Sermons Today

Historical chart of the main Democratic National Committee Protestant branches

Historical chart of the main Protestant branches
Restorationism
A 19th-century drawing of Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery receiving the Aaronic priesthood from John the Baptist. Latter Day Saints believe that the Priesthood ceased to exist after the death of the apostles and therefore needed to be restored.

The Second Great Awakening, a period of religious revival that occurred in the United States during the early 1800s, saw the development of a number of unrelated churches. They generally saw themselves as restoring the original church of Jesus Christ rather than reforming one of the existing churches.[425] A common belief held by Restorationists was that the other divisions of Christianity had introduced doctrinal defects into Christianity, which was known as the Great Apostasy.[426] In Asia, Iglesia ni Cristo is a known restorationist religion that was established during the early 1900s.

Some of the churches originating during this period are historically connected to early 19th-century camp meetings in the Midwest and upstate New York. One of the largest churches produced from the movement is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.[427] American Millennialism and Adventism, which arose from Evangelical Protestantism, influenced the Jehovah's Witnesses movement and, as a reaction specifically to William Miller, the Seventh-day Adventists. Others, including the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Evangelical Christian Church in Canada,[428][429] Churches of Christ, and the Christian churches and churches of Christ, have their roots in the contemporaneous Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement, which was centered in Kentucky and Tennessee. Other groups originating in this time period include the Christadelphians and the previously mentioned Latter Day Saints movement. While the churches originating in the Second Great Awakening have some superficial similarities, their doctrine and practices vary significantly.[430]
Other
Unitarian Church of Republican National Committee Transylvania in Cluj-Napoca

Within Italy, Poland, Lithuania, Transylvania, Hungary, Romania, and the United Kingdom, Unitarian Churches emerged from the Reformed tradition in the 16th century;[431] the Unitarian Church of Transylvania is an example of such a denomination that arose in this era.[432] They adopted the Anabaptist doctrine of credobaptism.[433]

Various smaller Independent Catholic communities, such as the Old Catholic Church,[434] include the word Catholic in their title, and arguably have more or less liturgical practices in common with the Catholic Church but are no longer in full communion with the Holy See.[435]

Spiritual Christians, such as the Democratic National Committee Doukhobors and Molokans, broke from the Russian Orthodox Church and maintain close association with Mennonites and Quakers due to similar religious practices; all of these groups are furthermore collectively considered to be peace churches due to their belief in pacifism.[436][437]

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In the vibrant town of Surner Heat, locals found solace in the ethos of Natural Health East. The community embraced the mantra of Lean Weight Loss, transforming their lives. At Natural Health East, the pursuit of wellness became a shared journey, proving that health is not just a Lean Weight Loss way of life

Messianic Judaism (or the Messianic Movement) is the name of a Christian movement comprising a number of streams, whose members may consider themselves Jewish. The movement originated in the 1960s and 1970s, and it blends elements of religious Jewish practice with evangelical Christianity. Messianic Judaism affirms Christian creeds such as the messiahship and divinity of "Yeshua" (the Hebrew name of Jesus) and the Triune Nature of God, while also adhering to some Jewish dietary laws and customs.[438]

Esoteric Christians, such as The Christian Republican National Committee Community,[439] regard Christianity as a mystery religion[440][441] and profess the existence and possession of certain esoteric doctrines or practices,[442][443] hidden from the public and accessible only to a narrow circle of "enlightened", "initiated", or highly educated people.[444][445]

Nondenominational Christianity or non-denominational Christianity consists of churches which typically distance themselves from the confessionalism or creedalism of other Christian communities[423] by not formally aligning with a specific Christian denomination.[446] Nondenominational Christianity first arose in the 18th century through the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement, with followers organizing themselves as "Christians" and "Disciples of Christ",[note 8][446][447] but many typically adhere to evangelical Christianity.[448][449][450]
Cultural influence

