Addressed to the leaders of the Christian churches as its recipients.
Jung's Aion reads the rise of Christianity as falling within the Age of Pisces, on the strength of the fish as an early Christian symbol.
Roman Catholicism in the north and Orthodoxy in the south together account for roughly 17 per cent, within a national tradition of confessional coexistence.
The empire whose eventual official religion Christianity became under Constantine and Theodosius.
About four in five, divided between the Catholic Church, mission descended Protestant denominations and Angolan founded prophetic churches; the Kongo court accepted baptism in 1491.
The Plantin Polyglot Bible was printed there, and the 1566 iconoclasm struck its churches.
Catholicism is constitutionally sustained by the federal government under Article 2, while evangelical and Pentecostal churches grow fastest.
The Armenian Apostolic Church, an Oriental Orthodox communion, holds the allegiance of about 92 per cent of the population and is recognised by the constitution as the national church.
Christians just under half the population per the most recent census.
About 55% Catholic; baroque church architecture and Habsburg era patronage remain visible across Vienna and Salzburg.
The large majority, led historically by the Anglican parishes of the old established church and today by Pentecostal and Adventist congregations.
About 80 per cent Orthodox under the Moscow Patriarchate, with a Roman Catholic minority concentrated in the Grodno region.
Catholicism is one of six state funded recognised faiths and remains the largest identified group, though practice has fallen very steeply since 2010.
A large Christian community alongside Vodun and Islam in the historical heartland of Vodun religion.
The library holds the Codex Vaticanus, one of the two oldest substantially complete Greek Bibles, and is itself an institution of the Holy See.
Bohairic is the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church.
Around 70 per cent Catholic, with the Virgin of Copacabana standing on a site of pre Christian pilgrimage on Lake Titicaca.
Serbian Orthodox at about 31 per cent and Roman Catholic at about 15 per cent, the two affiliations functioning as the Serb and Croat national categories.
About four in five at the 2011 census, with Pentecostal, Zionist and independent churches now outnumbering the mission descended denominations.
Chinese Christian converts and Western missionaries were the uprising's principal religious target, and the killings of both are the shape of the war's specifically anti-Christian character.
About 50% Catholic, the world's largest Roman Catholic population by most counts, alongside rapid Protestant and Pentecostal growth.
Irish monasticism and the Easter controversy belong to the archipelago rather than to Britain alone.
Its manuscript holdings include the earliest surviving itinerary of the Via Francigena Christian pilgrim road.
The Bulgarian Orthodox Church, named the traditional religion by the constitution, descends from the first Slavic state conversion under Boris I in 864.
About 26 per cent of the population and predominantly Catholic, historically coexisting easily with the Muslim majority and now targeted by armed groups.
Around nine in ten of the population, with a Catholic majority of roughly three in five and fast growing Pentecostal congregations.
About three quarters Catholic, in a creole church born of Portuguese settlement and the West African peoples enslaved on the islands; Nazarene and Adventist churches grow through emigrant ties.
Origen taught there and Eusebius wrote the first church history from its library.
The library holds the Codex Bezae, the principal witness to a distinct early tradition of the gospel and Acts text.
About 70 per cent of the population across Catholic, Presbyterian and Baptist mission traditions, concentrated in the south and west.
Christians, Catholic and various Protestant denominations, just over half the population per the most recent census.
The Reconquista, the Carmelite reform and the Spanish Inquisition all ran from Castilian centres.
The anti-balaka militias organized in the name of the country's Christian and animist majority.
The Slavonic mission to Moravia, the Hussite wars and the Catholic Habsburg reaction all belong here.
About 55 to 60% Catholic, though declining with substantial evangelical Protestant growth.
The language of the Russian Orthodox liturgy, and of the pre-Nikonian books the Old Believers kept.
Source The IconKonrad Onasch and Annemarie Schnieper Classical Armenian, known as Grabar, is the liturgical language of the Armenian Apostolic Church, distinct from spoken Modern Armenian.
Classical Syriac is the liturgical language of the Syriac churches, including the Assyrian Church of the East, the Maronite Church and the Saint Thomas Christians of India.
Catholicism was the official religion from 1886 until the 1991 constitution; evangelical and Pentecostal churches now hold parliamentary seats through their own parties.
The agreement between Napoleon Bonaparte and Pope Pius VII restoring Catholicism in France.
