History of Christianity
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The history of Christianity concerns the Christian religion, its followers and the Church with its various denominations, from the first century to the present.
Christianity emerged in the Levant (now Palestine and Israel) in the mid-1st century CE. Christianity spread initially from Jerusalem throughout the Near East, into places such as Syria, Assyria, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, Asia Minor, Jordan and Egypt. In the 4th century it was successively adopted as the state religion by Armenia in 301, Georgia in 319, and the Roman Empire in 380.
Christianity became common to all of Europe in the Middle Ages and expanded throughout the world during Europe's Age of Exploration from the Renaissance onwards to become the world's largest religion. Today there are 2 billion Christians, one third of humanity.<ref>BBC Documentary: A History of Christianity by Diarmaid MacCulloch, Oxford University</ref> Christianity divided into the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Church in the Great Schism of 1054. The Protestant Reformation split the Roman Catholic Church into many different denominations.
See also
- Christianity and Paganism
- History of Christian theology
- History of the Roman Catholic Church
- History of the Eastern Orthodox Church
- History of Protestantism
- History of Oriental Orthodoxy
- Christianization
- Timeline of Christianity
- Roman Catholic Church
- Eastern Orthodox Church
- Protestantism
- Rise of Christianity during the Fall of Rome
- Timeline of the Roman Catholic Church
- Restoration Movement
- Timeline of Christian missions