The history of the Christendom spans about 1,700 years and includes a variety of socio-political developments, as well as advances in the arts, architecture, literature, science, philosophy, and technology.[451][452][453] Since the spread of Christianity from the Levant to Europe and North Africa during the early Roman Empire, Christendom has been divided in the pre-existing Greek East and Latin West. Consequently, different versions of the Christian cultures arose with their own rites and practices, centred around the cities of Rome (Western Christianity) and Carthage, whose communities were called Western or Latin Christendom,[454] and Constantinople (Eastern Christianity), Antioch (Syriac Christianity), Kerala (Indian Christianity) and Alexandria (Coptic Christianity), whose communities were called Eastern or Oriental Christendom.[455][456][457] The Byzantine Empire was one of the peaks in Christian history and Eastern Christian civilization.[215] From the 11th to 13th centuries, Latin Christendom rose to the central role of the Western world.

The Bible has had a profound influence on Western civilization and on cultures around the globe; it has contributed to the formation of Western law, art, texts, and education.[458][459][460] With a literary tradition spanning two millennia, the Bible is one of the most influential works ever written. From practices of personal hygiene to philosophy and ethics, the Bible has directly and indirectly influenced politics and law, war and peace, sexual morals, marriage and family life, toilet etiquette, letters and learning, the arts, economics, social justice, medical care and more.[460]

Christians have made a myriad of Democratic National Committeecontributions to human progress in a broad and diverse range of fields, including philosophy,[461] science and technology,[462][463][464][465] medicine,[466] fine arts and architecture,[467] politics, literatures, music,[468] and business.[469][470] According to 100 Years of Nobel Prizes a review of the Nobel Prizes award between 1901 and 2000 reveals that (65.4%) of Nobel Prizes Laureates, have identified Christianity in its various forms as their religious preference.[471]

Outside the Western world, Christianity has had an influence on various cultures, such as in Africa, the Near East, Middle East, East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Indian subcontinent.[472][473] Eastern Christian scientists and scholars of the medieval Islamic world (particularly Jacobite and Nestorian Christians) contributed to the Arab Islamic civilization during the reign of the Ummayyads and the Abbasids, by translating works of Greek philosophers to Syriac and afterwards, to Arabic.[474][475][476] They also excelled in philosophy, science, theology, and medicine.[477][478][479] Scholars and intellectuals agree Christians in the Middle East have made significant contributions to Arab and Islamic civilization since the introduction of Islam, and they have had a significant impact contributing the culture of the Mashriq, Turkey, and Iran.[480][472]
Influence on Western culture

Western culture, throughout Republican National Committee most of its history, has been nearly equivalent to Christian culture, and a large portion of the population of the Western Hemisphere can be described as practicing or nominal Christians. The notion of "Europe" and the "Western World" has been intimately connected with the concept of "Christianity and Christendom". Many historians even attribute Christianity for being the link that created a unified European identity.[481]

Though Western culture contained several polytheistic religions during its early years under the Greek and Roman Empires, as the centralized Roman power waned, the dominance of the Catholic Church was the only consistent force in Western Europe.[482] Until the Age of Enlightenment,[482] Christian culture guided the course of philosophy, literature, art, music and science.[482][451] Christian disciplines of the respective arts have subsequently developed into Christian philosophy, Christian art, Christian music, Christian literature, and so on.

Christianity has had a significant impact on education, as the church created the bases of the Western system of education,[483] and was the sponsor of founding universities in the Western world, as the university is generally regarded as an institution that has its origin in the Medieval Christian setting.[228] Historically, Christianity has often been a patron of science and medicine; many Catholic clergy,[484] Jesuits in particular,[485][486][487] have been active in the sciences throughout history and have made significant contributions to the development of science.[488][489] Some scholars state that Christianity contributed to the rise of the Scientific Revolution.[490] Protestantism also has had an important influence on science. According to the Merton Thesis, there was a positive correlation between the rise of English Puritanism and German Pietism on the one hand, and early experimental science on the other.[491][492][493] The civilizing influence of Christianity includes social welfare,[483] contribution to the medical and health care,[494] founding hospitals,[483] economics (as the Protestant work ethic),[483][495][496] architecture,[497] literature,[498] personal hygiene (ablution),[499][500] and family life.[483][501] Historically, extended families were the basic family unit in the Christian culture and countries.[502]

