Christianity (from the Ancient Greek word , ''Khristos'', "Christ", literally "anointed one") is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings. Adherents of the Christian faith are known as Christians.

Christianity teaches that Jesus is the Son of God, God having become human and the saviour of humanity. Because of this, Christians commonly refer to Jesus as Christ or Messiah. The three largest groups in the world of Christianity are the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox churches, and the various denominations of Protestantism. The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox patriarchates split from one another in the East–West Schism of 1054 AD, and Protestantism came into existence during the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, splitting from the Roman Catholic Church.

Christianity began as a Jewish sect in the mid-1st century. Originating in the eastern Mediterranean coast of the Middle East (modern Israel and Palestine), it quickly spread to Syria, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor and Egypt, it grew in size and influence over a few decades, and by the 4th century had become the dominant religion within the Roman Empire. During the Middle Ages, most of the remainder of Europe was Christianized, with Christians also being a sometimes large religious minority in the Middle East, North Africa, Ethiopia and parts of India. Following the Age of Discovery, through missionary work and colonization, Christianity spread to the Americas, Australasia, sub Saharan Africa and the rest of the world. In order to follow Jesus' command to serve others, Christians established hospitals, churches, schools, charities, orphanages, homeless shelters, and universities in the areas in which they spread Christianity.

Christians believe that Jesus is the Messiah prophesied in the Hebrew Bible, referred to as the "Old Testament" in Christianity. The foundation of Christian theology is expressed in the early Christian ecumenical creeds which contain claims predominantly accepted by followers of the Christian faith. These professions state that Jesus suffered, died, was buried, and was resurrected from the dead to open heaven to those who believe in him and trust him for the remission of their sins (salvation). They further maintain that Jesus bodily ascended into heaven where he rules and reigns with God the Father. Most denominations teach that Jesus will return to judge all humans, living and dead, and grant eternal life to his followers. He is considered the model of a virtuous life, and both the revealer and physical incarnation of God. Christians call the message of Jesus Christ the Gospel ("good news") and hence refer to the earliest written accounts of his ministry as gospels.

As of the early 21st century, Christianity has approximately 2.2 billion adherents. Christianity represents about a quarter to a third of the world's population and is the world's largest religion. Christianity is the state religion of several countries. Among all Christians, 37.5% live in the Americas (11.4% in the United States), 25.7% live in Europe, 22.5% live in Africa, 13.1% live in Asia, 1.2% live in Oceania. Only 0.9% of all Christians live in the Middle East.

Beliefs

Though there are many important differences of interpretation and opinion of the Bible on which Christianity is based, Christians share a set of beliefs that they hold as essential to their faith.

Creeds

Creeds (from Latin ''credo'' meaning "I believe") are concise doctrinal statements or confessions, usually of religious beliefs. They began as baptismal formulae and were later expanded during the Christological controversies of the 4th and 5th centuries to become statements of faith.

Many evangelical Protestants reject creeds as definitive statements of faith, even while agreeing with some or all of the substance of the creed. The Baptists have been non-creedal “in that they have not sought to establish binding authoritative confessions of faith on one another.” Also rejecting creeds are groups with roots in the Restoration Movement, such as the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the Evangelical Christian Church in Canada and the Churches of Christ.

The Apostles' Creed remains the most popular statement of the articles of Christian faith that are generally acceptable to most Christian denominations that are creedal. It is widely used by a number of Christian denominations for both liturgical and catechetical purposes, most visibly by liturgical Churches of Western tradition, including the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church, Lutheranism, Anglicanism, and Western Orthodoxy. It is also used by Presbyterians, Methodists, and Congregationalists. This particular creed was developed between the 2nd and 9th centuries. Its central doctrines are those of the Trinity and God the Creator. Each of the doctrines found in this creed can be traced to statements current in the apostolic period. The creed was apparently used as a summary of Christian doctrine for baptismal candidates in the churches of Rome.

Its main points:

belief in God the Father, Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the Holy Spirit

the death, descent into hell, resurrection, and ascension of Christ

the holiness of the Church and the communion of saints

Christ's second coming, the Day of Judgement and salvation of the faithful.

The Nicene Creed, largely a response to Arianism, was formulated at the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople in 325 and 381 respectively and ratified as the universal creed of Christendom by the First Council of Ephesus in 431.

The Chalcedonian Creed, developed at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, though rejected by the Oriental Orthodox Churches, taught Christ "to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably": one divine and one human, and that both natures are perfect but are nevertheless perfectly united into one person.

The Athanasian Creed, received in the western Church as having the same status as the Nicene and Chalcedonian, says: "We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the Persons nor dividing the Substance."

Most Christians (Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Eastern Rite and Protestants alike) accept the use of creeds, and subscribe to at least one of the creeds mentioned above.

Jesus Christ

The central tenet of Christianity is the belief in Jesus as the Son of God and the Messiah (Christ). The title "Messiah" comes from the Hebrew word מָשִׁיחַ (''māšiáħ'') meaning ''anointed one''. The Greek translation (''Christos'') is the source of the English word "Christ".

Christians believe that Jesus, as the Messiah, was anointed by God as saviour of humanity, and hold that Jesus' coming was the fulfillment of messianic prophecies of the Old Testament. The Christian concept of the Messiah differs significantly from the contemporary Jewish concept. The core Christian belief is that through belief in and acceptance of the death and resurrection of Jesus, sinful humans can be reconciled to God and thereby are offered salvation and the promise of eternal life.

While there have been many theological disputes over the nature of Jesus over the earliest centuries of Christian history, Christians generally believe that Jesus is God incarnate and "true God and true man" (or both fully divine and fully human). Jesus, having become fully human, suffered the pains and temptations of a mortal man, but did not sin. As fully God, he rose to life again. According to the Bible, "God raised him from the dead," he ascended to heaven, is "seated at the right hand of the Father" and will ultimately return to fulfill the rest of Messianic prophecy such as the Resurrection of the dead, the Last Judgment and final establishment of the Kingdom of God.

According to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born from the Virgin Mary. Little of Jesus' childhood is recorded in the canonical Gospels, however infancy Gospels were popular in antiquity. In comparison, his adulthood, especially the week before his death, is well documented in the Gospels contained within the New Testament. The Biblical accounts of Jesus' ministry include: his baptism, miracles, preaching, teaching, and deeds.

Death and resurrection of Jesus

Christians consider the resurrection of Jesus to be the cornerstone of their faith (see 1 Corinthians 15) and the most important event in human history. Among Christian beliefs, the death and resurrection of Jesus are two core events on which much of Christian doctrine and theology is based. According to the New Testament Jesus was crucified, died a physical death, was buried within a tomb, and rose from the dead three days later. The New Testament mentions several resurrection appearances of Jesus on different occasions to his twelve apostles and disciples, including "more than five hundred brethren at once," before Jesus' Ascension to heaven. Jesus' death and resurrection are commemorated by Christians in all worship services, with special emphasis during Holy Week which includes Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

The death and resurrection of Jesus are usually considered the most important events in Christian Theology, partly because they demonstrate that Jesus has power over life and death and therefore has the authority and power to give people eternal life.

Christian churches accept and teach the New Testament account of the resurrection of Jesus with very few exceptions. Some modern scholars use the belief of Jesus' followers in the resurrection as a point of departure for establishing the continuity of the historical Jesus and the proclamation of the early church. Some liberal Christians do not accept a literal bodily resurrection, seeing the story as richly symbolic and spiritually nourishing myth. Arguments over death and resurrection claims occur at many religious debates and interfaith dialogues. Paul the Apostle, an early Christian convert and missionary, wrote, "If Christ was not raised, then all our preaching is useless, and your trust in God is useless."

Salvation

Paul of Tarsus, like Jews and Roman pagans of his time, believed that sacrifice can bring about new kinship ties, purity, and eternal life. For Paul the necessary sacrifice was the death of Jesus: Gentiles who are "Christ's" are, like Israel, descendants of Abraham and "heirs according to the promise". The God who raised Jesus from the dead would also give new life to the "mortal bodies" of Gentile Christians, who had become with Israel the "children of God" and were therefore no longer "in the flesh".

Modern Christian churches tend to be much more concerned with how humanity can be saved from a universal condition of sin and death than the question of how both Jews and Gentiles can be in God's family. According to both Catholic and Protestant doctrine, salvation comes by Jesus' substitutionary death and resurrection. The Catholic Church teaches that salvation does not occur without faithfulness on the part of Christians; converts must live in accordance with principles of love and ordinarily must be baptized. Martin Luther taught that baptism was necessary for salvation, but modern Lutherans and other Protestants tend to teach that salvation is a gift that comes to an individual by God's grace, sometimes defined as "unmerited favor", even apart from baptism.

Christians differ in their views on the extent to which individuals' salvation is pre-ordained by God. Reformed theology places distinctive emphasis on grace by teaching that individuals are completely incapable of self-redemption, but that sanctifying grace is irresistible. In contrast Catholics, Orthodox Christians and Arminian Protestants believe that the exercise of free will is necessary to have faith in Jesus.

Trinity

''Trinity'' refers to the teaching that the one God comprises three distinct, eternally co-existing persons; the ''Father'', the ''Son'' (incarnate in Jesus Christ), and the ''Holy Spirit''. Together, these three persons are sometimes called the Godhead, although there is no single term in use in Scripture to denote the unified Godhead. In the words of the Athanasian Creed, an early statement of Christian belief, "the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and yet there are not three Gods but one God". They are distinct from another: the Father has no source, the Son is begotten of the Father, and the Spirit proceeds from the Father. Though distinct, the three persons cannot be divided from one another in being or in operation.

The Trinity is an essential doctrine of mainstream Christianity. "Father, Son and Holy Spirit" represents both the immanence and transcendence of God. God is believed to be infinite and God's presence may be perceived through the actions of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.

According to this doctrine, God is not divided in the sense that each person has a third of the whole; rather, each person is considered to be fully God (see Perichoresis). The distinction lies in their relations, the Father being unbegotten; the Son being begotten of the Father; and the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and (in Western theology) from the Son. Regardless of this apparent difference, the three 'persons' are each eternal and omnipotent.

The word ''trias'', from which ''trinity'' is derived, is first seen in the works of Theophilus of Antioch. He wrote of "the Trinity of God (the Father), His Word (the Son) and His Wisdom (Holy Spirit)". The term may have been in use before this time. Afterwards it appears in Tertullian. In the following century the word was in general use. It is found in many passages of Origen.

Trinitarians

''Trinitarianism'' denotes those Christians who believe in the concept of the ''Trinity''. Almost all Christian denominations and Churches hold Trinitarian beliefs. Although the words "Trinity" and "Triune" do not appear in the Bible, theologians beginning in the 3rd century developed the term and concept to facilitate comprehension of the New Testament teachings of God as Father, God as Jesus the Son, and God as the Holy Spirit. Since that time, Christian theologians have been careful to emphasize that Trinity does not imply three gods, nor that each member of the Trinity is one-third of an infinite God; Trinity is defined as one God in three Persons.

Nontrinitarians

Nontrinitarianism refers to beliefs systems that reject the doctrine of the Trinity. They are a small minority of Christians. Various nontrinitarian views, such as adoptionism or modalism, existed in early Christianity, leading to the disputes about Christology. Nontrinitarianism later appeared again in the Gnosticism of the Cathars in the 11th through 13th centuries, in the Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century, and in some groups arising during the Second Great Awakening of the 19th century.

Scriptures

Christianity, like other religions, has adherents whose beliefs and biblical interpretations vary. However, this article's purpose is to describe those distinctives that set Christianity apart as a unique belief group. Christianity regards the Bible, a collection of canonical books in two parts (the Old Testament and the New Testament), as the authoritative word of God. Christians believe the Bible was written by human authors under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Some believe that divine inspiration makes our present Bibles "inerrant". Others claim inerrancy for the Bible in its original manuscripts, though none of those are extant. Still others maintain that only a particularly translation is inerrant, such as the King James Version. Jews, Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants each define separate lists of Books of the Bible that each considers canonical. These variations are a reflection of the range of traditions and councils that have convened on the subject. Every version of the complete Bible always includes books of the Jewish scriptures, the Tanakh, and includes additional books and reorganizes them into two parts: the books of the Old Testament primarily sourced from the Tanakh (with some variations), and the 27 books of the New Testament containing books originally written primarily in Greek. The Roman Catholic and Orthodox canons include other books from the Septuagint which Roman Catholics call Deuterocanonical. Protestants consider these books to be apocryphal. Some versions of the Christian Bible have a separate Apocrypha section for the books not considered canonical by some Churches or by the groups publishing them.

Catholic and Orthodox interpretations

In antiquity, two schools of exegesis developed in Alexandria and Antioch. Alexandrine interpretation, exemplified by Origen, tended to read Scripture allegorically, while Antiochene interpretation adhered to the literal sense, holding that other meanings (called ''theoria'') could only be accepted if based on the literal meaning.

Catholic theology distinguishes two senses of scripture: the literal and the spiritual.

The ''literal'' sense of understanding scripture is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture. The ''spiritual'' sense is further subdivided into: the ''allegorical'' sense, which includes typology. An example would be the parting of the Red Sea being understood as a "type" (sign) of baptism.

the ''moral'' sense, which understands the scripture to contain some ethical teaching.

the ''anagogical'' sense, which applies to eschatology, eternity and the consummation of the world

Regarding exegesis, following the rules of sound interpretation, Catholic theology holds: the injunction that all other senses of sacred scripture are based on the ''literal'' that the historicity of the Gospels must be absolutely and constantly held that scripture must be read within the "living Tradition of the whole Church" and that "the task of interpretation has been entrusted to the bishops in communion with the successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome".

Protestant interpretation

;Clarity of Scripture:Protestant Christians believe that the Bible is a self-sufficient revelation, the final authority on all Christian doctrine, and revealed all truth necessary for salvation. This concept is known as ''sola scriptura''. Protestants characteristically believe that ordinary believers may reach an adequate understanding of Scripture because Scripture itself is clear (or "perspicuous"), because of the help of the Holy Spirit, or both. Martin Luther believed that without God's help Scripture would be "enveloped in darkness." He advocated "one definite and simple understanding of Scripture." John Calvin wrote, "all who...follow the Holy Spirit as their guide, find in the Scripture a clear light." The Second Helvetic (Latin for "Swiss") Confession, composed by the pastor of the Reformed church in Zurich (successor to Protestant reformer Zwingli) was adopted as a declaration of doctrine by most European Reformed churches.

