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Jesus himself was a Jew, of the tribe of Judah and the house of King David. As such, he accepted and practiced the traditions of the religion known today as Judaism as it existed in his time and culture. Thus, modern Christians believe, as the ancient Jews did, that the universe, including mankind, was created and is controlled by an uncreated personal Being (God) to whom (which?) all human beings are personally accountable for their conduct. The nature of God, and the means and extent of His (Its?) interaction with mankind, distinguish individual Christian religions among themselves and from other religious traditions. Thus, Christianity, like Islam some 600 years later, can be considered an evolution of Jewish thought, belief, traditions, and values.
Eleven of his followers were close friends Jesus acquired during the years that he taught in Palestine. These eleven are known as Apostles. They are: Simon (whom he later named Peter, "The Rock"), his brother Andrew, the brothers James and John, Philip, Bartholomew, also known as Nathanael, Matthew, also known as Levi, Thomas the twin, James son of Alphaeus, Simon who was called the Zealot, and Judas (sometimes called Thaddius or Jude). There was a twelfth, Judas Iscariot, but he was the one who betrayed Jesus by selling him to the Romans. After Jesus' crucifixion, this Judas reportedly committed suicide.
The remaining eleven Apostles went around the Roman Empire, and possibly as far east as India, preaching the things that Jesus taught and converting some of the people from Greek and Roman (and Indian) religious beliefs. Where large numbers of people were converted, they established what today are called "dioceses," or territorial churches. Jesus and the Apostles were all Jews, so Jesus' teaching is an evolution of Judaism. Many Jews, as well as Greek and Roman gentiles, were converted to believe and practice the new Christian additions. Jews believe that God will someday send a prophet to restore the Jewish kingdom that was destroyed. Christians believe that Jesus is that prophet, but that the kingdom he claimed to have restored is the kingdom of heaven (Paradise), not one on earth. Muslims, however, regard Mohammed, not Jesus, as the last and final Prophet.
Two of the Apostles, a tax collector named Matthew and a young fisherman named John, wrote histories of the life and teachings of Jesus. Their books are known as the Gospels of Matthew and John, respectively. When John was an old man, he wrote another book about Jesus, God and Paradise, called Revelation. Another writer, Mark, was apparently a good friend of the Apostle Peter, and wrote the history of the life and teachings of Jesus that he learned from Peter. His book is called the Gospel of Mark. Finally, a pagan named Luke, probably a Greek physician, was converted to Christianity and wrote another history of the life and teachings of Jesus, known as the Gospel of Luke, for a friend of his named Theophilus. Luke also wrote a history of what the Apostles did to establish Christianity as a religion throughout the Roman Empire later on. This book is called "The Acts of the Apostles," or simply "Acts."
The fourteenth founder of the Christian religion is a very interesting Jewish philosopher named Saul of Tarsus. Saul realized that Christianity was a serious threat to Judaism, because the Apostles taught that Jesus was the prophet for whom the Jews had been waiting. Saul hated Christians, "entering house after house, dragging out men and women, and handing them over for imprisonment." He was instrumental in the death of the first Christian martyr, Stephen, who was stoned to death by the Jews for blasphemy while Saul looked on.
On the way to Damascus on one of his Christian hunts, Saul was knocked off his horse and struck blind. He had a vision in which he claimed he heard Jesus ask him why he (Saul) was persecuting him (Jesus). Saul was so overcome by this experience that he didn't eat or drink when he reached Damascus. There, a Christian named Ananias visited and cured him of his blindness. Saul was so overwhelmed by all this that he immediately converted to Christianity, changed his name to the more Roman-sounding "Paul," and began preaching the teachings of the Apostles to the Jews, and eventually to the pagans as well. He became such a fierce proponent of Christianity that the Apostles, who were initially afraid of him, eventually accepted him and even made him an honorary Apostle.
Paul was as good a preacher for Christianity as he had been against it before. He traveled all over Asia Minor, establishing dioceses in Greek and Roman cities, and writing letters, called Epistles, to the congregations he had established and some of the people he had left in charge of them. He achieved the truly remarkable feat of convincing pagan Greeks and Romans to accept Jewish philosophy and to worship the Jewish God without converting to Judaism. Paul was the first Christian theologian; Catholic Christians get most of their religious philosophy from him. Without the influence of Paul, Christianity may well have become no more than an obscure Jewish sect, instead of the most popular religion in the modern world!
