A Brief Overview of Church History
From Persecution to Acceptance in the Roman Empire (30-590)
The New Testament begins the story of how Jesus, His 12 disciples, and later the apostle Paul came to establish Christianity in the Mediterranean world. In the Roman empire, with its worship of pagan gods and sexual immorality, Christian beliefs and practices were often misunderstood, misunderstanding led to suspicion, and suspicion sometimes led to persecution.
Periodically, Roman emperors initiated persecution against Christians, including Nero (64) and Domitian (81-96), although persecution before the year 200 was limited. Persecution intensified under Diocletian (303-305), and Galerius (305-311). While many Christians denied the faith in the face of intense persecution, many others embraced martyrdom. As martyrdom gained popularity, Galerius reluctantly proclaimed toleration of Christianity before he died (311).
In 312 Constantine battled a rival for the throne and claimed to see a vision of a cross in the sky, and the words “in this sign conquer.” When Constantine later defeated his rival, Constantine attributed his success to Christ and became Christian. While some historians have claimed his conversion to be a political stunt, Constantine made Christian ministers tax exempt, recognized Sunday as a holiday, and financially supported the building of churches. He also lived by his Christian convictions and brought up his family as Christians (Church History in Plain Language, Shelley, pg. 93-95).
In 325, Constantine presided over the Council of Nicea, which recognized that Jesus was truly God, of the same substance as the Father, and was co-eternal with the God the Father. Later, in 380, the emperor Theodosius made Christianity the official faith of the Roman empire.
Development of the New Testament Scriptures
Around 140, a man named Marcion, a widely traveled shipowner, arrived in Rome having come from the area of the Black Sea. Marcion’s idea was that some of Paul’s letters and part of Luke’s gospel were sacred writings that should be kept together. Indeed, Paul’s letters were already well known and in wide circulation. Gradually, churches developed the idea of grouping together the letters of Paul and other apostles, along with the 4 gospels, and using the book of Acts to connect the gospels with the letters.
By the year 190, churches accepted idea that the Christian Scriptures would exist along with the Jewish Scriptures since a New Covenant was best understood because there was a record of the Old Covenant (Church History, pgs. 64-66, Shelley).
The books in today’s New Testament were first listed together in a letter written by Athanasius, a bishop from Alexandria (Egypt), in the year 367. In the 390’s, church councils in North Africa published the same list of books (Church History, pg.66, Shelley). The New Testament had now been set.
Christianity in the Middle Ages (590-1517)
Pope Gregory I (590-604) became Pope in 590, at age 50, and having been Mayor of Rome earlier in his life. He began exercising authority in secular government (in addition to his church authority as Pope) because at that time Rome suffered from an invasion by a barbarian tribe, as well as a plague.
The rise of Islam in the 600’s, saw Muslims invade North Africa, Spain and into France before being decisively beaten at Tours in 732. That victory helped to keep the Christian influence in Europe rather than Europe becoming Muslim. The German king Charlemagne united central Europe from 768 to 814 under Catholic Christianity before the Viking invasions of 840-1100.
A series of Crusades (1095-1291) were launched from Europe to the Middle East as the Pope attempted to claim control of the Holy Land for the Roman Catholic Church and to secure access of those lands for Christian pilgrims. However, the crusades met with limited success. One of the favorite ways for the Catholic church to create revenue was to sell indulgences to soldiers in Crusades. This was a way for soldiers to try to buy forgiveness, and to buy it ahead of time, for any sins that they might commit during the Crusade. Of course, the Bible clearly teaches that only God can forgive sin, and that is accomplished only through the shedding of blood on the cross by Jesus. Forgiveness simply cannot be bought.
John Wycliffe (1330-1384) worked with a small group of scholars at Oxford to accomplish the first translation of the whole Bible from Latin to English. Wycliffe did this because he believed that the scriptures should be available in the language of peasants and craftsmen.
Jan Hus (1369-1415) was a Czech theologian and philosopher who was influenced by Wycliffe’s writings. Hus was supremely committed to the truth of Scripture and criticized the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church. He was targeted by the Inquisition and was burned for his beliefs in July 1415. Copies of Hus’ sermons later influenced reformation founder, Martin Luther.
