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Christianity developed out of Judaism in the 1st Century C.E.
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Jesus was born in 6 BC.
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Christianity began as a Jewish messianic movement in Jerusalem in the 1st century of the Common Era.
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Missionaries carried their message of resurrection and salvation throughout the Mediterranean and other countries.
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During these first few decades after the death of Jesus, Roman law regarded the new Christian movement as a Jewish sect. the Christians, like the Jews, were exempt from the legal requirement to worship the Roman emperor as a god-like figure. Both Jews and Christians considered this an act of idol.
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Christians had a hard time spreading their religion because of the government. They where dying and being put into jail.
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Christians where having a hard time spreding the word because of the government. The Roman government would not let them.
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When the Visigoths (an invading Germanic tribe) sacked Rome, Christian communities could be found as far west as the British Isles, south to North Africa and Ethiopia, north to the Danube and modern-day Romania, and east from modern-day Turkey into Armenia and even in India.
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The Pope in Rome and the Patriarch in Constantinople rose to power.
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The Latin-speaking western Church referred to itself as the universal or Catholic Church. While the Greek-speaking eastern Church also affirmed the Church's universality, it developed an equally firm understanding of the pure and unchanging nature of its doctrine.
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The two powers (religion) where spreading and struggling.
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Over the centuries, the two churches were involved in power struggles between the Byzantine Emperor, the Roman pope, the patriarch of Constantinople, and the various rulers and warlords of the peoples and nations of northern and central Europe.
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The western Church had slightly modified the Nicene Creed in order to clarify the doctrine of the Trinity (the filioque clause), but the eastern Church was not involved in this revision. It did not add the same language to the Creed, and protested the western Church's unilateral action.
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Only a few decades after Emperor Theodosius I declared Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, the Western Empire came to a painful and symbolic end when the Visigoths sacked Rome.
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Catholic missionary efforts in Africa in the 16th-18th centuries withered from the difficulty of obtaining support from Europe,
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Missionaries arrived and build missions. Convesion here was less violent.
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One major exception was found in Sierra Leone, where in 1787 an emancipationist group sponsored the return of Africans from London.
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As African slaves were imported in increasing numbers to the American colonies, Baptist and Methodist missionaries introduced Christianity to the slave population
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Missionary efforts in Africa increased dramatically after 1870.
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In the 19th and 20th centuries, Christians were divided over colonialism.
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By the 20th century, Christian missionaries had spread throughout the world, and Christianity was in every continent except for Antartica. (no one lives there)
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As Gentiles increasingly filled the ranks of these early Christian communities, Christians as a group lost their legal status as Jews. By refusing to honor the gods of Rome, being a Christian was punishable by death.
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In the 8th and 9th centuries, the entire Church was deeply upset by a serious controversy over the use of icons in the Byzantine Church.
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In the 8th and 9th centuries, the entire Church was deeply upset by a serious controversy over the use of icons in the Byzantine Church.
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Finally, when Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne, king of the Franks, the Holy Roman Emperor in 800, the eastern Church perceived this as an apparent challenge to the authority of the Emperor in Constantinople.
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The centuries past with Christianity being the official religion of the Roman Empire.