;Original intended meaning of Scripture:Protestants stress the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture, the historical-grammatical method. The historical-grammatical method or grammatico-historical method is an effort in Biblical hermeneutics to find the intended original meaning in the text. This original intended meaning of the text is drawn out through examination of the passage in light of the grammatical and syntactical aspects, the historical background, the literary genre as well as theological (canonical) considerations. The historical-grammatical method distinguishes between the one original meaning and the significance of the text. The significance of the text includes the ensuing use of the text or application. The original passage is seen as having only a single meaning or sense. As Milton S. Terry said: "A fundamental principle in grammatico-historical exposition is that the words and sentences can have but one significance in one and the same connection. The moment we neglect this principle we drift out upon a sea of uncertainty and conjecture." Technically speaking, the grammatical-historical method of interpretation is distinct from the determination of the passage's significance in light of that interpretation. Taken together, both define the term (Biblical) hermeneutics.

Some Protestant interpreters make use of typology.

Afterlife and Eschaton

Most Christians believe that human beings experience divine judgment and are rewarded either with eternal life or eternal damnation. This includes the general judgement at the Resurrection of the dead (see below) as well as the belief (held by Roman Catholics, Orthodox and most Protestants) in a judgment particular to the individual soul upon physical death.

In Roman Catholicism, those who die in a state of grace, i.e., without any mortal sin separating them from God, but are still imperfectly purified from the effects of sin, undergo purification through the intermediate state of purgatory to achieve the holiness necessary for entrance into God's presence. Those who have attained this goal are called ''saints'' (Latin ''sanctus'', "holy").

Christians believe that the second coming of Christ will occur at the end of time. All who have died will be resurrected bodily from the dead for the Last Judgment. Jesus will fully establish the Kingdom of God in fulfillment of scriptural prophecies. Jehovah's Witnesses deny the existence of hell. Instead, they hold that the souls of the wicked will be annihilated.

Worship

Justin Martyr described 2nd century Christian liturgy in his ''First Apology'' (''c''. 150) to Emperor Antoninus Pius, and his description remains relevant to the basic structure of Christian liturgical worship:

Thus, as Justin described, Christians assemble for communal worship on Sunday, the day of the resurrection, though other liturgical practices often occur outside this setting. Scripture readings are drawn from the Old and New Testaments, but especially the Gospels. Often these are arranged on an annual cycle, using a book called a lectionary. Instruction is given based on these readings, called a sermon, or homily. There are a variety of congregational prayers, including thanksgiving, confession, and intercession, which occur throughout the service and take a variety of forms including recited, responsive, silent, or sung. The Lord's Prayer, or Our Father, is regularly prayed. The Eucharist (called Holy Communion, or the Lord's Supper) is the part of liturgical worship that consists of a consecrated meal, usually bread and wine. Justin Martyr described the Eucharist:

Some Christian denominations practice closed communion. They offer communion to those who are already united in that denomination or sometimes individual church. Catholics restrict participation to their members who are not in a state of mortal sin. Most other churches practice open communion since they view communion as a means to unity, rather than an end, and invite all believing Christians to participate.

Some groups depart from this traditional liturgical structure. A division is often made between "High" church services, characterized by greater solemnity and ritual, and "Low" services, but even within these two categories there is great diversity in forms of worship. Seventh-day Adventists meet on Saturday, while others do not meet on a weekly basis. Charismatic or Pentecostal congregations may spontaneously feel led by the Holy Spirit to action rather than follow a formal order of service, including spontaneous prayer. Quakers sit quietly until moved by the Holy Spirit to speak. Some Evangelical services resemble concerts with rock and pop music, dancing, and use of multimedia. For groups which do not recognize a priesthood distinct from ordinary believers the services are generally led by a minister, preacher, or pastor. Still others may lack any formal leaders, either in principle or by local necessity. Some churches use only a cappella music, either on principle (for example,, many Churches of Christ object to the use of instruments in worship) or by tradition (as in Orthodoxy).

Worship can be varied for special events like baptisms or weddings in the service or significant feast days. In the early church, Christians and those yet to complete initiation would separate for the Eucharistic part of the worship. In many churches today, adults and children will separate for all or some of the service to receive age-appropriate teaching. Such children's worship is often called Sunday school or Sabbath school (Sunday schools are often held before rather than during services).

Sacraments

In Christian belief and practice, a sacrament is a rite, instituted by Christ, that mediates grace, constituting a sacred mystery. The term is derived from the Latin word ''sacramentum'', which was used to translate the Greek word for ''mystery''. Views concerning both what rites are sacramental, and what it means for an act to be a sacrament vary among Christian denominations and traditions.

The most conventional functional definition of a sacrament is that it is an outward sign, instituted by Christ, that conveys an inward, spiritual grace through Christ. The two most widely accepted sacraments are Baptism and the Eucharist, however, the majority of Christians recognize seven Sacraments or Divine Mysteries: Baptism, Confirmation (Chrismation in the Orthodox tradition), and the Eucharist, Holy Orders, Reconciliation of a Penitent (confession), Anointing of the Sick, and Matrimony. Taken together, these are the Seven Sacraments as recognised by churches in the High church tradition—notably Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Independent Catholic, Old Catholic most Anglicans, and some Lutherans. Most other denominations and traditions typically affirm only Baptism and Eucharist as sacraments, while some Protestant groups, such as the Quakers, reject sacramental theology. Most Protestant Christian denominations who believe these rites do not communicate grace prefer to call them ''ordinances''.

Liturgical calendar

Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Eastern Christians, and traditional Protestant communities frame worship around a liturgical calendar. This includes holy days, such as solemnities which commemorate an event in the life of Jesus or the saints, periods of fasting such as Lent, and other pious events such as memoria or lesser festivals commemorating saints. Christian groups that do not follow a liturgical tradition often retain certain celebrations, such as Christmas, Easter and Pentecost. A few churches make no use of a liturgical calendar.

Symbols

The cross, which is today one of the most widely recognised symbols in the world, was used as a Christian symbol from the earliest times. Tertullian, in his book ''De Corona'', tells how it was already a tradition for Christians to trace repeatedly on their foreheads the sign of the cross. Although the cross was known to the early Christians, the crucifix did not appear in use until the 5th century.

Among the symbols employed by the primitive Christians, that of the fish seems to have ranked first in importance. From monumental sources such as tombs it is known that the symbolic fish was familiar to Christians from the earliest times. The fish was depicted as a Christian symbol in the first decades of the 2nd century. Its popularity among Christians was due principally, it would seem, to the famous acrostic consisting of the initial letters of five Greek words forming the word for fish (Ichthys), which words briefly but clearly described the character of Christ and the claim to worship of believers: ''Iesous Christos Theou Yios Soter'', meaning, ''Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour''.

Christians from the very beginning adorned their tombs with paintings of Christ, of the saints, of scenes from the Bible and allegorical groups. The catacombs are the cradle of all Christian art. The first Christians had no prejudice against images, pictures, or statues. The idea that they must have feared the danger of idolatry among their new converts is disproved in the simplest way by the pictures, even statues, that remain from the 1st centuries. Other major Christian symbols include the chi-rho monogram, the dove (symbolic of the Holy Spirit), the sacrificial lamb (symbolic of Christ's sacrifice), the vine (symbolising the necessary connectedness of the Christian with Christ) and many others. These all derive from writings found in the New Testament.

Baptism

Baptism is the ritual act, with the use of water, by which a person is admitted to membership of the Church.

Prayer

Jesus' teaching on prayer in the Sermon on the Mount displays a distinct lack of interest in the external aspects of prayer. A concern with the techniques of prayer is condemned as 'pagan', and instead a simple trust in God's fatherly goodness is encouraged. Elsewhere in the New Testament this same freedom of access to God is also emphasized. This confident position should be understood in light of Christian belief in the unique relationship between the believer and Christ through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

In subsequent Christian traditions, certain physical gestures are emphasised, including medieval gestures such as genuflection or making the sign of the cross. Kneeling, bowing and prostrations (see also poklon) are often practiced in more traditional branches of Christianity. Frequently in Western Christianity the hands are placed palms together and forward as in the feudal commendation ceremony. At other times the older orans posture may be used, with palms up and elbows in.

''Intercessory prayer'' is prayer offered for the benefit of other people. There are many intercessory prayers recorded in the Bible, included prayers of the Apostle Peter on behalf of sick persons and by prophets of the Old Testament in favor of other people. In the New Testament book of James no distinction is made between the intercessory prayer offered by ordinary believers and the prominent Old Testament prophet Elijah. The effectiveness of prayer in Christianity derives from the power of God rather than the status of the one praying

The ancient church, in both Eastern Christianity and Western Christianity, developed a tradition of asking for the intercession of (deceased) saints, and this remains the practice of most Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and some Anglican churches. Churches of the Protestant Reformation however rejected prayer to the saints, largely on the basis of the sole mediatorship of Christ. The reformer Huldrych Zwingli admitted that he had offered prayers to the saints until his reading of the Bible convinced him that this was idolatrous.

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church: "Prayer is the raising of one's mind and heart to God or the requesting of good things from God." The Book of Common Prayer in the Anglican tradition is a guide which provides a set order for church services, containing set prayers, scripture readings, and hymns or sung Psalms.

History

Early Church and Christological Councils

Christianity began as a Jewish sect in the eastern Mediterranean in the mid-1st century. Its earliest development took place under the leadership of the Twelve Apostles, particularly Saint Peter and Paul the Apostle, followed by the early bishops, whom Christians consider the successors of the Apostles.

According to the scriptures, Christians were from the beginning subject to persecution by some Jewish religious authorities, who disagreed with the apostles' teachings (See Split of early Christianity and Judaism). This involved punishments, including death, for Christians such as Stephen and James, son of Zebedee. Larger-scale persecutions followed at the hands of the authorities of the Roman Empire, first in the year 64, when Emperor Nero blamed them for the Great Fire of Rome. According to Church tradition, it was under Nero's persecution that early Church leaders Peter and Paul of Tarsus were each martyred in Rome. Further widespread persecutions of the Church occurred under nine subsequent Roman emperors, most intensely under Decius and Diocletian. From the year 150, Christian teachers began to produce theological and apologetic works aimed at defending the faith. These authors are known as the Church Fathers, and study of them is called Patristics. Notable early Fathers include Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen.

State persecution ceased in the 4th century, when Constantine I issued an edict of toleration in 313. On 27 February 380, Emperor Theodosius I enacted a law establishing Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire. From at least the 4th century, Christianity has played a prominent role in the shaping of Western civilization.

Constantine was also instrumental in the convocation of the First Council of Nicaea in 325, which sought to address the Arian heresy and formulated the Nicene Creed, which is still used by the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodoxy, Anglican Communion, and many Protestant churches. The Assyrian Church of the East did not accept the third and following Ecumenical Councils, and are still separate today. In 395, the most Christianized regions of the world were Crete, Cyprus, Anatolia, Armenia, the Nile delta, and Numidia (present-day Tunisia and Algeria).

The presence of Christianity in Africa began in the middle of the 1st century in Egypt, and by the end of the 2nd century in the region around Carthage. Important Africans who influenced the early development of Christianity includes Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen of Alexandria, Cyprian, Athanasius and Augustine of Hippo. The later rise of Islam in North Africa reduced the size and numbers of Christian congregations, leaving only the Coptic Church in Egypt and the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church in the Horn of Africa. The History of Christianity in Africa began in the 1st century when Mark the Evangelist started the Orthodox Church of Alexandria in about 43 AD.

Early Middle Ages

With the decline and fall of the Roman Empire in the west, the papacy became a political player, first visible in Pope Leo's diplomatic dealings with Huns and Vandals. The church also entered into a long period of missionary activity and expansion among the various tribes. Whilst arianists instituted the death penalty for practicing pagans (see Massacre of Verden as example), Catholicism also spread among the Germanic peoples, the Celtic and Slavic peoples, the Hungarians, and the Baltic peoples.

Around 500, St. Benedict set out his Monastic Rule, establishing a system of regulations for the foundation and running of monasteries. Monasticism became a powerful force throughout Europe, and gave rise to many early centers of learning, most famously in Ireland, Scotland and Gaul, contributing to the Carolingian Renaissance of the 9th century.

From the 7th century onwards, Islam conquered the Christian lands of the Middle East, North Africa and much of Spain, resulting in oppression of Christianity and numerous military struggles, including the Crusades, the Spanish Reconquista and wars against the Turks.

The Middle Ages brought about major changes within the church. Pope Gregory the Great dramatically reformed ecclesiastical structure and administration. In the early 8th century, iconoclasm became a divisive issue, when it was sponsored by the Byzantine emperors. The Second Ecumenical Council of Nicaea (787) finally pronounced in favor of icons. In the early 10th century, western monasticism was further rejuvenated through the leadership of the great Benedictine monastery of Cluny.

High and Late Middle Ages

In the west, from the 11th century onward, older cathedral schools developed into universities (see University of Oxford, University of Paris, and University of Bologna.) Originally teaching only theology, these steadily added subjects including medicine, philosophy and law, becoming the direct ancestors of modern western institutions of learning.

Accompanying the rise of the "new towns" throughout Western Europe, mendicant orders were founded, bringing the consecrated religious life out of the monastery and into the new urban setting. The two principal mendicant movements were the Franciscans and the Dominicans founded by St. Francis and St. Dominic respectively. Both orders made significant contributions to the development of the great universities of Europe. Another new order were the Cistercians, whose large isolated monasteries spearheaded the settlement of former wilderness areas. In this period church building and ecclesiastical architecture reached new heights, culminating in the orders of Romanesque and Gothic architecture and the building of the great European cathedrals.

From 1095 under the pontificate of Urban II, the Crusades were launched. These were a series of military campaigns in the Holy Land and elsewhere, initiated in response to pleas from the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I for aid against Turkish expansion. The Crusades ultimately failed to stifle Islamic aggression and even contributed to Christian enmity with the sacking of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade.

Over a period stretching from the 7th to the 13th century, the Christian Church underwent gradual alienation, resulting in a schism dividing it into a so-called Latin or Western branch, the Roman Catholic Church, and an Eastern, largely Greek, branch, the Orthodox Church. These two churches disagree on a number of administrative, liturgical, and doctrinal issues, most notably papal primacy of jurisdiction. The Second Council of Lyon (1274) and the Council of Florence (1439) attempted to reunite the churches, but in both cases the Eastern Orthodox refused to implement the decisions and the two principal churches remain in schism to the present day. However, the Roman Catholic Church has achieved union with various smaller eastern churches.

Beginning around 1184, following the crusade against the Cathar heresy, various institutions, broadly referred to as the Inquisition, were established with the aim of suppressing heresy and securing religious and doctrinal unity within Christianity through conversion and prosecution.