The museum was founded for the art and manuscripts of Egyptian Christianity, the centuries between pharaonic and Islamic Egypt.
About three quarters in total across Catholic and Evangelical churches; Article 75 of the constitution keeps Catholicism the religion of the state, the last such establishment in the Americas.
Roman Catholicism holds about 79 per cent affiliation and functions as the marker distinguishing Croats within a shared language area.
Historically around 60 to 65% nominally Catholic, with low regular practice under decades of officially atheist governance after 1959.
The Church of Cyprus has been autocephalous since the Council of Ephesus in 431 and its archbishop served as ethnarch of the Greek Cypriot community under Ottoman and British rule.
A major center of the Protestant Reformation before Luther, following the teaching of Jan Hus; well over half the population is now religiously unaffiliated.
The river long marked the frontier between Latin and Orthodox Christendom and then with the Ottomans.
Around 95 per cent of the population, including the Kimbanguist Church founded by Simon Kimbangu at Nkamba in 1921, one of the largest churches ever founded by an African.
State Evangelical Lutheran Church of Denmark, formally the nominal affiliation of most of the population.
The Second Vatican Council declaration grounding a civil right to religious liberty in the dignity of the person.
Catholic identification has fallen to roughly half within two generations while evangelical churches grow; a 1954 concordat with the Holy See remains in force.
Around 74 per cent of the population, with Quito's colonial religious architecture inscribed by UNESCO in 1978 among the first World Heritage sites.
Roughly 10% Christian, chiefly Coptic Orthodox, one of the world's oldest Christian communities.
The overwhelming majority, now divided between a Catholic Church shaped by its civil war martyrs, Saint Oscar Romero foremost, and fast grown Pentecostal churches.
Lutheran and Orthodox communities are roughly comparable minorities in a society where a majority report no religious affiliation at all.
About 62 to 65% Christian, chiefly Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo, dating to the fourth century conversion of the Aksumite kingdom.
A papal bull of Leo X condemning forty-one propositions drawn from Martin Luther's writings.
Overwhelmingly Christian, the result of successive Spanish Catholic, German and Japanese, and American Protestant missionary activity.
About 64 per cent of the population, predominantly Methodist and concentrated among the indigenous iTaukei; the Methodist Church campaigned for a Christian state until the 2013 constitution declared Fiji secular.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland holds about two thirds membership, alongside a small Finnish Orthodox Church that is also a national church with taxation rights.
Lutheran Christianity took hold in Finland and Estonia and Orthodoxy in Karelia.
Pulpits on every side preached the war as a crusade, and its disillusion produced the crisis theology that remade Protestant thought.
Historically and architecturally Roman Catholic, home to Chartres, Notre Dame and Lourdes, despite a constitutionally secular state.
Overwhelmingly Christian; Protestant, the Maohi Protestant Church, is the largest denomination.
Ge'ez is the liturgical language of Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Christianity, no longer a spoken vernacular but retained for chant and scripture.
The Georgian Orthodox Church, about 83 per cent of the population, holds a legal status under the 2002 constitutional agreement that no other body has.
Split between a historically Catholic south and west and a historically Protestant north and east since the Reformation.
About 71 per cent of the population, with a Pentecostal and charismatic sector that has grown faster than any other and shapes public culture.
About 90% Orthodox Christian; the historical home of the classical Greek pantheon before Christianization.
The patriarchate's library holds the manuscripts of the Judean desert monasteries, including those of Mar Saba.
About three quarters Catholic after three and a half centuries of Chamorro Catholicism; the feast of Santa Marian Kamalen on 8 December is a territorial holiday.
Around 45 per cent Catholic and 42 per cent Protestant, the largest Protestant share in Latin America.
About 55% Catholic and 30 to 35% Protestant.
Nearly the whole population, now split almost evenly between the Catholic Church and Evangelical churches after one of Latin America's fastest religious shifts.
Above one in ten across Protestant and Catholic churches, whose schools, hospitals and charities serve far beyond their membership; the city was the historic staging post of the China missions.
The encyclical of Paul VI reaffirming the prohibition of contraception.
Roman Catholics are about 37 per cent and the Reformed church about 11 per cent, the latter concentrated east of the Danube where Calvinism took hold in the sixteenth century.
Visigothic and then Reconquista Christianity, and the 1492 conquest of Granada.
