Christianity in the 20th century

The 20th century

Russian Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union

The Russian Orthodox Church collaborated with the White Army in the Russian Civil War (see White movement) after the October Revolution. This may have further strengthened the Bolshevik animus against the church. According to Lenin, a communist regime cannot remain neutral on the question of religion but must show itself to be merciless towards it. There was no place for the church in Lenin's classless society.

Before and after the October Revolution of 7 November 1917 (October 25 Old Calendar) there was a movement within the Soviet Union to unite all of the people of the world under Communist rule (see Communist International). This included the Eastern European bloc countries as well as the Balkan States. Since some of these Slavic states tied their ethnic heritage to their ethnic churches, both the peoples and their church where targeted by the Soviet. The Soviets' official religious stance was one of "religious freedom or tolerance", though the state established atheism as the only scientific truth. Criticism of atheism was strictly forbidden and sometimes lead to imprisonment.

The Soviet Union was the first state to have as an ideological objective the elimination of religion. Toward that end, the Communist regime confiscated church property, ridiculed religion, harassed believers, and propagated atheism in the schools. Actions toward particular religions, however, were determined by State interests, and most organised religions were never outlawed. Some actions against Orthodox priests and believers along with execution included torture being sent to prison camps, labour camps or mental hospitals. The result of this militant atheism was to transform the Church into a persecuted and martyred Church. In the first five years after the Bolshevik revolution, 28 bishops and 1,200 priests were executed. This included people like the Grand Duchess Elizabeth Fyodorovna who was at this point a monastic. Along with her murder was Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich Romanov; the Princes Ioann Konstantinovich, Konstantin Konstantinovich, Igor Konstantinovich and Vladimir Pavlovich Paley; Grand Duke Sergei's secretary, Fyodor Remez; and Varvara Yakovleva, a sister from the Grand Duchess Elizabeth's convent. They were herded into the forest, pushed into an abandoned mineshaft and grenades were then hurled into the mineshaft. Her remains were buried in Jerusalem, in the Church of Maria Magdalene.

Christ the Saviour Cathedral Moscow after reconstruction

The main target of the anti-religious campaign in the 1920s and 1930s was the Russian Orthodox Church, which had the largest number of faithful. Nearly its entire clergy, and many of its believers, were shot or sent to labor camps. Theological schools were closed, and church publications were prohibited. In the period between 1927 and 1940, the number of Orthodox Churches in the Russian Republic fell from 29,584 to less than 500. Between 1917 and 1940, 130,000 Orthodox priests were arrested. Of these, 95,000 were put to death, executed by firing squad. Father Pavel Florensky was one of the New-martyrs of this particular period.

After Nazi Germany's attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, Joseph Stalin revived the Russian Orthodox Church to intensify patriotic support for the war effort. By 1957 about 22,000 Russian Orthodox churches had become active. But in 1959 Nikita Khrushchev initiated his own campaign against the Russian Orthodox Church and forced the closure of about 12,000 churches. By 1985 fewer than 7,000 churches remained active. Members of the church hierarchy were jailed or forced out, their places taken by docile clergy, many of whom had ties with the KGB.

In the Soviet Union, in addition to the methodical closing and destruction of churches, the charitable and social work formerly done by ecclesiastical authorities was taken over by the state. As with all private property, Church owned property was confiscated into public use. The few places of worship left to the Church were legally viewed as state property which the government permitted the church to use. After the advent of state funded universal education, the Church was not permitted to carry on educational, instructional activity for children. For adults, only training for church-related occupations was allowed. Outside of sermons during the celebration of the divine liturgy it could not instruct or evangelise to the faithful or its youth. Catechism classes, religious schools, study groups, Sunday schools and religious publications were all illegal and or banned. This persecution continued, even after the death of Stalin until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. This caused many religious tracts to be circulated as illegal literature or samizdat. Since the fall of the Soviet Union there have been many New-martyrs added as Saints from the yoke of atheism.

Diaspora emigration to the West

One of the most striking developments in modern historical Orthodoxy is the dispersion of Orthodox Christians to the West. Emigration from Greece and the Near East in the last hundred years has created a sizable Orthodox diaspora in Western Europe, North and South America, and Australia. In addition, the Bolshevik Revolution forced thousands of Russian exiles westward. As a result, Orthodoxy's traditional frontiers have been profoundly modified. Millions of Orthodox are no longer geographically "eastern" since they live permanently in their newly adopted countries in the West. Nonetheless, they remain Eastern Orthodox in their faith and practice. Virtually all the Orthodox nationalities — Greek, Arab, Russian, Serbian, Albanian, Ukrainian, Romanian, and Bulgarian — are represented in the United States.

Fascism

Fascism describes certain related political regimes in 20th century Europe, especially the Nazi Germany of Hitler, the Fascist Italy of Mussolini and the falangist Spain of Franco.

Nazism

The position of Christians in Nazi Fascism is highly complex.

Regarding the matter, historian Derek Holmes wrote, “There is no doubt that the Catholic districts, resisted the lure of National Socialism [Nazism] far better than the Protestant ones.” Pope Pius XI declared - Mit brennender Sorge - that Fascist governments had hidden "pagan intentions" and expressed the irreconcilability of the Catholic position and Totalitarian Fascist State Worship, which placed the nation above God and fundamental human rights and dignity. His declaration that “Spiritually, [Christians] are all Semites” prompted the Nazis to give him the title “Chief Rabbi of the Christian World.”

Catholic priests were executed in concentration camps alongside Jews; for example, 2,600 Catholic Priests were imprisoned in Dachau, and 2,000 of them were executed. A further 2,700 Polish priests were executed (a quarter of all Polish priests), and 5,350 Polish nuns were either displaced, imprisoned, or executed. Many Catholic laypeople and clergy played notable roles in sheltering Jews during the Holocaust, including Pope Pius XII (1876–1958). The head rabbi of Rome became a Catholic in 1945 and, in honour of the actions the Pope undertook to save Jewish lives, he took the name Eugenio (the pope's first name). A former Israeli consul in Italy claimed: “The Catholic Church saved more Jewish lives during the war than all the other churches, religious institutions, and rescue organisations put together.”

The relationship between Nazism and Protestantism, especially the German Lutheran Church, was complex. Though the majority of Protestant church leaders in Germany supported the Nazis' growing anti-Jewish activities, some, such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer (a Lutheran pastor) were strongly opposed to the Nazis. Bonhoeffer was later found guilty in the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler and executed.

Italian Fascism

Pope Pius XI moderately sceptic. G. K. Chesterton friendly but critical.

Spanish Civil War

Roman Catholics internationally mainly either neutral or on Franco's side, due to Azaña's de facto toleration of anti-clerical violence in and just before this conflict.

Dollfuss in Austria

was the ideal politician realising Quadragesimo Anno to Pope Pius XI.

International Christianity

In the twentieth century, Christianity has gained a wider representation in all parts of the world and at the beginning of the 21st century China is estimated to be the third largest Christian nation on earth, with the future prospect of Christianity eventually becoming a Sino-centric religion.

I suspect that even the most enthusiastic accounts err on the downside, and that Christianity will have become a Sino-centric religion two generations from now. China may be for the 21st century what Europe was during the 8th-11th centuries, and America has been during the past 200 years: the natural ground for mass evangelisation. If this occurs, the world will change beyond our capacity to recognise it. Islam might defeat the western Europeans, simply by replacing their diminishing numbers with immigrants, but it will crumble beneath the challenge from the East. – Spengler

Modern trends in Christian theology

Modernism and liberal Christianity

Main article: Liberal Christianity

Liberal Christianity, sometimes called liberal theology, is an umbrella term covering diverse, philosophically-informed religious movements and moods within late 18th, 19th and 20th century Christianity. The word "liberal" in liberal Christianity does not refer to a leftist political agenda or set of beliefs, but rather to the freedom of dialectic process associated with continental philosophy and other philosophical and religious paradigms developed during the Age of Enlightenment.

Fundamentalism

Main article: Christian fundamentalism

Fundamentalist Christianity, is a movement that arose mainly within British and American Protestantism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in reaction to modernism and certain liberal Protestant groups that denied doctrines considered fundamental to Christianity yet still called themselves "Christian." Thus, fundamentalism sought to re-establish tenets that could not be denied without relinquishing a Christian identity, the "fundamentals": inerrancy of the Bible, Sola Scriptura, the Virgin Birth of Jesus, the doctrine of substitutionary atonement, the bodily Resurrection of Jesus, and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.

Second Vatican Council

Main article: Second Vatican Council

On 11 October 1962 Pope John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council, the 21st ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. The council was "pastoral" in nature, emphasising and clarifying already defined dogma, revising liturgical practices, and providing guidance for articulating traditional Church teachings in contemporary times. The council is perhaps best known for its instructions that the Mass may be celebrated in the vernacular as well as in Latin.

Ecumenism

Main article: Ecumenism

Ecumenism broadly refers to movements between Christian groups to establish a degree of unity through dialogue. "Ecumenism" is derived from Greek οἰκουμένη (oikoumene), which means "the inhabited world", but more figuratively something like "universal oneness." The movement can be distinguished into Catholic and Protestant movements, with the latter characterised by a redefined ecclesiology of "denominationalism" (which the Catholic Church, among others, rejects).

