List of Figures
1.1 Figure of Jesus as a young shepherd (from the catacomb ofPriscilla, Rome, third century) and Jesus as a middle-agedjudge (from the Chora Church in Istanbul, originallyconstructed in the later fourth century)
1.2 Geographic locations of the three traditions created by the Great Division
1.3 Diagram of the Great Division summarizing Christological differences
2.1 Holy Trinity Orthodox Cathedral (Sibiu, Romania), interior of main dome
2.2 Floor plans of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem and a typicalOrthodox church showing similarity of layout
2.3 Simplified map of Eastern Europe showing national boundariesin 1700 and 1900
2.4 Interior of small Orthodox church (Cyprus)
3.1 Statues of the Infant of Prague (the young Jesus) for sale at a shop near the Church of Our Lady Victorious in Prague (Czech Republic), where the original statue is on display
3.2 Chiesa di Sant’Ignazio di Loyola, a Baroque style Catholicchurch in Rome built in the early 1600s, showing apse at thefront of the sanctuary and details from the painted ceiling
4.1 Interior of Hungarian Reformed Church in Sibiu, Romania illustrating the centrality of the pulpit in Protestant church architecture
4.2 Religious map of Catholic and Protestant Europe c. 1650. (Regions colored white were predominantly Orthodox)
5.1 Aimee Semple McPherson (front row, second from left) in a performance at her church, Angelus Temple, in Los Angeles
5.2 Social structure of Pentecostalism
6.1 Graph showing changing percentage of all Christians who lived in Europe and who lived elsewhere during the period 1500 to the present
7.1 Global geographic profiles of the world’s four largest religions
7.2 Nine regions of the world, with percentage (in parenthesis) of world’s Christian population
List of Tables
2.1 Major Eastern Orthodox Churches with current ecclesiastical status and estimated membership
4.1 Five major Protestant families, representing two-thirds of all Protestants worldwide
Introduction What Is Christianity?
Christianity is the most popular and influential religion in human history. Launched by Jesus of Nazareth two thousand years ago, the Christian movement currently has more than two and a half billion members. Christians are now located in every country on earth, and they represent the majority of the population in Europe, Latin America, North America, Oceania, and southern Africa. But what exactly constitutes Christianity? What does this religion stand for? What makes Christianity Christian? Why have so many people embraced it?
More than one hundred years ago, a professor at a prestigious German university decided to provide answers to all these questions. He arrived at the university lecture hall a few minutes before six o’clock in the morning when it was still dark outside, and the walk across campus had invigorated him. When he stepped up to the podium, not a seat in the house was empty. Six hundred students (all of them male because women would not be admitted to the university until 1908) and a smattering of faculty colleagues had their eyes fixed on him as he began the day’s address. “What is Christianity?” he asked, and they were counting on him to supply an answer. The year was 1900. The place was the University of Berlin. The speaker was Adolph von Harnack, one of the most brilliant and well-known scholars in the world.
Professor Harnack did not disappoint. He gave them a simple and straightforward answer because, he told them, the gospel itself is simple. Christianity at its purest and best is the religion of Jesus, the message that Jesus himself proclaimed. It focuses on three things: the fatherhood of God, the infinite value of the human soul, and the commandment to love everyone. In a nutshell, that was it. That is the essence of Christianity. Christians had advocated many other beliefs and practices during the movement’s long history, but, according to Harnack, those other things were largely superfluous. The only thing that really matters is Jesus’s core teaching. This is the gospel – the message Christianity has to share with the world – and that gospel (or “good news”) is simple.
Something even more basic was at stake, however. For Harnack, the simple gospel of Jesus is not merely the essence of Christianity, it is the quintessence of religion itself. A humanistic scholar who affirmed the validity of science, Harnack served as the first president of the Kaiser Wilhelm society which later became the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science, one of the most prestigious centers for the study of human evolution in the world. Harnack was interested in human origins, and he believed that it is religion – the spiritual impulse that leads people to wonder about the mystery of life and how they are called to live – that makes Homo sapiens into something more than merely smart animals. For Harnack, a proper understanding of the gospel of Jesus was not merely the key to understanding Christianity, it was the key for understanding what makes any of us human. And that is why 600 students voluntarily crowded into a university lecture hall at six o’clock in the morning for fifteen weeks in a row: to hear someone explain who they were called to be as followers of Jesus and who they were as human beings.
The German state church was not impressed with Harnack’s views or erudition. Traditional German Christians thought his interpretation downplayed Christianity’s traditional emphasis on personal salvation and correct doctrine, and they initially tried to block his promotion to the University of Berlin when it was announced in 1888. Ultimately Kaiser Wilhelm II was forced to intervene personally to make sure Harnack got the job. Despite the church’s worries, Harnack himself was deeply committed to Christianity, and his lectures were crafted to provide university students with a positive view of Christianity that was fully compatible with modern learning. He hoped that university students would be so inspired by the message of Jesus that they would leave the university intent on making the German nation a place where “justice is done, no longer by the aid of force, but by free obedience to the good…not by legal regulations but by the ministry of love.”1 He wanted his students, and everyone else who heard or read his lectures, to become better Jesus-following Christians and more intelligent, caring citizens. That is how he envisioned Christianity: as the highest expression of religion itself, a faith focused on goodness and love, and the solution to all of humanity’s problems.
Except it wasn’t. Just a few years after delivering his lectures, Harnack’s own actions undercut his claims. During the early months of World War I, he was one of ninety-three German intellectuals who composed a document entitled “To the Civilized World,” which justified atrocities committed by the German army during its infamous Rape of Belgium. In this statement he and his professorial peers argued that anyone “inciting Mongolians [i.e., Asians] and negroes against the white race, ha[d] no right whatsoever to call themselves upholders of civilization.”2 Harnack may have thought Christianity was the best and most perfect religion for all people, times, and places, but it did not prevent him from rationalizing wanton violence against civilians and championing the cause of German racial supremacy.
Christianity has not been a wellspring of universal goodness for humankind. Christians have contributed much that is good to the world, but they have also done significant harm. They have believed Jesus’s message of love for all people, but have often failed to act in loving, or even decent, ways. And Christianity cannot serve as the sole arbiter