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Christianization (or Christianisation) is a term for the specific type of change that occurs when someone or something has been or is being converted to Christianity. The term can be used in more than one way, for example, it can describe individual conversion, and it can also be used to designate the conversion of previously non-Christian practices, spaces and places to Christian use and names. Historically, the term has also been used to describe the changes that emerge in a nation when sufficient numbers of individuals convert, or when secular leaders require those changes.

Christianization has played a significant role in shaping multiple nations, cultures and societies, beginning with ancient Roman Empire, however, as Richard Lim has written, scholars are aware that Christianizing the Roman Empire was never completed. Therefore most agree, Christianization of a nation is an ongoing process more than it is a full achievement even when laws and leaders support it.

Christianization began in the Roman Empire when the early individual followers of Jesus became itinerant preachers in response to the command recorded in Matthew 28:19, (sometimes called the Great Commission), to go to all the nations of the world and preach the good news about Jesus. It spread through the Roman Empire and surrounding nations, into Europe of the Middle Ages, and in the twenty-first century, has become a global phenomenon.

Individual conversion

James P. Hanigan writes that individual conversion is the foundational experience and the central message of Christianization, adding that Christian conversion begins with an experience of being "thrown off balance" through cognitive and psychological "disequilibrium", followed by an "awakening" of consciousness and a new awareness of God. Hanigan compares it to "death and rebirth, a turning away..., a putting off of the old..., a change of mind and heart". The person responds by acknowledging and confessing personal lostness and sinfulness, and then accepting a call to holiness thus restoring balance.

Baptism

Jesus began his ministry after his baptism by John the Baptist which can be dated to approximately AD 28–35 based on references by the Jewish historian Josephus in his (Antiquities 18.5.2).

Individual conversion is followed by the initiation rite of baptism. In Christianity's earliest communities, candidates for baptism were introduced by someone willing to stand surety for their character and conduct. Baptism created a set of responsibilities within the Christian community. Candidates for baptism were instructed in the major tenets of the faith, examined for moral living, sat separately in worship, were not yet allowed to receive the communion eucharist, but were still generally expected to demonstrate commitment to the community, and obedience to Christ's commands, before being accepted into the community as a full member. This could take months to years.

The normal practice in the ancient church was baptism by immersion of the whole head and body of an adult, with the exception of infants in danger of death, until the fifth or sixth century. Historian Philip Schaff has written that sprinkling, or pouring of water on the head of a sick or dying person, where immersion was impractical, was also practiced in ancient times and up through the twelfth century. Infant baptism was controversial for the Protestant Reformers, but according to Schaff, it was practiced by the ancients and is neither required nor forbidden in the New Testament.

Eucharist

The celebration of the eucharist (also called communion) was the common unifier for early Christian communities, and remains one of the most important of Christian rituals. Early Christians believed the Christian message, the celebration of communion (the Eucharist) and the rite of baptism came directly from Jesus of Nazareth.

Father Enrico Mazza writes that the "Eucharist is an imitation of the Last Supper" when Jesus gathered his followers for their last meal together the night before he was arrested and killed. While the majority share the view of Mazza, there are others such as New Testament scholar Bruce Chilton, who argue that there were multiple origins of the Eucharist.

In the Middle Ages, the Eucharist came to be understood as a sacrament (wherein God is present) that evidenced Christ's sacrifice, and the prayer given with the rite was to include two strophes of thanksgiving and one of petition. The prayer later developed into the modern version of a narrative, a memorial to Christ and an invocation of the Holy Spirit.

Confirmation

During the Middle Ages, confirmation was added to the rites of initiation. While baptism, instruction, and Eucharist have remained the essential elements of initiation in all Christian communities, theologian Knut Alfsvåg writes on the differing status of confirmation in different denominations:

Some see baptism, confirmation, and first communion as different elements in a unified rite through which one becomes a part of the Christian church. Others consider confirmation a separate rite which may or may not be considered a condition for becoming a fully accepted member of the church in the sense that one is invited to take part in the celebration of the Eucharist. Among those who see confirmation as a separate rite some see it as a sacrament, while others consider it a combination of intercessory prayer and graduation ceremony after a period of instruction.