Catholic ecumenism

Main article: Catholic Church and ecumenism

Over the last century, a number of moves have been made to reconcile the schism between the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox churches. Although progress has been made, concerns over papal primacy and the independence of the smaller Orthodox churches has blocked a final resolution of the schism.

On 30 November 1894, Pope Leo XIII published the Apostolic Letter Orientalium Dignitas (On the Churches of the East) safeguarding the importance and continuance of the Eastern traditions for the whole Church. On 7 December 1965, a Joint Catholic-Orthodox Declaration of His Holiness Pope Paul VI and the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I was issued lifting the mutual excommunications of 1054.

Some of the most difficult questions in relations with the ancient Eastern Churches concern some doctrine (i.e. Filioque, Scholasticism, functional purposes of asceticism, the essence of God, Hesychasm, Fourth Crusade, establishment of the Latin Empire, Uniatism to note but a few) as well as practical matters such as the concrete exercise of the claim to papal primacy and how to ensure that ecclesiastical union would not mean mere absorption of the smaller Churches by the Latin component of the much larger Catholic Church (the most numerous single religious denomination in the world), and the stifling or abandonment of their own rich theological, liturgical and cultural heritage.

With respect to Catholic relations with Protestant communities, certain commissions were established to foster dialogue and documents have been produced aimed at identifying points of doctrinal unity, such as the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification produced with the Lutheran World Federation in 1999.

Ecumenism within Protestantism

Ecumenical movements within Protestantism have focused on determining a list of doctrines and practices essential to being Christian and thus extending to all groups which fulfil these basic criteria a (more or less) co-equal status, with perhaps one's own group still retaining a "first among equal" standing. This process involved a redefinition of the idea of "the Church" from traditional theology. This ecclesiology, known as denominationalism, contends that each group (which fulfils the essential criteria of "being Christian") is a sub-group of a greater "Christian Church", itself a purely abstract concept with no direct representation, i.e., no group, or "denomination", claims to be "the Church." Obviously, this ecclesiology is at variance with other groups that indeed consider themselves to be "the Church." The "essential criteria" generally consist of belief in the Trinity, belief that Jesus Christ is the only way to have forgiveness and eternal life, and that He died and rose again bodily.

Welsh and Pentecostal revivals

The final Great Awakening (1904 onwards) had its roots in the Holiness movement which had developed in the late 19C. The Pentecostal revival movement began, out of a passion for more power and a greater outpouring of the Spirit. In 1902, the American evangelists Reuben Archer Torrey and Charles M. Alexander conducted meetings in Melbourne, Australia, resulting in more than 8,000 converts. News of this revival travelled fast, igniting a passion for prayer and an expectation that God would work in similar ways elsewhere.

Torrey and Alexander were involved in the beginnings of the great Welsh revival (1904) which led Jessie Penn-Lewis to witness the working of Satan during times of revival, and write her book "War on the Saints". In 1906 the modern Pentecostal Movement was born in Azusa Street, in Los Angeles.

Modern Catholic response to Protestantism

Well into the Twentieth Century, Catholics—even if no longer resorting to persecution—still defined Protestants as heretics. Thus, Hillaire Belloc - in his time one of the most conspicuous speakers for Catholicism in Britain - was outspoken about the "Protestant Heresy". He even defined Islam as being "A Christian heresy", on the grounds that Muslims accept many of the tenets of Christianity but deny the godhood of Jesus (see Hilaire Belloc#On Islam).

However, in the second half of the Century - and especially in the wake of Vatican II - the Catholic Church, in the spirit of ecumenism, tends not to refer to Protestantism as a heresy nowadays, even if the teachings of Protestantism are indeed heretical from a Catholic perspective. Modern usage favors referring to Protestants as "separated brethren" rather than "heretics", although the latter is still on occasion used vis-a-vis Catholics who abandon their Church to join a Protestant denomination. Many Catholics consider Protestantism to be material rather than formal heresy, and thus non-culpable.

Some of the doctrines of Protestantism that the Catholic Church considers heretical are the belief that the Bible is the only source and rule of faith ("sola scriptura"), that faith alone can lead to salvation ("sola fide") and that there is no sacramental, ministerial priesthood attained by ordination, but only a universal priesthood of all believers.

Postmodern Christianity

Liberal Christianity

Main article: Liberal Christianity

Liberal Christianity -- sometimes called liberal theology -- has an affinity with certain current forms of postmodern Christianity, although postmodern thought was originally a reaction against mainstream Protestant liberalism. Liberal Christianity is an umbrella term covering diverse, philosophically informed movements and moods within 19th and 20th century Christianity.

Despite its name, liberal Christianity has always been thoroughly protean. The word "liberal" in liberal Christianity does not refer to a leftist political agenda but rather to insights developed during the Enlightenment. Generally speaking, Enlightenment-era liberalism held that man is a political creature and that liberty of thought and expression should be his highest value. The development of liberal Christianity owes a lot to the works of philosophers Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Schleiermacher. As a whole, liberal Christianity is a product of a continuing philosophical dialogue.

Many 20th century liberal Christians have been influenced by philosophers Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. Examples of important liberal Christian thinkers are Rudolf Bultmann and John A.T. Robinson.

Emerging church

Main article: Emerging church

Postmodern Christianity has influenced the emerging church movement. The emerging church movement seeks to revitalize the Christian church beyond what it sees as the confines of Christian fundamentalism so that it can effectively engage with people in contemporary society. Critics allege, however, that this movement's understanding of faith has led many of its adherents outside the bounds of traditional Christianity. Brian McLaren is a well-known author and spokesperson for the emerging church movement.

Anglican communion

In the early 20th century when the Anglo-Catholic Movement was at its height, the Anglican Communion had hundreds of orders and communities, and thousands of religious. However, since the 1960s there has been a sharp falling off in the numbers of religious in many parts of the Anglican Communion, most notably in the United Kingdom and the United States. Many once large and international communities have been reduced to a single convent or monastery comprised of elderly men or women. In the last few decades of the 20th century, novices have for most communities been few and far between. Some orders and communities have already become extinct. There are however, still thousands of Anglican religious working today in religious communities around the world. While vocations remain few in some areas, Anglican religious communities are experiencing exponential growth in Africa, Asia, and Oceania.

Monasticism: Lutheran Church

In 1947 Mother Basilea Schlink and Mother Martyria founded the Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary, in Darmstadt, Germany. This movement is largely considered Evangelical or Lutheran in its roots.

In 1948 Bavarian Lutheran pastor Walter Hümmer and his wife Hanna founded the Communität Christusbruderschaft Selbitz.

In other Lutheran traditions "The Congregation of the Servants of Christ" was established at St. Augustine's House in Oxford, Michigan, in 1958 when some other men joined Father Arthur Kreinheder in observing the monastic life and offices of prayer. These men and others came and went over the years. The community has always remained small; at times the only member was Father Arthur. During the 35 years of its existence over 25 men tested their vocations to monastic life by living at the house for some time, from a few months to many years, but at Father Arthur's death in 1989 only one permanent resident remained. At the beginning of 2006, there are 2 permanent professed members and 2 long-term guests. Strong ties remain with this community and their brothers in Sweden (Östanbäck monastery) and in Germany (Priory of St. Wigbert). In Germany, Communität Casteller Ring is a Lutheran Benedictine community for women.

In Lutheran Sweden, religious life for women had been established already in 1954, when Sister Marianne Nordström made her profession through contacts with The Order of the Holy Paraclete and Mother Margaret Cope (1886-1961) at St Hilda’s Priory, Whitby, Yorkshire.

Monasticism: Other denominations

Around 1964, Reuben Archer Torrey III, an Episcopal missionary, grandson of R. A. Torrey, founded Jesus Abbey as a missionary community in Korea. It has some links with the Episcopal Church and holds an Evangelical doctrine.

The Community of the Sisterhood Emmanuel was founded in 1973 in Makak - in the Centre Province by Mother Marie, one of the first female Pastors of the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon. In 1975 she moved the community to the present site- at Agyati in Bafut. It has 10 finally consecrated Sisters, four in simple vows and a handfull of others in formation. The Sisters are trained in strong collaboration with the sister Institutes of the Catholic Church. They say that one of their charisms is ecumenism. The Sisterhood Emmanuel is the only Presbyterian Monastery in Cameroon.

In 1999 an independent Protestant order was founded named The Knights of Prayer Monastic Order. The community maintains several monks in its Portland, Oregon, cloister and has an international network of associated lay people. It is not affiliated with any particular congregation.

Ecumenical monastic expressions

Christian monasticism is experiencing renewal in the form of several new foundations with an 'inter-Christian' vision for their respective communities.

In 1944 Roger Schütz, a pastor of the Swiss Reformed Church, founded a small religious brotherhood in France which became known as the Taizé Community. Although he was partly inspired by the hope of reviving monasticism in the Protestant tradition, the brotherhood was interdenominational, accepting Roman Catholic brothers, and is thus an ecumenical rather than a specifically Protestant community.

