History & overview · every faith gets one
God became human, died under empire, and did not stay dead.
Faith in Jesus of Nazareth as the incarnation of God: crucified, risen, and returning. What began as a sect within Judaism became, within four centuries, the faith of the empire that executed its founder — today the largest religion on earth.
Jesus and the first communities
An itinerant teacher in Roman Judea announced the kingdom of God, gathered followers among fishermen and outcasts, and was executed as a rebel around 30 CE. His followers testified that he rose, and that testimony — not the ethics, which Judaism already held — became the founding claim. Paul of Tarsus carried the message to the gentiles, and within a generation the sect had communities around the eastern Mediterranean, held together by letters, shared meals, and a book still being written.
From persecution to empire
For three centuries Christians were an intermittently persecuted minority; then Constantine legalized the faith in 313, and by century's end it was the empire's religion. The councils — Nicaea above all — hammered doctrine into creeds: one God in three persons, Christ fully divine and fully human. The faith of the executed founder became the faith of the executing state, a tension the tradition has argued with ever since.
The great divisions
The church divided along the lines of the empire that carried it: East and West drifted for centuries and formally split in 1054 over authority and a single word in the creed. Five hundred years later Luther's protest against indulgences broke the Western church itself; the Reformation's principle — scripture over hierarchy — proved endlessly divisible, and Protestantism became a family of families. Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant remain the three great branches, with ancient Oriental churches beside them.
Texts and worship
The Bible binds Jewish scripture (the Old Testament) to the gospels and letters of the New — one story read as promise and fulfillment. Worship centers on word and sacrament: the reading and preaching of scripture, and the meal — Eucharist, Mass, communion — that reenacts the founder's last supper. What that meal is has been one of the tradition's sharpest internal arguments.
The modern era
Christianity is the largest religion on earth — roughly 2.4 billion people — and its center of gravity has moved decisively south: the typical Christian today is more likely in Lagos or São Paulo than in Rome or Geneva. Pentecostalism, barely a century old, is its fastest-growing current, while the old churches of Europe empty and the argument between literal and liberal readings runs through every branch.
The line
descent is public here — where it came from, what left itBranches:
The Church of the East — The church that went east when the empire went west. Oriental Orthodoxy — The first families of Christendom — parted at Chalcedon. Eastern Orthodoxy — The liturgy is heaven on earth; the goal is to become like God. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom — A Chinese monotheism that became a state, and then a war. La Luz del Mundo — A Mexican Restorationist Christian church centered on modern apostleship, baptism, and communal worship. The Unification Church (Family Federation) — Finish what the cross left undone — and do it through a family. The Family International — One law only — love — read out to its last consequence. The Twelve Tribes — The church in Acts, restarted — and everything in one purse. Shekinah Church — An independent Christian church centered on spiritual gifts, leadership, and salvation Remnant Fellowship Church — A Christian movement linking devotion, obedience and everyday self-control. Catholicism — One, holy, catholic, apostolic — with Peter's successor at the center.