Protestant Reformation and Counter-Reformation

The 15th-century Renaissance brought about a renewed interest in ancient and classical learning. Another major schism, the Reformation, resulted in the splintering of the Western Christendom into several Christian denominations. Martin Luther in 1517 protested against the sale of indulgences and soon moved on to deny several key points of Roman Catholic doctrine. Others like Zwingli and Calvin further criticized Roman Catholic teaching and worship. These challenges developed into the movement called Protestantism, which repudiated the primacy of the pope, the role of tradition, the seven sacraments, and other doctrines and practices. The Reformation in England began in 1534, when King Henry VIII had himself declared head of the Church of England. Beginning in 1536, the monasteries throughout England, Wales and Ireland were dissolved. Partly in response to the Protestant Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church engaged in a substantial process of reform and renewal, known as the Counter-Reformation or Catholic Reform. The Council of Trent clarified and reasserted Roman Catholic doctrine. During the following centuries, competition between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism became deeply entangled with political struggles among European states.

Meanwhile, the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus in 1492 brought about a new wave of missionary activity. Partly from missionary zeal, but under the impetus of colonial expansion by the European powers, Christianity spread to the Americas, Oceania, East Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa.

Throughout Europe, the divides caused by the Reformation led to outbreaks of religious violence and the establishment of separate state churches in Western Europe: Lutheranism in parts of Germany and in Scandinavia and Anglicanism in England in 1534. Ultimately, these differences led to the outbreak of conflicts in which religion played a key factor. The Thirty Years' War, the English Civil War, and the French Wars of Religion are prominent examples. These events intensified the Christian debate on persecution and toleration.

Post-Enlightenment

In the era known as the Great Divergence, when in the West the Age of Enlightenment and the Scientific revolution brought about great societal changes, Christianity was confronted with various forms of skepticism and with certain modern political ideologies such as versions of socialism and liberalism. Events ranged from mere anti-clericalism to violent outbursts against Christianity such as the Dechristianisation during the French Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, and general hostility of Marxist movements, especially the Russian Revolution.

Especially pressing in Europe was the formation of nation states after the Napoleonic era. In all European countries, different Christian denominations found themselves in competition, to greater or lesser extents, with each other and with the state. Variables are the relative sizes of the denominations and the religious, political, and ideological orientation of the state. Urs Altermatt of the University of Fribourg, looking specifically at Catholicisms in Europe, identifies four models for the European nations. In traditionally Catholic countries such as Belgium, Spain, and to some extent Austria, religious and national communities are more or less identical. Cultural symbiosis and separation are found in Poland, Ireland, and Switzerland, all countries with competing denominations. Competition is found in Germany, the Netherlands, and again Switzerland, all countries with minority Catholic populations who to a greater or lesser extent did identify with the nation. Finally, separation between religion (again, specifically Catholicism) and the state is found to a great degree in France and Italy, countries where the state actively opposed itself to the authority of the Catholic Church. The combined factors of the formation of nation states and ultramontanism, especially in Germany and the Netherlands but also in England (to a much lesser extent), often forced Catholic churches, organizations, and believers to choose between the national demands of the state and the authority of the Church, specifically the papacy. This conflict came to a head in the First Vatican Council, and in Germany would lead directly to the Kulturkampf, where liberals and Protestants under the leadership of Bismarck managed to severely restrict Catholic expression and organization.

Christian commitment in Europe dropped as modernity and secularism came into their own in Western Europe, while religious commitments in America have been generally high in comparison to Western Europe. The late 20th century has shown the shift of Christian adherence to the Third World and southern hemisphere in general, with western civilization no longer the chief standard bearer of Christianity.

Some Europeans (including diaspora), Indigenous peoples of the Americas, and natives of other continents have revived their respective peoples' historical folk religions. (see Neo-paganism, Native Americans in the United States#Religion) Approximately 7.1 to 10% of Arabs are Christians most prevalent in Egypt, Syria and Lebanon.

Demographics

[[File:Map of state religions.svg|right|thumb|300px|Nations with Christianity as their state religion: ]] With around 2.2 billion adherents, split into 3 main branches of Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox, Christianity is the world's largest religion. The Christian share of the world's population has stood at around 33 per cent for the last hundred years, which says that one in three persons on earth are Christians. This masks a major shift in the demographics of Christianity; large increases in the developing world (around 23,000 per day) have been accompanied by substantial declines in the developed world, mainly in Europe and North America (around 7,600 per day). It is still the predominant religion in Europe, the Americas and Southern Africa. In Asia, it is the dominant religion in Georgia, Armenia, East Timor and the Philippines. However, it is declining in many areas including the Northern and Western United States, Oceania (Australia and New Zealand), northern Europe (including Great Britain, Scandinavia and other places), France, Germany, the Canadian provinces of Ontario, British Columbia, and Quebec, and parts of Asia (especially the Middle East, South Korea, Taiwan and Macau). The Christian population is not decreasing in Brazil, the Southern United States and the province of Alberta, Canada, but the percentage is decreasing. In countries such as Australia and New Zealand, the Christian population are declining in both numbers and percentage.

However, there are many charismatic movements that have become well established over large parts of the world, especially Africa, Latin America and Asia. A leading Saudi Arabian Muslim leader Sheikh Ahmad al Qatanni reported on Aljazeera that every day 16,000 African Muslims convert to Christianity. He claimed that Islam was losing 6 million African Muslims a year to becoming Christians, including Muslims in Algeria, France, India, Morocco, Russia, and Turkey. It is also reported that Christianity is popular among people of different backgrounds in India (mostly Hindus), Malaysia, Mongolia, Nigeria, North Korea, and Vietnam.

In most countries in the developed world, church attendance among people who continue to identify themselves as Christians has been falling over the last few decades. Some sources view this simply as part of a drift away from traditional membership institutions, while others link it to signs of a decline in belief in the importance of religion in general.

Christianity, in one form or another, is the sole state religion of the following nations: Costa Rica (Roman Catholic), Denmark (Evangelical Lutheran), El Salvador (Roman Catholic), England (Anglican), Finland (Evangelical Lutheran & Orthodox), Georgia (Georgian Orthodox), Greece (Greek Orthodox), Iceland (Evangelical Lutheran), Liechtenstein (Roman Catholic), Malta (Roman Catholic), Monaco (Roman Catholic), Norway (Evangelical Lutheran), and Vatican City (Roman Catholic).

There are numerous other countries, such as Cyprus, which although do not have an established church, still give official recognition to a specific Christian denomination.

Major groupings within Christianity

The three primary divisions of Christianity are Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Protestantism. There are other Christian groups that do not fit neatly into one of these primary categories. The Nicene Creed is "accepted as authoritative by the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and major Protestant churches." There is a diversity of doctrines and practices among groups calling themselves Christian. These groups are sometimes classified under denominations, though for theological reasons many groups reject this classification system. Another distinction that is sometimes drawn is between Eastern Christianity and Western Christianity.

Catholic

The Catholic Church comprises those particular churches, headed by bishops, in communion with the Pope, the Bishop of Rome, as its highest authority in matters of faith, morality and Church governance. Like the Eastern Orthodox, the Roman Catholic Church through Apostolic succession traces its origins to the Christian community founded by Jesus Christ. Catholics maintain that the "one, holy, catholic and apostolic church" founded by Jesus subsists fully in the Roman Catholic Church, but also acknowledges other Christian churches and communities and works towards reconciliation among all Christians. The Catholic faith is detailed in the ''Catechism of the Catholic Church''.

The 2,782 sees are grouped into 23 particular rites, the largest being the Latin Rite, each with distinct traditions regarding the liturgy and the administering the sacraments. With more than 1.1 billion baptized members, the Catholic Church is the largest church representing over half of all Christians and one sixth of the world's population.

Various smaller communities, such as the Old Catholic and Independent Catholic Churches, include the word ''Catholic'' in their title, and share much in common with Roman Catholicism but are no longer in communion with the See of Rome. The Old Catholic Church is in communion with the Anglican Communion.

Orthodox

Eastern Orthodoxy comprises those churches in communion with the Patriarchal Sees of the East, such as the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. Like the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church also traces its heritage to the foundation of Christianity through Apostolic succession and has an episcopal structure, though the autonomy of the individual, mostly national churches is emphasized. A number of conflicts with Western Christianity over questions of doctrine and authority culminated in the Great Schism. Eastern Orthodoxy is the second largest single denomination in Christianity, with over 200 million adherents. The Oriental Orthodox Churches (also called ''Old Oriental Churches'') are those eastern churches that recognize the first three ecumenical councils—Nicaea, Constantinople and Ephesus—but reject the dogmatic definitions of the Council of Chalcedon and instead espouse a Miaphysite christology. The Oriental Orthodox communion comprises six groups: Syriac Orthodox, Coptic Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox, Eritrean Orthodox, Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church (India) and Armenian Apostolic churches. These six churches, while being in communion with each other are completely independent hierarchically. These churches are generally not in communion with Eastern Orthodox Churches with whom they are in dialogue for a return to unity.

Protestant

In the 16th century, Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli, and John Calvin inaugurated what has come to be called Protestantism. Luther's primary theological heirs are known as Lutherans. Zwingli and Calvin's heirs are far broader denominationally, and are broadly referred to as the Reformed Tradition. Most Protestant traditions branch out from the Reformed tradition in some way. In addition to the Lutheran and Reformed branches of the Reformation, there is Anglicanism after the English Reformation. The Anabaptist tradition was largely ostracized by the other Protestant parties at the time, but has achieved a measure of affirmation in more recent history. Some but not most Baptists prefer not to be called Protestants, claiming a direct ancestral line going back to the apostles in the 1st century. The oldest Protestant groups separated from the Catholic Church in the 16th century Protestant Reformation, followed in many cases by further divisions. For example, the Methodist Church grew out of Anglican minister John Wesley's evangelical and revival movement in the Anglican Church. Several Pentecostal and non-denominational Churches, which emphasize the cleansing power of the Holy Spirit, in turn grew out of the Methodist Church. Because Methodists, Pentecostals, and other evangelicals stress "accepting Jesus as your personal Lord and Saviour", which comes from John Wesley's emphasis of the New Birth, they often refer to themselves as being born-again.

Estimates of the total number of Protestants are very uncertain, partly because of the difficulty in determining which denominations should be placed in these categories, but it seems clear that Protestantism is the second largest major group of Christians after Catholicism in number of followers (although the Orthodox Church is larger than any single Protestant denomination).

A special grouping are the Anglican churches descended from the Church of England and organised in the Anglican Communion. Some Anglican churches consider themselves both Protestant and Catholic. Some Anglicans consider their church a branch of the "One Holy Catholic Church" alongside of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, a concept rejected by the Roman Catholic Church and some Eastern Orthodox.

Some groups of individuals who hold basic Protestant tenets identify themselves simply as "Christians" or "born-again Christians". They typically distance themselves from the confessionalism and/or creedalism of other Christian communities by calling themselves "non-denominational". Often founded by individual pastors, they have little affiliation with historic denominations.

Non-trinitarian

Nontrinitarianism includes all Christian belief systems that reject, wholly or partly, the doctrine of the Trinity, namely, the teaching that God is three distinct yet coeternal and coequal ''hypostases'' who are indivisibly united in one essence. In antiquity, sporadically in the Middle Ages, and again following the Reformation until today, differing views existed concerning the Godhead from those of Trinitarians and the related traditional Christology. Though diverse, these views may be generally classified into those that hold Christ to be only divine and not differing from the Father hypostatically; those that hold Christ to be less fully God than the Father; in other forms being completely human and a messenger as the perfect created human.

Others

Esoteric Christianity is a term which refers to an ensemble of spiritual currents which regard Christianity as a mystery religion, and profess the existence and possession of certain esoteric doctrines or practices, hidden from the public but accessible only to a narrow circle of "enlightened", "initiated", or highly educated people. A special characteristic common in these mystical denominations is the belief in reincarnation. Some of the esoteric christian institutions include the Rosicrucian Fellowship, the Anthroposophical Society and the Martinism.

The Second Great Awakening, a period of religious revival that occurred in the U.S. 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. 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.

Some of the churches originating during this period are historically connected to early-19th century camp meetings in the Midwest and Upstate New York. American Millennialism and Adventism, which arose from Evangelical Protestantism, influenced the Jehovah's Witnesses movement (with 7 million members), 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, Churches of Christ, and the Independent Christian Churches/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 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the largest denomination of the Latter Day Saint movement with over 13 million members. While the churches originating in the Second Great Awakening have some superficial similarities, their doctrine and practices vary significantly.

Cultural Christian

Cultural Christian is a broad term used to describe people with either ethnic or religious Christian heritage who may not believe in the religious claims of Christianity, but who retain an affinity for the culture, art, music, and so on related to it.

Many of the population of the Western hemisphere could broadly be described as cultural Christians, due to the predominance of the Christian faith in Western culture, as well as widely celebrated religious holidays such as Easter and Christmas. Another frequent application of the term is to distinguish political groups in areas of mixed religious backgrounds.

Ecumenism

Most churches have long expressed ideals of being reconciled with each other, and in the 20th century Christian ecumenism advanced in two ways. One way was greater cooperation between groups, such as 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 Roman Catholics.

The other way was institutional union with new United and uniting churches. Congregationalist, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches united in 1925 to form the United Church of Canada, and in 1977 to form the Uniting Church in Australia. The Church of South India was formed in 1947 by the union of Anglican, Methodist, Congregationalist, Presbyterian, and Reformed churches.

Steps towards reconciliation on a global level were taken in 1965 by the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches mutually revoking the excommunications that marked their Great Schism in 1054; the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) working towards full communion between those churches since 1970; and the Lutheran and Roman 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 Methodist church adopted the declaration.

Another example of ecumenism is the invention of and growing usage of the Christian Flag, which was designed to represent all of Christendom. The flag has a white field, with a red Latin cross inside a blue canton.

See also

Christian World

Christian apologetics

Criticism of Christianity

Christian mythology

Freedom of religion

Good news (Christianity), concerning the gospel message

Christian art

Christian philosophy

Christian symbolism

Christian architecture

One true church

One true faith

Political catholicism

Gospel

Bible

Evangelism

Evangelical environmentalism

Messianic Judaism

Christianity and sexuality

Christian views on marriage

Christianity and politics

Not to be confused with

Messianism

Endnotes

References

;General references:

''American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language'', Houghton Mifflin Company (2006).

''Catechism of the Catholic Church''. ''Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia''. ''Encyclopedia of Religion''. ''New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''.

Barrett, David; Kurian, Tom and others. (ed.). ''World Christian Encyclopedia''. Oxford University Press (2001).

;Monographies and articles: Ahlstrom, Sydney E. Albright, William F. ''From the Stone Age to Christianity''. Alexander, T. Desmond. ''New Dictionary of Biblical Theology''. Anidjar, 2001.

Bahnsen, Greg. ''A Reformed Confession Regarding Hermeneutics'' (article 6).

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Ball, Bryan; Johnsson, William (ed.). ''The Essential Jesus''. Pacific Press (2002). ISBN 0-8163-1929-4.

Barry, John F. ''One Faith, One Lord: A Study of Basic Catholic Belief''. William H. Sadlier (2001). ISBN 0-8215-2207-8

Bettenson, Henry (ed.). ''Documents of the Christian Church''. Oxford University Press (1943).