The Order of Ecumenical Franciscans is a religious order of men and women devoted to following the examples of Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Clare of Assisi in their life and understanding of the Christian gospel: sharing a love for creation and those who have been marginalized. It includes members of many different denominations, including Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and a range of Protestant traditions. The Order understands its charism to include not only ecumenical efforts and the traditional emphases of the Franciscans in general, but also to help to develop relationships between the various Franciscan orders.

Additional expressions of ecumenical monasticism can be seen in the Bose Monastic Community and communities of the New Monasticism movement arising from Protestant Evangelicalism.

20th century

Protestant Christianity in the 20th century was characterized by accelerating fragmentation. The century saw the rise of both liberal and conservative splinter groups, as well as a general secularization of Western society. The Roman Catholic Church instituted many reforms in order to modernize. Missionaries also made inroads in the Far East, establishing further followings in China, Taiwan, and Japan. At the same time, state-promoted atheism in Communist Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union brought many Eastern Orthodox Christians to Western Europe and the United States, leading to greatly increased contact between Western and Eastern Christianity. Nevertheless, church attendance declined more in Western Europe than it did in the East. Christian ecumenism grew in importance, beginning at the Edinburgh Missionary Conference in 1910, and accelerated after the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) of the Catholic Church, The Liturgical Movement became significant in both Catholic and Protestant Christianity, especially in Anglicanism.

Another movement which has grown up over the 20th century has been Christian anarchism which rejects the church, state or any power other than God. They usually also believe in absolute nonviolence. Leo Tolstoy's book The Kingdom of God is Within You published in 1894, is believed to be the catalyst for this movement. Because of its extremist political views, however, its appeal has been largely limited to the highly educated, especially those with erstwhile humanist sentiments; the thoroughgoing aversion to institutionalism on Christian anarchists' part has also hindered acceptance of this philosophy on a large scale.

The 1950s saw a boom in the Evangelical church in America. The post–World War II prosperity experienced in the U.S. also had its effects on the church. Although simplistically referred to as "morphological fundamentalism", the phrase nonetheless does accurately describe the physical developments experienced. Church buildings were erected in large numbers, and the Evangelical church's activities grew along with this expansive physical growth.

Pentecostal movement

Main article: Pentecostalism

Another noteworthy development in 20th-century Christianity was the rise of the modern Pentecostal movement. Although its roots predate the year 1900, its actual birth is commonly attributed to the 20th century. Sprung from Methodist and Wesleyan roots, it arose out of the meetings at an urban mission on Azusa Street in Los Angeles. From there it spread around the world, carried by those who experienced what they believed to be miraculous moves of God there. These Pentecost-like manifestations have steadily been in evidence throughout the history of Christianity—such as seen in the two Great Awakenings that started in the United States. However, Azusa Street is widely accepted as the fount of the modern Pentecostal movement. Pentecostalism, which in turn birthed the Charismatic movement within already established denominations, continues to be an important force in western Christianity.

In reaction to these developments, Christian fundamentalism was a movement to reject the radical influences of philosophical humanism, as this was affecting the Christian religion. Especially targeting critical approaches to the interpretation of the Bible, and trying to blockade the inroads made into their churches by atheistic scientific assumptions, the fundamentalists began to appear in various denominations as numerous independent movements of resistance to the drift away from historic Christianity. Over time, the Fundamentalist Evangelical movement has divided into two main wings, with the label Fundamentalist following one branch, while Evangelical has become the preferred banner of the more moderate movement. Although both movements primarily originated in the English speaking world, the majority of Evangelicals now live elsewhere in the world.

A third, but less popular, option than either liberalism or fundamentalism was the neo-orthodox movement, which generally affirmed a higher view of Scripture than liberalism but did not tie the main doctrines of the Christian faith to precise theories of Biblical inspiration. If anything, thinkers in this camp denounced such quibbling between liberals and conservatives as a dangerous distraction from the duties of Christian discipleship. This branch of thought arose in the early 20th century in the context of the rise of the Third Reich in Germany and the accompanying political and ecclesiastical destabilization of Europe in the years before and during World War II. Neo-orthodoxy's highly contextual, dialectical modes of argument and reasoning often rendered its main premises incomprehensible to American thinkers and clergy, and it was frequently either dismissed out of hand as unrealistic or cast into the reigning left- or right-wing molds of theologizing. Karl Barth, a Swiss Reformed pastor and professor, brought this movement into being by drawing upon earlier criticisms of established (largely modernist) Protestant thought made by the likes of Soren Kierkegaard and Franz Overbeck; Dietrich Bonhoeffer, murdered by the Nazis for allegedly taking part in an attempt to overthrow the Hitler regime, adhered to this school of thought; his classic The Cost of Discipleship is likely the best-known and accessible statement of the neo-orthodox position.

Evangelicalism

Main article: Evangelicalism

In the U.S. and elsewhere in the world, there has been a marked rise in the evangelical wing of Protestant denominations, especially those that are more exclusively evangelical, and a corresponding decline in the mainstream liberal churches. In the post–World War I era, Liberalism was the faster growing sector of the American church. Liberal wings of denominations were on the rise, and a considerable number of seminaries held and taught from a liberal perspective as well. In the post–World war II era, the trend began to swing back towards the conservative camp in America's seminaries and church structures. Those entering seminaries and other postgraduate theologically related programs have shown more conservative leanings than their average predecessors.

The neo-Evangelical push of the 1940s and 1950s produced a movement that continues to have wide influence. In the southern U.S., the more moderate neo-Evangelicals, represented by leaders such as Billy Graham, have experienced a notable surge displacing the caricature of the pulpit pounding country preachers of fundamentalism. The stereotypes have gradually shifted. Some, such as Jerry Falwell, have managed to maintain credibility in the eyes of many fundamentalists, as well as to gain stature as a more moderate Evangelical.

Evangelicalism is not a single, monolithic entity. The Evangelical churches and their adherents cannot be easily stereotyped. Most are not fundamentalist, in the narrow sense that this term has come to represent; though many still refer to themselves as such. There have always been diverse views on issues, such as openness to cooperation with non-Evangelicals, the applicability of the Bible to political choices and social or scientific issues, and even the limited inerrancy of the Bible.

However, the movement has managed in an informal way, to reserve the name Evangelical for those who adhere to an historic Christian faith, a paleo-orthodoxy, as some have put it. Those who call themselves "moderate evangelicals"(although considered conservative in relation to society as a whole) still hold fast to the fundamentals of the historic Christian faith. Even "Liberal" Evangelicals label themselves as such not so much in terms of their theology, but rather to advertise that they are progressive in their civic, social, or scientific perspective.

There is some debate as to whether Pentecostals are considered to be Evangelical. Their roots in Pietism and the Holiness movement are undisputedly Evangelical, but their doctrinal distinctives differ from the more traditional Evangelicals, who are less likely to have an expectation of private revelations from God, and differ from the Pentecostal perspective on miracles, angels, and demons. Typically, those who include the Pentecostals in the Evangelical camp are labeled neo-evangelical by those who do not. The National Association of Evangelicals and the Evangelical Alliance have numerous Trinitarian Pentecostal denominations among their membership. Another relatively late entrant to wide acceptance within the Evangelical fold is the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Evangelicals are as diverse as the names that appear—Billy Graham, Chuck Colson, J. Vernon McGee, Benny Hinn, J.I. Packer, John R.W. Stott, Pat Robertson, Jimmy Carter, etc.—or even Evangelical institutions such as Dallas Theological Seminary (dispensationalist), Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (Boston), Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (Chicago), Wheaton College (Illinois), the Christian Coalition, The Christian Embassy (Jerusalem), etc. Although there exists a diversity in the Evangelical community worldwide, the ties that bind all Evangelicals are still apparent. A "high view" of Scripture, belief in the Deity of Christ, the Trinity, salvation by grace through faith, and the bodily resurrection of Christ, to mention a few.

10/40 Window

Evangelicals defined and prioritized efforts to reach the "unreached" in the late 20th and early 21st centuries by focusing on countries located between 10 degrees and 40 degrees North of the equator and stretching from North Africa across to China. This area is mostly dominated by Muslim nations, many who do not allow missionaries of other religions to enter their countries.

Spread of secularism

In Europe there has been a general move away from religious observance and belief in Christian teachings and a move towards secularism. The "secularization of society", attributed to the time of the Enlightenment and its following years, is largely responsible for the spread of secularism. For example the Gallup International Millennium Survey[1] showed that only about one sixth of Europeans attend regular religious services, less than half gave God "high importance", and only about 40% believe in a "personal God". Nevertheless the large majority considered that they "belong" to a religious denomination. Numbers show that the "de-Christianization" of Europe has slowly begun to swing in the opposite direction. Renewal in certain quarters of the Anglican church, as well as in pockets of Protestantism on the continent attest to this initial reversal of the secularization of Europe, the continent in which Christianity originally took its strongest roots and world expansion.

In North America, South America and Australia, the other three continents where Christianity is the dominant professed religion, religious observance is much higher than in Europe. At the same time, these regions are often seen by other nations as being uptight and "Victorian", in their social mores}. In general, the United States leans toward the conservative in comparison to other western nations in its general culture, in part due to the Christian element found primarily in its Midwestern and southern states.

South America, historically Catholic, has experienced a large Evangelical and Pentecostal infusion in the 20th century due to the influx of Christian missionaries from abroad. For example: Brazil, South America's largest country, is the largest Catholic country in the world, and at the same time is the largest Evangelical country in the world (based on population). Some of the largest Christian congregations in the world are found in Brazil.