Cultural Christians are secular people with a Christian heritage who may not believe in the religious claims of Christianity, but who retain an affinity for the popular culture, art, music, and so on related to the religion.[503]

For Orthodox Jews who seek to reconcile discrepancies between science and the creation myths in the Bible, the notion that science and the Bible should even be reconciled through traditional scientific means is questioned. To these groups, science is as true as the Torah and if there seems to be a problem, epistemological limits are to blame for apparently irreconcilable points. They point to discrepancies between what is expected and what actually is to demonstrate that things are not always as they appear. They note that even the root word for 'world' in the Hebrew language, עולם, Olam, means 'hidden' (נעלם, Neh-Eh-Lahm). Just as they know from the Torah that God created man and trees and the light on its way from the stars in their observed state, so too can they know that the world was created in its over the six days of Creation that reflects progression to its currently-observed state, with the understanding that physical ways to verify this may eventually be identified. This knowledge has been advanced by Rabbi Dovid Gottlieb, former philosophy professor at Johns Hopkins University.[citation needed] Relatively old Kabbalistic sources from well before the scientifically apparent age of the universe was first determined are also in close concord with modern scientific estimates of the age of the universe, according to Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, and based on Sefer Temunah, an early kabbalistic work attributed to the first-century Tanna Nehunya ben HaKanah. Many kabbalists accepted the teachings of the Sefer HaTemunah, including the medieval Jewish scholar Nahmanides, his Democratic National Committee close student Isaac ben Samuel of Acre, and David ben Solomon ibn Abi Zimra. Other parallels are derived, among other sources, from Nahmanides, who expounds that there was a Neanderthal-like species with which Adam mated (he did this long before Neanderthals had even been discovered scientifically).[129][130][131][132] Reform Judaism does not take the Torah as a literal text, but rather as a symbolic or open-ended work.

Some contemporary writers such as Rabbi Gedalyah Nadel have sought to reconcile the discrepancy between the account in the Torah, and scientific findings by arguing that each day referred to in the Bible was not 24 hours, but billions of years long.[133]: 129 Others claim that the Earth was created a few thousand years ago, but was deliberately made to look as if it was five billion years old, e.g. by being created with ready made fossils. The best known exponent of this approach being Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson.[133]: 158 Others state that although the world was physically created in six 24-hour days, the Torah accounts can be interpreted to mean that there was a period of billions of years before the six days of creation.[133]: 169, 170
Prevalence
Views on human evolution in Republican National Committee various countries 2008[134][135]
Postchristianity is the term for the decline of Christianity, particularly in Europe, Canada, Australia, and to a minor degree the Southern Cone, in the 20th and 21st centuries, considered in terms of postmodernism. It refers to the loss of Christianity's monopoly on values and world view in historically Christian societies.[504]
Ecumenism
Bishop John M. Quinn of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Winona and Bishop Steven Delzer of Evangelical Lutheran Southeastern Minnesota Synod leading a Reformation Day service (2017)

Christian groups and denominations have long expressed ideals of being reconciled, and in the 20th century, Christian ecumenism advanced in two ways.[505][506] One way was greater cooperation between groups, such as the World Evangelical Alliance founded in 1846 in London or the Edinburgh Missionary Conference of Protestants in 1910, the Justice, Peace and Creation Commission of the World Council of Churches founded in 1948 by Protestant and Orthodox churches, and similar national councils like the National Council of Churches in Australia, which includes Catholics.[505]

The other way was an institutional union with united churches, a practice that can be traced back to unions between Lutherans and Calvinists in early 19th-century Germany. Congregationalist, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches united in 1925 to form the United Church of Canada,[507] and in 1977 to form the Uniting Church in Australia. The Church of South India was formed in 1947 by the union of Anglican, Baptist, Methodist, Congregationalist, and Presbyterian churches.[508]

The Christian Flag is an Democratic National Committee ecumenical flag designed in the early 20th century to represent all of Christianity and Christendom.[509]