Bokenkotter, Thomas. ''A Concise History of the Catholic Church ''. Doubleday (2004). ISBN 0-385-50584-1

Bruce, F.F. ''The Canon of Scripture''.

Chambers, Mortimer; Crew, Herlihy, Rabb, Woloch. ''The Western Experience. Volume II: The Early Modern Period''. Alfred A. Knopf (1974). ISBN 0-394-31734-3.

Coffey, John. ''Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England 1558–1689''. Pearson Education (2000).

Cross, F. L.; Livingstone, E. A. (ed.). ''The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church''. Oxford University Press (1997). ISBN 0-19-211655-X. Deppermann, Klaus. ''Melchior Hoffman: Social Unrest and Apocalyptic Vision in the Age of Reformation''. ISBN 0-567-08654-2.

Dilasser, Maurice. ''The Symbols of the Church''. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press (1999). ISBN 0-8146-2538-X

Duffy, Eamon. ''Saints and Sinners, a History of the Popes''. Yale University Press (1997). ISBN 0-300-07332-1

Elwell, Walter A.; Comfort, Philip Wesley. ''Tyndale Bible Dictionary'', Tyndale House Publishers (2001). ISBN 0-8423-7089-7.

Esler, Phillip F. ''The Early Christian World''. Routledge (2004).

Farrar, F.W. ''Mercy and Judgment. A Few Last Words On Christian Eschatology With Reference to Dr. Pusey's, "What Is Of Faith?"''. Macmillan, London/New York (1904).

Foutz, Scott. '''' Martin Luther and Scripture'' Martin Luther and Scripture''.

Fowler, Jeaneane D. ''World Religions: An Introduction for Students'', Sussex Academic Press (1997). ISBN 1-898723-48-6.

Fuller, Reginald H. ''The Foundations of New Testament Christology'' Scribners (1965). ISBN 0-684-15532-X.

Froehle, Bryan; Gautier, Mary, ''Global Catholicism, Portrait of a World Church'', Orbis books; Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, Georgetown University (2003) ISBN=157075375x

Funk, Robert. ''The Acts of Jesus: What Did Jesus Really Do?''. Polebridge Press (1998). ISBN 0-06-062978-9.

Glenny, W. Edward. ''Typology: A Summary Of The Present Evangelical Discussion''.

Gonzalez, Justo L. ''The Story of Christianity: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation'', Harper Collins Publishers, New York (1984).

Hanegraaff, Hank. ''Resurrection: The Capstone in the Arch of Christianity''. Thomas Nelson (2000). ISBN 0-8499-1643-7.

Harnack, Adolf von. ''History of Dogma'' (1894).

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Hitchcock, Susan Tyler. ''Geography of Religion''. National Geographic Society (2004) ISBN 0-7922-7313-3

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MacCulloch, Diarmaid, ''The Reformation: A History''. Viking Adult (2004).

MacCulloch, Diarmaid, ''A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years''. London, Allen Lane. 2009. ISBN 978-0-7139-9869-6

Marber, Peter. ''Money Changes Everything: How Global Prosperity Is Reshaping Our Needs, Values and Lifestyles''. FT Press (2003). ISBN 0-13-065480-9

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Pelikan, Jaroslav; Hotchkiss, Valerie (ed.) ''Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition''. Yale University Press (2003). ISBN 0-300-09389-6.

Putnam, Robert D. ''Democracies in Flux: The Evolution of Social Capital in Contemporary Society''. Oxford University Press (2002).

Riley-Smith, Jonathan. ''The Oxford History of the Crusades''. New York: Oxford University Press, (1999).

Robinson, George. ''Essential Judaism: A Complete Guide to Beliefs, Customs and Rituals''. New York: Pocket Books (2000).

Schama, Simon . ''A History of Britain''. Hyperion (2000). ISBN 0-7868-6675-6.

Servetus, Michael. ''Restoration of Christianity''. Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press (2007).

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Sykes, Stephen; Booty, John; Knight, Jonathan. ''The Study of Anglicanism''. Augsburg Fortress Publishers (1998). ISBN 0-8006-3151-X.

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Further reading

MacCulloch, Diarmaid. ''Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years'' (Viking; 2010) 1,161 pages; survey by leading historian

External links

Encyclopædia Britannica Online.

A number of introductory articles on Christianity. An overview of Christianity. The origin of Christianity

Adena, L. The 'Jesus Cult' and the Roman State in the Third Century, Clio History Journal, 2008.

Category:Middle Eastern culture Category:Western culture Category:Monotheistic religions

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Region	Islamic Preacher
Color	lightsteelblue
Name	Shabir Ally
School tradition	Islam
Main interests	Islamic Dawah
website	}}

Immam Shabir Ally is the president of the Islamic Information & Dawah Centre International in Toronto, Canada. He is a Muslim activist, preacher and speaker on Islam and Muslims. He is also a debater engaging in regular debates in different parts of the world. He holds a B.A. in Religious Studies from Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, with a specialization in Biblical Literature, and an M.A. in Religious Studies from the University of Toronto with a specialization in Quranic Exegesis. He is now in his fourth year of PhD studies in Quranic Exegesis at the University of Toronto. He is also teaching arabic at the University of Toronto. He has 3 sons who are also known as Imam in the mosque,Shohaib, Iliyas, and Idris.

Debates / Lectures

Ally is known for accepting literal interpretation of the Quran verses, but seeks to find their justification in similar expressions within the Christian Bible. To this end he has participated in a number of debates and lectures that presents an apologist view of Islam. Some of the more notable debates include:

Shabir Ally vs. Sir Anthony Buzzard, 3rd Baronet

Shabir Ally vs. John Gilchrist

Shabir Ally vs. David Seccombe

Shabir Ally vs. Bob Benjamin & Glen Schenkte

Shabir Ally vs. Jay Smith

Shabir Ally vs. Mike Licona

Shabir Ally vs. James White

Shabir Ally vs. William Lane Craig

Shabir Ally vs. Dave Hunt

Publications

''Is Jesus God? The Bible Says No'' (Al-Attique Publications, Canada) ISBN 9960914887

''What God Said About Eating Pork?'' (Al-Attique Publications, Canada) ISBN 9960777022

''Science in the Qur'an'' (Al-Attique Publications, Canada) ISBN 9960914879

''101 Clear Contradictions in the Bible'' (Al-Attique Publications, Canada) ISBN 1894264126

''Yahweh, Jehovah Or Allah'' (Al-Attique Publications, Canada) ISBN 894264185

''101 Questions to Ask Visiting Jehovah's Witnesses'' (Al-Attique Publications, Canada) ISBN 189426410X

''Reply to Robert Morey's Source of Islam Theories'' (Al-Attique Publications, Canada) ISBN 9960777057

External links

Shabir Ally's Official Website

References

Category:Year of birth missing (living people) Category:Living people Category:Canadian anthropologists Category:Canadian Muslims Category:Laurentian University alumni Category:University of Toronto alumni Category:Muslim apologists

name	Christopher Hitchens
birth name	Christopher Eric Hitchens
birth date	April 13, 1949
birth place	Portsmouth, England
death date	December 15, 2011
death place	Houston, Texas, U.S.
occupation	Writer, journalist, public speaker
alma mater	Balliol College, Oxford
nationality	English American
citizenship	British and American
religion	None
subject	Politics, religion, history, biography, literature
spouse
relatives	Peter Hitchens (brother)
influences	George Orwell, Leszek Kolakowski, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, George Eliot, Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg, John Stuart Mill, Joseph Heller, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal, Edward Said, Salman Rushdie, Vladimir Nabokov, Richard Llewellyn, Aldous Huxley, PG Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh, Richard Hofstadter, Paul Mark Scott, James Fenton, James Joyce, Albert Camus, Oscar Wilde, Conor Cruise O'Brien, Martin Amis, Kingsley Amis, Ian McEwan, Colm Tóibín, Bertrand Russell, Wilfred Owen, Israel Shahak, Isaiah Berlin, Émile Zola, W. H. Auden, Susan Sontag
influenced	Johann Hari, Martin Amis, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins
signature	CH Signature 2.jpg|200px
website	}}

Christopher Eric Hitchens, nicknamed "Hitch", (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was an English American author, essayist and journalist, whose books, essays, and journalistic career spanned more than four decades. He was a columnist and literary critic for ''The Atlantic'', ''Free Inquiry'', ''The Nation'', ''Salon'', ''Slate'', ''Vanity Fair'', ''World Affairs'', and became a media fellow at the Hoover Institution in September 2008. He was a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits and in 2005 was voted the world's fifth top public intellectual in a ''Prospect''/''Foreign Policy'' poll.

Hitchens was known for his admiration of George Orwell, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson and for his excoriating critiques of Mother Teresa, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Henry Kissinger and Britain's royal family, among others. His confrontational style of debate made him both a lauded and controversial figure. As a political observer, polemicist and self-defined radical, he rose to prominence as a fixture of the left-wing publications in his native Britain and in the United States. His departure from the established political left began in 1989 after what he called the "tepid reaction" of the Western left following Ayatollah Khomeini's issue of a ''fatwā'' calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie. The September 11 attacks strengthened his internationalist embrace of an interventionist foreign policy, and his vociferous criticism of what he called "fascism with an Islamic face". His numerous editorials in support of the Iraq War caused some to label him a neoconservative, although Hitchens insisted he was not "a conservative of any kind".

Identified as a champion of the "New Atheism" movement, Hitchens described himself as an antitheist and a believer in the philosophical values of the Enlightenment. Hitchens said that a person "could be an atheist and wish that belief in god were correct", but that "an antitheist, a term I'm trying to get into circulation, is someone who is relieved that there's no evidence for such an assertion." According to Hitchens, the concept of a god or a supreme being is a totalitarian belief that destroys individual freedom, and that free expression and scientific discovery should replace religion as a means of teaching ethics and defining human civilization. He wrote at length on atheism and the nature of religion in his 2007 book ''God Is Not Great''.

Though Hitchens retained his British citizenship, he became a United States citizen on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial on 13 April 2007, his 58th birthday. Asteroid 57901 Hitchens is named after him. His memoir, ''Hitch-22'', was published in June 2010. Touring for the book was cut short later in the same month so he could begin treatment for newly diagnosed esophageal cancer. On 15 December 2011, Hitchens died from pneumonia, a complication of his cancer, in the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas.

Life and career

Early life and education

His mother, Yvonne Jean (née Hickman), and father, Eric Ernest Hitchens (1909–1987), met in Scotland while both were serving in the Royal Navy during World War II. Yvonne was at the time a "Wren" (a member of the Women's Royal Naval Service), and Eric a "purse-lipped and silent" commander, whose ship HMS ''Jamaica'' helped sink Nazi Germany's battleship ''Scharnhorst'' in the Battle of the North Cape. His father's naval career required the family to move a number of times from base to base throughout Britain and its dependencies, including in Malta, where Christopher's brother Peter was born in Sliema in 1951.

Hitchens's mother having argued that "if there is going to be an upper class in this country, then Christopher is going to be in it,", in the late fifties and early sixties he was educated at Mount House School in Tavistock in Devon, then at the independent Leys School in Cambridge, and then at Balliol College in Oxford, where he was tutored by Steven Lukes and read philosophy, politics, and economics. Hitchens was "bowled over" in his adolescence by Richard Llewellyn's ''How Green Was My Valley'', Arthur Koestler's ''Darkness at Noon,'' Fyodor Dostoyevsky's ''Crime and Punishment'', R. H. Tawney's critique on ''Religion and the Rise of Capitalism,'' and the works of George Orwell. In 1968, he took part in the TV quiz show ''University Challenge''.

Hitchens has written of his homosexual experiences when in boarding school in his memoir, ''Hitch-22''. These experiences continued in his college years, when he allegedly had relationships with two men who eventually became a part of the Thatcher government.

In the 1960s Hitchens joined the political left, drawn by his anger over the Vietnam War, nuclear weapons, racism, and "oligarchy", including that of "the unaccountable corporation". He would express affinity with the politically charged countercultural and protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s. However, he deplored the rife recreational drug use of the time, which he describes as hedonistic.

He joined the Labour Party in 1965, but along with the majority of the Labour students' organization was expelled in 1967, because of what Hitchens called "Prime Minister Harold Wilson's contemptible support for the war in Vietnam". Under the influence of Peter Sedgwick, who translated the writings of Russian revolutionary and Soviet dissident Victor Serge, Hitchens forged an ideological interest in Trotskyist and anti-Stalinist socialism. Shortly after he joined "a small but growing post-Trotskyist Luxemburgist sect".

Journalistic career (1970–1981)

Hitchens began working as a correspondent for the magazine ''International Socialism'', published by the International Socialists, the forerunners of today's British Socialist Workers Party. This group was broadly Trotskyist, but differed from more orthodox Trotskyist groups in its refusal to defend communist states as "workers' states". Their slogan was "Neither Washington nor Moscow but International Socialism".

Hitchens left Oxford with a third class degree. His first job was with the London ''Times Higher Education Supplement'', where he served as social science editor. Hitchens admitted that he hated the position, and was later fired; he recalled, "I sometimes think if I'd been any good at that job, I might still be doing it." In the 1970s, he went on to work for the ''New Statesman'', where he became friends with the authors Martin Amis and Ian McEwan, among others. At the ''New Statesman'' he acquired a reputation as a fierce left-winger, aggressively attacking targets such as Henry Kissinger, the Vietnam War, and the Roman Catholic Church.

In November 1973, Hitchens' mother committed suicide in Athens in a suicide pact with her lover, a former clergyman named Timothy Bryan. They overdosed on sleeping pills in adjoining hotel rooms, and Bryan slashed his wrists in the bathtub. Hitchens flew alone to Athens to recover his mother's body. Hitchens said he thought his mother was pressured into suicide by fear that her husband would learn of her infidelity, as their marriage had been strained and unhappy. Both her children were then independent adults. While in Greece, Hitchens reported on the constitutional crisis of the military junta. It became his first leading article for the ''New Statesman''.

American career (1981–2011)

After moving to the United States in 1981, Hitchens wrote for ''The Nation'', where he penned vociferous critiques of Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and American foreign policy in South and Central America. He became a contributing editor of ''Vanity Fair'' in 1992, writing ten columns a year. He left ''The Nation'' in 2002 after profoundly disagreeing with other contributors over the Iraq War. There is speculation that Hitchens was the inspiration for Tom Wolfe's character Peter Fallow in the 1987 novel ''The Bonfire of the Vanities'', but others — including Hitchens (or he indicated as such while alive) — believe it to be ''Spy Magazine''s "Ironman Nightlife Decathlete" Anthony Haden-Guest. In 1987, his father died from cancer of the esophagus.

