest. In addition, most Protestants think it’s fine for a priest (or minister or whatever they call their clergy members) to get married—celibacy is not a prerequisite.

There are so many different Protestant traditions that I won’t attempt to cover them all here—at least not today (go ahead and thank me now if you want). From Anglicans to Methodists to Baptists, Protestantism has something for just about every taste.

At the heart of things, though, all Protestants—and Catholics and members of the Orthodox Church—believe the same basic thing: that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, that he came to Earth to preach a better way for people to live, and that he died and rose from the dead to redeem human beings from their sins and to make it possible for people to join him in heaven. That’s simple enough, right?

So I’ll stop torturing you with today’s miniature history lesson and tomorrow we can find something a little more entertaining to talk about—I hope.