The Apostles James, Peter, John and Jude also wrote Epistles to the congregations they established. In addition, an unknown writer wrote the Epistle known as "Hebrews." The four Gospels, Acts, the Epistles and Revelation are what is known as the "New Testament," the Christian Scriptures. Christians also accept the Jewish Scriptures, known as the "Old Testament." Together, the Old Testament and New Testament comprise the body of literature we call "The Bible." You can read more here.
There are 1455 places in the Koran, the Scripture of Islam, which say essentially the same thing or refer to statements in the Bible. There are 639 references to the Old Testament, which is not surprising, since much of the Koran is about people and events familiar to the Jews. However, there are also 659 references to the Gospels, which shows the similarity between the teaching of Jesus and the Prophet Mohammed. There are also 26 references to Acts, 108 to the Epistles, and 23 to Revelation.
Among the Apostles, Peter was the spokesman for the group. Jesus made him the official spokesman by promising that he would build his church on Peter, and gave Peter the "keys to the kingdom of heaven." As Christianity became more widespread and the Apostles died, the successors of Peter became known as "the Pope," and the successors of the Apostles were called "bishops." Throughout history, there have been thousands and thousands of bishops and about 266 popes. The last pope was the 16th one to take the name "Benedict," so he was known as Pope Benedict the Sixteenth" (Benedict XVI). The current pope, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, is the first one to take the name "Francis," so he is known simply as "Pope Francis." There is a bishop for every human habitation on earth. The bishop of the Diocese of Biloxi, where I live, is Bishop Louis F. Kihneman III. Most (or perhaps all) of Iran is in the Diocese of Tehran, the bishop of which (at this writing) is Bishop Ramzi Garmou.
From the very earliest times, the Apostles appointed men to help them teach and care for their followers. Along with the bishops, these men, known as priests and deacons, are collectively referred to as clergy. The clergy are believed to have special powers that allow them to conduct Christian ceremonies and forgive sins, and authority to preach the teachings of Jesus. There does not appear to be an equivalent to priests and deacons in Islam. A Jewish clergyman is known as a "kohen" (not a "rabbi," which is a teacher).
Since the time of Peter, the first pope, Christians regarded the bishops and priests as their teachers and rulers under the leadership of the pope. Whenever the bishops had questions about some Christian belief, they would get together and come to agreement about the matter in what are called "ecumenical councils." The first one, the First Council of Nicaea in 325, defined what Christians believed about the identity of Jesus. The last one (1962 - 1965), the Second Vatican Council, defined how Christianity fits into the modern world. All of them require the approval of the pope to be official and required Catholic belief.
Because Christianity arose at a time when Rome was the political center of the empire, Rome became the focus of Christian organization as well, and the popes initially established their residences there (The Pope lives there today). Initially the idol-worshipping Romans tortured and persecuted Christians, and all the Apostles except John were put to death for the "crime" of Christianity. However, Christianity became legal under the Christian Emperor Constantine in 313 (which allowed the meeting of the Council of Council of Nicaea which Constantine convened 12 years later in the town of Nicaea, 55 miles from his capital city of Constantinople), and became the official religion of the Roman Empire in 383 under the Emperor Theodosius I, the same year the first Christian bible, compiled by St. Jerome, was published under the direction of Pope Damasus I.
The Roman Empire became so large that the Emperor Diocletian divided it in two in 295 AD. The capital of the Western Empire was Rome, and the capital of the Eastern Empire was established by Constantine in 330 as Constantinople, now Istanbul. Barbarians invaded and destroyed Rome in 455, leaving the Eastern half as the surviving Roman Empire. The Barbarians eventually established an empire of their own in 962, called the "Holy Roman Empire," but it was essentially a collection of French, German and Italian states which, for a long time, did not even include Rome within its borders.
This division marked the first important division of Christianity, known as the "Great Schism." With the fall of Rome, the Western Empire became a collection of warring barbarian tribes that would eventually become the modern nations of Europe. The pope was for a long time the most effective civil ruler (much like the Ayatollah in Iran today), and thus became essentially a religious emperor of a barbarian empire in a time of ignorance known as the Dark Ages. Large areas of Europe became papal states, essentially owned by the pope. The Eastern empire, however, continued to flourish, and the bishops there began to feel that the pope was little more than a barbarian bishop presiding over the ragged remains of a dead empire. The leading bishops of the Eastern empire, called "Patriarchs," saw themselves as equal successors of Peter to the pope. In addition, the Western Christians spoke Latin, while the Eastern Christians spoke Greek, and some of the decisions of the ecumenical councils of the West were not widely accepted in the East.
