Christianity in the 20th century

See also: Christianity in the 19th century and Christianity in the 21st century

Main article: History of Christianity of the Late Modern era

Christianity in the 20th century was characterized by an accelerating secularization of Western society, which had begun in the 19th century, and by the spread of Christianity to non-Western regions of the world.

Christian ecumenism grew in importance, beginning at the Edinburgh Missionary Conference in 1910, and accelerated after the Second Vatican Council of the Catholic Church, The Liturgical Movement became significant in both Catholic and Protestant Christianity, especially in Anglicanism.

At the same time, state-promoted atheism in communist Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union brought persecution to many Eastern Orthodox and other Christians. Many Orthodox came to Western Europe and the Americas, leading to greatly increased contact between Western and Eastern Christianity. Nevertheless, church attendance declined more in Western Europe than it did in the East. (Christianity) The Roman Catholic Church instituted many reforms in order to modernize. Catholic and Protestant missionaries also made inroads in the Far East, establishing further followings in mainland China, Taiwan, and Japan.

Role under authoritarianism

Russian Orthodoxy under the Soviet Union

Since the 18th century, the Russian Orthodox Church had been run by the Most Holy Synod of bishops and lay bureaucrats, appointed by the tsar. With the Russian Civil War came a brief re-establishment of an independent patriarchate in 1917. The Russian Orthodox Church collaborated with the White Army in the civil war after the October Revolution. This may have further strengthened the Bolshevik animus against the church. According to Vladimir Lenin, a communist regime cannot remain neutral on the question of religion but must take action against it. He argued that a classless society would not contain religion. Lenin quashed the Church just a few years after the re-establishment, imprisoning or killing many clergy and faithful. Part of the clergy escaped the Soviet persecutions by fleeing abroad, where they founded an independent church in exile.

After the October Revolution, there was a movement within the Soviet Union to unite all of the people of the world under Communist rule. This included the Eastern Bloc 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 Soviets. 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 state 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 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

Catholics and Protestants under the Third Reich

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 was executed.

In the 1937 encyclical Mit brennender Sorge, drafted by the future Pope Pius XII, 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 the Netherlands, the Nazis responded with even more severe measures.

Neo-orthodoxy is a branch of Protestant 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 Søren Kierkegaard and Franz Overbeck. Bonhoeffer adhered to this school of thought; his classic The Cost of Discipleship is likely the best-known and accessible statement of the neo-orthodox philosophy.

In Poland, the Nazis murdered over 2,500 monks and priests while even more were sent to concentration camps. The Priester-Block (priests barracks) in Dachau concentration camp lists 2,600 Roman Catholic priests. Joseph 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 antisemitism, and they accused 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. 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".

Many Catholic laypeople and clergy played notable roles in sheltering Jews during the Holocaust. 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."

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 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.

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

Protestantism

Evangelicalism

Countries by percentage of Protestants in 1938 and 2010. Pentecostal and Evangelical Protestant denominations fueled much of the growth in Africa and Latin America.

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 mainline 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 were taught from a liberal perspective. 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 Evangelical push of the 1940s and 1950s produced a movement that continues to have wide influence. In the southern United States, the Evangelicals, represented by leaders such as Billy Graham, have experienced a notable surge.

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.

Pentecostal movement

The Third Great Awakening had its roots in the Holiness movement which had developed in the late 19th century. The Pentecostal revival movement began out of a passion for a greater outpouring of the Holy Spirit. In 1902, 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 at Azusa Street in Los Angeles.

From there Pentecostalism spread around the world, carried by those who experienced what they believed to be miraculous moves of God. These Pentecost-like manifestations have steadily been in evidence throughout the history of Christianity—such as seen in the first 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.

Ecumenism

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.

Monasticism

Christian monasticism experienced renewal in the form of several new foundations with an 'inter-Christian' vision for their respective communities. Expressions of ecumenical monasticism can be seen in the Bose Monastic Community and communities of the New Monasticism movement arising from Protestant Evangelicalism.

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.

Modernism and liberal Protestantism

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. Despite its name, liberal Christianity has always been thoroughly protean.

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 much of its progression 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.

Fundamentalism

Fundamentalist Christianity began as a less rigid movement than the current movement described and self-described by that term. It is a movement that arose within British and American Protestantism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, mainly 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 basic tenets that could not be denied without relinquishing a Christian identity, the "fundamentals". These distinctive tenets defined 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. The movement divided over these and other factors over time into those now known as Fundamentalists, retaining its name, and those known as Evangelicals, retaining its original concerns.

