Over two thousands of years, a diverse range of different Christian traditions and communities developed in different areas of the world. As Christianity spread around the world (usually through European imperial expansion), different communities experienced unique circumstances that resulted in distinctive histories, languages, religious practices, customs, and culture. This lesson will draw from theoretical frameworks introduced in the Globalization & Diaspora lesson to address diversity within global Christianity today.
Objectives:
- identify different Christian communities worldwide
- recognize modern Christianity as a global collection of different Christian communities
- situate a contemporary Christian community within its unique social and historical context using terms and concepts from Globalization & Diaspora Studies.
There are approximately 2.2 billion believers in Christianity comprising 25,000 denominations within 156 traditions organized into seven major branches. Ethnic and cultural diversity in Christianity reflects a wide geographic distribution.
Catholicism
The Roman Catholic Church, also known as the Latin curch or Western Church, is the largest Christian church, with approximately 1.3 billion baptised Catholics worldwide. It is the world’s oldest continuously functioning international institution, and it has played a prominent role in the history and development of Western European civilization. The church is headed by the Bishop of Rome, known as the pope. Its central administration is in the Vatican City within the city of Rome in Italy.
Eastern Catholic Churches, also called Oriental Catholic Churches, Eastern-rite Catholic Churches, or Uniate Churches, are twenty-three Eastern Churches in full communion with the Pope in Rome, and they are considered part of the worldwide Catholic Church. The Eastern Catholic Churches are governed in accordance with the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, although each church also has its own canons and laws, and the preservation of unique traditions is explicitly encouraged. The total membership of the various churches accounts for about 18 million, making up about 1.5 percent of the Catholic Church.
Eastern Orthodox
The Eastern Orthodox Church, also known as the Orthodox Catholic Church, is the second-largest Christian church, with approximately 200–260 million baptised members. It is comprised of a collection of churches that are each governed by bishops in local synods. The church has no central doctrinal or governmental authority analogous to the Bishop of Rome. As one of the oldest surviving religious institutions in the world, the Eastern Orthodox Church has played a prominent role in the history and culture of Eastern and Southeastern Europe, the Caucasus, and the Near East.
Greek Orthodoxy refers to the body of several Churches within Eastern Orthodox Christianity whose liturgy is or was traditionally conducted in Koine Greek, the original language of the Septuagint and the New Testament. Greek Orthodoxy is rooted in the early Church and the culture of the Byzantine Empire with a heavy emphasis on Eastern Orthodox monasticism with origins in Early Christianity in the Near East and in Byzantine Anatolia. Visit the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America website for more information.
Russian Orthodoxy is one of the largest ecclesiastically independent Eastern Orthodox churches in the world. Its membership is estimated at more than 90 million, roughly half of the Eastern Orthodox Christian population. Syrian Orthodoxy is an Eastern Orthodox church established by Severus of Antioch in Antioch in 518 A.D. Several smaller orthodox churches includes Eastern European (Serbian, Romanian, Bulgarian) and Ethiopian Orthodoxy.
To learn more about Eastern Orthodox Beliefs and Practices and how they differ with roman Catholicism, watch this Ovo Video.
Aescetic Communities
Aescetic communities observe highly structured religious discipline that oftentimes consist of vows of poverty, celibacy and obedience. Monastic monks (male) and nuns (female) play an important part in Latin and Greek traditions. Unlike priests who are considered ‘secular’ clergy who tended to the affairs of the secular world, monks primarily consisted of laymen dedicated to prayer and worship. A wide range of monastic orders emerged in the middle ages and persist into the present such as Cluniac Fathers, Cisternians and Carthusians in France. Medicant Communities consist of friars who were dedicated to pastoral work, and who either worked or begged for a living without being bound to a particular convent. Modern medicant orders include Franciscans, Capuchins, Domincans and Carmalites. The emergence of women’s communities occurred during the development of the early church. Female monastic communities began to separate from the secular world in the 13th century, and church-imposed ‘cloistering’ or seclusion in convents, became the primary role for women in the church well into the 19th century. A wide variety of convents persist into the present. To learn more, listen to the NPR radio story below about the lives of modern american nuns.