Australia has seen renewal in different parts of her Anglican Church, as well as a growing presence of an Evangelical community. Although more "traditional" in its Anglican roots, the nation has seen growth in its religious sector. Some of its religious programming is even exported via satellite.

• González, Justo L. (1985). The Story of Christianity, Vol. 2: The Reformation to the Present Day. San Francisco: Harper. ISBN 0-06-063316-6.
• Latorette, Kenneth Scott (1975). A History of Christianity, Volume 2. San Francisco: Harper. ISBN 0-06-064953-4 (paperback). {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)
• Hastings, Adrian (1999). A World History of Christianity. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. ISBN 0802848753.

Roman Catholicism

India and China

In 1939 Pope Pius XII, within weeks of his coronation, radically reverted the 250 year old Vatican policy and permitted the veneration of dead family members. The Church began to flourish again with twenty new arch-dioceses, seventy-nine dioceses and thirty-eight apostolic prefects, but only until 1949, when the Communist revolution took over the country.

Social teachings

Quadragesimo Anno was issued by Pope Pius XI, on 15 May 1931, 40 years after Rerum Novarum. Unlike Leo, who addressed the mainly condition of workers, Pius XI concentrated on the ethical implications of the social and economic order. He called for the reconstruction of the social order based on the principle of solidarity and subsidiarity.  He noted major dangers for human freedom and dignity, arising from unrestrained capitalism and totalitarian communism.

The social teachings of Pope Pius XII repeat these teachings, and apply them in greater detail not only to workers and owners of capital, but also to other professions such as politicians,educators, house-wives, farmers bookkeepers, international organizations, and all aspects of life including the military. Going beyond Pius XI, he also defined social teachings in the areas of medicine, psychology, sport, TV,science, law and education. There is virtually no social issue, which Pius XII did not address and relate to the Christian faith. He was called "the Pope of Technology, for his willingness and ability to examine the social implications of technological advances. The dominant concern was the continued rights and dignity of the individual. With the beginning of the space age at the end of his pontificate, Pius XII explored the social implications of space exploration and satellites on the social fabric of humanity asking for a new sense of community and solidarity in light of existing papal teachings on subsidiarity.

Anti-Clericalism and persecutions

Between 1926 and 1934, over 3,000 priests were exiled or assassinated. In an effort to prove that "God would not defend the Church", Calles ordered "hideous desecration of churches ... there were parodies of (church) services, nuns were raped and any priests captured ... were shot ...". Calles was eventually deposed and despite the persecution, the Church in Mexico continued to grow. A 2000 census reported that 88 percent of Mexicans identify as Catholic.

In 1954, under the regime of General Juan Perón, Argentina saw extensive destruction of churches, denunciations of clergy and confiscation of Catholic schools as Perón attempted to extend state control over national institutions. Cuba, under atheist Fidel Castro, succeeded in reducing the Church's ability to work by deporting the archbishop and 150 Spanish priests, discriminating against Catholics in public life and education and refusing to accept them as members of the Communist Party. The subsequent flight of 300,000 people from the island also helped to diminish the Church there.

Unprecedented persecutions of the Catholic Church took place not only in Mexico but also in 20th century Spain and the Soviet Union. Pius XI called this the Terrible Triangle The " harsh persecution short of total annihilation of the clergy, monks, and nuns and other people associated with the Church, , began in 1918 and continued well into the Thirties. The Civil War in Spain started in 1936, during which thousands of churches were destroyed, thirteen bishops and some 6,832 clergy and religious Spaniards were assassinated. . After the massive Church persecutions in Mexico, Spain and the Soviet Union, Pius XI defined communism as the main adversary of the Catholic Church in his encyclical Divini Redemptoris issued on March 19, 1937. He blamed Western powers and media for a conspiracy of silence on the persecutions carried out by Communist, Socialist and Fascist forces.

World War II

In the 1937 encyclical Mit brennender Sorge, drafted by the future Pope Pius XII, Pope Pius XI warned Catholics that antisemitism is incompatible with Christianity. Read from the pulpits of all German Catholic churches, it described Hitler as an insane and arrogant prophet and was the first official denunciation of Nazism made by any major organization. Nazi persecution of the Church in Germany then began by "outright repression" and "staged prosecutions of monks for homosexuality, with the maximum of publicity." When Dutch bishops protested against deportation of Jews in Holland, the Nazi's responded with even more severe measures. In Poland, the Nazis murdered over 2500 monks and priests while even more were sent to concentration camps. The Priester-Block (priests barracks) in Dachau lists 2600 Roman Catholic priests. Stalin staged an even more severe persecution at almost the same time. After World War II historians such as David Kertzer accused the Church of encouraging centuries of anti–semitism, and Pope Pius XII of not doing enough to stop Nazi atrocities. Prominent members of the Jewish community, including Golda Meir, Albert Einstein, Moshe Sharett and Rabbi Isaac Herzog contradicted the criticisms and spoke highly of Pius' efforts to protect Jews, while others such as rabbi David G. Dalin noted that "hundreds of thousands" of Jews were saved by the Church.

Second Vatican Council

A major event of the Second Vatican Council, known as Vatican II, was the issuance by Pope Paul VI and Orthodox Patriarch Athenagoras of a joint expression of regret for many of the past actions that had led up to the Great Schism between the Western and Eastern churches, expressed as the Catholic-Orthodox Joint declaration of 1965. At the same time, they lifted the mutual excommunications dating from the eleventh century.

The Catholic Church engaged in a comprehensive process of reform following the Second Vatican Council (1962–65). Intended as a continuation of Vatican I, under Pope John XXIII the council developed into an engine of modernisation. It was tasked with making the historical teachings of the Church clear to a modern world, and made pronouncements on topics including the nature of the church, the mission of the laity and religious freedom. The council approved a revision of the liturgy and permitted the Latin liturgical rites to use vernacular languages as well as Latin during mass and other sacraments. Efforts by the Church to improve Christian unity became a priority. In addition to finding common ground on certain issues with Protestant churches, the Catholic Church has discussed the possibility of unity with the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Reforms

Changes to old rites and ceremonies following Vatican II produced a variety of responses. Some stopped going to church, while others tried to preserve the old liturgy with the help of sympathetic priests. These formed the basis of today's Traditionalist Catholic groups, which believe that the reforms of Vatican II have gone too far. Liberal Catholics form another dissenting group who feel that the Vatican II reforms did not go far enough. The liberal views of theologians such as Hans Küng and Charles Curran, led to Church withdrawal of their authorization to teach as Catholics. According to Professor Thomas Bokenkotter, most Catholics "accepted the changes more or less gracefully." In 2007, Benedict XVI reinstated the old mass as an option, to be celebrated upon request by the faithful.

A new Codex Juris Canonici - Canon Law called for by John XXIII, was promulgated by Pope John Paul II on January 25, 1983. It includes numerous reforms and alterations in Church law and Church discipline for the Latin Church. It replaced the 1917 version issued by Benedict XV.

Modernism: Liberation theology

In the 1960s, growing social awareness and politicization in the Latin American Church gave birth to liberation theology. The Peruvian priest, Gustavo Gutiérrez, became it primary proponent and, in 1979, the bishops' conference in Mexico officially declared the Latin American Church's "preferential option for the poor". Archbishop Óscar Romero, a supporter of the movement, became the region's most famous contemporary martyr in 1980, when he was murdered while saying mass by forces allied with the government. Both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI (as Cardinal Ratzinger) denounced the movement. The Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff was twice ordered to cease publishing and teaching. While Pope John Paul II was criticized for his severity in dealing with proponents of the movement, he maintained that the Church, in its efforts to champion the poor, should not do so by resorting to violence or partisan politics. The movement is still alive in Latin America today, though the Church now faces the challenge of Pentecostal revival in much of the region.

Sexuality and gender issues

The sexual revolution of the 1960s brought challenging issues for the Church. Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae reaffirmed the Catholic Church's traditional view of marriage and marital relations and asserted a continued proscription of artificial birth control. In addition, the encyclical reaffirmed the sanctity of life from conception to natural death and asserted a continued condemnation of both abortion and euthanasia as grave sins which were equivalent to murder.

Efforts to lead the Church to consider the ordination of women led Pope John Paul II to issue two documents to explain Church teaching. Mulieris Dignitatem was issued in 1988 to clarify women's equally important and complementary role in the work of the Church. Then in 1994, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis explained that the Church extends ordination only to men in order to follow the example of Jesus, who chose only men for this specific duty.

The Uniate problem

At a meeting in Balamand, Lebanon in June 1993, the Joint International Commission for the Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church the delegates of the Eastern Orthodox Churches declared "...and that what has been called 'uniatism' can no longer be accepted either as a method to be followed nor as a model of the unity our Churches are seeking" (section 12 of the document).

At the same time, the Commission stated:

• Concerning the Eastern Catholic Churches, it is clear that they, as part of the Catholic Communion, have the right to exist and to act in response to the spiritual needs of their faithful.
• The Oriental Catholic Churches who have desired to re-establish full communion with the See of Rome and have remained faithful to it, have the rights and obligations which are connected with this communion.