Anglicanism

In the early 20th century when the Anglo-Catholic Movement was at its height, the Anglican Communion had hundreds of orders and communities. 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 composed of elderly men or women. 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.

Roman Catholic Church

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.

Second Vatican Council

A major event of the Second Vatican Council, known as Vatican II, was the issuance by Pope Paul VI and 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 11th century.

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.

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.

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 and liberation theology

In the 1960s, growing social awareness and politicization in the Latin American Church gave birth to liberation theology. Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutiérrez became its 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.

Social and sexuality issues

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 repeated these teachings and applied them in greater detail not only to workers and owners of capital, but also to other professions such as politicians, educators, housewives, 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.

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 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.

Persecutions of Roman Catholic clergy

During the Mexican Revolution between 1926 and 1934, over 3,000 priests were exiled or assassinated. In an effort to prove that "God would not defend the Church", president Plutarco Elías 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% 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.

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 1930s. The Spanish Civil War started in 1936, during which thousands of churches were destroyed and thirteen bishops and some 6,832 clergy and religious Spaniards were assassinated. After the 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.

Eastern Orthodoxy

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 20th century 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.

Russian Orthodoxy

By 1957 about 22,000 Russian Orthodox churches were active. But in 1959 Nikita Khrushchev initiated a campaign against the Russian Orthodox Church and forced the closure of about 12,000 churches. By 1985 fewer than 7,000 churches remained active.

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 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. 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.

Catholic-Orthodox dialogue

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.

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

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".

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.

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 Bartholomew I 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 visited Romania, becoming the first pope since the Great Schism to visit an Eastern Orthodox country. 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.

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, California 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
• 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
• 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
• 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.
• 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 [1]
• 1917 Our Lady appears to 3 young people, in Fátima, 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; 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
• 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 Studium Biblicum OFM
• 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 appears to five school children in Beauraing, Belgium as Lady Virgin of the Poor index
• 1933 - Gladys Aylward (subject of movie "The Inn of the Sixth Happiness") arrives in China; Columbans enter Korea
• 1933 Catholic Worker Movement founded
• 1934 - William Cameron Townsend begins the Summer Institute of Linguistics; Columbans enter Japan
• 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; Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF [2]) 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 19th century.
• 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; 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 Studium Biblicum OFM
• 1945 Dietrich Bonhoeffer is executed by the Nazis
• 1945 Ludwig Müller
• 1945 On the Feast of the Annunciation, Our Lady appears to a simple woman, Ida Peerdeman, in Amsterdam. This was the first of 56 appearances as "Our Lady of All Nations" The Lady of All Nations - Familie Mariens Marian apparition, 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)
• 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-Haïtien, Haiti
• 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) debuts 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
• 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
• 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); 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 Asia Evangelistic Fellowship
• 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; Hans von Staden of the Dorothea Mission proposes to Patrick Johnstone that he write the book now titled Operation World
• 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 Studium Biblicum OFM 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
• 1970 - Frankfurt Declaration on Mission; Operation Mobilisation launches MV Logos ship; 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 appears to Sister Agnes Katsuko Sasagawa. Three messages were given to Sr. Agnes over a period 5 months. Our Lady of Akita.
• 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
• 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
• 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"; Columban missionaries enter Pakistan at the request of the Bishop of Lahore
• 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; Project Pearl: one million Bibles are delivered in a single night to thousands of waiting believers in China
• 1981 Kibeho, Rwanda reported that Our Lady appeared to several teenages telling them to pray to avoid "rivers of blood" Marian apparitions. This was an ominous foreshadowing of the Rwanda Genocide of 1994.
• 1981 Mother Angelica launches EWTN, which 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) merges into SIM (formerly Sudan Interior Mission)
• 1982 – Chicago Statement on Biblical Hermeneutics
• 1983 - Missionary Athletes International, a global soccer ministry, founded by Tim Conrad
• 1984 - Founding of The Mission Society for United Methodists, a voluntary missionary sending agency within the United Methodist Church; re-branded 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)
• 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
• 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church
• 1993 - Trans World Radio starts broadcasting from a 250,000-watt shortwave transmitter in Russia
• 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"
• 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
• 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, March 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; 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, October 31 signing of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification between the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church.
• 1 January 2000 - The Church of Sweden is separated from the Swedish government.
• 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; phenomena associated to Our Lady reported again, in 2006, in a Church at the same location during the Mass. Local Coptic priests and then the Coptic Orthodox Church of Assiut issue statements in 2000 and 2006, respectively

