Portal:Christianity

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The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, the holiest Christian site

Christianity (/krɪstʃiˈænɪti, krɪstiˈænɪti/) is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.4 billion followers, comprising around 31.2% of the world population. Its adherents, known as Christians, are estimated to make up a majority of the population in 157 countries and territories. Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, whose coming as the Messiah was prophesied in the Hebrew Bible (called the Old Testament in Christianity) and chronicled in the New Testament.

Christianity remains culturally diverse in its Western and Eastern branches, and doctrinally diverse concerning justification and the nature of salvation, ecclesiology, ordination, and Christology. The creeds of various Christian denominations generally hold in common Jesus as the Son of God—the Logos incarnated—who ministered, suffered, and died on a cross, but rose from the dead for the salvation of humankind; and referred to as the gospel, meaning the "good news". The four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John describe Jesus's life and teachings, with the Old Testament as the gospels' respected background.

The six major branches of Christianity are Roman Catholicism (1.3 billion people), Protestantism (900 million), Eastern Orthodoxy (230 million), Oriental Orthodoxy (60 million), Restorationism (35 million), and the Church of the East (600 thousand). Smaller church communities number in the thousands despite efforts toward unity (ecumenism). In the West, Christianity remains the dominant religion even with a decline in adherence, with about 70% of that population identifying as Christian. Christianity is growing in Africa and Asia, the world's most populous continents. Christians remain greatly persecuted in many regions of the world, particularly in the Middle East, North Africa, East Asia, and South Asia. (Full article...)

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Henry Conwell (c. 1748 – April 22, 1842) was an Irish-born Catholic bishop in the United States. He became a priest in 1776 and served in that capacity in Ireland for more than four decades. After the Pope declined to appoint him Archbishop of Armagh, the diocese in which he served as Vicar General, he was instead installed as the second Bishop of Philadelphia in 1819.

Conwell took up the post at an advanced age and spent much of his time there feuding with the lay trustees of his parishes, especially those of St. Mary's Church in Philadelphia. When Conwell removed and excommunicated William Hogan, a controversial priest at St. Mary's, the parish trustees instead rejected Conwell's authority, creating a minor schism. The two sides partially reconciled by 1826, but the Vatican hierarchy believed Conwell had ceded too much power to the laymen in the process and recalled him to Rome. (Full article...)

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The following are images from various Christianity-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1A depiction of the Council of Nicaea in AD 325, at which the Deity of Christ was declared orthodox and Arianism condemned (from Trinity)
Image 2Detail of the earliest known artwork of the Trinity, the Dogmatic or Trinity Sarcophagus, c. 350 (Vatican Museums)
Three similar figures, representing the Trinity, are involved in the creation of Eve, whose much smaller figure is cut off at lower right; to her right, Adam lies on the ground (from Trinity)
Image 3The "Heavenly Trinity" joined to the "Earthly Trinity" through the Incarnation of the Son–The Heavenly and Earthly Trinities by Murillo (c. 1677) (from Trinity)
Image 4Russian icon of the Old Testament Trinity by Andrei Rublev, between 1408 and 1425 (from Trinity)
Image 5Representation of the Trinity in the form of the mercy seat (epitaph from 1549) (from Trinity)
Image 613th-century depiction of the Trinity from a Roman de la Rose manuscript (from Trinity)
Image 7Depiction of Trinity from Saint Denis Basilica in Paris (12th century) (from Trinity)
Image 8A compact diagram of the Trinity, known as the "Shield of Trinity". The Shield is generally not intended to be a schematic diagram of the structure of God, but it presents a series of statements about the correlation between the persons of the Trinity. (from Trinity)
Image 9The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is a holy site in Jerusalem believed by most Christians to encompass the tomb of Jesus and the site of his crucifixion and resurrection. (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 10The Baptism of Christ, by Piero della Francesca, 15th century (from Trinity)
Image 11The Father, The Holy Spirit, and Christ crucified, depicted in a Welsh manuscript c. 1390–1400 (from Trinity)
Image 12Atypical depiction The Son is identified by a lamb, the Father an Eye of Providence, and the Spirit a dove; the painting is by Fridolin Leiber (d. 1912). (from Trinity)
Image 13Pope Clement I prays to the Trinity, in a typical post-Renaissance depiction by Gianbattista Tiepolo (d. 1770) (from Trinity)
Image 14The Adoration of the Trinity by Albrecht Dürer (1511)
From top to bottom: Holy Spirit (dove), God the Father and Christ on the cross (from Trinity)
Image 15God the Father (top), the Holy Spirit (a dove), and the child Jesus, painting by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (d. 1682) (from Trinity)
Image 16The Holy Trinity in an angelic glory over a landscape, by Lucas Cranach the Elder (d. 1553) (from Trinity)
Image 17The Communion of the Apostles, by Luca Signorelli, 1512 (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 18Jesus healing the paralytic in The Pool by Palma il Giovane, 1592 (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 19Nativity at Night, by Geertgen tot Sint Jans, c. 1490 (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 20The Good Samaritan is a painting by James Tissot. The Parable of the Good Samaritan is one of the parables of Jesus. (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 21The Glory of Saint Nicholas, by António Manuel da Fonseca; Nicholas of Myra, a participant in the First Council of Nicaea, achieves the beatific vision in the shape of the Holy Trinity. (from Trinity)
Image 22A 'Jesus Saves' neon cross sign outside of a Protestant church in New York City (from Salvation in Christianity)
Image 23Depictions of the Resurrection of Jesus are central to Christian art (Resurrection of Christ by Raphael, 1499–1502). (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 24Jesus' Farewell Discourse to his eleven remaining disciples after the Last Supper, from the Maestà by Duccio (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 25God in the person of the Son confronts Adam and Eve, by Master Bertram (d. c. 1415) (from Trinity)
Image 26A Greek fresco of Athanasius of Alexandria, the chief architect of the Nicene Creed, formulated at Nicaea (from Trinity)
Image 27First page of Mark, by Sargis Pitsak (14th century): "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God". (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 28God the Father (top), and the Holy Spirit (represented by a dove) depicted above Jesus Painting by Francesco Albani (d. 1660) (from Trinity)
Image 29A Gospel of John, 1056 (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 30Renaissance painting by Jerónimo Cosida depicting Jesus as a triple deity Inner text: The Father is God; the Son is God; the Holy Spirit is God (from Trinity)