Recent efforts at reconciliation: Joint Theological Commission

The Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue Between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church first met in Rhodes in 1980.

Other moves toward reconciliation

In June 1995, Patriarch Bartholomew I, who was elected as the 273rd Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople in October 1991, visited the Vatican for the first time, when he joined in the historic inter-religious day of prayer for peace at Assisi. Pope John Paul II and the Patriarch explicitly stated their mutual "desire to relegate the excommunications of the past to oblivion and to set out on the way to re-establishing full communion."

In May 1999, John Paul II was the first pope since the Great Schism to visit an Eastern Orthodox country: Romania. Upon greeting John Paul II, the Romanian Patriarch Teoctist stated: "The second millennium of Christian history began with a painful wounding of the unity of the Church; the end of this millennium has seen a real commitment to restoring Christian unity." Pope John Paul II visited other heavily Orthodox areas such as Ukraine, despite lack of welcome at times, and he said that healing the divisions between Western and Eastern Christianity was one of his fondest wishes.

References

• Joseph P. Farrell. God, History, & Dialectic: The Theological Foundations of the Two Europes and Their Cultural Consequences. Bound edition 1997. Electronic edition 2008.
• Aidan Nichols. Rome and the Eastern Churches: a Study in Schism. 1992

An influx of Russian émigrés fleeing the Soviet Union occurred during the American colonial period. In 1935, a Russian parish was established in Manila, and the Episcopal Church then permitted the use the north transept of their cathedral for worship. It is said that in 1937, the first Orthodox church was built, which also housed the first Orthodox altar in the Philippines. Later, both the Episcopal cathedral and the Orthodox church in Manila were destroyed during the Second World War.

In 1949, 5,500 Russian Orthodox from China, including then-Archbishop John Maximovitch, were relocated to the island of Tubabao in the south-central Philippines by the International Refugee Organization and with the permission of the newly independent Republic of the Philippines. Maximovitch then established a makeshift wooden church, orphanage, and other buildings in Tubabao exclusively for the Russian refugees. Tubabao, however, was (and still is) an underdeveloped island which is humid (typical of the Philippine climate), prone to typhoons, and at times inaccessible due to the ocean conditions. When a Russian refugee commented to the locals on their fear that a typhoon would destroy their camp, they replied that there was nothing to worry about because “your holy man blesses your camp from four directions every night,” and indeed, there were no typhoons or floods while Maximovitch was there. Maximovitch did not preach the Orthodox faith to the natives: no Filipino was baptized, chrismated, ordained, or consecrated by him during his stay in the country. Through the persistent lobbying of Maximovitch to the United States Congress, the refugees were eventually allowed in 1951 to settle in the United States and Australia.

In 1996, the Orthodox Metropolitanate of Hong Kong and Southeast Asia [2] was created for the needs of the faithful in Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and India.

Today, there are some 560 Orthodox in the Philippines under the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.

Second Vatican Council

At the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) the debate on papal primacy and authority re-emerged, and in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium, the Roman Catholic Church's teaching on the authority of the Pope, bishops and councils was further elaborated. Vatican II sought to correct the unbalanced ecclesiology left behind by Vatican I. The result is the body of teaching about the papacy and episcopacy contained in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium.

Vatican II reaffirmed everything Vatican I taught about papal primacy and infallibility, but it added important points about bishops. Bishops, it says, are not "vicars of the Roman Pontiff." Rather, in governing their local churches they are "vicars and legates of Christ" . Together, they form a body, a "college," whose head is the pope. This episcopal college is responsible for the well-being of the Universal Church. Here in a nutshell are the basic elements of the Council’s much-discussed communio ecclesiology, which affirms the importance of local churches and the doctrine of collegiality.

In a key passage about collegiality, Vatican II teaches: "The order of bishops is the successor to the college of the apostles in their role as teachers and pastors, and in it the apostolic college is perpetuated. Together with their head, the Supreme Pontiff, and never apart from him, they have supreme and full authority over the Universal Church; but this power cannot be exercised without the agreement of the Roman Pontiff" . Much of the present discussion of papal primacy is concerned with exploring the implications of this passage.

Chapter 3 of the dogmatic constitution on the Church of Vatican Council I (Pastor aeternus) is the principal document of the Magisterium about the content and nature of the primatial power of the Roman Pontiff. Chapter 4 is a development and defining of one particular characteristic of this primatial power, namely the Pope's supreme teaching authority, i.e. when the Pope speaks ex cathedra he teaches the doctrine of the faith infallibly.

Muslim history

Demise of the Ottoman Empire

Islam in the world.(Green: Sunni, Red: Shia

Main article: Partitioning of the Ottoman Empire

The modern age brought radical technological and organizational changes to Europe and Islamic countries found themselves less modern when compared to many western nations. Europe's state-based government and rampant colonization allowed the West to dominate the globe economically and forced Islamic countries to question change.

By the end of the 19th century, the Ottoman empire had declined due to internal conflict. Their decision to back Germany in World War I meant they shared the Central Powers' defeat in that war, which led directly to the overthrow of the Ottomans by Turkish nationalists led by Kemal Atatürk. Following World War I, its remnants were parceled out as European protectorates or spheres of influence. Ottoman successor states include today's Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Egypt, Greece, Iraq, Lebanon, Montenegro, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Syria, Jordan, Turkey, other Balkan states, North Africa and the north shore of the Black sea.

Many Muslim countries sought to adopt European political organization and nationalism began to emerge in the Muslim world. Countries like Egypt, Syria, and Turkey organized their governments with definable policies and sought to develop national pride amongst their citizens. Other places, like Iraq, were not as successful due to a lack of unity and an inability to resolve age-old prejudices between Muslim sects and against non-Muslims.

Some Muslim countries, such as Turkey and Egypt, sought to separate Islam from the secular government. In other cases, such as Saudi Arabia, the new government brought out new religious expression in the re-emergence of the puritanical form of Sunni Islam known to its detractors as Wahhabism which found its way into the Saudi royal family.

