Portal:Christianity

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The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, the holiest Christian site

Christianity (/ˌkrɪst(ʃ)iˈænɪti/) is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.4 billion followers, comprising around 31.2% of the world population. Its adherents, known as Christians, are estimated to make up a majority of the population in 157 countries and territories. Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, whose coming as the Messiah was prophesied in the Hebrew Bible (called the Old Testament in Christianity) and chronicled in the New Testament.

Christianity remains culturally diverse in its Western and Eastern branches, and doctrinally diverse concerning justification and the nature of salvation, ecclesiology, ordination, and Christology. The creeds of various Christian denominations generally hold in common Jesus as the Son of God—the Logos incarnated—who ministered, suffered, and died on a cross, but rose from the dead for the salvation of humankind; and referred to as the gospel, meaning the "good news". The four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John describe Jesus's life and teachings, with the Old Testament as the gospels' respected background.

The six major branches of Christianity are Roman Catholicism (1.3 billion people), Protestantism (1.17 billion), Eastern Orthodoxy (230 million), Oriental Orthodoxy (60 million), Restorationism (35 million), and the Church of the East (600 thousand). Smaller church communities number in the thousands despite efforts toward unity (ecumenism). In the West, Christianity remains the dominant religion even with a decline in adherence, with about 70% of that population identifying as Christian. Christianity is growing in Africa and Asia, the world's most populous continents. Christians remain greatly persecuted in many regions of the world, particularly in the Middle East, North Africa, East Asia, and South Asia. (Full article...)

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The Gregorian mission or Augustinian mission was a Christian mission sent by Pope Gregory the Great in 596 to convert Britain's Anglo-Saxons. The mission was headed by Augustine of Canterbury. By the time of the death of the last missionary in 653, the mission had established Christianity among the southern Anglo-Saxons. Along with the Irish and Frankish missions it converted Anglo-Saxons in other parts of Britain as well and influenced the Hiberno-Scottish missions to continental Europe.

When the Roman Empire recalled its legions from the province of Britannia in 410, parts of the island had already been settled by pagan Germanic tribes who, later in the century, appear to have taken control of Kent and other coastal regions no longer defended by the Roman Empire. In the late 6th century Pope Gregory sent a group of missionaries to Kent to convert Æthelberht, King of Kent, whose wife, Bertha of Kent, was a Frankish princess and practising Christian. Augustine had been the prior of Gregory's own monastery in Rome and Gregory prepared the way for the mission by soliciting aid from the Frankish rulers along Augustine's route. In 597, the forty missionaries arrived in Kent and were permitted by Æthelberht to preach freely in his capital of Canterbury. (Full article...)