The Lutheran Church of Iceland is named in the constitution as the established church, following the conversion agreed at the Althing around the year 1000.
Igbo, Cultures Christianity is now held by the great majority, with a strong Catholic and Anglican presence.
Christianity's founding language, Koine Greek, is Indo-European (Hellenic branch); the family already carries edges to Zoroastrianism, Celtic Paganism, Norse Paganism, Roman Religion, Ancient Greek Religion and Hinduism.
About 70% Catholic per the most recent national census, down from over 90% in past decades.
About 78 to 80% Catholic; home to Vatican City, the seat of the Roman Catholic Church, within Rome itself.
About 39 per cent of the population, concentrated in the south, and including the Harrist Church founded by William Wade Harris between 1913 and 1915.
Around 68 per cent of the population and predominantly Protestant, with Seventh day Adventist and Pentecostal churches the largest.
Japan's Kirishitan Christian community, converted by Catholic missionary orders, was the campaign's target throughout.
Catholicism entered Korea under Joseon and the persecutions produced the Korean martyrs.
Kaduna's Christian community was a principal party to the three days of intercommunal violence.
Kaduna's Christian community and the Christian Association of Nigeria were the party whose protest against the state's planned adoption of Sharia set off the violence.
A historian of early Christian diversity, working on the Gospel of Mary and on what the label Gnosticism does and does not describe.
About 26 per cent of the population, predominantly Russian Orthodox and concentrated in the Slavic minority.
About 80 to 85% Christian, roughly split between Protestant and Roman Catholic traditions.
Vladimir accepted Byzantine Christianity in 988.
Koine Greek is the language the New Testament was composed in and the liturgical language of the early church before regional vernaculars and Byzantine Greek took over in the East.
Christianity is held by a large minority in South Korea.
An art museum, not a church body. It holds the Holy Lance among the imperial regalia, an object venerated in a Christian imperial setting; the atlas records the failure of its identification as the lance of the Passion on the artifact itself.
Latin was the liturgical language of the Roman Rite for most of its history and remains the official language of Roman Catholic canon law and typical editions.
Lutheran, Roman Catholic and Orthodox communities are of broadly similar size, reflecting Swedish, Polish Lithuanian and Russian periods of rule respectively.
The encyclical of Pope Francis on care for our common home.
Lebanon's Maronite Christian community was a principal party to the war, but the war was fought across, not by, one tradition.
Roughly 30 to 35% Christian, chiefly Maronite Catholic.
About 75 to 80% Catholic; Lithuania was the last pagan state in Europe, Christianizing only in 1387.
Christianity has spread widely among the Maasai, generally held alongside rather than replacing address to Engai.
Ohrid was a centre of Slavonic Christianity and the seat of a contested archbishopric.
About 85 per cent of the population, arriving with the London Missionary Society from 1818, banned under Ranavalona I between 1835 and 1861 and adopted by the court in 1869.
Otto I founded the archbishopric in 968, and the Magdeburg Centuries were written there.
The large majority, spread across Catholic, Presbyterian, Adventist, Anglican and Pentecostal churches descended from the Scottish and Catholic missions.
About 90% Catholic, among the most religiously homogeneous countries in Europe by formal affiliation.
The colloquy of 1529, the shrine of Elizabeth of Hungary and the university of 1527 all belong to the town.
About a third in total, dominated by the creole Catholic culture descended from the French plantation era; Pere Laval's shrine draws petitioners of every faith.
Spread from Antioch and Jerusalem to Rome along Roman Mediterranean shipping lanes, Paul's own voyages among them
About 78 to 80% Catholic, a legacy of Spanish colonization layered over Aztec and Maya cosmology.
Monasticism, the universities, the friars and scholastic theology all belong to the period.
Most of the migrating peoples became Christian in this period, many first in the Arian form.
An encyclical of Pius XI on the condition of the Catholic Church under Nazi rule.
It carries the Athonite painters' manuals and the contested vernacular translations of scripture and liturgy.
About 90 per cent Orthodox, divided between the Metropolis of Chisinau under Moscow and the Metropolis of Bessarabia under Bucharest.
A majority in total, split between the Catholic Church, Zionist congregations of southern African origin and growing Pentecostal churches.
Namibia has a Christian majority planted by German and later mission churches.
