Christianity Study Guide

Who are Christians?

1. Slide show

a. Diversity: Cultural and Institutional/Theological

2. A little more than 2 billion Christians in the world (~ 1/3)

a. America: 240 million, or 77% of population

b. America: 20-25 % in a church on any given Sunday

c. Numbers always have a ‘use’ (political & evangelism)

3. Most diversely widespread of the religions

a. Indigenous Christian communities on all continents and most nations

i. Americas, Europe, Pacific and Sub-Saharan Africa (majority)

ii. Asia (minority), e xcept Philippines. S. Korea ~ 30%.

b. Reasons: political and missionary

i. Religious policies varied among colonial powers.

c. Cultural diversity

i. Geographic/intellectual/spiritual center has moved/is moving to the global south (Andrew Walls)

1. Commitment level, fervency, etc higher in global south

d. Theological/religious diversity

i. Orthodox

ii. Catholic

iii. Protestant

1. Evangelical

2. Mainline

3. Pentecostal

iv. Christian NRMs

The Christian Story

4. Takes over the Jewish story.

a. Re-interprets it.

i. Tells the Jewish story in a different way.

b. Adam and Eve

i. Becomes the doctrine of Original Sin.

1. Means that human beings are born with the inclination towards sin (or doing wrong/evil).

c. Claims Abraham, Moses, David, etc. as its own!

i. As far as religions go, this is fairly unusual.

d. Interprets Israel, or the first covenant, as a failure!

i. Covenant went unfulfilled.

e. Interprets Jesus as the one to fulfill the covenant.

i. In a sense Jesus replaces Israel in Genesis (12:1-3)

ii. In history, many Christians have understood this as the Church replacing Israel as the chosen people, which often resulted in persecution.

5. Story of Jesus.

a. Question of miracles!

i. Historically, we can say that people believed that he could perform miracles.

b. Virgin Birth – from God (Theological)

i. Part of the story; but is it history?

1. Only 2 of 27 New Testament writings mention it.

ii. Stories portray a humble...