20th century Timeline

• 1901 - Nazarene John Diaz goes to Cape Verde Islands; Maude Cary sails for Morocco; Oriental Missionary Society founded by Charles Cowman (his wife is the compiler of popular devotional book Streams in the Desert); Missionary James Chalmers killed and eaten by cannibals in Papua New Guinea
• 1902 - Swiss members of the Plymouth Brethren Christian Missions in Many Lands (CMML) enter Laos ; California Yearly Meeting of Friends opens work in Guatemala
• 1903 - Church of the Nazarene enters Mexico
• 1904 - Premillennialist theologian William Eugene Blackstone begins teaching that the world has already been evangelized, citing Acts 2:5, 8:4, Mark 16:20 and Colossians 1:23
• 1904 Welsh revival
• 1905 - Gunnerius Tollefsen is converted at a Salvation Army meeting under the preaching of Samuel Logan Brengle. Later he would become a missionary to the Belgian Congo and then first mission secretary of the Norwegian Pentecostal movement.
• 1905 French law on the separation of Church and State
• 1906 - The Evangelical Alliance Mission (TEAM) opens work in Venezuela with T. J. Bach and John Christiansen
• 1906 Albert Schweitzer publishes The Quest of the Historical Jesus (English translation 1910)
• 1906 Biblia Hebraica
• 1906-1909 Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles, CA begins modern Pentecostal movement
• 1907 - Massive revival meetings in Korea ; Harmon Schmelzenbach sails for Africa; Presbyterians and Methodists open Union Theological Seminary in Manila, Philippines; Bolivian Indian Mission founded by George Allen
• 1907-1912 Nicholas of Japan, Archbishop of Japanese Orthodox Church
• 1908 - Gospel Missionary Union opens work in Colombia with Charles Chapman and John Funk; Assemblies of God enter Rome and southern Italy as well as Egypt
• 1909 - Pentecostal movement reaches Chile through ministry of American Methodist Willis Hoover [3]
• 1909 Scofield Reference Bible
• 1909-1911 The Rosicrucian Fellowship, an international association of Esoteric Christian mystics, founded at Mount Ecclesia
• 1910 - C.T. Studd establishes Heart of Africa Mission, now called WEC International ; Edinburgh Missionary Conference held in Scotland, presided over by John Mott, beginning modern Protestant ecumenical cooperation in missions
• 1910 Edinburgh Missionary Conference launches modern missions movement and modern ecumenical movement; 5-point statement of the Presbyterian General Assembly, also used by Fundamentalists
• 1910-1915 The Fundamentals, a 12-volume collection of essays by 64 British and American scholars and preachers, a foundation of Fundamentalism
• 1911 - Christian & Missionary Alliance enters Cambodia and Vietnam (Niell, 293</ref>
• 1912 - Conference of British Missionary Societies formed ; International Review of Missions begins publication
• 1913 - African-American Eliza George sails from New York for Liberia ; William Whiting Borden dies in Egypt while preparing to take the gospel to the Muslims in China
• 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia
• 1914 - Large-scale revival movement in Uganda; C.T. Studd reports a revival movement in the Congo [4]
• 1914 Iglesia ni Cristo incorporated in the Philippines
• 1914 Welsh Church Act 1914
• 1914-1918 World War I numerous missionaries in Africa and Asia in British, French, German and Belgian colonies are expelled or detained for the duration of the war, if their nation was at war with the colonial authority
• 1915 - Founded in 1913 in Nanjing, China as a women's Christian college, Ginling College officially opens with eight students and six teachers. It was supported by four missions: the Northern Baptists, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the Methodists, and the Presbyterians. [5]
• 1915-1917 Armenian Genocide
• 1916 - Rhenish missionaries are forced to leave Ondjiva in southern Angola under pressure from the Portuguese authorities and Chief Mandume of the Kwanyama. By then, four congregations existed with a confessing membership of 800.
• 1916 And did those feet in ancient time
• 1916 Father Divine founded International Peace Mission movement
• 1917 - Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association (IFMA) founded
• 1917 Heinrich Hansen publishes Lutheran Evangelical Catholic theses Stimuli et Clavi
• 1917 Miracle of the Sun an event that was witnessed by as many as 100,000 people on 13 October 1917 in the Cova da Iria fields near Fátima, Portugal. How the Sun Danced at Midday at Fátima[6][7]
• 1917 Our Lady appear [8] to 3 young people, in Fatima, Portugal. They were Jacinta Marto, Tiago Veloso and Lúcia (Sister Lucia)
• 1917 True Jesus Church founded in Beijing
• 1917 Restitution of the Moscow Patriarchy with Tikhon as patriarch
• 1918 - James L. Barton, head of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, asked missionaries who had served in the Ottoman Empire for detailed reports of the horrors they had witnessed of the Armenian Genocide
• 1918 Execution of Holy Martyrs of Russia, including the last tsar, Nicholas II, and his wife, Alexandra Feodorovna
• 1919 - The Union Version of Bible in Chinese is published [9]; Gospel Missionary Union enters Sudan
• 1919 Karl Barth's Commentary on Romans is published, critiquing Liberal Christianity and beginning the neo-orthodox movement
• 1920 - Baptist Mid-Missions formed by William Haas ;Church of the Nazarene enters Syria; Columbans enter Australia and New Zealand [10]
• 1920 The Ecclesia, an Esoteric Christian Temple, was erected and dedicated on Christmas day (December 25)
• 1921 - Founding of International Missionary Council (IMC); Norwegian Mission Council formed; Columbans enter China
• 1921 Oxford Group founded at Oxford
• 1922 - Nazarenes enter Mozambique
• 1923 - Scottish missionaries begin work in British Togoland
• 1923 Aimee Semple McPherson built Angelus Temple
• 1924 - Bible Churchman's Missionary Society opens work in Upper Burma ; Baptist Mid-Missions begins work in Venezuela
• 1925 - E. Stanley Jones, Methodist missionary to India, writes The Christ of the Indian Road
• 1925 Scopes Trial, caused division among Fundamentalists
• 1925 United Church of Canada formed
• 1926 - Dawson Trotman, founder of the Navigators, is converted through Bible verses he had memorized
• 1926 Father Charles Coughlin's first radio broadcast
• 1926-1929 Cristero War in Mexico, the Constitution of 1917 brought persecution of Christian practices and anti-clerical laws - approximately 4,000 Catholic Priests were expelled, assassinated or executed
• 1927 - East African revival movement (Balokole) emerges in Rwanda and moves across several other countries
• 1927 Pope Pius XI decrees Comma Johanneum open to dispute
• 1928 - Cuba Bible Institute (West Indies Mission) opens; Jerusalem Conference of International Missionary Council ; foundation of Borneo Evangelical Mission by Hudson Southwell, Frank Davidson and Carey Tolley.
• 1929 - Christian & Missionary Alliance enters East Borneo (Indonesia) and Thailand
• 1929 Lateran Treaty signed containing three agreements between kingdom of Italy and the papacy.
• 1930 - Christian & Missionary Alliance starts work among Baouli tribe in the Côte d'Ivoire
• 1930 Rastafari movement founded
• 1931 - HCJB radio station started in Quito, Ecuador by Clarence Jones ; Baptist Mid-Missions enters Liberia
• 1931 - Franciscan missionary the Venerable Gabriele Allegra arrives in Hunan China from Italy to start translating the Bible [11]
• 1931 Christ the Redeemer (statue) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
• 1931 Jehovah's Witnesses founded see 1884 for more information.
• 1932 - Assemblies of God open mission work in Colombia; Laymen's Missionary Inquiry report published
• 1932 Our Lady appeared [12] to five school children in Beauraing, Belgium as Lady Virgin of the Poor [13] [14]
• 1933 - Gladys Aylward (subject of movie "The Inn of the Sixth Happiness") arrives in China; Columbans enter Korea [15]
• 1933 Catholic Worker Movement founded
• 1934 - William Cameron Townsend begins the Summer Institute of Linguistics; Columbans enter Japan [16]
• 1934 Herbert W. Armstrong founded Radio Church of God
• 1935 - Frank C. Laubach, American missionary to the Philippines, perfects the "Each one teach one" literacy program, which has been used worldwide to teach 60 million people to read
• 1935 Billy Sunday, early U.S. radio evangelist
• 1935 Gunnar Rosendal publishes Lutheran High Church manifesto Kyrklig förnyelse
• 1935 Dr. Frank C. Laubach, known as "The Apostle to the Illiterates." working in the Philippines, developed a literacy program that continues to teach millions of people to read.
• 1935 Rahlf's critical edition of the Koine Greek Septuagint
• 1936 - With the outbreak of civil war in Spain, missionaries are forced to leave that country.
• 1937 - After expulsion of missionaries from Ethiopia by Italian invaders, widespread revival erupts among Protestant (SIM) churches in south [17]; Child Evangelism Fellowship ([CEF[18]) founded by Jesse Irvin Overholzer
• 1938 - West Indies Mission enters Dominican Republic; Church Missionary Society forced out of Egypt; Madras World Missionary Conference held; Dr. Orpha Speicher completes construction of Reynolds Memorial Hospital in central India
• 1938 Tripura Baptist Christian Union was established at Laxmilunga, Tripura.
• 1938 First Debbarma Christian, Manindra Debbarma, was baptized at Agartala.
• 1939 - A sick missionary, Joy Ridderhof, makes a recording of gospel songs and a message and sends it into the mountains of Honduras. It is the beginning of Gospel Recordings
• 1939 Southern and Northern US branches of the Methodist Episcopal Church, along with the Methodist Protestant Church reunite to form The Methodist Church. Slavery had divided the church in the 1800s.
• 1939-1945 World War II numerous missionaries in Africa and Asia in British, French and Belgian colonies are expelled or detained for the duration of the war, if their nation was at war with the colonial authority
• 1940 - Marianna Slocum begins translation work in Mexico [19]; Military police in Japan arrest the executive officers of the Salvation Army
• 1940 Monumento Nacional de Santa Cruz del Valle de los Caidos, world's largest cross, 152.4 meters high
• 1941 - The steamship Zamzam, sailing from New York with 140 missionaries bound for various mission fields in Africa, is sunk by the Germans. All the missionary passengers would be saved.
• 1942 - William Cameron Townsend founds Wycliffe Bible Translators; New Tribes mission founded with a vision to reach the tribal peoples of Bolivia
• 1942 National Association of Evangelicals founded\
• 1943 - Five missionaries with New Tribes Mission martyred; 11 American Baptist missionaries beheaded in the Philippines by Japanese soldiers
• 1944 - Missionaries return to Suki, Papua New Guinea after withdrawal of the Japanese military
• 1945 - Mission Aviation Fellowship formed ; Far East Broadcasting Company (FEBC) founded ; Evangelical Foreign Missions Association formed by denominational mission boards
• 1945 - The Venerable Gabriele Allegra establishes the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum in Beijing [20]
• 1945 Dietrich Bonhoeffer is executed by the Nazis
• 1945 Ludwig Müller
• 1945 On the Feast of the Annunciation, Our Lady appeared to a simple woman, Ida Peerdeman, in Amsterdam. This was the first of 56 appearances as "Our Lady of All Nations" [21] [22], which took place between 1945 and 1959.
• 1945 The Nag Hammadi library is discovered.
• 1946 - First Inter-Varsity missionary convention (now called "Urbana") ; United Bible Societies formed
• 1946-1952 Revised Standard Version, revision of AV "based on consonantal Hebrew text" for OT and best available texts for NT, done in response to changes in English usage
• 1947 - Conservative Baptist Foreign Mission Society begins work among the Senufo people in the Côte d'Ivoire
• 1947 Dead Sea scrolls discovered
• 1947 Oral Roberts founded Evangelistic Association
• 1947 Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism by Carl F. H. Henry, a landmark of Evangelicalism versus Fundamentalism in US
• 1948 - Alfredo del Rosso merges his Italian Holiness Mission with the Church of the Nazarene, thus opening Nazarene work on the European continent; Southern Baptist Convention adopts program calling for the tripling of the number of missionaries (achieved by 1964</ref>
• 1948 Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, see also Christian Zionism
• 1948 World Council of Churches is founded
• 1949 - Southern Baptist Mission board opens work in Venezuela, Mary Tripp sent out by CEF Child Evangelism Fellowship to the Netherlands.
• 1949 evangelist Billy Graham preaches his first Los Angeles crusade
• 1950 - Paul Orjala arrives in Haiti; radio station 4VEH, owned by East and West Indies Bible Mission, starts broadcasting from near Cap Haitien, Haiti [23]
• 1950 Assumption of Mary decreed by Pope Pius XII
• 1950 Missionaries of Charity founded by Mother Teresa
• 1950 New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures released
• 1951 - World Evangelical Alliance organized; Bill and Vonette Bright create Campus Crusade for Christ at UCLA; Alaska Missions is founded (later to be renamed InterAct Ministries).
• 1951 Campus Crusade for Christ founded at UCLA