See also

• History of Christianity
• History of Eastern Orthodox Churches in the 20th century
• History of Protestantism
• Mormonism in the 20th century
• 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
• Role of the Roman Catholic Church in civilization
• Timeline of Christianity#19th century
• Timeline of Christian missions#1900 to 1949
• Timeline of the Roman Catholic Church#20th century
• List of 20th-century religious leaders
• Christian heresy in the 20th century
• Chronological list of saints and blesseds in the 20th century

References

• Anderson, Gerald H.,, ed. (1998), Biographical dictionary of Christian missions, Simon & Schuster Macmillan{{citation}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link)
• Barrett, David, ed. (1982), World Christian Encyclopedia, Oxford University Press {{citation}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
• Duffy, Eamon (1997), Saints and Sinners, a History of the Popes, Yale University Press in association with S4C, Library of Congress Catalog card number 97-60897
• Franzen, August; Bäumer, Remigius (1988), Kleine Kirchengeschichte, Freiburg: Herder
• Fontenelle, Mrg R (1939), Seine Heiligkeit Pius XI., France: Alsactia
• Gailey, Charles R.; Culbertson, Howard (2007), Discovering Missions, Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City
• Glover, Robert H.; Kane, J. Herbert (reviser) (1960), The Progress of World-Wide Missions, Harper and Row
• Herzog, Johann Jakob; Schaff, Philip; Hauck, Albert (1910–1911), The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (12 volumes ed.), Funk and Wagnalls Company {{citation}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
• Kane, J. Herbert (1982), A Concise History of the Christian World Mission, Baker
• Latourette, Kenneth Scott (1938–45), A History of the Expansion of Christianity (7 volumes ed.)
  • Latourette, Kenneth Scott (1941), A History of the Expansion of Christianity, vol. IV and V
• Moreau, A. Scott; Burnett, David; Engen, Charles Edward van; Netland, Harold A. (2000), Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions, Baker Book House Company
• O'Brien, Felictity (2000), Pius XII, London{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Olson, C. Gordon (2003), What in the World is God Doing?, Global Gospel Publishers
• Parker, J. Fred (1988), Mission to the World, Nazarene Publishing House
• Riasanovsky, Nicholas V. (1963), A History of Russia, New York: Oxford University Press

Further reading

• Farrell, Joseph P. God, History, & Dialectic: The Theological Foundations of the Two Europes and Their Cultural Consequences. (1997)
• González, Justo L. (1985), The Story of Christianity, Vol. 2: The Reformation to the Present Day, San Francisco: Harper, ISBN 978-0-06-063316-5
• Hastings, Adrian (1999), A World History of Christianity, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, ISBN 978-0-8028-4875-8
• Nichols, Aidan. Rome and the Eastern Churches: a Study in Schism. 1992
• Shelley, Bruce L. (1996), Church History in Plain Language (2nd ed.), ISBN 978-0-8499-3861-0

National And regional studies

• Ahlstrom, Sydney E. A Religious History of the American People (1972, 2nd ed. 2004); widely cited standard scholarly history excerpt and text search
• Angold, Michael, ed. The Cambridge History of Christianity: Volume 5, Eastern Christianity (2006)
• Callahan, William J. The Catholic Church in Spain, 1875–1998 (2000).
• Gibson, Ralph. A Social History of French Catholicism 1789–1914 (London, 1989)
• González Justo L. and Ondina E. González, Christianity in Latin America: A History (2008)
• Hastings, Adrian. A History of English Christianity 1920–2000 (2001)
• Hope, Nicholas. German and Scandinavian Protestantism 1700-1918 (1999)
• Lannon, Frances. Privilege, Persecution and Prophecy: The Catholic Church in Spain 1875–1975 (1987)
• Lippy, Charles H., ed. Encyclopedia of the American Religious Experience (3 vol. 1988)
• Lynch, John. New Worlds: A Religious History of Latin America (2012)
• McLeod, Hugh, ed. European Religion in the Age of Great Cities 1830–1930 (1995)
• Noll, Mark A. A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada (1992)
• Rosman, Doreen. The Evolution of the English Churches, 1500-2000 (2003) 400pp

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