Christianization of places and practices

Christianization has at times involved appropriation, removal and/or redesignation of aspects of native religion and former sacred spaces. This was allowed, or required, or sometimes forbidden by the missionaries involved. The church adapts to its local cultural context, just as local culture and places are adapted to the church, or in other words, Christianization has always worked in both directions: Christianity absorbs from native culture as it is absorbed into it.

When Christianity spread beyond Judaea, it first arrived in Jewish diaspora communities. The Christian church was modeled on the synagogue, and Christian philosophers synthesized their Christian views with Semitic monotheism and Greek thought. Christianity adopted aspects of Platonic thought, names for months and days of the week – even the concept of a seven-day week – from Roman paganism.

Christian art in the catacombs beneath Rome rose out of a reinterpretation of Jewish and pagan symbolism. While many new subjects appear for the first time in the Christian catacombs - i.e. the Good Shepherd, Baptism, and the Eucharistic meal – the Orant figures (women praying with upraised hands) probably came directly from pagan art.

Bruce David Forbes says "Some way or another, Christmas was started to compete with rival Roman religions, or to co-opt the winter celebrations as a way to spread Christianity, or to baptize the winter festivals with Christian meaning in an effort to limit their excesses. Most likely all three". Michelle Salzman has shown that, in the process of converting the Roman Empire's aristocracy, Christianity absorbed the values of that aristocracy.

Some scholars have suggested that characteristics of some pagan gods — or at least their roles — were transferred to Christian saints after the fourth century. Demetrius of Thessaloniki became venerated as the patron of agriculture during the Middle Ages. According to historian Hans Kloft, that was because the Eleusinian Mysteries, Demeter's cult, ended in the 4th century, and the Greek rural population gradually transferred her rites and roles onto the Christian saint Demetrius.

Several early Christian writers, including Justin (2nd century), Tertullian, and Origen (3rd century) wrote of Mithraists copying Christian beliefs and practices yet remaining pagan.

In both Jewish and Roman tradition, genetic families were buried together, but an important cultural shift took place in the way Christians buried one another: they gathered unrelated Christians into a common burial space, as if they really were one family, "commemorated them with homogeneous memorials and expanded the commemorative audience to the entire local community of coreligionists" thereby redefining the concept of family.

Temple conversion within Roman Empire

In Late Antique Roman Empire, sites already consecrated as pagan temples or mithraea began being converted into Christian churches. Scholarship has been divided over whether this was a general effort to demolish the pagan past, simple pragmatism, or perhaps an attempt to preserve the past's art and architecture, or most likely, some combination.

R. P. C. Hanson says the direct conversion of temples into churches began in the mid-fifth century but only in a few isolated incidents. According to modern archaeology, 120 pagan temples were converted to churches in the whole of the empire, out of the thousands of temples that existed, with the majority of those conversions dated after the fifth century. It is likely this timing stems from the fact that these buildings and sacred places remained officially in public use, ownership could only be transferred by the emperor, and temples remained protected by law.

In the fourth century, there were no conversions of temples in the city of Rome itself. It is only with the formation of the Papal State in the eighth century, (when the emperor's properties in the West came into the possession of the bishop of Rome), that the conversions of temples in Rome took off in earnest.

According to Dutch historian Feyo L. Schuddeboom, individual temples and temple sites in the city were converted to churches primarily to preserve their exceptional architecture. They were also used pragmatically because of the importance of their location at the center of town.

Temple and icon destruction

During his long reign (307 - 337), Constantine (the first Christian emperor) destroyed a few temples, plundered more, and generally neglected the rest. Classicist Scott Bradbury says Constantine "confiscated temple funds to help finance his own building projects", and he confiscated temple hoards of gold and silver to establish a stable currency; on a few occasions, he confiscated temple land.

In the 300 years prior to the reign of Constantine, Roman authority had confiscated various church properties, some of which were associated with Christian holy places. For example, Christian historians alleged that Hadrian (2nd century) had, in the military colony of Aelia Capitolina (Jerusalem), constructed a temple to Aphrodite on the site of the crucifixion of Jesus on Golgotha hill in order to suppress Jewish Christian veneration there. Constantine was vigorous in reclaiming such properties whenever these issues were brought to his attention, and he used reclamation to justify the Aphrodite temple's destruction. Using the vocabulary of reclamation, Constantine acquired several more sites of Christian significance in the Holy Land.