Finally, in 1054, Roman delegates traveled to Istanbul to insist that Patriarch Michael I Cerularius recognize Pope Leo IX as his superior. The visit did not go well; they could have saved themselves the trip! Michael refused, and each side formally cursed the other. To make matters worse, the pope began to appoint new "loyal" bishops in the Eastern empire whose religious leader was Patriarch Michael. The two religious leaders thus became the heads of two different congregations of Christians. The ones loyal to the pope are called Catholics, while those loyal to the Patriarch are called Orthodox. Since there are a number of Patriarchs, there are a number of Orthodox churches as well. A friend of mine who lives in Moscow, Russia, is a member of the Russian Orthodox Church whose leader is the Patriarch of Moscow, Kirill I. Another friend, an American/Israeli Palestinian Arab Christian (!) is Greek Orthodox; her patriarch is Bartholomew I of Constantinople (Istanbul). There are various Orthodox dioceses in the United States, the bishops of which live here and whose patriarchs, like the pope, reside overseas.
Catholics see Orthodox as "split off" from the church Jesus built on Peter. Orthodox Christians see both sides as "separated." They regard the pope as "Patriarch of the West;" first, but equal to the other Patriarchs. Catholic belief and practices have evolved over the last 956 years, but the Orthodox churches feel that they cannot make any major changes unless they are "reunited" with their "separated (Catholic) brothers." To go to an Orthodox ceremony is to see Christian practices as they were a thousand years ago. The Armenian Orthodox Bishop of Tehran is Archbishop Sepuh Sargsyan, and his Patriarch is Aram I Keshishian, the Catholicos of Cilicia, who resides in Antelias, Lebanon.
The second great division of Christianity is known as the Protestant Reformation (1517 - 1648). The word "protestant" means one who opposes or protests against something. With a capital "P," it means one who opposes traditional Catholic belief and practices. The Reformation began with a trip to Rome by a very devout German priest and teacher, Martin Luther. Religion was big business in Rome at the time (much like it is in Mecca today), and the pious and scholarly Luther was shocked by the trinket sellers, carnival atmosphere, and selling of spiritual favors going on there. His reaction was something like, "This is not the religion that Jesus established!" His disdain for the abuses that had accumulated in the Catholic Church let him to reevaluate the things he himself believed. After much prayer, soul-searching and study, in 1517 Luther published 95 theses (protests) ("The Ninety-Five Theses") regarding the established teachings of the Catholic Church.
This got him in trouble with Pope Leo X and the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, who considered him a renegade and outlaw. Whereas Christians had always believed that one had to do good (including participation in seven religious ceremonies called "sacraments") and avoid evil to enter Paradise ("be saved"), Luther taught that doing good and avoiding evil was impossible for sinful man. He claimed that the way to be saved was to believe in the forgiveness of sins by Jesus. He maintained that the Bible was the only source of eternal truth, and that the teachings of the clergy were no better than those of anyone else. He believed that all Christians participated equally in the clergy, so that the pope, bishops and priests have no more authority than individual believers. In some ways, Luther's theses resemble the ideas of getting back to the God's REAL religion expressed in Al-Baqara and Al-e-Imran. Christians who follow the teachings of Luther are called "Lutherans." There are several millions of them throughout the world. My father was one of them. You can read what kind of man he was here.
Luther's teaching that one couldn't help doing evil and that you didn't have to actually do anything good to be saved except believe in Jesus proved immensely popular among people who saw believing something as a good bit easier than actually doing it. In addition, Luther enhanced his public acceptance by translating the Latin Bible into German so that educated Germans could read it and writing songs of such beauty and power that they are sung in churches (including Catholic churches) all over the world today. He is also known as an authority on German beer, including that brewed by his wife. His religious teaching is the basis for the popular American belief that one can MAKE something true or happen if one believes hard enough, and that sinners are really sick people with limited responsibility for their actions.
John Calvin was another architect of the Protestant Reformation. Originally trained as a French lawyer, he broke from the Roman Catholic Church around 1530. After religious tensions provoked a violent uprising against Protestants in Catholic France, Calvin fled to Switzerland, where in 1536 he published the first edition of "Institutes of the Christian Religion," in which he maintained that God alone chooses who is to be saved in paradise or condemned to hell, and nothing man can do can change that. Thus, sinners and evildoers, as well as the righteous and just, are the way they are because God made them that way, and their fate is already determined. Modern followers of Calvin include Presbyterians.