Protestant Churches
The Reformed churches, also called the Reformed tradition, Reformed Christianity, Reformed Protestantism, or the Reformed faith, are a group of Protestant Christian denominations connected by a Calvinist system of doctrine which differ from Lutherans on the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, theories of worship, and the use of God’s law for believers, among other things. As declared in the Westminster and Second Helvetic confessions, the core doctrines are predestination and election.
The Anglican Church is a Western Christian tradition which has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation. The international Anglican Communion forms the third-largest Christian communion in the world, after the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. TO learn more about the history of the Anglican church, watch the video below.
Sixteenth Century: Lutheran, Presbyterian, Anabaptist
Seventeenth & Eighteenth Century: Pietist, Congregationalist, Baptist, Methodist
Marginal Protestant: Unitarian, Mormon, Jehovah Witness
Nineteenth Century: Pentacostal, United Churches
Apostolic church
The Apostolic Church is a Christian denomination that came from the Pentecostal movement. The term “Apostolic” represents the denomination’s belief that it follows the teachings of the twelve Apostles who followed Christ. With roots in the 1904–1905 Welsh Revival, it seeks to stand for first-century Christianity in its faith, practices, and government.
The purpose of the denomination is summed up by one prominent Apostolic writer as:
to make known world-wide the forgiveness of sins through the atoning death of Christ; the baptism in water by immersion; the baptism of the Holy Ghost with signs following; the nine gifts of the Holy Ghost; the five gifts of our Ascended Lord; and the vision referred to in the New Testament as “the Church which is His Body”.
The largest national church is The Apostolic Church Nigeria, with over 4.5 million members and a national convention center that seats over 100,000.
Syncretic
Chrislam is a blend of Christianity and Islam primarily in Nigeria
The Unification Church, founded by religious leader Sun Myung Moon in South Korea in 1954. Its teachings are based on the Bible, but include new interpretations not found in mainstream Judaism and Christianity and incorporates Asian traditions.
Caodaism blends elements of Buddhism, Catholicism and Taoism.
African-initiated church (AIC) is a Christian church independently started in Africa by Africans rather than by missionaries from another continent. The oldest of these is the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church which dates from the 4th century and was one of the first Christian churches in the world. These churches are often classified as Protestant or other Christian, but there are Eastern Orthodox churches located in Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Catholicism in Central and South America has been integrated with indigenous and African cultures. African diasporic religions, Candomblé, Vodou and Santería analogize various Yorùbá and other African deities to the Roman Catholic saints. The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe and the subsequent devotion to her are seen as assimilating some elements of native Mexican culture into Christianity. To learn about Voodou (Voodoo) watch the video below,
Santo Daime, founded in Brazil, incorporates elements of several religious or spiritual traditions including Folk Catholicism, Kardecist Spiritism, African animism and indigenous South American shamanism, including vegetalismo.
Situating Christian Communities in their Social and historical Context
This lesson addressed different Christian communities worldwide and presented modern Christianity as a global collection of different Christian communities. The information presented here sheds light on diversity within the global Christian community, and this makes it important to situate a contemporary Christian communities within their unique social and historical contexts.
References and Resources
- Christianity in Africa
- Glocalizations of Christianity in Europe
- The Rise of Cultural Religion in European Christianity
- Glocalization and Christianity in Early Modern Asia
- Religious Studies in Latin America
Writing Assignment: To analyze and understand diversity within contemporary Christianity, select a contemporary Christian community and use terms and concepts from the Globalization & Diaspora lesson to situate it within its unique social and historical circumstances in order to contextualize how the community is different from others. The community can be a local church or religious group, a political association, a cultural group, etc.
- Select a unique Christian community (ie Amish in Lancaster, Coptic Christians in Ethiopia, Westboro Baptist Church, Santeria, etc.)
- Locate scholarly sources about the community
- Identify how the community is different from other Christian communities
- Review the history of the community to determine how the unique characteristics emerged (ie diaspora, ideological movements, interactions with other religions and cultures, etc. )
- Develop a thesis statement
- Organize data and write body paragraphs to support the statement (cite in-text)
- Write Introduction and Conclusion
- Format sources.
(700 words and at least two scholarly sources properly formatted and cited in text; post in discussion, and respond to at least two other student posts)