In Eusebius' church history, there is a bold claim of a Constantinian campaign to destroy the temples, however, there are discrepancies in the evidence. Temple destruction is attested to in 43 cases in the written sources, but only four have been confirmed by archaeological evidence. Historians Frank R. Trombley and Ramsay MacMullen explain that discrepancies between literary sources and archaeological evidence exist because it is common for details in the literary sources to be ambiguous and unclear. For example, Malalas claimed Constantine destroyed all the temples, then he said Theodisius destroyed them all, then he said Constantine converted them all to churches.

Additional calculated acts of desecration – removing the hands and feet or mutilating heads and genitals of statues, and "purging sacred precincts with fire" – were acts committed by the common people during the early centuries. While seen as 'proving' the impotence of the gods, pagan icons were also seen as having been "polluted" by the practice of sacrifice. They were, therefore, in need of "desacralization" or "deconsecration". Antique historian Peter Brown says that, while it was in some ways studiously vindictive, it was not indiscriminate or extensive. Once temples, icons or statues were detached from 'the contagion' of sacrifice, they were seen as having returned to innocence. Many statues and temples were then preserved as art. Professor of Byzantine history Helen Saradi-Mendelovici writes that this process implies appreciation of antique art and a conscious desire to find a way to include it in Christian culture.

Aspects of paganism remained a part of the Roman Empire till its end. Public spectacles, "such as gladiatorial combats (munera), animal hunts (venationes), theatrical performances (ludi scaenici), and chariot races (ludi circenses) resisted Christianization. Roman society accommodated that while disagreeing over the definition and scope of christianization. Lim writes that it was within this process of disagreement that "the category of the secular was developed ... helped buffer select cultural practices, including Roman spectacles, from the claims of those who advocated a more thorough christianization of Roman society."

This produced a vigorous public culture shared by polytheists, Jews and Christians alike. By the time a fifth-century pope attempted to denounce the Lupercalia as 'pagan superstition', religion scholar Elizabeth Clark says "it fell on deaf ears". In Historian R. A. Markus's reading of events, this marked a colonization by Christians of pagan values and practices. For Alan Cameron, the mixed culture that included the continuation of the circuses, amphitheaters and games – sans sacrifice – on into the sixth century involved the secularization of paganism rather than appropriation by Christianity.

The Roman Empire cannot be considered Christianized before Justinian I in the sixth century, though most scholars agree the Empire was never fully Christianized. Archaeologist and historian Judith Herrin attests that, under Justinian, there was considerable destruction. The decree of 528 had already barred pagans from state office when, decades later, Justinian ordered a "persecution of surviving Hellenes, accompanied by the burning of pagan books, pictures and statues" which took place at the Kynêgion. Herrin says it is difficult to assess the degree to which Christians are responsible for the losses of ancient documents in many cases, but in the mid-sixth century, active persecution in Constantinople destroyed many ancient texts.

Other sacred sites

Christianizing native religious and cultural activities and beliefs became official in the sixth century. This argument is preserved in the Venerable Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum in the form of a letter from Pope Gregory to Mellitus (d.604). L. C. Jane has translated Bede's text:

Tell Augustine that he should by no means destroy the temples of the gods but rather the idols within those temples. Let him, after he has purified them with holy water, place altars and relics of the saints in them. For, if those temples are well built, they should be converted from the worship of demons to the service of the true God. Thus, seeing that their places of worship are not destroyed, the people will banish error from their hearts and come to places familiar and dear to them in acknowledgement and worship of the true God. Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (1.30)

When Benedict moved to Monte Cassino about 530, a small temple with a sacred grove and a separate altar to Apollo stood on the hill. The population was still mostly pagan. The land was most likely granted as a gift to Benedict from one of his supporters. This would explain the authoritative way he immediately cut down the groves, removed the altar, and built an oratory before the locals were converted.