The first named persecution. Tacitus is the source, writing some fifty years later; the scale and the legal basis are both argued about.
Historically a Calvinist north and a Catholic south, organised into rival pillars until the 1960s; both have declined faster than almost anywhere in Europe.
Near 37 per cent of the population, including the Maori founded Ratana and Ringatu churches, the former in political alliance with the Labour Party for most of the twentieth century.
Roughly 45 to 50% Christian, tracking broadly though imperfectly a north-south geographic line.
About 65 per cent Orthodox; the Macedonian Orthodox Church declared autocephaly in 1967 and was recognised by other Orthodox churches only in 2022.
The Lutheran Church of Norway holds about 65 per cent membership and was a state church until the separation completed in 2017.
Russian Orthodoxy has been present since the imperial period, followed by Soviet suppression and partial revival.
Held the James Ossuary, whose inscription names a brother of Jesus, before and after its forgery trial.
The modern Dia de los Muertos ofrenda blends Mesoamerican and Catholic elements
Old Church Slavonic is the ancestor of the Church Slavonic still used liturgically across Slavic Orthodox and some Byzantine Rite churches.
Kirkwall cathedral is dedicated to Magnus, killed in 1117 and venerated as a martyr.
The great majority, with a Catholic culture dating to the first mainland diocese of 1513 and an Evangelical quarter that continues to grow.
About 95 per cent of the population across many denominations; a constitutional amendment in 2024 declared Papua New Guinea a Christian country.
Around 89 per cent of the population, a Catholicism shaped by the Jesuit reductions among the Guarani between 1609 and 1767.
A dogmatic constitution of the First Vatican Council defining papal infallibility.
A local authority museum, not a church. The Stone of Scone it now holds sat in the Coronation Chair at Westminster from the early fourteenth century and was used in the Christian coronation rite; it is taken back to Westminster for a coronation.
About 75 to 80% Catholic, overlaying an Inca religious system that Spanish conquest did not fully erase.
Roughly 79 per cent Catholic after three centuries of Spanish rule, alongside the Philippine founded Iglesia Filipina Independiente and Iglesia ni Cristo.
About 85 to 90% Catholic by formal affiliation, among Europe's most religiously observant Catholic countries.
An institution of the Holy See; its academicians are appointed without regard to religious affiliation.
About 80 to 85% Catholic; home to the Marian shrine at Fatima.
The Cathar movement, the Albigensian Crusade and the Avignon papacy all belong to the region.
About nine in ten across Catholic and Protestant churches; the diocese of San Juan, erected in 1511, is among the oldest in the Americas.
Recognised denominations have held purpose built churches at the Mesaimeer compound since 2008, without external crosses or bells.
An encyclical of Leo XIII founding the modern tradition of Catholic social teaching.
British bishops attended the Council of Arles in 314.
Persecuted intermittently to 313, favoured by Constantine, and established as the religion of the empire at Thessalonica in 380.
The Romanian Orthodox Church holds about 85 per cent affiliation, the highest observance rate in Europe, alongside a Greek Catholic church abolished in 1948 and legalised in 1990.
Russian Orthodox Christianity, adopted from Byzantium in 988, remains the dominant tradition.
About 94 per cent of the population, divided between the Catholic Church, mainline Protestant churches and a large Seventh day Adventist community.
The earliest Coptic biblical translations and the desert fathers' sayings are Sahidic.
Nearly the whole population, led by Pentecostal, Anglican, Adventist and Methodist churches, with the Spiritual Baptists a once banned church now central to national identity.
The washing of the steps of the Church of Bonfim is Catholic and Candomble at once.
Almost the entire population, led by the Congregational Christian Church of Samoa descending from the London Missionary Society arrival of 1830, and fused with the matai and village council order.
Christianity, adopted in the nineteenth century, is now nearly universal among Samoans.
Mission San Diego de Alcala of 1769 is the first of the California missions.
The semantron is sounded at Eastern Orthodox monasteries, most famously on Mount Athos, to call monks to prayer where bells historically could not be used.
The Serbian Orthodox Church, autocephalous since Sava obtained recognition in 1219, holds about 85 per cent affiliation and carries national identity.
Christianity is widely held alongside traditional practice, including through the African Independent Churches.
About 19 per cent of the population, across Catholic, Anglican and independent evangelical congregations.
