Contents

Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………… 3

1. Christianity…………………………………………………………………………….3

1.1. The Roman Catholic Church …………………………………………………3

1.2. The Orthodox Church…………………………………………………………..4

1.3. The Protestant Churches ………………………………………………………5

1.3.1. Lutheran Church ……………………………………………………………….5

1.3.2. The Calvinist Church of Scotland ………………………………………..6

1.3.3. The Church of England………………………………………………………6

1.3.5. Baptist Church ………………………………………………………………….6

1.3.6. The Quakers ……………………………………………………………………..6

1.3.7. Methodist Church ………………………………………………………………7

1.4. African Initiated Churches…………………………………………………….7

List of References cited ………………………………………………………………8

Christianity

Introduction

Human beings have used religion in order to find reasons for his/her existence and at the same time to explain his/her world, the universe and everything that is imaginable. That’s why we can see that the human being invented different religions andone of them is the Christianity.

Christianity started with the Pentecost (ten days after his ascension) which marked the beginning of a new movement. “Christianity occupies a unique position in world history, today being the predominant religion in four and a half of the world’s six continents (Europe, North, and South America, Australasia and the Pacific, Southern Africa) while it even ispractised in Asia, the world’s most populated continent, where it includes in all a very small proportion of the population, it still has hundreds of millions of adherents and is predominant within several countries – Philippines, South Korea, East Timor” (Hastings 1999: 1). In this essay I will discuss a brief part of Christianity, its history and main branches that exist today, at the same time Iwill mention the origins of these branches, their founders and the main characteristics.

1. Christianity

Christianity is divided into three or four divisions (some research say there are three other ones say there are four and added Anglican): Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant; the last one has a lot of different denominations. There are some subdivisions inside these ones:Eastern Christians, Catholic Christians and Protestant Christians.
Christianity origins started in the lower classes, all those that worked long hours or were already slaves, also the artisans. Later on this will become a religious movement that would include all those that believe in Jesus Christ. Consequently, after Jesus Christ dead his apostles went ahead spreading his teachings and became thefounders of this new religion. The apostles’ teachings later on became the base of Christianity. I personally believed that the founder would be Jesus because he is the one that started teaching his believes, and talked about God, but in my research I found that some sources mention the apostles as the ones that founded Christianity.
“Christians believe that there is one God, who is seen in threeways – God father, God the son, god the Holy Spirit. They believe that god and son was a man called Jesus who lived on earth about 2000 years ago. Christians believe Jesus is the most important person who has ever lived because he showed what god is really like” (Penney 1995: 6). Medieval Christianity had seven sacraments (baptism, confirmation, confession, marriage, ordination, last anointing,…