Christianization of the Irish landscape was a complex process that varied considerably depending on local conditions. Ancient sites were viewed with veneration, and were excluded or included for Christian use based largely on diverse local feeling about their nature, character, ethos and even location.

In Greece of the sixth century, the Parthenon, the Erechtheion, and the Theseion were turned into churches, but Alison Frantz has won consensus support of her view that, aside from a few rare instances, temple conversions took place in and after the seventh century, after the displacements caused by the Slavic invasions.

In early Anglo-Saxon England, non-stop religious development meant paganism and Christianity were never completely separate. Lorcan Harney has reported that Anglo-Saxon churches were built by pagan barrows after the 11th century. Richard A. Fletcher suggests that, within the British Isles and other areas of northern Europe that were formerly druidic, there are a dense number of holy wells and holy springs that are now attributed to a saint, often a highly local saint, unknown elsewhere. In earlier times many of these were seen as guarded by supernatural forces such as the melusina, and many such pre-Christian holy wells appear to have survived as baptistries. According to Willibald's Life of Saint Boniface, about 723, the missioner Boniface cut down the sacred Donar's Oak and used the lumber to build a church dedicated to St. Peter.

By 771, Charlemagne inherited the long established conflict with the Saxons who regularly specifically targeted churches and monasteries in brutal raids into Frankish territory. In January 772, Charlemagne retaliated with an attack on the Saxon's most important holy site, a sacred grove in southern Engria. "It was dominated by the Irminsul ('Great Pillar'), which was either a (wooden) pillar or an ancient tree and presumably symbolized Germanic religion's 'Universal Tree'. The Franks cut down the Irminsul, looted the accumulated sacrificial treasures (which the King distributed among his men), and torched the entire grove... Charlemagne ordered a Frankish fortress to be erected at the Eresburg".

Early historians of Scandinavian Christianization wrote of dramatic events associated with Christianization in the manner of political propagandists according to John Kousgärd Sørensen [Da] who references the 1987 survey by Birgit Sawyer. Sørensen focuses on the changes of names, both personal and place names, showing that cultic elements were not banned from personal names and are still in evidence today. Considering place names, large numbers of pre-Christian names survive into the present day demonstrating missionaries had the sense that eradicating elements of the old religion was not necessary. Indications are that the process of Christianization in Denmark was peaceful and gradual and did not include the complete eradication of the old cultic associations. However, there are local differences as well.

Outside of Scandinavia, old names did not fare as well.

The highest point in Paris was known in the pre-Christian period as the Hill of Mercury, Mons Mercuri. Evidence of the worship of this Roman god here was removed in the early Christian period and in the ninth century a sanctuary was built here, dedicated to the 10000 martyrs. The hill was then called Mons Martyrum, the name by which it is still known (Mont Martres) (Longnon 1923, 377; Vincent 1937, 307). San Marino in northern Italy, the shrine of Saint Marino, replaced a pre-Christian cultic name for the place: Monte Titano, where the Titans had been worshipped (Pfeiffer 1980, 79). Monte Giove "Hill of Jupiter" came to be known as San Bernardo, in honour of St Bernhard (Pfeiffer 1980, 79). In Germany an old Wodanesberg "Hill of Ódin" was renamed Godesberg (Bach 1956, 553). Ä controversial but not unreasonable suggestion is that the locality named by Ädam of Bremen as Fosetisland "land of the god Foseti" is to be identified with Helgoland "the holy land", the island off the coast of northern Friesland which, according to Ädam, was treated with superstitious respect by all sailors, particularly pirates (Laur 1960, 360 with references).

The practice of replacing pagan beliefs and motifs with Christian, and purposefully not recording the pagan history (such as the names of pagan gods, or details of pagan religious practices), has been compared to the practice of damnatio memoriae.

Conversion of nations from Empire to Early Middle Ages (1 to 800)

Historian Dana L. Robert has written that Christianization across multiple cultures, societies and nations is understandable only through the concept of mission. Missions, as the embodiment of the Great Commission, are driven by a universalist logic, cannot be equated with western colonialism, but are instead a multi-cultural often complex historical process.