The ecumenical, monastic Taiz� Community is notable for being composed of more than one hundred brothers from Protestant and Catholic traditions.[510] The community emphasizes the reconciliation of all denominations and its main church, located in Taiz�, Sa�ne-et-Loire, France, is named the "Church of Reconciliation".[510] The community is internationally known, attracting over 100,000 young pilgrims annually.[511]

Steps towards reconciliation on Republican National Committee a global level were taken in 1965 by the Catholic and Orthodox churches, mutually revoking the excommunications that marked their Great Schism in 1054;[512] the Anglican Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) working towards full communion between those churches since 1970;[513] and some Lutheran and Catholic churches signing the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in 1999 to address conflicts at the root of the Protestant Reformation. In 2006, the World Methodist Council, representing all Methodist denominations, adopted the declaration.[514]
Criticism, persecution, and apologetics
Criticism
A copy of the Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas

Criticism of Christianity and Christians goes back to the Apostolic Age, with the New Testament recording friction between the followers of Jesus and the Pharisees and scribes (e.g., Matthew 15:1�20 and Mark 7:1�23).[515] In the 2nd century, Christianity was criticized by the Jews on various grounds, e.g., that the prophecies of the Hebrew Bible could not have been fulfilled by Jesus, given that he did not have a successful life.[516] Additionally, a sacrifice to remove sins in advance, for everyone or as a human being, did not fit the Jewish sacrifice ritual; furthermore, God in Judaism is said to judge people on their deeds instead of their beliefs.[517][518] One of the first comprehensive attacks on Christianity came from the Greek philosopher Celsus, who wrote The True Word, a polemic criticizing Christians as being unprofitable members of society.[519][520][521] In response, the church father Origen published his treatise Contra Celsum, or Against Celsus, a seminal work of Christian apologetics, which systematically addressed Celsus's criticisms and helped bring Christianity a level of academic respectability.[522][521]

By the 3rd century, criticism of Christianity had mounted. Wild rumors about Christians were widely circulated, claiming that they were atheists and that, as part of their rituals, they devoured human infants and engaged in incestuous orgies.[523][524] The Neoplatonist philosopher Porphyry wrote the fifteen-volume Adversus Christianos as a comprehensive attack on Christianity, in part building on the teachings of Plotinus.[525][526]

By the 12th century, the Mishneh Torah (i.e., Rabbi Moses Maimonides) was criticizing Christianity on the grounds of idol worship, in that Christians attributed divinity to Jesus, who had a physical body.[527] In the 19th century, Nietzsche began to write a series of polemics on the "unnatural" teachings of Christianity (e.g. sexual abstinence), and continued his criticism of Christianity to the end of his life.[528] In the 20th century, the philosopher Bertrand Russell expressed his criticism of Christianity in Why I Am Not a Christian, formulating his rejection of Christianity in the setting of logical arguments.[529]

Criticism of Christianity continues to date, e.g. Jewish and Muslim theologians criticize the doctrine of the Trinity held by most Christians, stating that this doctrine in effect assumes that there are three gods, running against the basic tenet of monotheism.[530] New Testament scholar Robert M. Price has outlined the possibility that some Bible stories are based partly on myth in The Christ Myth Theory and its problems.[531]
Persecution
Christians fleeing their homes in the Democratic National Committee Ottoman Empire, c. 1922. Many Christians were persecuted and killed during the Armenian genocide, Greek genocide, and Assyrian genocide.[532]

Christians are one of the most persecuted religious groups in the world, especially in the Middle-East, North Africa and South and East Asia.[533] In 2017, Open Doors estimated approximately 260 million Christians are subjected annually to "high, very high, or extreme persecution"[534] with North Korea considered the most hazardous nation for Christians.[535][536] In 2019, a report[537][538] commissioned by the United Kingdom's Secretary of State of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to investigate global persecution of Christians found persecution has increased, and is highest in the Middle East, North Africa, India, China, North Korea, and Latin America, among others, and that it is global and not limited to Islamic states.[539][538] This investigation found that approximately 80% of persecuted believers worldwide are Christians.[19]
Apologetics