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

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

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

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

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Early 19th-century portrait of Rookwood

Ambrose Rookwood (c. 1578 – 31 January 1606) was a member of the failed 1605 Gunpowder Plot, a conspiracy to replace the Protestant King James I with a Catholic sovereign. Rookwood was born into a wealthy family of Catholic recusants, and educated by Jesuits in Flanders. His older brother became a Franciscan, and his two younger brothers were ordained as Catholic priests. Rookwood became a horse-breeder. He married the Catholic Elizabeth Tyrwhitt, and had at least two sons.

He was enlisted into the plot in September 1605 by Robert Catesby, a religious zealot whose impatience with James' treatment of English Catholics had grown so severe that he conspired to blow up the House of Lords with gunpowder, killing the king and much of the Protestant hierarchy. With the other conspirators he had recruited, Catesby also planned to incite a rebellion in the Midlands, during which James's nine-year-old daughter Princess Elizabeth would be captured, and installed as titular queen. Rookwood's stable of fine horses was essential for the uprising to succeed. (Full article...)

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

Image 1The Glory of Saint Nicholas, by António Manuel da Fonseca; Nicholas of Myra, a participant in the First Council of Nicaea, achieves the beatific vision in the shape of the Holy Trinity. (from Trinity)
Image 2Atypical depiction The Son is identified by a lamb, the Father an Eye of Providence, and the Spirit a dove; the painting is by Fridolin Leiber (d. 1912). (from Trinity)
Image 3Depictions of the Resurrection of Jesus are central to Christian art (Resurrection of Christ by Raphael, 1499–1502). (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 4The Good Samaritan is a painting by James Tissot. The Parable of the Good Samaritan is one of the parables of Jesus. (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 5Representation of the Trinity in the form of the mercy seat (epitaph from 1549) (from Trinity)
Image 6Detail of the earliest known artwork of the Trinity, the Dogmatic or Trinity Sarcophagus, c. 350 (Vatican Museums)
Three similar figures, representing the Trinity, are involved in the creation of Eve, whose much smaller figure is cut off at lower right; to her right, Adam lies on the ground (from Trinity)
Image 7The Father, The Holy Spirit, and Christ crucified, depicted in a Welsh manuscript c. 1390–1400 (from Trinity)
Image 8The "Heavenly Trinity" joined to the "Earthly Trinity" through the Incarnation of the Son–The Heavenly and Earthly Trinities by Murillo (c. 1677) (from Trinity)
Image 9Russian icon of the Old Testament Trinity by Andrei Rublev, between 1408 and 1425 (from Trinity)
Image 10Jesus' Farewell Discourse to his eleven remaining disciples after the Last Supper, from the Maestà by Duccio (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 11A compact diagram of the Trinity, known as the "Shield of Trinity". The Shield is generally not intended to be a schematic diagram of the structure of God, but it presents a series of statements about the correlation between the persons of the Trinity. (from Trinity)
Image 12The Communion of the Apostles, by Luca Signorelli, 1512 (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 1313th-century depiction of the Trinity from a Roman de la Rose manuscript (from Trinity)
Image 14First page of Mark, by Sargis Pitsak (14th century): "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God". (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 15The Adoration of the Trinity by Albrecht Dürer (1511)
From top to bottom: Holy Spirit (dove), God the Father and Christ on the cross (from Trinity)
Image 16God in the person of the Son confronts Adam and Eve, by Master Bertram (d. c. 1415) (from Trinity)
Image 17Depiction of Trinity from Saint Denis Basilica in Paris (12th century) (from Trinity)
Image 18Nativity at Night, by Geertgen tot Sint Jans, c. 1490 (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 19A Gospel of John, 1056 (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 20Jesus healing the paralytic in The Pool by Palma il Giovane, 1592 (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 21The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is a holy site in Jerusalem believed by most Christians to encompass the tomb of Jesus and the site of his crucifixion and resurrection. (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 22Renaissance painting by Jerónimo Cosida depicting Jesus as a triple deity Inner text: The Father is God; the Son is God; the Holy Spirit is God (from Trinity)
Image 23The Baptism of Christ, by Piero della Francesca, 15th century (from Trinity)
Image 24A Greek fresco of Athanasius of Alexandria, the chief architect of the Nicene Creed, formulated at Nicaea (from Trinity)
Image 25A depiction of the Council of Nicaea in AD 325, at which the Deity of Christ was declared orthodox and Arianism condemned (from Trinity)
Image 26God the Father (top), the Holy Spirit (a dove), and the child Jesus, painting by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (d. 1682) (from Trinity)
Image 27Pope Clement I prays to the Trinity, in a typical post-Renaissance depiction by Gianbattista Tiepolo (d. 1770) (from Trinity)
Image 28A 'Jesus Saves' neon cross sign outside of a Protestant church in New York City (from Salvation in Christianity)
Image 29The Holy Trinity in an angelic glory over a landscape, by Lucas Cranach the Elder (d. 1553) (from Trinity)
Image 30God the Father (top), and the Holy Spirit (represented by a dove) depicted above Jesus Painting by Francesco Albani (d. 1660) (from Trinity)

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*The Descent of Peace*, 1803–1817, most likely c. 1815

William Blake drew and painted illustrations for John Milton's nativity ode On the Morning of Christ's Nativity between 1803 and 1815. A total of 16 illustrations are extant: two sets of six watercolours each, and an additional four drawings in pencil.

The dating of the sets is unknown, as is Blake's intended sequence for the illustrations. The two sets of watercolours are known as the "Butts set" and the "Thomas set", after their respective patrons, or as the "Huntington set" and the "Whitworth set" after the Huntington Library and the Whitworth Art Gallery, which now hold the sets in their collections. (Full article...)

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A Christian martyr is a person who is killed for following Christianity, through stoning, crucifixion, burning at the stake or other forms of torture and capital punishment. The word "martyr" comes from the Greek word μάρτυς, mártys, which means "witness." At first, the term applied to Apostles. Once Christians started to undergo persecution, the term came to be applied to those who suffered hardships for their faith. Finally, it was restricted to those who had been killed for their faith. The early Christian period before Constantine I was the "Age of martyrs". A martyr's death was considered a "baptism in blood," cleansing one of sin, similar to the effect of baptism in water. Early Christians venerated martyrs as powerful intercessors, and their utterances were treasured as inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Did you know (auto-generated) - load new batch

... that in the Book of Mormon, the city of Ammonihah kills Christians by fire as a deliberately twisted reference to a warning that spiritual death is like a "lake of fire and brimstone"?
... that the earliest representation of the devil might be a mosaic in San Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna from the 6th century, in the form of a blue angel?
... that the Global Methodist Church is part of a proposed divorce over marriage?
... that the Correspondence of Paul and Seneca was cited in the Middle Ages to claim that Seneca, a Roman philosopher of Stoicism, had converted to Christianity?
... that Mount Yasumandake was considered sacred to Buddhists, Shintoists, and Christians?
... that 19th-century American evangelist Dwight L. Moody was converted to Christianity in the stock room of a shoe store by his Sunday School teacher Edward Kimball?