Roman Empire

Christianization without coercion

There is agreement among twenty-first century scholars that Christianization of the Roman Empire in its first three centuries did not happen by imposition. Christianization emerged naturally as the cumulative result of multiple individual decisions and behaviors.

While enduring three centuries of on-again, off-again persecution, from differing levels of government ranging from local to imperial, Christianity had remained 'self-organized' and without central authority. In this manner, it reached an important threshold of success between 150 and 250, when it moved from less than 50,000 adherents to over a million, and became self-sustaining and able to generate further growth. Scholars agree there was a significant rise in the absolute number of Christians in the third century.

Role of Constantine

The Christianization of the Roman Empire is frequently divided by scholars into the two phases of before and after the conversion of Constantine in 312. Constantine did not support the suppression of paganism by force. He never engaged in a purge, and there were no pagan martyrs during his reign. Pagans remained in important positions at his court. Constantine ruled for 31 years and despite personal animosity toward paganism, he never outlawed paganism. Yet, Constantine also did not institute many christianizing changes, and those measures he did enact did little to Christianize civic culture.

Making the adoption of Christianity beneficial was Constantine's primary approach to religion, and imperial favor was important to successful Christianization over the next century. However, Constantine must have written the laws that threatened and menaced pagans who continued to practice sacrifice. The element of pagan culture most abhorrent to Christians was sacrifice, and altars used for it were routinely smashed. Christians were deeply offended by the blood of slaughtered victims as they were reminded of their own past sufferings associated with such altars. Richard Lim writes that "Putting an end to blood sacrifice ... thus became the singular goal of Christianization (Barnes 1984; Bradbury 1994, 1995)".

There is no evidence any of the horrific punishments included in the laws against sacrifice were ever enacted. There is no record of anyone being executed for violating religious laws before Tiberius II Constantine at the end of the sixth century (574–582). Still, Bradbury notes that the complete disappearance of public sacrifice by the mid-fourth century "in many towns and cities must be attributed to the atmosphere created by imperial and episcopal hostility".

According to historian Michelle Renee Salzman, there is no evidence to indicate that conversion of pagans through force was an accepted method of Christianization at any point in Late Antiquity. Evidence indicates all uses of imperial force concerning religion were aimed at heretics (who were already Christian) such as the Donatists and the Manichaeans and not at non-believers such as Jews or pagans.

Germanic conversions

Christianization spread through the Roman Empire and neighboring empires in the next few centuries, converting most of the Germanic barbarian peoples who would form the ethnic communities that would become the future nations of Europe. The earliest references to the Christianization of the Germanic peoples are in the writings of Irenaeus (130–202 ), Origen (185–253), and Tertullian (Adv. Jud. VII) (155–220).

Tacitus describes the nature of German religion, and their understanding of the function of a king, as facilitating Christianization. Missionaries aimed at converting Germanic nobility first. Ties of fealty between German kings and their followers often produced mass conversions of entire tribes following their king. Afterwards, their societies began a gradual process of Christianization that took centuries, with some traces of earlier beliefs remaining.

In all cases, Christianization meant "the Germanic conquerors lost their native languages. ... the syntax, the conceptual framework underlying the lexicon, and most of the literary forms, were thoroughly latinized".

St. Boniface led the effort in the mid-eighth century to organize churches in the region that would become modern Germany. As ecclesiastical organization increased, so did the political unity of the Germanic Christians. By the year 962, when Pope John XII anoints King Otto I as Holy Roman Emperor, "Germany and Christendom had become one". This union lasted until dissolved by Napoleon in 1806.

Frankish Empire

The Franks first appear in the historical record in the 3rd century as a confederation of Germanic tribes living on the east bank of the lower Rhine River. Clovis I was the first king of the Franks to unite all of the Frankish tribes under one ruler. The most likely date of his conversion to Catholicism is Christmas Day, 508, following that Battle of Tolbiac. He was baptized in Rheims. The Frankish Kingdom became Christian over the next two centuries.