The Reformation Age (1517-1648)
A German Monk, Martin Luther, began to have concerns about the corrupt behavior of Catholic officials (including the sale of indulgences), and that teachings of the Roman Catholic Church did not line up with Scripture. In October 1517, Luther wrote out 95 differences that he had with the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, and Luther posted those differences on the church door in Wittenburg, Germany (Church History, Shelley, pg. 240). This started the Reformation, which split the church between Catholics, who followed the teachings of the corrupt Roman Catholic church, and Protestants, who strove to live by the inspired scriptures, and believed that salvation is by faith in Christ alone, and not the accumulation of good works (Ephesians 2:8-9).
As Reformation ideas spread, Bible scholar Willam Tyndale had an intense desire to make an English version of the scriptures available to the common people. Facing persecution in England, he fled to Germany to complete his translation, and by 1526 he started smuggling initial copies of his translation back into England. Tyndale translated the first 5 books of the Old Testament by 1530. However, continued persecution from church officials eventually caused Tyndale to spend 17 months in prison before being executed in 1536. At the time of his death, 18,000 copies of his New Testament were in print (britannica.com).
Building on Tyndale’s work, in 1535 Myles Coverdale published the first translation of the Bible in modern English that was based on the original Hebrew and Greek wording. In 1604, King James I of England commissioned a new English Bible translation. More than 50 translators worked on it for 7 years, achieving what we know today as the “King James Version” in 1611.
The Reformation totally disrupted Europe, and eventually led to Catholics and Protestants fighting the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). The treaty that ended the war allowed religious toleration of both Catholics and Protestants (including denominations of Lutherans & Calvinists) to live within a territory without interference from either local governments, or from the Pope.
Reason and Revival (1648-1800)
After the peace of 1648, the Age of Reason developed and focused on the rights of man rather than man’s obligation to God. The Age of Reason contributed to the early development of the United States of America, and also took hold of Europe. Coinciding with this development, the 1700’s saw a wave of great revivals sweep across the United States of America, led by Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfield, and also sweep across England, led by John Wesley and the Methodists. Missionary David Brainerd saw several conversions among Native Americans in the 1740’s. The Age of Reason culminated in 1789 in the bitter and bloody French Revolution.
The Modern Era and Worldwide Missions – The 1800’s to the Present
The 1800’s saw the start of the Industrial Revolution in England which led great advances in technology such as the development of the steam engine (used in railroads and overseas shipping) the telegraph, and undersea cables (which united continents by telegraph). This helped the British empire achieve its’ greatest territorial expansion. However, it was also a British scientist, Charles Darwin, whose book “Origin of the Species” (1859) introduced the concept of evolution and caused some to doubt the biblical account of creation.
Advances in transportation also made possible the wide spread of (Protestant) Christian missionaries in the 1800’s such as Dr. David Livingstone (medical missionary) in Africa, Willam Carey in India, Adoniram Judson in Burma, and Hudson Taylor and Lottie Moon in China.
The 1900’s saw 2 world wars, a holocaust, a civil rights movement, and remarkable growth in technology. Protestant churches and theology often divided between Liberal and Evangelical views. The Evangelical view favored a much more literal interpretation of scripture than the Liberal view. Evangelicals saw man as a sinner that needed salvation, and that salvation only occurred through personal faith in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross (John 14:6). Evangelicals viewed the scriptures as inspired by God (2 Timothy 3:16-17), and therefore being God’s guidance for living daily life. Unfortunately, the 1970’s and 1980’s saw divorce rates rise significantly in the church to reflect a very similar rise in secular society.
As evangelical beliefs spread, the 1900’s also witnessed great revivals across the United States and the world. The most prominent evangelist was Billy Graham (1918-2018) whose ministry was approximately 60 years, where he preached to more than 200 million people in a total of 400 evangelistic crusades across 185 countries and territories (samaritanspurse.org). Likewise, Luis Palau (1934-2021) is estimated to have preached to 30 million people across 75 countries (nytimes.com).
In the 2000’s the church confronted the beliefs of postmodernism, which claimed that truth was relative, emphasizes the diversity of human experience, and the variety of people’s perspectives. Postmodernism has rejected the objective truth of the Bible. However, the 2000’s have also seen the development of megachurches.