Introduccion De Cristianidad A Europa

Ambar Pimentel

Riad Matqualoon

INR

10 December 2013

Introduction of Christianity into Europe

Christianity is the largest religion practiced in the world, with an estimated number of followers ranging between 1.5 billion and 2.1 billion, split into around 34,000 separate denominations. Christianity is a monotheistic religion centered on the life and teachings of Jesus. Its followers, known as Christians, believe that Jesus is the only Son of God and the Messiah predicted in the Hebrew Bible. To Christians, Jesus Christ is a teacher, the model of a virtuous life, the revealer of God, as well as an incarnation of God, and most importantly the savior of humanity who suffered, died, and was resurrected to bring about salvation from sin.

Christianity was widely introduced to various countries throughout Europe well before the year 1500. Several of the world’s major religions arose in Europe around the same time as Christianity, but Christianity did not initially stand out as the world’s most practiced religion as it is today. Other religions, such as Islam and Hinduism, were uniting people more and contributing more to the world than Christianity was. The development of the Renaissance in Italy and the spreading of the Renaissance made Christianity a lot more popular. The period from 1500 to 1700 marked a huge opportunity for Christianity, and the religion took advantage of that and left its mark on Europe. Although some cultural aspects remained the same and Christianity remained the dominant religion in Europe from 1500 to 1700, a lot of other cultural aspects, economics, and political characteristics changed due to Christianity’s impact.

Christianity continued to dominate Europe through the Renaissance period with little shifting to other religions; Christianity remained unchanged, aside from the differences between Catholic and Protestant groups. Christianity remained a monotheistic religion, meaning that its followers believe in one god. Not only did this religion remain a major influence for the ordinary people of Europe, but it also influenced the artists and authors coming into the Renaissance. Christianity continued to be a huge source of power for the Pope and other religious leaders during this time; religion, essentially, gave these leaders more control and power. These leaders set up churches all across their areas in Europe, which continued to spread the influence of Christianity even wider throughout the nations. Christianity remained a uniting source for the people which, in turn, led to making Europe a very rich and powerful force. Christianity remained a powerful force in Europe because a lot of the religious leaders were looking at continuing older Roman legacies. Even though Christianity developed after the fall of the Roman Empire, the Roman Catholic Church makes the claim of apostolic succession; they claim a unique authority over all other churches because they claim they have a common heritage with Roman Catholic Popes centuries before. Because of historical significance and the need of wanting to bring back older Roman and Byzantine religious traditions, Christianity was able to continue to dominate Europe through the influence of the church during 1500 to 1700. With so much power, different aspects of life in Europe would not remain the same. Because Christianity continued to remain the major source for power and influence in Europe, economic, political, and cultural changes were inevitable.

The development of Christianity in Europe has gone through decades until it reached its present-day shape. It was very essential to people in the past to have a religion considerable to this, which is why it played an outstanding role in the majority of Europe’s past.

It was a unifying power between nations and people, helped to give new meaning to life and offered a new hope to men and woman in troubling times. During the Hellenistic Age, the individuals struggled with the problem of alienation and lack of community. As people’s independency had declined, the individual searched for a new attachment what the Christianity could have given.

The twentieth century was a time of great flux and anxiety in Europe as the supremacy of

Christianity in Europe was being challenged by the fronts of biblical criticism, and evolution. According to Rev, Andrew Greeley, a social sciences professor at the University of Chicago, belief in God has increased in Russia and Hungary and decreased in Britain, the Netherlands, Western Germany and France. Atheism thrives in Eastern Germany, Russia, The Czech Republic and France. Interestingly though, most European countries report denominational affiliation.

According to Dr. Greeley, there was a time when people were more religious than they are now. Religion in a given country is affected by history, social structure and culture; and its effects on them. English historians have recently argued that Henry VIII was the first to secularize, in that he replaced a religious society with an established church. With that in mind, what one sees in Great Britain could represent the endgame of Anglicanism. Several European cultures today have steered away from Christianity as a religion, as it has become more of a cultural tradition or a page in history.

In Europe the Roman Catholic Church emerged from World War I with an enhanced prestige that carried it through the troubled period when much of mankind was hoping that there would be an introduction to peace but which proved to be a prelude to an even larger war. During and after World War I Pope Benedict XV repeatedly addressed the world calling to its attention principles for establishing peace. He used the facilities of his church to alleviate the sufferings from the war through negotiating the exchange of prisoners and civilians in occupied countries, aiding the sick, furthering the repatriation of prisoners of war and the correspondence of prisoners with their families, and promoting the relief of devastated areas (Latourette).

The upheavals of the first half of the twentieth century were felt most strongly in Europe. Europe had been the home of much of the optimistic philosophy and theology of the nineteenth century. It had believed that under its leadership humankind would see a brand new day. Catholicism during the nineteenth century had reacted to this modern world with wholesale condemnation, while Protestant liberalism had practically capitulated before the new age. Therefore when the two world wars and the events surrounding them gave the lie to the hopes and dreams of the nineteenth century, Protestant liberalism was shaken to its very core. During the nineteenth century skepticism and secularism had begun to be common place in France (Greeley). In the twentieth century those areas where Protestantism had been traditionally strong also witnessed a decided increase in skepticism and secularism. By the middle of the century, it was clear that northern Europe was no longer a stronghold of Protestantism and that of other areas of the world had taken the position of leadership in Protestantism that had once belonged to it. Protestantism was sorely lacking in a theology that could help it understand the events of the times, and respond to them. Liberalism with its optimistic view of human nature and capabilities had no word for the situation and held no power to capture the attention of the people. Scholars in Scandinavia and also in Germany, took a second look at Luther’s theology, and discovered there was much that was not in agreement with the interpretations of the previous century (Gonzalez).

Bill Bennett, director of communications for Greater Europe Mission commented in the Christian Post that, “The church to Europeans is seen as an economic and political power representing the religion of the rich world. Europeans have a more formal, ritualistic view of Christianity partially because in its history, a person’s landlord decided whether he would be Catholic or Protestant rather than any personal conviction.”(Vu) By understanding the primary objective of missions we can begin to prescribe the change that is necessary to the missionary enterprise in Europe. Missions are not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exist because worship doesn’t. Worship, therefore, is the fuel and goal of missions. Missions begin and end in worship (Piper). We have to recognize that there are cultural barriers (in addition to spiritual ones) that blind people from understanding the gospel. Our task is to find the right way to break through those cultural barriers while addressing the spiritual and theological ones as well (Stetzer & Putman).

While so many of the European church’s challengers over the years have lost steam or died out altogether, Europeans have shown little interest in returning to the church. They have found strange new gods in their secular world of modernization. The secularization thesis previously mentioned seems to hold true to a certain degree when applied to European countries. The mission field is closer to home than ever before.

The separation of church and state is an extremely controversial topic. The European Union, the intergovernmental organization between over twenty-five European nations, faces a lot of challenges concerning where it will go, how it will develop, and how and when it will expand. As its work continues and further develops, the Member States take many steps to becoming more united. Such developments are the birth of the Euro as the economic unit and the closure of borders between the Member States except the United Kingdom. The establishment of the EU Constitution is another development. However, this one has raised much controversy over one issue: the exclusion of religious reference in the Constitution. This

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