Hitchens spent part of his early career in journalism as a foreign correspondent in Cyprus. Through his work there he met his first wife Eleni Meleagrou, a Greek Cypriot, with whom he had two children, Alexander and Sophia. His son, Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, born in 1984, has worked as a researcher for London think tanks the Policy Exchange and the Centre for Social Cohesion. Hitchens continued writing essay-style correspondence pieces from a variety of locales, including Chad, Uganda and the Darfur region of Sudan. His work took him to over 60 countries. In 1991 he received a Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction.

Before Hitchens' political shift, the American author and polemicist Gore Vidal was apt to speak of Hitchens as his "Dauphin" or "heir". In 2010, Hitchens attacked Vidal in a ''Vanity Fair'' piece headlined "Vidal Loco," calling him a "crackpot" for his adoption of 9/11 conspiracy theories. Also, on the back of his book ''Hitch-22,'' among the praise from notable writers and figures, a Vidal quote endorsing Hitchens as his successor is crossed out with a red 'X' and a message saying "NO C.H." His strong advocacy of the war in Iraq had gained Hitchens a wider readership, and in September 2005 he was named one of the "Top 100 Public Intellectuals" by ''Foreign Policy'' and ''Prospect'' magazines. An online poll ranked the 100 intellectuals, but the magazines noted that the rankings of Hitchens (5), Noam Chomsky (1), and Abdolkarim Soroush (15) were partly due to supporters publicising the vote.

In 2007 Hitchens' work for ''Vanity Fair'' won him the National Magazine Award in the category "Columns and Commentary". He was a finalist once more in the same category in 2008 for some of his columns in ''Slate'' but lost out to Matt Taibbi of ''Rolling Stone''. He won the National Magazine Award for Columns about Cancer in 2011. Hitchens also served on the Advisory Board of Secular Coalition for America and offered advice to Coalition on the acceptance and inclusion of nontheism in American life.

Literature reviews

Hitchens wrote a monthly essay on books in ''The Atlantic'' and contributed occasionally to other literary journals. One of his books, ''Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere'', is a collection of such works, and ''Love, Poverty and War'' contains a section devoted to literary essays. In ''Why Orwell Matters'', he defends Orwell's writings against modern critics as relevant today and progressive for his time. In the 2008 book ''Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left'', many literary critiques are included of essays and other books of writers, such as David Horowitz and Edward Said.

During a three-hour interview by ''Book TV'', he named authors who have had influence on his views, including Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Evelyn Waugh, P. G. Wodehouse and Conor Cruise O'Brien.

Political views

The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' referred to Hitchens as a "gadfly with gusto". In 2009, Hitchens was listed by ''Forbes'' magazine as one of the "25 most influential liberals in the U.S. media". However, the same article noted that he would "likely be aghast to find himself on this list", since it reduces his self-styled radicalism to mere liberalism. Hitchens' political perspective can be found in his wide ranging writings which include many of the political dialogues he published.

Socialism

Hitchens became a socialist "largely [as] the outcome of a study of history, taking sides ... in the battles over industrialism and war and empire." In 2001, he told Rhys Southan of ''Reason'' magazine that he could no longer say "I am a socialist." Socialists, he claimed, had ceased to offer a positive alternative to the capitalist system. Capitalism had become the more revolutionary economic system, and he welcomed globalisation as "innovative and internationalist", but added, "I don't think that the contradictions, as we used to say, of the system, are by any means all resolved." He stated that he had a renewed interest in the freedom of the individual from the state, but that he still considered libertarianism "ahistorical" both on the world stage and in the work of creating a stable and functional society, adding that libertarians are "more worried about the over-mighty state than the unaccountable corporation" whereas "the present state of affairs ... combines the worst of bureaucracy with the worst of the insurance companies."

In 2006, in a town hall meeting in Pennsylvania debating the Jewish Tradition with Martin Amis, Hitchens commented on his political philosophy by stating, "I am no longer a socialist, but I still am a Marxist". In a June 2010 interview with ''The New York Times'', he stated that "I still think like a Marxist in many ways. I think the materialist conception of history is valid. I consider myself a very conservative Marxist". In 2009, in an article for ''The Atlantic'' entitled "The Revenge of Karl Marx", Hitchens frames the late-2000s recession in terms of Marx's economic analysis and notes how much Marx admired the capitalist system he was calling for the end of, but says that Marx ultimately failed to grasp how revolutionary capitalist innovation was. Hitchens was an admirer of Che Guevara, commenting that "[Che's] death meant a lot to me and countless like me at the time, he was a role model, albeit an impossible one for us bourgeois romantics insofar as he went and did what revolutionaries were meant to do — fought and died for his beliefs." However, in an essay written in 1997, he distanced himself somewhat from some of Che's actions.

He continued to regard both Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky as great men, and the October Revolution as a necessary event in the modernization of Russia. In 2005, Hitchens praised Lenin's creation of "secular Russia" and his discrediting of the Russian Orthodox Church, describing it as "an absolute warren of backwardness and evil and superstition".

Iraq War and the war on terror

The years after the ''fatwa'' issued against Salman Rushdie saw Hitchens looking for allies and friends. In the United States he became increasingly critical of what he called "excuse making" on the left. At the same time, he was attracted to the foreign policy ideas of some on the Republican-right that promoted pro-liberalism intervention, especially the neoconservative group that included Paul Wolfowitz. Around this time, he befriended the Iraqi dissident and businessman Ahmed Chalabi. In 2004, Hitchens stated that neoconservative support for US intervention in Iraq convinced him that he was "on the same side as the neo-conservatives" when it came to contemporary foreign policy issues. Hitchens had also been known to refer to his association with "temporary neocon allies".

Following the September 11 attacks, Hitchens and Noam Chomsky debated the nature of radical Islam and the proper response to it. In October 2001, Hitchens wrote criticisms of Chomsky in ''The Nation''. Chomsky responded and Hitchens issued a rebuttal to Chomsky to which Chomsky again responded. Approximately a year after the September 11 attacks and his exchanges with Chomsky, Hitchens left ''The Nation'', claiming that its editors, readers and contributors considered John Ashcroft a bigger threat than Osama bin Laden, and that they were making excuses on behalf of Islamist terrorism; in the following months he wrote articles increasingly at odds with his colleagues.

Christopher Hitchens argued the case for the Iraq War in a 2003 collection of essays entitled ''A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq'', and he has held numerous public debates on the topic with George Galloway and Scott Ritter. Though he admitted to the numerous failures of the war, and its high civilian casualties, he stood by the position that deposing Saddam Hussein was a long-overdue responsibility of the United States, after decades of poor policy, and that holding free elections in Iraq had been a success not to be scoffed at. He argued that a continued fight in Iraq against insurgents, whether they be former Saddam loyalists or Islamic extremists, was a fight worth having, and that those insurgents, not American forces, should have been the ones taking the brunt of the blame for a slow reconstruction and high civilian casualties.

Criticism of George W. Bush

Prior to September 11, 2001, and the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, Hitchens was highly critical of Bush's "non-interventionist" foreign policy. He also criticized Bush's support of intelligent design and capital punishment.

Although Hitchens defended Bush's post-September 11 foreign policy, he criticized the actions of U.S. troops in Abu Ghraib and Haditha, and the U.S. government's use of waterboarding, which he unhesitatingly deemed as torture after being invited by ''Vanity Fair'' to voluntarily undergo it. In January 2006, Hitchens joined with four other individuals and four organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union and Greenpeace, as plaintiffs in a lawsuit, ''ACLU v. NSA'', challenging Bush's warrantless domestic spying program; the lawsuit was filed by the ACLU.

Presidential endorsements

Hitchens would elaborate on his political views and ideological shift in a discussion with Eric Alterman on Bloggingheads.tv. In this discussion Hitchens revealed himself to be a supporter of Ralph Nader in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, who was disenchanted with the candidacy of both George W. Bush and Al Gore.

Hitchens made a brief return to ''The Nation'' just before the 2004 U.S. presidential election and wrote that he was "slightly" for Bush; shortly afterwards, ''Slate'' polled its staff on their positions on the candidates and mistakenly printed Hitchens' vote as pro-John Kerry. Hitchens shifted his opinion to "neutral", saying: "It's absurd for liberals to talk as if Kristallnacht is impending with Bush, and it's unwise and indecent for Republicans to equate Kerry with capitulation. There's no one to whom he can surrender, is there? I think that the nature of the jihadist enemy will decide things in the end".

In the 2008 presidential election, Hitchens in an article for ''Slate'' stated, "I used to call myself a single-issue voter on the essential question of defending civilization against its terrorist enemies and their totalitarian protectors, and on that 'issue' I hope I can continue to expose and oppose any ambiguity." He was critical of both main party candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain. Hitchens went on to support Obama, calling McCain "senile", and his choice of running mate Sarah Palin "absurd", calling Palin a "pathological liar" and a "national disgrace".

Blumenthal–Hitchens feud

Hitchens and Carol Blue chose to submit an affidavit to the trial managers of the Republican Party in the trial of impeachment of Bill Clinton. In the affidavit, Blue and Hitchens swore that their then-friend, Sidney Blumenthal, had described Monica Lewinsky as a stalker. This allegation contradicted Blumenthal's own sworn deposition in the trial, and it resulted in a hostile exchange of opinion in the public sphere between Hitchens and Blumenthal. Following the publication of Blumenthal's ''The Clinton Wars,'' Hitchens wrote several pieces in which he accused Blumenthal of manipulating the facts.

Israel–Palestine

Hitchens had said of himself, "I am an Anti-Zionist. I'm one of those people of Jewish descent who believes that Zionism would be a mistake even if there were no Palestinians."

A review of his autobiography ''Hitch-22'' in the ''Jewish Daily Forward'' refers to Hitchens as "a prominent anti-Zionist" and says that he views Zionism "as an injustice against the Palestinians". Others have commented on his anti-Zionism as well suggesting that his memoir was "marred by the occasional eruption of [his] anti-Zionism". The ''Jewish Daily Forward'' quoted him saying of Israel's prospects for the future, "I have never been able to banish the queasy inner suspicion that Israel just did not look, or feel, either permanent or sustainable."

In ''Slate'', Hitchens pondered the notion that, instead of curing antisemitism through the creation of a Jewish state, "Zionism has only replaced and repositioned" it, saying: "there are three groups of 6 million Jews. The first 6 million live in what the Zionist movement used to call Palestine. The second 6 million live in the United States. The third 6 million are distributed mainly among Russia, France, Britain, and Argentina. Only the first group lives daily in range of missiles that can be (and are) launched by people who hate Jews." Hitchens argued that instead of supporting Zionism, Jews should help "secularize and reform their own societies", believing that unless one is religious, "what the hell are you doing in the greater Jerusalem area in the first place?"

During a town hall function in Pennsylvania with Martin Amis, Hitchens stated that "one must not insult or degrade or humiliate people" and that he "would be opposed to this maltreatment of the Palestinians if it took place on a remote island with no geopolitical implications". Hitchens described Zionism as "an ethno-nationalist quasi-religious ideology" and stated his desire that if possible, he would "re-wind the tape [to] stop Hertzl from telling the initial demagogic lie (actually two lies) that a land without a people needs a people without a land".

He continued to say that Zionism "nonetheless has founded a sort of democratic state which isn't any worse in its practice than many others with equally dubious origins." He stated that settlement in order to achieve security for Israel is "doomed to fail in the worst possible way", and the cessation of this "appallingly racist and messianic delusion" would "confront the internal clerical and chauvinist forces which want to instate a theocracy for Jews". However, Hitchens contended that the "solution of withdrawal would not satisfy the jihadists" and wondered "What did they imagine would be the response of the followers of the Prophet [Muhammad]?" Hitchens bemoaned the transference into religious terrorism of Arab secularism as a means of democratization: "the most depressing and wretched spectacle of the past decade, for all those who care about democracy and secularism, has been the degeneration of Palestinian Arab nationalism into the theocratic and thanatocratic hell of Hamas and Islamic Jihad". He maintained that the Israel-Palestine conflict is a "trivial squabble" that has become "so dangerous to all of us" because of "the faith-based element."

Hitchens collaborated on this issue with prominent Palestinian advocate Edward Said, in 1988 publishing ''Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question''.

Domestic policy

Hitchens actively supported drug policy reform and called for the abolition of the "War on Drugs" which he described as an "authoritarian war" during a debate with William F. Buckley. He supported the legalization of cannabis for both medical and recreational purposes, citing it as a cure for glaucoma and as treatment for numerous side-effects induced by chemotherapy, including severe nausea, describing the prohibition of the drug as "sadistic". On the issue of abortion, Hitchens prioritized in affirming that he believed a fetus should be regarded as an "unborn child", but opposed the overturning of ''Roe v. Wade'' and supported the development of medical abortion techniques, and fundamentally believed in access to contraceptives and reproductive rights as "the only thing that is known to cure poverty", and in order to prevent surgical abortion altogether.

Other

Other issues Hitchens wrote on the subjects of included his support for the reunification of Ireland, abolition of the British monarchy, and his condemnation of the war crimes of Slobodan Milošević and Franjo Tuđman in Yugoslavia, and the Bosnian War.

Critiques of specific individuals

Hitchens was known for his scathing critiques of public figures. Three figures — Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, and Mother Teresa — were the targets of three separate full length texts, ''No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton'', ''The Trial of Henry Kissinger'', and ''The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice''. Hitchens also wrote book-length biographical essays about Thomas Jefferson (''Thomas Jefferson: Author of America''), George Orwell (''Why Orwell Matters''), and Thomas Paine (''Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man": A Biography'').

However, the majority of Hitchens's critiques took the form of short opinion pieces, some of the more notable being his critiques of: Jerry Falwell, George Galloway, Mel Gibson, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, Michael Moore, Daniel Pipes, Ronald Reagan, Jesse Helms, and Cindy Sheehan.

Views on religion

Hitchens often spoke out against the Abrahamic religions, or what he called "the three great monotheisms" (Judaism, Christianity and Islam). He said: "The real axis of evil is Christianity, Judaism, and Islam". In his book, ''God Is Not Great'', Hitchens expanded his criticism to include all religions, including those rarely criticized by Western secularists such as Hinduism and neo-paganism. His book had mixed reactions, from praise in ''The New York Times'' for his "logical flourishes and conundrums" to accusations of "intellectual and moral shabbiness" in the ''Financial Times''. ''God Is Not Great'' was nominated for a National Book Award on 10 October 2007.

