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 (/krɪstʃiˈænɪti, krɪstiˈænɪti/) 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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Open-air fire, built with conically arranged long pieces of wood, blazes in the night. Orthodox priest places a long oak sapling with brown leaves on the fire. The priest and the fire are surrounded by a ring of people watching them. In the background, walls of a great church are visible. — A Serbian Orthodox priest places the *badnjak* on a fire during a Christmas Eve celebration at the Temple of Saint Sava in Belgrade

The badnjak (Serbian Cyrillic: бадњак, pronounced [bǎdɲaːk]), also called veseljak (весељак, pronounced [ʋɛˈsɛ̌ʎaːk], literally "the one who brings joy" in Serbian), is a tree branch or entire tree that is central to Serbian Christmas celebrations. It is placed on a fire on Christmas Eve and its branches are later brought home by worshipers. The tree from which the badnjak is cut, preferably a young, straight and undamaged Oak, is ceremonially felled early on the morning of Christmas Eve. The felling, preparation, bringing in, and laying on the fire, are surrounded by elaborate rituals, with many regional variations. The burning of the log is accompanied by prayers that the coming year brings food, happiness, love, luck, and riches. The log burns on throughout Christmas Day, when the first visitor strikes it with a poker or a branch to make sparks fly, while wishing that the family's happiness and prosperity be as abundant as the sparks. As most Serbs today live in towns and cities, the badnjak is often symbolically represented by a cluster of oak twigs with brown leaves attached, with which the home is decorated on Christmas Eve.

Since the early 20th century, the Serbian badnjak tradition has also been celebrated more publicly. Before World War I, soldiers of the Kingdom of Serbia developed the custom of laying a badnjak on a fire in their barracks. In the succeeding Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the military badnjak ceremony was further elaborated and standardized in army service regulations, but the tradition ended at the outbreak of World War II. Since the early 1990s, the Serbian Orthodox Church has, together with local communities, organized public celebrations on Christmas Eve in which the badnjak plays a central role. Parishioners festively cut the sapling to be used as the badnjak and take it to their church, where it is consecrated by a priest before being ceremonially placed on a fire pit in the churchyard. (Full article...)

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

Image 1A depiction of the Council of Nicaea in AD 325, at which the Deity of Christ was declared orthodox and Arianism condemned (from Trinity)
Image 2The Baptism of Christ, by Piero della Francesca, 15th century (from Trinity)
Image 3The 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 4God the Father (top), and the Holy Spirit (represented by a dove) depicted above Jesus Painting by Francesco Albani (d. 1660) (from Trinity)
Image 5God in the person of the Son confronts Adam and Eve, by Master Bertram (d. c. 1415) (from Trinity)
Image 6Renaissance 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 7A 'Jesus Saves' neon cross sign outside of a Protestant church in New York City (from Salvation in Christianity)
Image 8Depiction of Trinity from Saint Denis Basilica in Paris (12th century) (from Trinity)
Image 9The 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 10Representation of the Trinity in the form of the mercy seat (epitaph from 1549) (from Trinity)
Image 11The Holy Trinity in an angelic glory over a landscape, by Lucas Cranach the Elder (d. 1553) (from Trinity)
Image 12Depictions of the Resurrection of Jesus are central to Christian art (Resurrection of Christ by Raphael, 1499–1502). (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 13The 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 14Detail 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 15The 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 16The Communion of the Apostles, by Luca Signorelli, 1512 (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 17Russian icon of the Old Testament Trinity by Andrei Rublev, between 1408 and 1425 (from Trinity)
Image 18God the Father (top), the Holy Spirit (a dove), and the child Jesus, painting by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (d. 1682) (from Trinity)
Image 19Nativity at Night, by Geertgen tot Sint Jans, c. 1490 (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 2013th-century depiction of the Trinity from a Roman de la Rose manuscript (from Trinity)
Image 21A Gospel of John, 1056 (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 22Jesus' Farewell Discourse to his eleven remaining disciples after the Last Supper, from the Maestà by Duccio (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 23Atypical 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 24First 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 25Jesus healing the paralytic in The Pool by Palma il Giovane, 1592 (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 26A Greek fresco of Athanasius of Alexandria, the chief architect of the Nicene Creed, formulated at Nicaea (from Trinity)
Image 27The "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 28The Father, The Holy Spirit, and Christ crucified, depicted in a Welsh manuscript c. 1390–1400 (from Trinity)
Image 29Pope Clement I prays to the Trinity, in a typical post-Renaissance depiction by Gianbattista Tiepolo (d. 1770) (from Trinity)
Image 30A 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)

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Charles Reynolds (Irish: Cathal Mac Raghnaill; c. 1496 – July 1535) was an Irish Catholic cleric, canonist, and diocesan administrator. Born in County Leitrim into an Irish clan of Hiberno-Norse descent and son of Marcus Mac Raghnaill, Reynolds entered a religious order and was appointed to influential posts as archdeacon and military chaplain to the Earl of Kildare. His name in native Irish is Cathal Mac Raghnaill, but he used the Anglicized name of "Archdeacon Charles Reynolds" whenever he was in the Pale or in the company of English-speakers. He was educated at the University of Oxford and was multilingual; being fluent in English, Irish, and Ecclesiastical Latin. Archdeacon Reynolds opposed Henry VIII of England's policy of imposing Caesaropapism upon the Catholic Church in his dominions, declined to acknowledge him as Supreme Head of the Church of England, and refusing to acknowledge the annulment of the King's marriage to Catherine of Aragon or his uncanonical remarriage to Anne Boleyn.

During the Kildare Rebellion of 1534–1535 against King Henry, Reynolds was dispatched as envoy to Rome to seek support from Pope Paul III. In May 1535 he secured a papal promise to excommunicate King Henry. (Full article...)

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A Christian martyr is a person who is killed for following Christianity, through stoning, crucifixion, burning at the stake or other forms of torture and capital punishment. The word "martyr" comes from the Greek word μάρτυς, mártys, which means "witness." At first, the term applied to Apostles. Once Christians started to undergo persecution, the term came to be applied to those who suffered hardships for their faith. Finally, it was restricted to those who had been killed for their faith. The early Christian period before Constantine I was the "Age of martyrs". A martyr's death was considered a "baptism in blood," cleansing one of sin, similar to the effect of baptism in water. Early Christians venerated martyrs as powerful intercessors, and their utterances were treasured as inspired by the Holy Spirit.

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... that Herb Lusk retired from the National Football League at the age of 26 to become a minister?
... that the growth of Christianity in 20th-century Africa has been termed the "fourth great age of Christian expansion"?
... that Edo literature was influenced by British colonialism in the late 19th century, which introduced the Roman script and Christianity to the Edo people?
... that although the Jesuit missionary He Tianzhang despised his "sad Chinese appearance", it allowed him to circumvent the Qing's ban on Christianity and enter China?
... that the Correspondence of Paul and Seneca was cited in the Middle Ages to claim that Seneca, a Roman philosopher of Stoicism, had converted to 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?

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And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us. And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger. And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds. But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them.

— Adoration of the Shepherds, Luke 2:10-20, King James Version

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