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Christianity
Christians are
followers of Jesus Christ and believe that he is the
Messiah. The Gospels summarise Jesus’ activities
as “preaching, teaching and healing”.
There
are many denominations in Christianity in the following
main groups:
1. The Eastern Churches and Orthodox Churches
The Eastern
Churches are closely linked by their history with the
first churches in Palestine and Syria. These
include the Armenian Church, Coptic Church in Egypt,
the Church of Ethiopia and the Syrian Orthodox Church.
The
Orthodox Churches are linked with the Greek civilisations
at the Eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea and Russia.
2. The
Roman Catholic Church
The Roman Catholic Church is strongly
linked with the Latin civilisation of the
Roman Empire. The Bishop of Rome, the Pope, has supreme
authority in the Church as the representative of Christ
on earth.
3. Protestant Churches
Lutherans, the Anglican Church
(Church of England), the Presbyterian Church, the Methodist
Church, the Baptist Church, Seventh Day Adventists,
Pentecostal and Independent Churches.
These are western
churches which “protested” against
the current practices in the Roman Catholic Church
in the 16th century and formed breakaway churches.
As
there are many different churches, it is not easy to
define what ordinary Christians believe about their
religion. In general, they believe in the following: |
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Christians worship
God as the great Creator of the world and pray
to him as “Our Father”. They believe
that the whole world is in his care and that he
controls all things |
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They worship
Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit as one with God,
the Father forming the Trinity (Father, son and
the Holy Spirit) |
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They believe
that Jesus is the Son of God who came into the
world to rescue them from the power of evil and
to make them God’s children. They believe
that he died on the cross of Calvary to do this
and so they must feel love towards him and honour
him as Lord |
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They believe
that God has chosen special ways to reveal his
will to the world and that they can know his will
through the Bible |
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They join in
services of Holy Communion, also called Mass or
Eucharist and believe through consecrated bread
and wine, they come into close touch with Jesus
Christ |
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They believe
that the Holy Spirit has been sent to guide them
and feel his influence very strongly within them |
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They try to follow the teachings of Jesus and know
that they should love God and all other people. |
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They accept the
leaders of their own churches as people who have
authority to teach them. Some give their whole
lives to ministry in the church |
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They treat the
words of the Bible with profound respect |
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| The Bible is
a collection of books written over a period of more than
1000 years. The larger part, the Old Testament, is the
Hebrew scriptures of Judaism presenting the history and
writings of the Jewish people up to the time of the prophets.
A number of later Jewish works in Greek are included
in Roman Catholic editions of the Old Testament and are
known as the Apocrypha. They are considered to be of
less importance than Hebrew scriptures. The Protestant
Bible omits these books since they were not included
in the original Jewish scriptures.
The New Testament, which is shorter, contains the
specifically Christian books of the Bible. It consists
of 27 books written in Greek in the first century CE.
Christmas, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Whitsun (Pentecost)
are some of the festivals celebrated by Christians.
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