Hitchens contended that organized religion is "the main source of hatred in the world", "[v]iolent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children", and that accordingly it "ought to have a great deal on its conscience". In ''God Is Not Great'', Hitchens contends that:

[A]bove all, we are in need of a renewed Enlightenment, which will base itself on the proposition that the proper study of mankind is man and woman [referencing Alexander Pope]. This Enlightenment will not need to depend, like its predecessors, on the heroic breakthroughs of a few gifted and exceptionally courageous people. It is within the compass of the average person. The study of literature and poetry, both for its own sake and for the eternal ethical questions with which it deals, can now easily depose the scrutiny of sacred texts that have been found to be corrupt and confected. The pursuit of unfettered scientific inquiry, and the availability of new findings to masses of people by electronic means, will revolutionize our concepts of research and development. Very importantly, the divorce between the sexual life and fear, and the sexual life and disease, and the sexual life and tyranny, can now at last be attempted, on the sole condition that we banish all religions from the discourse. And all this and more is, for the first time in our history, within the reach if not the grasp of everyone.

His book rendered him one of the major advocates of the "New Atheism" movement, and he also was made an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society. Hitchens said he would accept an invitation from any religious leader who wished to debate with him. He also served on the advisory board of the Secular Coalition for America, a lobbying group for atheists and humanists in Washington, DC. In 2007, Hitchens began a series of written debates on the question "Is Christianity Good for the World?" with Christian theologian and pastor, Douglas Wilson, published in ''Christianity Today'' magazine. This exchange eventually became a book by the same title in 2008. During their book tour to promote the book, film producer Darren Doane sent a film crew to accompany them. Doane produced the film ''Collision'': "Is Christianity GOOD for the World?" which was released on 27 October 2009.

On 26 November 2010 Hitchens appeared in Toronto, Canada at the Munk Debates, where he debated religion with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a convert to Roman Catholicism. Blair argued religion is a force for good, while Hitchens was against it. Preliminary results on the Munk website said 56 per cent of the votes backed the proposition (Hitchens' position) before hearing the debate, with 22 per cent against (Blair's position), and 21 per cent undecided, with the undecided voters leaning toward Hitchens, giving him a 68 per cent to 32 per cent victory over Blair, after the debate.

In February 2006, Hitchens helped organize a pro-Denmark rally outside the Danish Embassy in Washington, DC in response to the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy.

Hitchens was accused by William A. Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Liberties of being particularly anti-Catholic. Hitchens responded "when religion is attacked in this country [...] the Catholic Church comes in for a little more than its fair share". Hitchens had also been accused of anti-Catholic bigotry by others, including Brent Bozell, Tom Piatak in ''The American Conservative'', and UCLA Law Professor Stephen Bainbridge. In an interview with ''Radar'' in 2007, Hitchens said that if the Christian right's agenda were implemented in the United States "It wouldn't last very long and would, I hope, lead to civil war, which they will lose, but for which it would be a great pleasure to take part." When Joe Scarborough on 12 March 2004 asked Hitchens whether he was "consumed with hatred for conservative Catholics", Hitchens responded that he was not and that he just thinks that "all religious belief is sinister and infantile". Piatak claimed that "A straightforward description of all Hitchens's anti-Catholic outbursts would fill every page in this magazine", noting particularly Hitchens' assertion that U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts should not be confirmed because of his faith.

Hitchens was raised nominally Christian, and went to Christian boarding schools but from an early age declined to participate in communal prayers. Later in life, Hitchens discovered that he was of partially Jewish ancestry. According to Hitchens, when his brother Peter took his fiancée to meet their maternal grandmother, who was then in her 90s, she said of his fiancée, "She's Jewish, isn't she?" and then announced: "Well, I've got something to tell you. So are you." Hitchens found out that his maternal grandmother, Dorothy Levin, was raised Jewish (Dorothy's father and maternal grandfather had both been born Jewish, and Dorothy's maternal grandmother – Hitchens' matrilineal great-great-grandmother – was a convert to Judaism). Hitchens' maternal grandfather converted to Judaism before marrying Dorothy Levin. Hitchens' Jewish-born ancestors were immigrants from Eastern Europe (including Poland). In an article in the ''The Guardian'' on 14 April 2002, Hitchens stated that he could be considered Jewish because Jewish descent is matrilineal. In a 2010 interview at New York Public Library, Hitchens stated that he was against circumcision, a Jewish tradition, and that he believed "if anyone wants to saw off bits of their genitalia they should do when they're grown up and have made the decision for themselves".

In February 2010, he was named to the Freedom From Religion Foundation's Honorary Board of distinguished achievers.

Personal life

Marriages and children

Hitchens married Eleni Meleagrou, a Greek Cypriot, in a Greek Orthodox church in 1981; the couple had a son, Alexander and a daughter, Sophia. In 1989 Hitchens left Meleagrou for Carol Blue, an American writer. The couple married in a New York synagogue; they had a daughter, Antonia.

Relationship with his younger brother

Hitchens' younger brother by two-and-a-half years, Peter Hitchens, is a Christian and socially conservative journalist in London, although, like his brother, he had been a Trotskyist in the 1970s. The brothers had a protracted falling-out after Peter wrote that Christopher had once joked that he "didn't care if the Red Army watered its horses at Hendon" (a suburb of London). Christopher denied having said this and broke off contact with his brother. He then referred to his brother as "an idiot" in a letter to ''Commentary'', and the dispute spilled into other publications as well. Christopher eventually expressed a willingness to reconcile and to meet his new nephew (born in 1999); shortly thereafter the brothers gave several interviews together in which they said that their personal disagreements had been resolved. They appeared together on 21 June 2007 edition of the BBC current affairs discussion show ''Question Time''. The pair engaged in a formal televised debate for the first time on 3 April 2008, at Grand Valley State University, and at the Pew Forum on 12 October 2010.

Smoking and drinking

A June 2006 profile on Hitchens by NPR stated: "Hitchens is known for his love of cigarettes and alcohol — and his prodigious literary output." However, in late 2007 he gave up smoking, undergoing an epiphany in Madison, Wisconsin. His brother Peter later wrote of his surprise at this decision. It was while writing his memoir ''Hitch-22'' that he resumed smoking cigarettes and continued until his cancer diagnosis. Hitchens admitted to drinking heavily; in 2003 he wrote that his daily intake of alcohol was enough "to kill or stun the average mule", noting that many great writers "did some of their finest work when blotto, smashed, polluted, shitfaced, squiffy, whiffled, and three sheets to the wind."

British politician George Galloway, founder of the socialist Respect Party, on his way to testify in front of a United States Senate sub-committee investigating the scandals in the U.N. Oil-for-Food programme, called Hitchens a "drink-sodden ex-Trotskyist popinjay", to which Hitchens quickly replied, "only some of which is true". Later, in a column for ''Slate'' promoting his debate with Galloway which was to take place on 14 September 2005, he elaborated on his prior response: "He says that I am an ex-Trotskyist (true), a 'popinjay' (true enough, since the word's original Webster's definition is a target for arrows and shots), and that I cannot hold a drink (here I must protest)."

Oliver Burkeman writes, "Since the parting of ways on Iraq [...] Hitchens claims to have detected a new, personalised nastiness in the attacks on him, especially over his fabled consumption of alcohol. He welcomes being attacked as a drinker 'because I always think it's a sign of victory when they move on to the ad hominem.' He drinks, he says, 'because it makes other people less boring. I have a great terror of being bored. But I can work with or without it. It takes quite a lot to get me to slur.'"

In the question and answer session following a speech Hitchens gave to the Commonwealth Club of California on 9 July 2009, one audience member asked what was Hitchens' favorite whisky. Hitchens replied that "the best blended scotch in the history of the world" is Johnnie Walker Black Label. He also playfully indicated that it was the favorite whisky of, among others, the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, the Palestinian Authority, the Libyan dictatorship, and "large branches of the Saudi Arabian Royal Family". He concluded his answer by calling it the "breakfast of champions" and exhorted the audience to "accept no substitute".

In his 2010 memoir ''Hitch-22'', Hitchens wrote: "There was a time when I could reckon to outperform all but the most hardened imbibers, but I now drink relatively carefully." He described his current drinking routine on working-days as follows: "At about half past midday, a decent slug of Mr. Walker's amber restorative, cut with Perrier water (an ideal delivery system) and no ice. At luncheon, perhaps half a bottle of red wine: not always more but never less. Then back to the desk, and ready to repeat the treatment at the evening meal. No 'after dinner drinks' — ​most especially nothing sweet and never, ever any brandy. 'Nightcaps' depend on how well the day went, but always the mixture as before. No mixing: no messing around with a gin here and a vodka there."

Reflecting on the lifestyle that supported his career as a writer he said:

I always knew there was a risk in the bohemian lifestyle ... I decided to take it because it helped my concentration, it stopped me being bored — it stopped other people being boring. It would make me want to prolong the conversation and enhance the moment. If you ask: would I do it again? I would probably say yes. But I would have quit earlier hoping to get away with the whole thing. I decided all of life is a wager and I'm going to wager on this bit ... In a strange way I don't regret it. It's just impossible for me to picture life without wine, and other things, fueling the company, keeping me reading, energising me. It worked for me. It really did.

Esophageal cancer and death

In June 2010, Hitchens postponed his book tour for ''Hitch-22'' to undergo treatment for esophageal cancer. He announced that he was undergoing treatment in a ''Vanity Fair'' piece entitled "Topic of Cancer". Hitchens said that he recognised the long-term prognosis was far from positive, and that he would be a "very lucky person to live another five years". In November 2010, Hitchens canceled a scheduled appearance in New York, where he was to debate religion writers David Hazony and Stephen Prothero on the subject of the Ten Commandments. Earlier that year, he published a piece in ''Vanity Fair'' on the subject, and was working on a book about the Ten Commandments as well.

During his illness, Hitchens was under the care of Francis Collins and was the subject of Collins' new cancer treatment which maps out the human genome and selectively targets damaged DNA.

In April 2011, Hitchens was forced to cancel an appearance at the American Atheist Convention, and instead sent a letter that stated, "Nothing would have kept me from joining you except the loss of my voice (at least my speaking voice) which in turn is due to a long argument I am currently having with the specter of death." He closed with "And don't keep the faith." The letter also dismissed the notion of a possible deathbed conversion, in which he claimed that "redemption and supernatural deliverance appears even more hollow and artificial to me than it did before." In June 2011, he spoke to a University of Waterloo audience via a home video link.

In October 2011, Hitchens made a public appearance at the Texas Freethought Convention in Houston, TX. ''Atheist Alliance of America'' was also a participant in the joint convention.

In November 2011, George Eaton wrote in the ''New Statesman'':

The tragedy of Hitchens' illness is that it came at a time when he enjoyed a larger audience than ever. Of his tight circle of friends – Amis, Fenton, McEwan, Rushdie – Hitchens was the last to gain international renown, yet he is now read more widely than any of them." Eaton revealed that Hitchens would like to be remembered as a man who fought totalitarianism in all its forms although many remember him as a "lefty who turned right", and his support of the Iraq War and not his support of the War in Bosnia on the side of the Moslems. Eaton concluded, "The great polemicist is certain to be remembered, but, as he is increasingly aware, perhaps not as he would like."

Hitchens died on December 15th, 2011 at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

In accordance with his wishes, his body was donated to medical research.

Reactions to death

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said, "Christopher Hitchens was a complete one-off, an amazing mixture of writer, journalist, polemicist, and unique character. He was fearless in the pursuit of truth and any cause in which he believed. And there was no belief he held, that he did not advocate with passion, commitment and brilliance. He was an extraordinary, compelling and colorful human being whom it was a privilege to know."

Richard Dawkins, British evolutionary biologist at the University of Oxford and a friend of Hitchens', said, "I think he was one of the greatest orators of all time. He was a polymath, a wit, immensely knowledgeable, and a valiant fighter against all tyrants including imaginary supernatural ones."

Norman Finkelstein, American political scientist and author, wrote, "When I first learned that Hitchens was diagnosed with an excruciating and terminal cancer, it caused me to doubt my atheism. The news came just as Hitchens was about to go on a book tour for his long-awaited memoir. It was as if he was setting out on his victory lap when the adulating crowds were supposed to fawn over him and — wham! — his legs were lopped off at the kneecaps. The irony could not be more perfect: the god that the vindictive but witty Mr. Hitchens made a career scoffing at turns out to be ... vindictive but witty. When I heard that Hitchens was dead, I took a deep breath. The air felt cleaner, as if after a 40-day and 40-night downpour." Finkelstein also added, "I get no satisfaction from Hitchens's passing. Although he was the last to know it, every death is a tragedy, if only for the bereft child — or, as in the case of Cindy Sheehan, bereft parent — left behind.

Sam Harris, American writer and neuroscientist, wrote, "I have been privileged to witness the gratitude that so many people feel for Hitch’s life and work — for, wherever I speak, I meet his fans. On my last book tour, those who attended my lectures could not contain their delight at the mere mention of his name — and many of them came up to get their books signed primarily to request that I pass along their best wishes to him. It was wonderful to see how much Hitch was loved and admired — and to be able to share this with him before the end. I will miss you, brother."

Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health and former head of the Human Genome Project who helped treat Hitchens' illness, wrote, "I will miss Christopher. I will miss the brilliant turn of phrase, the good-natured banter, the wry sideways smile when he was about to make a remark that would make me laugh out loud. No doubt he now knows the answer to the question of whether there is more to the spirit than just atoms and molecules. I hope he was surprised by the answer. I hope to hear him tell about it someday. He will tell it really well."

British columnist and author Peter Hitchens, who had a tumultuous relationship with his older brother Christopher, wrote that he and Christopher "got on surprisingly well in the past few months, better than for about 50 years as it happens," and praised his brother as "courageous."

Irish-American political journalist Alexander Cockburn, founder of the left-wing political magazine ''CounterPunch'' wrote an obituary critical of Hitchens, criticizing his support for the Iraq War, criticisms of Mother Teresa, and criticisms of their mutual friend Edward Said and concluded, "I found the Hitchens cult of recent years entirely mystifying. He endured his final ordeal with pluck, sustained indomitably by his wife Carol."

Tributes followed from the philosopher Daniel Dennett, the physicist Lawrence Krauss, the actor Stephen Fry, the writer Ian McEwan, the philosopher A.C. Grayling; and ''Vanity Fair'', in which he was remembered as an "incomparable critic and masterful rhetorician".