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Pennock in 1934

Herbert Jefferis Pennock (February 10, 1894 – January 30, 1948) was an American professional baseball pitcher and front-office executive. He played in Major League Baseball from 1912 through 1933, and is best known for his time spent with the star-studded New York Yankee teams of the mid to late 1920s and early 1930s.

Pennock was signed by the Philadelphia Athletics in 1912, but was used sparingly by the Athletics and the Boston Red Sox, who bought his contract in 1915. After returning from military service in 1919, Pennock became a regular contributor for the Red Sox. The Yankees acquired Pennock after the 1922 season, and he served as a key member of the pitching staff as the Yankees won four World Series championships. After retiring as a player, Pennock served as a coach and farm system director for the Red Sox, and as general manager of the Philadelphia Phillies. (Full article...)

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Credit: User:Csanády

The Siege of Belgrade (1456) or Battle of Belgrade or Siege of Nándorfehérvár occurred from July 4–22, 1456. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II rallied his resources in order to subjugate the Kingdom of Hungary. His immediate objective was the border fort of the town of Belgrade (in old Hungarian Nándorfehérvár). John Hunyadi, the Voivode of Transylvania, who had fought many battles against the Turks in the previous two decades, prepared the defenses of the fortress. Since 22 July 2011, the date when Christian forces led by John Hunyadi and John of Capistrano defeated the Ottoman Turks besieging Belgrade in 1456, has been a national memorial day in Hungary.

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... that the growth of Christianity in 20th-century Africa has been termed the "fourth great age of Christian expansion"?
... that Herb Lusk retired from the National Football League at the age of 26 to become a minister?
... that although the Jesuit missionary He Tianzhang despised his "sad Chinese appearance", it allowed him to circumvent the Qing's ban on Christianity and enter China?
... that the Kitab al-wadih bi-l-haqq is a critique of Islam written by a convert to Coptic Christianity during a period of persecution?
... that in the Book of Mormon, the city of Ammonihah kills Christians by fire as a deliberately twisted reference to a warning that spiritual death is like a "lake of fire and brimstone"?
... that in Liber ad amicum, Bonizo of Sutri endorses violence against heretics?

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Jesus therefore lifting up his eyes, and seeing that a great multitude was coming to him, said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread, that these may eat?”
This he said to test him, for he himself knew what he would do.
Philip answered him, “Two hundred denarii worth of bread is not sufficient for them, that everyone of them may receive a little.”
One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are these among so many?”
Jesus said, “Have the people sit down.”
Now there was much grass in that place. So the men sat down, in number about five thousand.
Jesus took the loaves; and having given thanks, he distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to those who were sitting down; likewise also of the fish as much as they desired.
When they were filled, he said to his disciples, “Gather up the broken pieces which are left over, that nothing be lost.”
So they gathered them up, and filled twelve baskets with broken pieces from the five barley loaves, which were left over by those who had eaten.
When therefore the people saw the sign which Jesus did, they said, “This is truly the prophet who comes into the world.”
Jesus therefore, perceiving that they were about to come and take him by force, to make him king, withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

The figurative explanation given here is that of Jesus Christ, the true bread that nourishes the soul and builds up our spiritual life, just as bread plays a vital role in nourishing the body. Our bodies could live better without food than our souls without Christ. Those who have received of this true Bread of life are thus enjoined to be distributors of it to other hungry souls.

— Feeding the multitude, John 6:5-15; World English Bible

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