• 1951 Bishop Fulton Sheen (1919-1979) debutes his television program Life is Worth Living on the DuMont Network. His half hour lecture program on Roman Catholic theology remained the number one show on U.S. television for its time slot, winning several Emmys until Sheen ended the program in 1957.
• 1951 The Last Temptation a fictional account of the life of Jesus written by Nikos Kazantzakis, wherein Christ's divinity is juxtaposed with his humanity, is published, and promptly banned in many countries.
• 1952 - Trans World Radio founded
• 1952 C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity
• 1952 Novum Testamentum Graece, critical edition of Greek NT, basis of modern translations
• 1953 - Walter Trobisch, who would publish I loved a girl in 1962, begins pioneer missionary work in northern Cameroon Anderson, p. 679</ref>
• 1954 - Mennonite Board of Missions and Charities opens work in Cuba; Argentina Revival breaks out during Tommy Hicks crusade; Augustinians re-established in Japan; Columbans enter Chile [24]
• 1954 Unification Church founded under the name Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, acronymed HSA-UWC.
• 1954 U.S. Pledge of Allegiance modified by act of Congress from "one nation, indivisible" to "one nation under God, indivisible"
• 1955 - Donald McGavran publishes Bridges of God ; Dutch missionary "Brother Andrew" makes first of many Bible smuggling trips into Communist Eastern Europe;
• 1956 - U.S. missionaries Jim Elliot, Pete Fleming, Edward McCully, Nate Saint, and Roger Youderian are killed by Huaorani Indians in eastern Ecuador. (See Operation Auca)
• 1956 Anchor Bible Series
• 1956 In God We Trust designated U.S. national motto
• 1956 The Ten Commandments (1956 film)
• 1957 - East Asia Christian Conference (EACC) founded at Prapat, Sumatra, Indonesia
• 1957 United Church of Christ founded by ecumenical union of Congregationalists and Evangelical & Reformed, representing Calvinists and Lutherans
• 1957 English translation of Walter Bauer's Wörterbuch ...: A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, University of Chicago Press
• 1958 - Rochunga Pudaite completes translation of Bible into Hmar language (India) and was appointed the leader of the Indo-Burma Pioneer Mission; Missionaries Elisabeth Elliot and Rachel Saint make first peaceful contact with the Huaorani tribe in Ecuador.
• 1958 Sedevacantism
• 1959 - Radio Lumiere founded in Haiti by West Indies Mission (now World Team) [25]; Josephine Makil becomes the first African-American to join Wycliffe Bible Translators; Feba Radio founded in UK.
• 1959 Family Radio founded
• 1960 - Kenneth Strachan starts Evangelism-in-Depth in Central America ; 18,000 people in Morocco reply to newspaper ad by Gospel Missionary Union offering free correspondence course on Christianity ; Loren Cunningham founds Youth with a Mission ; The Asia Evangelistic Fellowship (AEF), one of the largest Asian indigenous missionary organisations, is launched in Singapore by G. D. James [26]
• 1961 - International Christian radio stations now number 30
• 1961 Christian Broadcasting Network founded
• 1961 New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures
• 1962 - Don Richardson goes to Sawi tribe in Papua New Guinea ; Operation Mobilisation founded in Mexico by George Verwer
• 1962 Engel v. Vitale, first U.S. Supreme Court decision against School prayer
• 1962-1965 Catholic Second Vatican Council, announced by Pope John XXIII in 1959, produced 16 documents which became official Roman Catholic teaching after approval by the Pope, purpose to renew "ourselves and the flocks committed to us"
• 1963 - Theological Education by Extension movement launched in Guatemala by Ralph Winter and James Emery
• 1963 Martin Luther King leads a civil rights march in Washington, D.C.
• 1963 Oral Roberts University founded
• 1963 campaign by Madalyn Murray O'Hair results in U.S. Supreme Court ruling prohibiting reading of Bible in public schools
• 1964 - In separate incidents, rebels in the Congo kill missionaries Paul Carlson and Irene Ferrel as well as brutalizing missionary doctor Helen Roseveare ; Carlson is featured on December 4 TIME magazine cover [27]; Hans von Staden of the Dorothea Mission proposes to Patrick Johnstone that he write the book now titled Operation World [28]
• 1965 Rousas John Rushdoony founds Chalcedon Foundation
• 1965 Reginald H. Fuller's The Foundations of New Testament Christology
• 1966 - Red Guards destroy churches in China; Berlin Congress on Evangelism ; Missionaries expelled from Burma; God's Smuggler published
• 1966 Raymond E. Brown's Commentary on the Gospel of John
• 1967 - All foreign missionaries expelled from Guinea
• 1968 - The Studium Biblicum Translation of the Bible is published in Chinese [29] by the Venerable Gabriele Allegra
• 1968 - Wu Yung and others form the Chinese Missions Overseas in order to send out missionaries from Taiwan to do cross-cultural ministry; Augustinian order re-established in India
• 1968 United Methodist Church formed with union of Methodist Church & Evangelical United Brethren Church, becoming the largest Methodist/Wesleyan church in the world
• 1968 Zeitoun, Egypt, a bright image of the Virgin Mary as Our Lady of Zeitoun was seen over the Coptic Orthodox Church of Saint Demiana for over a 3 year period. Over six million Egyptians and foreigners saw the image, including Copts, Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Protestants, Muslims, Jews and people of no particular faith.
• 1969 - OMF International begins "industrial evangelism" to Taiwan's factory workers [30]
• 1970 - Frankfurt Declaration on Mission ; Operation Mobilisation launches MV Logos ship [31]; Abp. Makarios III (Mouskos) of Cyprus baptizes 10,000 into the Orthodox Church in Kenya.
• 1970 Mass of Paul VI replaces Tridentine Mass
• 1970 The Late, Great Planet Earth futurist book by Hal Lindsey
• 1970s The Jesus movement takes hold in the U.S. One-way.org
• 1971 - Gustavo Gutierrez publishes A Theology of Liberation
• 1971 Liberty University founded by Jerry Falwell
• 1971 New American Standard Bible
• 1971 The Exorcist, a novel of demonic possession and the mysteries of the Catholic faith, is published.
• 1972 - American Society of Missiology founded with journal Missiology
• 1973 - Services by Billy Graham attract four and a half million people in six cities of Korea ; first All-Asa Mission Consultation convenes in Seoul, Korea with 25 delegates from 14 countries
• 1973 New International Version of the Bible is first published (revised in 1978,1984), using a variety of Greek texts, Masoretic Hebrew texts, and current English style
• 1973 Trinity Broadcasting Network founded
• 1973 On June 12, 1973, near the city of Akita, Our Lady appeared to Sister Agnes Katsuko Sasagawa. Three messages were given to Sr. Agnes over a period 5 months. Our Lady of Akita [32][33].
• 1974 - Missiologist Ralph Winter talks about "hidden" or unreached peoples at Lausanne Congress of World Evangelism . Lausanne Covenant is written and ratified
• 1974 Jim Bakker founds PTL television ministry
• 1975 - Missionaries Armand Doll and Hugh Friberg imprisoned in Mozambique after communist takeover of government [34]
• 1975 Bruce Metzger's Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament
• 1976 - U.S. Center for World Mission founded in Pasadena, California; 1600 Chinese assemble in Hong Kong for the Chinese Congress on World Evangelization; Islamic World Congress calls for withdrawal of Christian missionaries; Peace Child by Don Richardson appears in Reader's Digest.
• 1976 Anneliese Michel, Bavarian woman, underwent exorcism against demon possession
• 1977 - Evangelical Fellowship of India sponsors the All-India Congress on Mission and Evangelization
• 1977 Focus on the Family founded by James Dobson
• 1977 New Perspective on Paul
• 1978 - LCWE Consultation on Gospel and Culture in Willowbank, Bermuda ; Columbans enter Taiwan [35]
• 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy
• 1978-2005 Pope John Paul II, reaffirmed moral traditions (The Splendor of Truth)
• 1979 - Production of JESUS film commissioned by Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ ; Ted Fletcher founds Pioneers, a missionary agency with a focus on "unreached people groups" [36]; Columban missionaries enter Pakistan at the request of the Bishop of Lahore [37]
• 1979 Jesus (1979 film), most watched movie of all time according to New York Times
• 1979 Moral Majority founded by Jerry Falwell
• 1979-1982 New King James Version, complete revision of 1611 AV, updates archaisms while retaining style
• 1980 - Philippine Congress on Discipling a Whole Nation ; Lausanne Congress on World Evangelism Conference in Pattaya
• 1981 - Colombian terrorists kidnap and kill Wycliffe Bible Translator Chet Bitterman [38]; Project Pearl: one million Bibles are delivered in a single night to thousands of waiting believers in China [39]
• 1981 Kibeho, Rwanda reported that Our Lady appeared to several teenages telling them to pray to avoid "rivers of blood" [40][41]. This was an ominious foreshadowing of the Rwanda Genocide of 1994. [42]
• 1981 Mother Angelica launches EWTN. It grows to become one of the largest television networks in the world. The operation expands to radio in 1992.
• 1982 - Story on "The New Missionary" makes December 27 cover of TIME magazine ; Andes Evangelical Mission (formerly Bolivian Indian Mission</ref> merges into SIM (formerly Sudan Interior Mission</ref>
• 1982 Chicago Statement on Biblical Hermeneutics
• 1983 - Missionary Athletes International, a global soccer ministry, founded by Tim Conrad [43]
• 1984 - Founding of The Mission Society for United Methodists, a voluntary missionary sending agency within the United Methodist Church; rebranded in 2006 to The Mission Society; Founding of STEM (Short Term Evangelical Mission teams) ministry by Roger Petersen signals the rising importance of Short-term missions groups
• 1985 - Howard Foltz founds Accelerating International Mission Strategies (AIMS) [44]
• 1985 E. P. Sanders' Jesus and Judaism
• 1985 Jesus Seminar founded
• 1986 Chicago Statement on Biblical Application
• 1987 - Second International Conference on Missionary Kids (MKs) held in Quito, Ecuador
• 1987 Danver's Statement - Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood
• 1988 Christian Coalition
• 1988 The Last Temptation of Christ, directed by Martin Scorsese, is released by Universal Pictures, and promptly attacked as heretical by organized Christian and Catholic groups.
• 1988 The celebration of 1000 years since the baptism of Kievan Rus throughout the R.O.C.
• 1989 - Adventures In Missions (Georgia) (AIM) Short-term missions agency founded by Seth Barnes; Lausanne II, a world missions conference; concept of 10/40 Window emerges ; "Ee-Taow" video released by New Tribes Mission
• 1989 New Revised Standard Version
• 1990 American Center for Law and Justice founded
• 1991 - The Marxist government of Ethiopia is overthrown and missionaries are able to return to that country
• 1991 John P. Meier's series A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, v. 1
• 1992 - World Gospel Mission (National Holiness Missionary Society) starts work in Uganda [45]
• 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church
• 1993 - Trans World Radio starts broadcasting from a 250,000-watt shortwave transmitter in Russia [46]
• 1994 - Liibaan Ibraahim Hassan, a convert to Christianity in Somalia, is martyred by Islamic militants in the capital city of Mogadishu;
• 1994 "Evangelicals & Catholics Together" [47]
• 1994 Answers In Genesis founded by Ken Ham
• 1994 Porvoo Communion
• 1994,July 3- Glorification of St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco
• 1995 - Missionary Don Cox abducted in Quito, Ecuador
• 1996 - Nazarenes enter Hungary, Kazakhstan, Pakistan
• 1996 Cambridge Declaration - Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals [48]
• 1997 - Foreign Mission Board and Home Mission Board of Southern Baptist Convention become the International Mission Board and North American Mission Board with ten thousand missionaries
• 1997, Mar 5-10 World Council of Churches: Towards a Common Date for Easter, see also Reform of the date of Easter
• 1998, April 6 PBS Frontline: From Jesus to Christ
• 1999 - Trans World Radio goes on the air from Grigoriopol (Moldova) using a 1-million-watt AM transmitter [49]; Veteran Australian missionary Graham Stuart Staines and his two sons are burned alive by Hindu extremists as they are sleeping in a car in eastern India.
• 1999 International House of Prayer in Kansas City begins non-stop 24/7 continual prayer
• 1999 Gospel of Jesus Christ - An Evangelical Celebration; a consensus Gospel endorsed by various evangelical leaders including J.I. Packer, John Ankerberg, Jerry Falwell, Thomas C. Oden, R.C. Sproul, Wayne Grudem, Charles Swindoll, et al.
• 1999, Oct 31 signing of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification between the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church
• 2000 - Asia College of Ministry (ACOM), a ministry of Asia Evangelistic Fellowship (AEF), was launched by Jonathan James, to train national missionaries in Asia.
• 2000 Our Lady appears in Assiut, Upper Egypt [50]; phenomena associated to Our Lady reported again, in 2006, in a Church at the same location during the Mass [51]. Local Coptic priests and then the Coptic Orthodox Church of Assiut issue statements in 2000 and 2006, respectively