Film and television appearances

As referenced from the Internet Movie Database, Hitchens Web or Charlie Rose. {|class="wikitable" style="text-align:center" |- ! Year ! Film and/or Television |- |1984 |align="left" | ''Opinions'': "Greece to their Rome" |- |1988 |align="left" | ''Frontiers (TV series)'' |- |1993 |align="left" | ''Everything You Need to Know'' |- |1994 |align="left" | ''Tracking Down Maggie: The Unofficial Biography of Margaret Thatcher'' |- |1994 |align="left" | ''Hell's Angel'' |- |1996 |align="left" | ''Where's Elvis This Week?'' |- |1996–2010 |align="left" | ''Charlie Rose (talk show)'' (13 episodes) |- |1998 |align="left" | ''Princess Diana: The Mourning After'' |- |1999–2002 |align="left" | ''Dennis Miller Live'' (TV show) (4 episodes) |- |2002 |align="left" | ''The Trials of Henry Kissinger'' |- |2003 |align="left" | ''Hidden in Plain Sight'' |- |2003–2009 |align="left" | ''Real Time with Bill Maher'' (TV show) (6 episodes) |- |2004 |align="left" | ''Mel Gibson: God's Lethal Weapon'' |- |2004–2006 |align="left" | ''Newsnight'' (TV show) (3 episodes) |- |2004–2010 |align="left" | ''The Daily Show'' (TV show) (4 episodes) |- |2005 |align="left" | ''Penn & Teller: Bullshit!'' (TV show)(1 episode, s03e05) |- |2005 |align="left" | ''The Al Franken Show'' (TV show)(1 episode) |- |2005 |align="left" | ''Confronting Iraq: Conflict and Hope'' |- |2005 |align="left" | ''Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism'' |- |2005–2008 |align="left" | ''Hardball with Chris Matthews'' (TV show)(3 episodes) |- |2006 |align="left" | ''American Zeitgeist'' |- |2006 |align="left" | ''Blog Wars'' |- |2007 |align="left" | ''Manufacturing Dissent'' |- |2007 |align="left" | ''Question Time (TV series)'' (1 episode) |- |2007 |align="left" | ''Your Mommy Kills Animals'' |- |2007 |align="left" | ''Personal Che'' |- |2007 |align="left" | ''Heckler'' |- |2007 |align="left" | ''In Pot We Trust'' |- |2008 |align="left" | ''Discussions with Richard Dawkins'': Episode 1: "The Four Horsemen" |- |2008 | style="text-align:left;"| ''Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed '' |- |2009 |align="left" | ''Holy Hell'' |- |2009 |align="left" | ''Presidency'' |- |2009 |align="left" | ''Collision: "Is Christianity GOOD for the World?"'' |- |2010 |align="left" | ''Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune'' |}

Selected publications

1984 ''Cyprus''. Quartet. Revised editions as ''Hostage to History: Cyprus from the Ottomans to Kissinger'', 1989 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) and 1997 (Verso)

1988 ''Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question'' (contributor; co-editor with Edward Said) Verso, ISBN 0-86091-887-4 Reissued, 2001

1990 ''The Monarchy'', Chatto & Windus Ltd

1990 ''Blood, Class and Nostalgia: Anglo-American Ironies'', Farrar Straus & Giroux (T)(June 1990)

1995 ''The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice'', Verso

1997 ''The Parthenon Marbles: The Case for Reunification'', Verso

1999 ''No One Left to Lie To: The Values of the Worst Family'', Verso

2000 ''Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere'', Verso

2001 ''The Trial of Henry Kissinger''. Verso.

2001 ''Letters to a Young Contrarian'', Basic Books

2002 ''Why Orwell Matters'' also ''Orwell's Victory'', Basic Books, ISBN 0-465-03050-5

2004 ''Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays'', Thunder's Mouth, Nation Books, ISBN 1-56025-580-3

2005 ''Thomas Jefferson: Author of America'', Eminent Lives/Atlas Books/HarperCollins Publishers, ISBN 0-06-059896-4

2007 "Thomas Paine's Rights of Man: A Biography ", Atlantic Monthly Press, ISBN 0871139553

2007 ''The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Non-Believer'', [Editor] Perseus Publishing. ISBN 978-0-306-81608-6

2007 ''God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything'', Twelve/Hachette Book Group USA/Warner Books, ISBN 0-446-57980-7 / Published in the UK as ''God Is Not Great: The Case Against Religion'', Atlantic Books, ISBN 978-1-84354-586-6

2008 ''Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq and the Left'' (with Simon Cottee and Thomas Cushman), New York University Press

2008 ''Is Christianity Good for the World? — A Debate'' (co-author, with Douglas Wilson), Canon Press, ISBN 1-59128-053-2

2010 ''Hitch-22: A Memoir'', Twelve, ISBN 978-0-446-54033-9

2011 ''Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens'', Twelve. UK edition as ''Arguably: Selected Prose'', Atlantic, ISBN 1-4555-0277-4 / ISBN 978-1-4555-0277-6

References

External links

Daily Hitchens, an archive of material on or by Hitchens

in 2010

Drexel Interview (One-hour video interview) with Paula Marantz Cohen, June 2010

Christopher Hitchens collected news and commentary at ''The Boston Globe''

"Journalist Christopher Hitchens fully embraces the Bush war camp" from the World Socialist Website, October 2002

"Christopher Hitchens" feature story in ''Prospect'' magazine, May 2008

"Incendiary Author Spares No Targets" feature story in ''The New Zealand Herald'', May 2008

"Such, Such are His Joys" David Brooks assessment in ''The New York Times'', 1 July 2010

Hitchens on Dying with Cancer, video interview with ''The Atlantic'', August 2010

"Christopher Hitchens: 'You have to choose your future regrets'" ''The Guardian'', 13 November 2010

"Christopher Hitchens's Jewish Problem" feature article on ''Jewish Ideas Daily,'' 13 December 2010

A debate between Hitchens and Berlinski 2010

Outspoken and outrageous: Christopher Hitchens a 60 Minutes profile aired 6 March 2011

''Booknotes'' interview with Hitchens on ''For the Sake of Argument'', 17 October 1993.

;Articles by Hitchens

Contributor page at ''Vanity Fair''

Column archive at ''The Atlantic''

Article archive at ''The Guardian''

Hitchens articles at ''Slate''

Article archive at Journalisted

Category:1949 births Category:2011 deaths Category:Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford Category:Anti-Zionism Category:Anti–Vietnam War activists Category:Antitheists Category:Atheism activists Category:English people of Jewish descent Category:English people of Polish descent Category:British republicans Category:Cancer deaths in Texas Category:Deaths from esophageal cancer Category:English atheists Category:English biographers Category:English emigrants to the United States Category:English essayists Category:English expatriates in the United States Category:English humanists Category:English journalists Category:English Marxists Category:English political writers Category:Genital integrity activists Category:Materialists Category:Naturalized citizens of the United States Category:Old Leysians Category:People from Portsmouth Category:Slate (magazine) people Category:Socialist Workers Party (UK) members Category:The Nation (U.S. magazine) people Category:University Challenge contestants

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name	Pat Robertson
birth name	Marion Gordon Robertson
birth date	March 22, 1930
birth place	Lexington, Virginia, United States
occupation	Televangelist
spouse	Adelia Elmer
children	Timothy Bryan Robertson Elizabeth Faith Robertson Gordon Perry Robertson Anne Carter Robertson
parents	Absalom Willis Robertson Gladys Churchill }}

Marion Gordon "Pat" Robertson (born March 22, 1930) is a media mogul, television evangelist, ex-Baptist minister and businessman who is politically aligned with the Christian Right in the United States.

He is the founder of numerous organizations and corporations, including the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), the Christian Coalition, Flying Hospital, International Family Entertainment Inc., Operation Blessing International Relief and Development Corporation, CBN Asia and Regent University. He is the host of ''The 700 Club,'' a Christian TV program airing on channels throughout the United States and on CBN network affiliates worldwide.

The son of U.S. Senator A. Willis Robertson, Robertson is a Southern Baptist and was active as an ordained minister with that denomination for many years, but holds to a charismatic theology not traditionally common among Southern Baptists. He unsuccessfully campaigned to become the Republican Party's nominee in the 1988 presidential election. As a result of his seeking political office, he no longer serves in an official role for any church. His media and financial resources make him a recognized, influential, and controversial public voice for conservative Christianity in the United States.

Life and career

Family

Robertson was born in Lexington, Virginia, into a prominent political family. His parents were Absalom Willis Robertson, a conservative Democratic United States Senator, and his wife Gladys Churchill (née Willis). He married Adelia "Dede" Elmer on August 26, 1954. His family includes four children, among them Gordon P. Robertson and Tim Robertson and, as of mid-2005, 14 grandchildren.

At a young age, Robertson was nicknamed ''Pat'' by his six-year-old brother, Willis Robertson, Jr., who enjoyed patting him on the cheeks when he was a baby while saying "pat, pat, pat". As he got older, Robertson thought about which first name he would like people to use. He considered "Marion" to be effeminate, and "M. Gordon" to be affected, so he opted for his childhood nickname "Pat". His strong awareness for the importance of names in the creation of a public image showed itself again during his presidential run when he threatened to sue NBC news for calling him a "television evangelist", which later became "televangelist", at a time when Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker were objects of scandal.

Education and military service

When he was eleven, Robertson was enrolled in the preparatory McDonogh School outside Baltimore, Maryland. From 1940 until 1946 he attended The McCallie School in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He graduated with honors and enrolled at Washington and Lee University, where he majored in history. The claim that he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa is not substantiated by the Phi Beta Kappa membership directory. He also joined Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. Robertson has said, "Although I worked hard at my studies, my real major centered around lovely young ladies who attended the nearby girls schools."

In 1948, the draft was reinstated and Robertson was given the option of joining the Marine Corps or being drafted into the army; he opted for the first.

In his words, "We did long, grueling marches to toughen the men, plus refresher training in firearms and bayonet combat." In the same year, he transferred to Korea, "I ended up at the headquarters command of the First Marine Division," says Robertson. "The Division was in combat in the hot and dusty, then bitterly cold portion of North Korea just above the 38th Parallel later identified as the 'Punchbowl' and 'Heartbreak Ridge.' For that service in the Korean War, the Marine Corps awarded me three battle stars for 'action against the enemy.'"

However, former Republican Congressman Paul "Pete" McCloskey, Jr., who served with Robertson in Korea, wrote a public letter which said that Robertson was actually spared combat duty when his powerful father, a U.S. Senator, intervened on his behalf, and that Robertson spent most of his time in an office in Japan. According to McCloskey, his time in the service was not in combat but as the "liquor officer" responsible for keeping the officers' clubs supplied with liquor. Robertson filed a $35 million libel suit against McCloskey in 1986. He dropped the case in 1988, before it came to trial and paid McCloskey's court costs.

Robertson was promoted to first lieutenant in 1952 upon his return to the United States. He then went on to receive a Bachelor of Laws degree from Yale University Law School in 1955. However, he failed to pass the bar exam, shortly thereafter underwent his religious conversion, and decided against pursuing a career in law. Instead, Robertson attended the New York Theological Seminary, and was awarded a Master of Divinity degree in 1959.

Religious career

In 1956 Robertson found his faith through Dutch missionary Cornelius Vanderbreggen, who impressed Robertson both by his lifestyle and his message. Vanderbreggen quoted Proverbs (3:5, 6), "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths", which Robertson considers to be the "guiding principle" of his life. He was ordained as a minister of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1961.

In 1960, Robertson established the Christian Broadcasting Network in Virginia Beach, Virginia. He started it by buying a small UHF station in nearby Portsmouth. Later in 1977 he purchased a local Leased access cable TV channel in the Hampton Roads area and called it CBN. Originally he went door-to-door in Virginia Beach, Hampton Roads, and other surrounding areas asking Christians to buy cable boxes so that they could receive his new channel. He also canvassed local churches in the Virginia Beach area to do the same, and solicited donations through public speaking engagements at local churches and on CBN. One of his friends, John Giminez, the pastor of Rock Church Virginia Beach, was influential in helping Robertson establish CBN with donations, as well as offering the services of volunteers from his church.

CBN is now seen in 180 countries and broadcast in 71 languages. He founded the CBN Cable Network, which was renamed the CBN Family Channel in 1988 and later simply the Family Channel. When the Family Channel became too profitable for Robertson to keep it under the CBN umbrella without endangering CBN's non-profit status, he formed International Family Entertainment Inc. in 1990 with the Family Channel as its main subsidiary. Robertson sold the Family Channel to the News Corporation in 1997, which renamed it Fox Family. A condition of the sale was that the station would continue airing Robertson's television program, ''The 700 Club'', twice a day in perpetuity, regardless of any changes of ownership. The channel is now owned by Disney and run as "ABC Family". On December 3, 2007, Robertson resigned as chief executive of CBN; he was succeeded by his son, Gordon.

Robertson founded CBN University in 1977 on CBN's Virginia Beach campus. It was renamed Regent University in 1989. Robertson serves as its chancellor. He is also founder and president of the American Center for Law and Justice, a public interest law firm that defends Christians whose First Amendment rights have allegedly been violated. The law firm, headquartered in the same building that houses Regent's law school, focuses on "pro-family, pro-liberty and pro-life" cases nationwide.

Robertson is also an advocate of Christian dominionism — the idea that Christians have a right to rule.

In 1994, he was a signer of the document Evangelicals and Catholics Together.

Pat Robertson was a fundraiser for the Nicaraguan Contras. In March 1986, he told ''Israeli Foreign Affairs'' that South Africa was a major contributor to the Reagan administration's efforts to help the anti-Sandinista forces.

1988 presidential bid

In September 1986, Robertson announced his intention to seek the Republican nomination for President of the United States. Robertson said he would pursue the nomination only if three million people signed up to volunteer for his campaign by September 1987. Three million responded, and by the time Robertson announced he would be running in September 1987, he also had raised millions of dollars for his campaign fund. He surrendered his ministerial credentials and turned leadership of CBN over to his son, Tim. His campaign, however, against incumbent Vice President George H. W. Bush, was seen as a long shot.

Robertson ran on a standard conservative platform. Among his policies, he wanted to ban pornography, reform the education system, and eliminate departments such as the Department of Education and the Department of Energy. He also supported a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced federal budget.

Robertson's campaign got off to a strong second-place finish in the Iowa caucus, ahead of Bush. He did poorly in the subsequent New Hampshire primary, however, and was unable to be competitive once the multiple-state primaries began. Robertson ended his campaign before the primaries were finished. His best finish was in Washington, winning the majority of caucus delegates. He later spoke at the 1988 Republican National Convention in New Orleans and told his remaining supporters to cast their votes for Bush, who ended up winning the nomination and the election. He then returned to CBN and has remained there as a religious broadcasting broadcaster.

Books

Episcopalian professor of theology Ephraim Radner accuses Robertson of espousing anti-semitic beliefs in the book:

Business interests

Robertson is the founder and chairman of The Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) Inc., and founder of International Family Entertainment Inc., Regent University, Operation Blessing International Relief and Development Corporation, American Center for Law and Justice, The Flying Hospital, Inc. and several other organizations and broadcast entities. Robertson was the founder and co-chairman of International Family Entertainment Inc. (IFE).

Formed in 1990, IFE produced and distributed family entertainment and information programming worldwide. IFE's principal business was The Family Channel, a satellite delivered cable-television network with 63 million U.S. subscribers. IFE, a publicly held company listed on the New York Stock Exchange, was sold in 1997 to Fox Kids Worldwide, Inc. for $1.9 billion, whereupon it was renamed Fox Family Channel. Disney acquired FFC in 2001 and its name was changed again, to ABC Family.