Meanwhile trouble was brewing across the English Channel! In 1534, King Henry VIII was refused a divorce by Church authorities from his brother's widow (his former sister in law), Catherine of Aragon. In retaliation, he initiated a series of acts of parliament which separated the Christian church in England and made King Henry, and subsequent monarchs, the head of the English, or Anglican, church. The tradition of the king as the head of the church was upheld by Henry's only son, Edward VI, who died of tuberculosis at the age of 16, and his 15 year old cousin, Lady Jane Grey, who was the reigning monarch for 9 days. But Edward's older half-sister, Mary, Catherine's daughter, overthrew Jane's supporters and consolidated her reign by having Jane beheaded. She then attempted to restore Roman Catholicism by force, persecution and torture, earning herself the nickname, "Bloody Mary." Plagued by ill health and palace intrigue, Mary died in 1558, leaving the crown to her illegitimate younger half-sister, Elizabeth I, who restored the Church of England. This religion is the official Christian church of the United Kingdom today, with the Queen as its head. In England, its members are known as "Anglicans." They are known as "Episcopalians" in the United States, because they broke from the English church during the American Revolution. There is some division within the Episcopal church, so that some congregations resemble Catholics and some are more like Lutherans or Presbyterians.
The Scottish Reformation was Scotland's formal break with the pope in 1560. It was heavily influenced by religious changes in other parts of Europe and Scotland's common heritage with England and hatred of Catholic France whose Catholic queen, Mary, Queen of Scots, was their queen as well. (Mary was brought to England and beheaded under the reign of Protestant Queen Elizabeth, but her son, James VI of Scotland became King James I of England when Elizabeth died childless in 1603.) The Reformation Parliament of 1560 repudiated the pope's authority, forbade the celebration of Catholic ceremonies and approved a Protestant Confession of Faith. The Scottish Reformation decisively shaped the Church of Scotland and, through it, all other Presbyterian churches worldwide.
King James is perhaps the most influential person in the Protestant Reformation. His mother Mary, Queen of Scots, was a staunch Catholic, hated by Presbyterian Scotland and Anglican England. James was raised a Presbyterian in Scotland, and earnestly desired to demonstrate his rejection of Catholicism and his loyalty to Protestantism when he became king of England. At this time, few people could read, so the common man got his religious instruction from philosophers and scholars who could read the Vulgate, the Latin Bible that had been compiled under the direction of Pope Damasus in 383, when there was only one Christian religion. Realizing the political power to be achieved, James set out to provide English-speaking Protestants with their own Bible. He created a commission of 54 advisers to put together a Bible that could be understood by the common person, contained only ideas compatible with Protestant beliefs, and would be the most beautiful expression of the English language possible. The result of their efforts, the King James Version (KJV) was published in 1611 and has been translated into every language of the world. (There is even a committee working on translating it into Klingon!) A version containing over 30,000 changes was published in 1881 and a Revised Standard Version (RSV), written in modern English, was published in 1951. Many Protestants, however, still regard the KJV as "The Bible," and believe that it is literally, word for word, the word of God (who, along with everyone mentioned in it, speaks seventeenth century English).
The Protestant Reformation coincided with the rise of nationalism in Europe, and was influential in and influenced by the political changes that were taking place at that time. It involved much hatred and bitterness, and 131 years of religious war and persecution. Whole nations adopted "national" religions and punished people within their borders, sometimes with torture and death, who didn't accept and practice them. The Reformation ended in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia, that allowed the rulers of the countries involved independently to decide upon national religions and allowed both Protestants and Catholics openly to practice their religion wherever in Europe they happened to be. It also effectively ended the power of the Holy Roman Empire in favor of individual national kings and princes.
Catholic and Orthodox religions are based on the authority of the pope or the patriarch to teach what their followers must believe and must do to be saved, based on their official interpretation of the Bible and traditional beliefs. In the Catholic Church, these teachings are contained in the various decrees of the popes or ecumenical councils. A compendium of Catholic belief is contained in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. To be a Catholic, a person must believe what the Catholic Church teaches and do what it requires. Many people who claim to be Catholics don't do these things, even though they attend Catholic services, so they are not Catholics even though they say and think they are.
One of the defining characteristics of Protestantism is that Protestants do not recognize such authority. As a result, Protestants can (and most often do) believe anything they want, including what it means to be whatever they claim that they are. They generally regard the Bible as "true," but they are divided on what that means. Starting with their break with the Catholic religion and the authority of the pope, the Protestant religions began to split and fragment within themselves as arguments broke out between and within congregations about what they should believe or do to be saved, or what "being saved" means in the first place, or what "Christian" means, or other things.