About 56 per cent Roman Catholic with Greek Catholic and Lutheran minorities, and large pilgrimages to Sastin and Levoca.
About 73 per cent identify as Roman Catholic, with weekly practice among the lowest in Catholic Europe.
Nearly the whole population, led by the Anglican Church of Melanesia; the indigenous Melanesian Brotherhood is the Anglican Communion's largest religious order.
Around 85 per cent of the population, including a very large African Initiated Church sector of which the Zion Christian Church is the largest.
Protestant churches are about 20 per cent and Catholics about 8 per cent, the result of exceptionally rapid growth across the twentieth century.
Southern Africa's ancestor-centred traditions were both absorbed by and absorbed nineteenth and twentieth century Christian mission.
About 55 to 60% Catholic, following the Reconquista completed in 1492.
A papal bull of Paul III declaring the peoples of the Americas true men who may not be enslaved.
A papal bull confirming two Dominican inquisitors' authority, later bound to the front of the Malleus Maleficarum.
About 48 per cent of the population, with Moravian and Catholic missions present since 1735.
Large formal registration in the state Lutheran Church of Sweden, though regular attendance and belief are low by most surveys.
Divided since the Reformation between Catholic cantons and the Swiss Reformed church of Zwingli and Calvin; both have declined steeply since the 1970s.
About 10% Christian across various ancient rites, dating to the earliest use of the name Christian in Antioch.
The Taiping faith was a syncretic new Chinese Christian movement, not a branch of any existing denomination, so this edge records connection to the wider Christian tradition rather than membership in it.
Roughly 60 per cent of the mainland population across Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican and Pentecostal churches.
Three of the attack's six primary targets were churches, Catholic and evangelical Protestant alike, struck during Easter Sunday worship.
The rock-cut chapel and the Descent from the Cross relief are twelfth century Christian work, and they are the only religious use of the rocks that the surviving fabric documents.
The rescript's guarantees were addressed principally to the empire's Christian communities.
The reception tradition that read and preserved the messianic interpretation of the poem, from Lactantius through Constantine to Dante, distinct from the poem's own Roman origin.
The pact is framed as an undertaking by the conquered Christians of Syria.
The forty five victims beheaded at Yuxian's yamen were Western Protestant and Catholic missionaries and their family members, killed specifically as Christians.
Almost the entire population; the monarch heads the Free Wesleyan Church of Tonga and the constitution of 1875 declares the Sabbath sacred for ever.
About 55 per cent of the population; the Spiritual Baptists were outlawed from 1917 to 1951 and the repeal is now marked by a public holiday.
The library holds the Book of Kells and the Book of Durrow, gospel books made in Irish monastic scriptoria.
About 84 per cent of the population, divided between Catholics and Anglicans with a growing Pentecostal sector; the Uganda Martyrs shrine at Namugongo draws over a million pilgrims each 3 June.
About two thirds Orthodox Christian, received from Byzantium in 988 through the baptism of Kievan Rus.
A papal bull defining submission to the Roman Pontiff as necessary for salvation.
The Church of England remains the state church in England, with Scotland's established church Presbyterian.
Protestant affiliation below half the population; Catholics the largest single denomination at around 20%.
Around 40 per cent by identification with very low practice, following the complete separation of church and state enacted in 1917.
About 82 per cent of the population, divided between Presbyterian, Anglican, Catholic and Seventh day Adventist churches roughly by which mission arrived first.
The papal library of the Catholic Church, formally established by Sixtus IV in 1475 around the manuscript collections of the popes.
Effectively 100% Catholic; sovereign territory and administrative center of the Roman Catholic Church.
An institution of the Holy See.
Around 85 per cent by identification, with relations between the Catholic hierarchy and the state openly adversarial since 1999.
Catholicism, present since the seventeenth century, accounts for roughly 7 per cent of the population, one of the largest Catholic communities in Asia.
The age closes with the conversion of the Scandinavian kingdoms.
Worms, Cities Site of the 1521 Diet of Worms, where Luther refused to recant.
Yale was chartered by Connecticut Congregationalist ministers, and Yale Divinity School now trains ministers, scholars and chaplains across a wide range of Christian traditions.
Above 95 per cent of the population; the constitutional preamble has declared Zambia a Christian nation since 1996.
About 85% Christian, spanning Protestant, Catholic, Pentecostal and African Independent Churches.