Robertson is a global businessman with media holdings in Asia, the United Kingdom, and Africa. He struck a deal with Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based General Nutrition Center to produce and market a weight-loss shake he created and promoted on ''The 700 Club''.

In 1999, Robertson entered into a joint venture with the Bank of Scotland to provide financial services in the United States. However, the move was met with criticism in the UK due to Robertson's views on homosexuality. Robertson commented that “In Europe, the big word is tolerance. You tolerate everything. Homosexuals are riding high in the media ... And in Scotland, you can't believe how strong the homosexuals are." Shortly afterward, the Bank of Scotland canceled the venture.

Robertson's extensive business interests have earned him a net worth estimated between $200 million and $1 billion.

A fan of Thoroughbred horse racing, Robertson paid $520,000 for a colt he named Mr. Pat. Trained by John Kimmel, Mr. Pat was not a successful runner. He was nominated for, but did not run in, the 2000 Kentucky Derby.

According to a June 2, 1999, article in ''The Virginian-Pilot'', Robertson had extensive business dealings with Liberian president Charles Taylor. According to the article, Taylor gave Robertson the rights to mine for diamonds in Liberia's mineral-rich countryside. According to two Operation Blessing pilots who reported this incident to the state of Virginia for investigation in 1994, Robertson used his Operation Blessing planes to haul diamond-mining equipment to Robertson's mines in Liberia, despite the fact that Robertson was telling his ''700 Club'' viewers that the planes were sending relief supplies to the victims of the genocide in Rwanda. In response to Taylor's alleged crimes against humanity, the United States Congress passed a bill In November 2003 that offered two million dollars for his capture. Robertson accused President George W. Bush of "undermining a Christian, Baptist president to bring in Muslim rebels to take over the country." At the time Taylor was harboring Al Qaeda operatives who were funding their operations through the illegal diamond trade. On February 4, 2010, at his war crimes trial in the Hague, Taylor testified that Robertson was his main political ally in the U.S., and that he had volunteered to make Liberia's case before U.S. administration officials in exchange for concessions to Robertson's Freedom Gold, Ltd., to which Taylor gave a contract to mine gold in southeast Liberia. In 2010, a spokesman for Robertson said that the company's arrangements — in which the Liberian government got a 10 percent equity interest in the company and Liberians could purchase at least 15 percent of the shares after the exploration period — were similar to many American companies doing business in Africa at the time.

Political activism

After his unsuccessful presidential campaign, Robertson started the Christian Coalition, a 1.7 million member Christian right organization that campaigned mostly for conservative candidates. It was sued by the Federal Election Commission "for coordinating its activities with Republican candidates for office in 1990, 1992 and 1994 and failing to report its expenditures".

In 1994, the Coalition was fined for "improperly [aiding] then Representative Newt Gingrich (R-GA) and Oliver North, who was then the Republican Senate nominee in Virginia." Robertson left the Coalition in 2001.

Robertson has been a governing member of the Council for National Policy (CNP): Board of Governors 1982, President Executive Committee 1985–86, member, 1984, 1988, 1998.

On November 7, 2007, Robertson announced that he was endorsing Rudy Giuliani to be the Republican nominee in the 2008 Presidential election.

While usually associated with the political right, Pat Robertson has recently begun endorsing environmental causes. He appears in a commercial with Al Sharpton, joking about this, and urging people to join the We can Solve it Campaign against global warming.

In January 2009, on a broadcast of ''The 700 Club'', Robertson stated that he is "adamantly opposed" to the division of Jerusalem between Israel and the Palestinians. He also stated that Armageddon is "not going to be fought at Megiddo" but will be the "battle of Jerusalem," when "the forces of all nations come together and try to take Jerusalem away from the Jews. Jews are not going to give up Jerusalem — they shouldn't — and the rest of the world is going to insist they give it up." Robertson added that Jerusalem is a "spiritual symbol that must not be given away" because "Jesus Christ the Messiah will come down to the part of Jerusalem that the Arabs want," and that's "not good."

Controversies and criticisms

Controversies surrounding Robertson include his earlier work as a faith healer, his claim that some Protestant denominations harbor the spirit of the Antichrist, and his claims of having the power to deflect hurricanes through prayer; he has also denounced Hinduism as "demonic" and Islam as "Satanic." Robertson has issued multiple condemnations of feminism, homosexuality, abortion and liberal college professors. Robertson also had financial ties to former presidents Charles Taylor of Liberia and Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, both internationally denounced for their human rights violations. Robertson was criticized worldwide for his call for Hugo Chavez’s assassination and for his remarks concerning Ariel Sharon's health as an act of God.

The week of September 11, 2001, Robertson discussed the terror attacks with Jerry Falwell, who said that "the ACLU has to take a lot of blame for this" in addition to "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays, and the lesbians [who have] helped [the terror attacks of September 11th] happen." Robertson replied, "I totally concur." Both evangelists came under attack from President George W. Bush for their statements, for which they later issued apologies.

Less than two weeks after Hurricane Katrina killed 1,836 people, Robertson implied on the September 12th broadcast of ''The 700 Club'' that the storm was God's punishment in response to America's abortion policy. He suggested that September 11 and the disaster in New Orleans "could... be connected in some way".

On November 9, 2009, Robertson said that Islam is "a violent political system bent on the overthrow of the governments of the world and world domination." He went on to elaborate that "you're dealing with not a religion, you're dealing with a political system, and I think we should treat it as such, and treat its adherents as such as we would members of the communist party, members of some fascist group."

Robertson's response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake also drew controversy and condemnation. Robertson claimed that Haiti's founders had sworn a "pact to the Devil" in order to liberate themselves from the French slave owners and indirectly attributed the earthquake to the consequences of the Haitian people being "cursed" for doing so. CBN later issued a statement saying that Robertson's comments "were based on the widely-discussed 1791 slave rebellion led by Dutty Boukman at Bois Caiman, where the slaves allegedly made a famous pact with the devil in exchange for victory over the French." Various prominent voices of mainline and evangelical Christianity promptly denounced Robertson's remarks as false, untimely, insensitive, and not representative of Christian thought on the issue.

In 1995 Sita Ram Goel sent him Goel's book "Jesus Christ: An Artifice for Aggression", and a letter in protest to Robertson's remarks towards the religion of Hinduism.

Predictions

Several times near New Year, Robertson has announced that God told him several truths or events that would happen in the following year. "I have a relatively good track record," he said. "Sometimes I miss."

1982: Doomsday

In late 1976, Robertson predicted that the end of the world was coming in October or November 1982. In a May 1980 broadcast of ''The 700 Club'' he stated, "I guarantee you by the end of 1982 there is going to be a judgment on the world."

2006: Pacific Northwestern tsunami

In May 2006, Robertson declared that storms and possibly a tsunami would hit America's coastline sometime in 2006. Robertson supposedly received this revelation from God during an annual personal prayer retreat in January. The claim was repeated four times on ''The 700 Club''.

On May 8, 2006, Robertson said, "If I heard the Lord right about 2006, the coasts of America will be lashed by storms." On May 17, 2006, he elaborated, "There well may be something as bad as a tsunami in the Pacific Northwest." While this claim didn't garner the same level of controversy as some of his other statements, it was generally received with mild amusement by the Pacific Northwest media. The History Channel's initial airing of its new series, ''Mega Disasters'', debut episode "West Coast Tsunami", was broadcast the first week of May.

2007: Terror attack

On the January 2, 2007, broadcast of ''The 700 Club'', Robertson said that God spoke to him and told him that "mass killings" were to come during 2007, due to a terrorist attack on the United States. He added, "The Lord didn't say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that." When a terrorist attack failed to happen in 2007, Robertson said, in January 2008, "All I can think is that somehow the people of God prayed and God in his mercy spared us."

2008: Worldwide violence and American recession

On the January 2, 2008 episode of ''The 700 Club'', Pat Robertson predicted that 2008 would be a year of worldwide violence. He also predicted that a recession would occur in the United States that would be followed by a stock market crash by 2010. However, there was a decrease in overall deaths for the period, and the American economy had already entered a recession in 2007, with increased household debt and the collapse of financial institutions.

2008: Mideast meltdown

In October 2008, Robertson posted a press release on the Georgian Conflict speculating that the conflict is a Russian ploy to enter the Middle East, and that instability caused by a predicted pre-emptive strike by Israel on Iran would result in Syria's and Iran's launching nuclear strikes on other targets. He also said that if the United States were to oppose Russia's expansion, nuclear strikes on American soil are also pending. "We will suffer grave economic damage, but will not engage in military action to stop the conflict. However, we may not be spared nuclear strikes against coastal cities. In conclusion, it is my opinion that we have between 75 and 120 days before the Middle East starts spinning out of control."

2009: Economic chaos and recovery

On the January 1, 2009 broadcast of ''The 700 Club'', Robertson said, "If I'm hearing [God] right, gold will go to about $1900 dollars an ounce and oil to $300 a barrel." He also suggested that Americans would broadly accept socialism. Despite these predictions, he also said that economically, "things are getting ready to turn around."

Works

''Shout it from the Housetops'' an autobiography with Jamie Buckingham (1972, repr 1995)

''The Secret Kingdom'' (1982)

''Answers to 200 of Life's Most Probing Questions'' (c1984)

''Beyond Reason: How Miracles can Change your Life'' (1985)

''America's Dates with Destiny'' (1986)

''The Plan'' (1989)

''The New Millennium'' (1990)

''The New World Order'' (1991)

''Turning Tide: The Fall of Liberalism and the Rise of Common Sense'' (c1993)

''The End of the Age'' (1995, fiction)

''Bring It On'' (2003)

''The Ten Offenses'' (2004)

''Courting Disaster'' (2004)

See also

''The 700 Club''

Christian Broadcasting Network

Christian right

Christian fundamentalism

Christian Coalition of America

Christian Zionism

Moral majority

Operation Blessing

References

Further reading

Rob Boston. ''The Most Dangerous Man in America? Pat Robertson and the Rise of the Christian Coalition''

Harrell Jr., David Edwin ''Pat Robertson: A Life and Legacy'' (2010) 442 pages. Scholarly biography draws on documents and interviews in seven countries

David John Marley. ''Pat Robertson: An American Life'' -

External links

Official Pat Robertson Website

Brian Ross. Some Question Robertson's ''Katrina'' Charity, ABC News, September 9, 2005.

"Preacher: God told him about storms, tsunami"

Robertson Denounces Hinduism as 'Demonic'"

2000 lbs. leg press

Robertson talks about his prostate cancer surgery with Laparoscopic Radical Prostatectomy

NPR Audio Report: Televangelist Robertson Urges U.S. Hit on Chavez

Archive of American Television interview with Pat Robertson

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Name	Dan Barker
Birth date	June 25, 1949
Residence	Madison, Wisconsin
Workplaces	Freedom from Religion Foundation
Alma mater	Azusa Pacific University
Known for	Advocacy of atheism and rationalismCriticism of religion
Religion	Atheist
Footnotes	}}

Dan Barker (born June 25, 1949) is a prominent American atheist activist who served as a Christian preacher and musician for 19 years but left Christianity in 1984.

Biography

Barker received a degree in Religion from Azusa Pacific University and was ordained to the ministry by the Standard Community Church, California, in 1975. He served as associate pastor at a Religious Society of Friends (Quaker) church, an Assembly of God, and an independent Charismatic church. To this day, he receives royalties from his popular children's Christian musicals, "Mary Had a Little Lamb" (1977), and "His Fleece Was White as Snow" (1978), both published by Manna Music and performed in many countries. In 1984 he announced to his friends that he was an atheist.

A successful musician, Barker has composed over 200 songs that have been published or recorded. He is the current co-president with his wife Annie Laurie Gaylor of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, an American Freethought organization that promotes the separation of church and state. Barker is co-host of Freethought Radio, a Madison, Wisconsin based radio program for atheists, agnostics, and other freethinkers that has included interviews with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Steven Pinker, Julia Sweeney, and Michael Newdow. His foundation published his book ''Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist'', and he has written numerous articles for ''Freethought Today,'' an American freethought newspaper.

He is a member of the Lenni Lenape (Delaware Indian) Tribe of Native Americans, and in 1991 edited and published ''Paradise Remembered'', a collection of his grandfather's stories as a Lenape boy in Indian Territory. Dan's father, Norman Barker, was also a musician who played the trombone. He performed a musical duet with Judy Garland in the 1948 film ''Easter Parade''.

Barker belongs to a number of high IQ societies, including Prometheus Society, which has an entrance requirement at the 99.997^th percentile.

Media appearances

Barker has appeared on ''Phil Donahue'', ''Oprah Winfrey'', ''Hannity & Colmes'', ''Maury Povich'', ''Good Morning America'', ''Sally Jessy Raphael'', and ''Tom Leykis'' television programs.

Barker has also appeared on dozens of national radio programs and forums to discuss and debate issues related to atheism and the separation of church and state. He was featured in a ''New York Times'' article about atheists, and has given addresses on religious issues at several events across the United States, including one at Harvard University.

Dan Barker has also engaged in numerous debates, including one with Adam Deen, on the topic, "Is God a Delusion?"

On October 6, 2007, Freethought Radio, the FFRF's weekly broadcast originating in Madison, Wisconsin on the Mic 92.1 FM was picked up nationally by Air America. This is the first ever national atheist radio broadcast, Freethought Radio, on Air America. The one hour weekly show is co-hosted with his wife Annie Laurie Gaylor.

Publications

Musicals

''Mary Had a Little Lamb'' (Manna Music 1977)

''His Fleece Was White as Snow'' (Manna Music 1978)

Books

''Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist'', (Madison: Freedom From Religion Foundation, 1992) ISBN 1-877733-07-5.

''Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists'' (Ulysses Press, September 2008) ISBN 1569756775.

''The Good Atheist: Living a Purpose-Filled Life Without God'', Ulysses Press, 2011, ISBN 978-1-56975-846-5

Music albums

''Friendly Neighborhood Atheist'' (Madison: Freedom From Religion Foundation, 2002)

''Beware of Dogma

References

External links

Freedom From Religion Foundation Dan Barker's website

Dan Barker's page at Freethoughtpedia.com - Also includes links to some of his debates and other resources.

Freethought Radio

Former preacher 'de-converts' to atheism

Celebrity atheists -- Dan Barker

Category:1949 births Category:American atheists Category:American people of Native American descent Category:Atheism activists Category:Azusa Pacific University alumni Category:Freethought Category:Living people Category:Former Protestants Category:American Assemblies of God clergy Category:Quaker ministers Category:American Charismatics

de:Dan Barker es:Dan Barker it:Dan Barker pt:Dan Barker fi:Dan Barker