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WORLD
WIDE LINKS TO RELIGION
IN VARIOUS LANGUAGES
Did you know that Santa
Claus (or St. Nicholas, was born and lived in Turkey? Born in Patara near
the close of the third century A.D., Nicholas secretly began giving gifts to
the children and the poor. After moving to Demre (Myra) Nicholas continued
his secret gift giving
Did you know that Mary
(the mother of Jesus) is believed by many to have died in Turkey, near Efes
(formerly Ephesus, a well-known place to those who've read the New
Testament)? John is said to have brought Mary to this location after the
crucifixion of Christ
The Seven Churches of the
Revelation of John are located in Turkey
Mt. Ararat, where
Noah is said to have stepped off the Ark after the Deluge, is in Turkey.
The Church of the Holy Wisdom, the Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, Built by
the Emperor Justinian and inaugurated in 537 it remained the single most
important Christian church until the building of St. Peter’s Basillica in
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Christianity
Christianity is a
monotheistic
religion, encompassing many religious traditions that trace
their origins to
Jesus Christ. Christians accept that Jesus is the son of
God, and
the Lord and sole Savior of all humanity as the Jewish
Messiah. With over two billion adherents, Christianity is the
world's largest religion.
History
Christianity originated in the first century AD. According to
Acts 11:19 and 11:26 in the Christian
New Testament, Jesus's followers were first called Christians by
non-Christians in the city of
Antioch, where they had fled and settled after early
persecutions in
Palestine. After
Jesus'
death, early Christian doctrine was taught by
Paul of Tarsus and the other
apostles. The term Christian derives from
Greek Χριστός Khristós (Christ).
Relative peace and good roads throughout the
Roman Empire allowed Christianity to spread quickly over the
next three centuries, but more important was the conversion of
Emperor
Constantine in
312.
Combined with his
Edict of Milan in
313,
Constantine's conversion effectively made Christianity the favored
religion of the Empire, and he organized the first of several
ecumenical councils for resolving doctrinal issues. Between the
first century and 1050,
missionaries from
Constantinople,
Ireland (from about 450), and elsewhere evangelized Christianity
throughout
Europe,
Asia and Africa, translating the
Bible
into local languages and sometimes incorporating elements of native
culture into Christian custom (see for example
Easter:
Symbolism of Easter,
Halloween: Alleged Christianizing the Celtic Samhain).
In the second millennium, Christianity spread worldwide but
experienced accelerating fragmentation. The
Great Schism of 1054 split the universal Church into Western and
Eastern branches: the Western branch gradually consolidated into the
Catholic Church under the central authority of Rome (see
Catholicism), while the Eastern branch became known as the
Orthodox Church with the
Patriarch of Constantinople as the most honored bishop among its
autocephalous churches (see
Eastern Orthodoxy). In the European
Reformation of the 1520s,
Protestants and numerous similar churches arose in objection to
perceived abuses of growing Papal authority and to perceived
doctrinal error and novelty in Rome. This sparked a vigorous
struggle for the hearts and minds of Europeans.
Protestants arrived in
North America (and later
Australasia) with European settlement, but lacking any central
authority in either Rome or national governments, they worshipped in
hundreds, and later thousands, of independent denominations (see
Restorationism). Christianity was taken to
South America and
Africa
by European colonists, especially in the 16th to 19th centuries. In
the 19th and 20th centuries many Christian-dominated nations,
especially in Europe, became more secular (and most
communist states were governed by avowed
atheists, though only Albania was officially atheist). Adherents
to
Fundamentalist Christianity, particularly in the
United States, also perceived threats from new scientific
findings about the
age of the Earth and
evolution of life.
For more, see:
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