The conversion of the northern Saxons began with their forced incorporation into the Frankish kingdom in 776 by Charlemagne (r. 768–814). Thereafter, the Saxon's Christian conversion slowly progressed into the eleventh century. Saxons went back and forth between rebellion and submission to the Franks for decades. Charlemagne placed missionaries and courts across Saxony in hopes of pacifying the region, but Saxons rebelled again in 782 with disastrous losses for the Franks. In response, the Frankish King "enacted a variety of draconian measures" beginning with the massacre at Verden in 782 when he ordered the decapitation of 4500 Saxon prisoners offering them baptism as an alternative to death. These events were followed by the severe legislation of the Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniae in 785 which prescribes death to those that are disloyal to the king, harm Christian churches or its ministers, or practice pagan burial rites. His harsh methods of Christianization raised objections from his friends Alcuin and Paulinus of Aquileia. Charlemagne abolished the death penalty for paganism in 797.

Christianization with coercion under Justinian I

The religious policy of the Eastern emperor Justinian I (527 to 565) reflected his conviction that a unified Empire presupposed unity of faith. Justinian's efforts at requiring and enforcing this have led Anthony Kaldellis to write that Justinian is often seen as a tyrant and despot. Unlike Constantine, Justinian did purge the bureaucracy of those who disagreed with him. He sought to centralize imperial government, became increasingly autocratic, and "nothing could be done", not even in the Church, that was contrary to the emperor's will and command. In Kaldellis' estimation, "Few emperors had started so many wars or tried to enforce cultural and religious uniformity with such zeal".

Ireland

Pope Celestine I (422–430) sent Palladius to be the first bishop to the Irish in 431, and in 432, St Patrick began his mission there. Scholars cite many questions (and scarce sources) concerning the next two hundred years. Relying largely on recent archaeological developments, Lorcan Harney has reported to the Royal Academy that the missionaries and traders who came to Ireland in the fifth to sixth centuries were not backed by any military force. Patrick and Palladius and other British and Gaulish missionaries aimed first at converting royal households. Patrick indicates in his Confessio that safety depended upon it. Communities often followed their king en masse.

Great Britain

The most likely date for Christianity getting its first foothold in Britain is sometime around 200. Recent archaeology indicates that it had become an established minority faith by the fourth century. Thereafter, Irish missionaries led by Saint Columba, based in Iona (from 563), converted many Picts. The court of Anglo-Saxon Northumbria, and the Gregorian mission, who landed in 596, did the same to the Kingdom of Kent. They had been sent by Pope Gregory I and were led by Augustine of Canterbury with a mission team from Italy. In both cases, as in other kingdoms of this period, conversion generally began with the royal family and the nobility adopting the new religion first.

Italy

Christianization throughout Italy in Late Antiquity allowed for an amount of religious competition, negotiation, toleration and cooperation; it included syncretism both to and from pagans and Christians; and it allowed for a great deal of secularism.

In 529, Benedict of Nursia established his first monastery at Monte Cassino, Italy. He wrote the Rule of Saint Benedict based on "pray and work". This "Rule" provided the foundation of the majority of the thousands of monasteries that spread across what is modern day Europe thereby becoming a major factor in the Christianization of Europe.

Greece

Christianization was slower in Greece than in most other parts of the Roman empire. There are multiple theories of why, but there is no consensus. What is agreed upon is that, for a variety of reasons, Christianization did not take hold in Greece until the fourth and fifth centuries. Christians and pagans maintained a self imposed segregation throughout the period. J. M. Speiser has argued that this was the situation throughout the country, and "rarely was there any significant contact, hostile or otherwise" between Christians and pagans in Greece.

Timothy Gregory says, "it is admirably clear that organized paganism survived well into the sixth century throughout the empire and in parts of Greece (at least in the Mani) until the ninth century or later". Gregory adds that pagan ideas and forms persisted most in practices related to healing, death, and the family.

Albania

Most scholars agree that Christianity was officially adopted in Caucasian Albania in AD 313 or AD 315 when Gregory the Illuminator baptized the Albanian king and ordained the first bishop Tovmas, the founder of the Albanian church. It is highly probable that Christianity covered the whole of antique Caucasian Albania by the late fourth century.