As a result, new, supposedly "Christian" religions arise every few years. There are about 630 of them in the United States alone. Some of these are minor variations of long-established traditions whose members, for one reason or another, reject traditional established beliefs. Others pop up suddenly because of some social or political event or the charisma of some self-appointed religious leader. These attract a small following, achieve national attention, and quickly die out when the members come to realize what whatever benefits they thought they would receive do not materialize. (One such religion, "The People's Temple," was instituted by the charismatic Jim Jones, who moved over 900 followers to Jonestown, Guyana, to start a "new temple." His final teaching was that all his followers should commit suicide, which they did after fatally poisoning all of their children. Thankfully "The People's Temple" is no more!)
In the United States today, some of the largest Protestant congregations are:
Episcopalians believe and practice many of the same things Catholics do, with the exception of the authority of the pope. Recently, some congregations have separated themselves from other Episcopalians due to controversy over appointment of women to the clergy and tolerance of homosexuality as an "alternate lifestyle." Their religious authority is the Presiding Bishop, currently The Most Reverend Michael Curry, who is famous for presiding over the wedding of Prince Harry and Princess Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. His predecessor is The Most Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori, DD, the first female Presiding Bishop of any major religion in history.
Lutherans repudiate Catholic concepts of good works, sin, punishment, some Christian ceremonies, and the honor of saints, especially the mother of Jesus. Lutheran clergy are primary teachers of the Bible, and Lutherans generally to go church to hear them preach and to pray.
Baptists generally believe that salvation consists in "taking Christ as your Savior" (whatever that means to them), and that once a person does that, he or she is guaranteed entry into Paradise. Baptist worship is mostly spontaneous, consisting of prayer, preaching, singing, and feeling good. For many Baptists, preaching is priority. Baptists and many other Protestants believe in a literal interpretation of the King James Bible, published before the Industrial and Scientific Revolutions. Therefore, many of them reject (among other things) belief in biological evolution, the origin and age of the universe, rockets in outer space, the Apollo moon landing, and scientific principles or discoveries that they think contradict Scripture.
Virtually every Protestant congregation has at least one "Bible study group." Participants without the least bit of training in history, geography, cultural anthropology, linguistics, comparative theology or investigative philosophy get together to try better to understand their translation of the compendium of Semitic literature which is the Bible. Their inquiry is motivated by a sincere belief that if they do this often enough, and with sufficient devotion, God will somehow tell them what they need to know. Their conclusions are based on a fundamental belief in the basic equivalence of truth and acceptability, that if devout people find something sufficiently reasonable, it must be true. This assumed truth then becomes a basis for judgment and condemnation (sometimes violently) of those who disagree, including recognized authorities such as: established science, the United States Supreme Court, or the jury that acquitted Casey Anthony. Less popular religions attempt to establish the legitimacy of their relatively unconventional articles of faith by vigorous missionary activity. If you live in a city anywhere in the United States, you can expect to be visited periodically by adherents of these religions, whose intent is to convince you that their faith is reasonable enough to be worthy of belief.
In the past few years, this philosophy has lead to circulation on the Internet of the most preposterous stories, in the hope that enough people will find them acceptable enough to make them true. You can read some of them here and here. One of the most intractable problems of American society today is that our voting citizens are uniquely free to believe and act on ideas that are popular, apparently reasonable, compatible with established belief, and totally wrong.
One of these is that the United States is a Christian country, in spite of the First Amendment to the Constitution and numerous Supreme Court decisions that reaffirm the opposite and erect a wall of separation between church and state. While it is true that 76 percent of United States citizens, when asked, call themselves Christians, the US is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation or a Hindu nation. The United States doesn't have any religion; it is like a flock of bald eagles, which do not sow or reap or gather into barns, and yet their Heavenly Father feeds them. Instead, it is a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values, many of which are shared by Christians and Jews and Muslims and others because they are inherently compatible with human nature and civilization. They continue to shape our national actions and beliefs.
- Sandra Day O'Connor, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, McCreary v. ACLU of Kentucky, 2004
PRIMACY OF PETER
"It is true that the Framers lived at a time when our national religious diversity was neither as robust nor as well recognized as it is now. They may not have foreseen the variety of religions for which this Nation would eventually provide a home... We owe our First Amendment to a generation with a profound commitment to religion and a profound commitment to religious liberty."
COMMISSION OF THE APOSTLES:
THE EUCHARIST:
FORGIVENESS OF SINS:
My church, St. Thomas the Apostle,
a Modern Catholic Church