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The following are images from various Christianity-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Atypical depiction The Son is identified by a lamb, the Father an Eye of Providence, and the Spirit a dove; the painting is by Fridolin Leiber (d. 1912). (from Trinity)
Image 2A Greek fresco of Athanasius of Alexandria, the chief architect of the Nicene Creed, formulated at Nicaea (from Trinity)
Image 3Depiction of Trinity from Saint Denis Basilica in Paris (12th century) (from Trinity)
Image 4Depictions of the Resurrection of Jesus are central to Christian art (Resurrection of Christ by Raphael, 1499–1502). (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 5First page of Mark, by Sargis Pitsak (14th century): "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God". (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 6Jesus' Farewell Discourse to his eleven remaining disciples after the Last Supper, from the Maestà by Duccio (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 7Pope Clement I prays to the Trinity, in a typical post-Renaissance depiction by Gianbattista Tiepolo (d. 1770) (from Trinity)
Image 8A 'Jesus Saves' neon cross sign outside of a Protestant church in New York City (from Salvation in Christianity)
Image 9The Father, The Holy Spirit, and Christ crucified, depicted in a Welsh manuscript c. 1390–1400 (from Trinity)
Image 10The Adoration of the Trinity by Albrecht Dürer (1511)
From top to bottom: Holy Spirit (dove), God the Father and Christ on the cross (from Trinity)
Image 11Representation of the Trinity in the form of the mercy seat (epitaph from 1549) (from Trinity)
Image 12Russian icon of the Old Testament Trinity by Andrei Rublev, between 1408 and 1425 (from Trinity)
Image 13Detail of the earliest known artwork of the Trinity, the Dogmatic or Trinity Sarcophagus, c. 350 (Vatican Museums)
Three similar figures, representing the Trinity, are involved in the creation of Eve, whose much smaller figure is cut off at lower right; to her right, Adam lies on the ground (from Trinity)
Image 14A depiction of the Council of Nicaea in AD 325, at which the Deity of Christ was declared orthodox and Arianism condemned (from Trinity)
Image 15Nativity at Night, by Geertgen tot Sint Jans, c. 1490 (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 1613th-century depiction of the Trinity from a Roman de la Rose manuscript (from Trinity)
Image 17The Glory of Saint Nicholas, by António Manuel da Fonseca; Nicholas of Myra, a participant in the First Council of Nicaea, achieves the beatific vision in the shape of the Holy Trinity. (from Trinity)
Image 18The Baptism of Christ, by Piero della Francesca, 15th century (from Trinity)
Image 19The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is a holy site in Jerusalem believed by most Christians to encompass the tomb of Jesus and the site of his crucifixion and resurrection. (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 20A Gospel of John, 1056 (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 21The Communion of the Apostles, by Luca Signorelli, 1512 (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 22God the Father (top), the Holy Spirit (a dove), and the child Jesus, painting by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (d. 1682) (from Trinity)
Image 23The Holy Trinity in an angelic glory over a landscape, by Lucas Cranach the Elder (d. 1553) (from Trinity)
Image 24A compact diagram of the Trinity, known as the "Shield of Trinity". The Shield is generally not intended to be a schematic diagram of the structure of God, but it presents a series of statements about the correlation between the persons of the Trinity. (from Trinity)
Image 25The "Heavenly Trinity" joined to the "Earthly Trinity" through the Incarnation of the Son–The Heavenly and Earthly Trinities by Murillo (c. 1677) (from Trinity)
Image 26God in the person of the Son confronts Adam and Eve, by Master Bertram (d. c. 1415) (from Trinity)
Image 27The Good Samaritan is a painting by James Tissot. The Parable of the Good Samaritan is one of the parables of Jesus. (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 28Renaissance painting by Jerónimo Cosida depicting Jesus as a triple deity Inner text: The Father is God; the Son is God; the Holy Spirit is God (from Trinity)
Image 29God the Father (top), and the Holy Spirit (represented by a dove) depicted above Jesus Painting by Francesco Albani (d. 1660) (from Trinity)
Image 30Jesus healing the paralytic in The Pool by Palma il Giovane, 1592 (from Jesus in Christianity)

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St Mary's Church, Astbury, from the west

St Mary's Church is an Anglican parish church in the village of Newbold Astbury, Cheshire, England. It is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade I listed building, and its architecture has been praised by a number of writers.

It is possible that a church was present on the site in the Saxon era, although the earliest fabric in the church is Norman. The present ground plan was established in the 13th and 14th centuries, from which time the church's external appearance dates, apart from a major rebuilding in the later part of the 15th century, when the range of high windows or clerestory was added. All styles of English Gothic architecture, are represented in the church: Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular. During the English Civil War, a group of Roundheads stabled their horses in the church. In the 19th century the interior of the church was restored by George Gilbert Scott; some wall paintings were revealed, and stained glass was added. (Full article...)

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Credit: User:Dmitry Rozhkov

The Finding in the Temple, also called "Christ among the Doctors" or the Disputation (the usual names in art), was an episode in the early life of Jesus depicted in the Gospel of Luke. It is the only event of the later childhood of Jesus mentioned in a gospel.

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... that Jacobus Capitein, who was sold into slavery at either age 7 or 8, promoted proslavery arguments based on Christianity?
... that American religious speaker Ann Kiemel Anderson ran in two Boston Marathons and two Israel marathons near the Sea of Galilee to promote Christianity?
... that the earliest representation of the devil might be a mosaic in San Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna from the 6th century, in the form of a blue angel?
... that in the Book of Mormon, the city of Ammonihah kills Christians by fire as a deliberately twisted reference to a warning that spiritual death is like a "lake of fire and brimstone"?
... that the Kitab al-wadih bi-l-haqq is a critique of Islam written by a convert to Coptic Christianity during a period of persecution?
... that Herb Lusk retired from the National Football League at the age of 26 to become a minister?

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Selected scripture

“Don’t judge, so that you won’t be judged.
For with whatever judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with whatever measure you measure, it will be measured to you.
Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but don’t consider the beam that is in your own eye?
Or how will you tell your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye;’ and behold, the beam is in your own eye?
You hypocrite! First remove the beam out of your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother’s eye."

— The Mote and the Beam, Matthew 7:1-5, World English Bible

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