21st century

Monasticism: Other denominations

In February 2001, the United Methodist Church organized the Saint Brigid of Kildare Monastery. It is a Methodist-Benedictine residential monastery for women in Collegeville, Minnesota.

Other moves toward reconciliation

In June 2004, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I's visit to Rome for the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul (29 June) afforded him the opportunity for another personal meeting with Pope John Paul II, for conversations with the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and for taking part in the celebration for the feast day in St. Peter's Basilica.

The Patriarch's partial participation in the Eucharistic liturgy at which the Pope presided followed the program of the past visits of Patriarch Dimitrios (1987) and Patriarch Bartholomew I himself: full participation in the Liturgy of the Word, joint proclamation by the Pope and by the Patriarch of the profession of faith according to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed in Greek and as the conclusion, the final Blessing imparted by both the Pope and the Patriarch at the Altar of the Confessio. The Patriarch did not fully participate in the Liturgy of the Eucharist involving the consecration and distribution of the Eucharist itself.

In accordance with the Roman Catholic Church's practice of including the clause when reciting the Creed in Latin, but not when reciting the Creed in Greek, Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI have recited the Nicene Creed jointly with Patriarchs Demetrius I and Bartholomew I in Greek without the Filioque clause. The action of these Patriarchs in reciting the Creed together with the Popes has been strongly criticized by some elements of Eastern Orthodoxy, such as the Metropolitan of Kalavryta, Greece, in November 2008

The declaration of Ravenna in 2007 re-asserted these beliefs, and re-stated the notion that the bishop of Rome is indeed the protos, although future discussions are to be held on the concrete ecclesiological exercise of papal primacy.

21st century Timeline

• 2001 - New Tribes Missionaries Martin and Gracia Burnham are kidnapped in the Philippines by Muslim terrorist group; Baptist missionary Roni Bowers and her infant daughter are killed when a Peruvian Air Force jet fires on their small float-plane. Though severely wounded in both legs, missionary pilot Kevin Donaldson landed the burning plane on the Amazon River.
• 2001 The Way of the Master founded
• 2003 the Mission Province is established in Church of Sweden: new era for confessional Lutheranism in Scandinavia.
• 2003 - Publication of Back To Jerusalem Called to Complete the Great Commission - Three Chinese Church Leaders with Paul Hattaway brings Chinese and Korean mission movement to forefront; Coptic priest Fr. Zakaria Botros begins his television and internet mission to Muslims in North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and western countries, resulting in thousands of conversions.
• 2004 - Four Southern Baptist missionaries are killed by gunman in Iraq
• 2005 Death of Pope John Paul II, election of Pope Benedict XVI
• 2006, July 18 World Methodist Council voted unanimously to adopt the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification [52] [53]
• 2006 Gospel of Judas a 2nd century Gnostic account of Judas is shown on TV (discovered in the 1970s)
• 2006 - Abdul Rahman, an Afghan Christian convert, is forced out of Afghanistan by local Muslim leaders and exiled to Italy. Missionary Vijay Kumar is publicly stoned by Hindu extremists for Christian preaching.
• 2007 Kriol Bible completed, the first translation of the entire Bible into an Australian indigenous language [54]
• 2007 The Creation Museum opens in Kentucky USA.
• 2007-May 17th The Reunification of the Russian Orthodox Church after 80 years of a schism
• 2008 Conservative Anglicans indicate that they plan to split from liberal Anglicans in "The Jerusalem Declaration" [55]

See also

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• History of Christianity
• History of Eastern Orthodox Churches in the 20th century
• History of Protestantism
• History of the Roman Catholic Church#World War II
• History of the Eastern Orthodox Church
• History of Christian theology#Modern Christian theology
• History of Oriental Orthodoxy
• Timeline of Christianity#19th century
• Timeline of Christian missions#1900 to 1949
• Timeline of the Roman Catholic Church#20th century
• Chronological list of saints and blesseds in the 20th century
• 20th century

Further reading

• González, Justo L. (1985). The Story of Christianity, Vol. 2: The Reformation to the Present Day. San Francisco: Harper. ISBN 0–06–063316–6.
• Latorette, Kenneth Scott (1975). A History of Christianity, Volume 2. San Francisco: Harper. ISBN 0–06–064953–4 (paperback).
• Shelley, Bruce L. (1996). Church History in Plain Language (2nd edition ed.). ISBN 0–8499–3861–9. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)
• Hastings, Adrian (1999). A World History of Christianity. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. ISBN 0802848753.

External links

• History of Christianity Reading Room: Extensive online resources for the study of global church history (Tyndale Seminary).
• Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Christianity in History

• Church history at WikiChristian
• Church History in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
• Historical Christianity, A time line with references to the descendants of the early church.

History of Christianity: Modern Christianity
Preceded by: Christianity in the 19th century				20th Century			Theology of the Last Things in Christianity