The king of the country then was the founder of the Arsacid dynasty of Albania Vachagan I the Brave (but not his grandson Urnayr), and the king of Armenia was Tiridat III the Great, also Arsacid. As M.-L. Chaumont established in 1969, the latter, with the help of Gregory the Illuminator, adopted the Christian faith at the state level in June 311, two months after the publication of the Edict of Sardica “On Tolerance” by Emperor Galerius (293–311). In 313, after the appearance of the Edict of Milan, Tiridat attracted the younger allies of Armenia Iberia-Kartli, Albania-Aluank' and Lazika-Egerk' (Colchis) to the process of Christianization. In the first half of 315, Gregory the Illuminator baptized the Albanian king (who had arrived in Armenia) and ordained the first bishop Tovmas (the founder of the Albanian church, with the center in the capital Kapalak) for his country: he was from the city of Satala in Lesser Armenia. Probably, at the same stage, Christianization covered the whole of antique Albania, i.e. territory north of the Kura River, to the Caspian Sea and the Derbend Pass.

Armenia, Georgia, Ethiopia and Eritrea

In 301, Armenia became the first kingdom in history to adopt Christianity as an official state religion. The transformations taking place in these centuries of the Roman Empire had been slower to catch on in Caucasia. Indigenous writing did not begin until the fifth century, there was an absence of large cities, and many institutions such as monasticism did not exist in Caucasia until the seventh century. Scholarly consensus places the Christianization of the Armenian and Georgian elites in the first half of the fourth century, although Armenian tradition says Christianization began in the first century through the Apostles Thaddeus and Bartholomew. This is said to have eventually led to the conversion of the Arsacid family, (the royal house of Armenia), through St. Gregory the Illuminator in the early fourth century.

Christianization took many generations and was not a uniform process. Robert Thomson writes that it was not the officially established hierarchy of the church that spread Christianity in Armenia. "It was the unorganized activity of wandering holy men that brought about the Christianization of the populace at large". The most significant stage in this process was the development of a script for the native tongue.

Scholars do not agree on the exact date of Christianization of Georgia, but most assert the early 4th century when Mirian III of the Kingdom of Iberia (known locally as Kartli) adopted Christianity. According to medieval Georgian Chronicles, Christianization began with Andrew the Apostle and culminated in the evangelization of Iberia through the efforts of a captive woman known in Iberian tradition as Saint Nino in the fourth century. Fifth, 8th, and 12th century accounts of the conversion of Georgia reveal how pre-Christian practices were taken up and reinterpreted by Christian narrators.

In 325, the Kingdom of Aksum (Modern Ethiopia and Eritrea) became the second country to declare Christianity as its official state religion.

A seismic moment on the Iberian Peninsula

Hispania had become part of the Roman Republic in the third century BC. Christian communities can be found dating to the third century, and bishoprics had been created in León, Mérida and Zaragoza by that same period. In AD 300 an ecclesiastical council held in Elvira was attended by 20 bishops. With the end of persecution in 312, churches, baptistries, hospitals and episcopal palaces were erected in most major towns, and many landed aristocracy embraced the faith and converted sections of their villas into chapels.

In 416, the Germanic Visigoths crossed into Hispania as Roman allies. They converted to Arian Christianity shortly before 429. The Visigothic King Sisebut came to the throne in 612 when the Roman emperor Heraclius surrendered his Spanish holdings. Sisebut banished all Jews who would not submit to baptism. Bouchier says 90,000 Hebrews were baptized while others fled to France or North Africa. This contradicted the traditional position of the Catholic Church on the Jews, and scholars refer to this shift as a "seismic moment" in Christianization.

Nations in Europe and Asia of the High and Late Middle Ages (800 to 1500)

In Central and Eastern Europe of the 8th and 9th centuries, Christianization was an integral part of the political centralization of the new nations being formed. In Eastern Europe, the combination of Christianization and political centralization created what Peter Brown describes as, "specific micro-Christendoms". Bulgaria, Bohemia (which became Czechoslovakia), the Serbs and the Croats, along with Hungary, and Poland, voluntarily joined the Western, Latin church, sometimes pressuring their people to follow. Full Christianization of the populace often took centuries to accomplish. Conversion began with local elites who wanted to convert because they gained prestige and power through matrimonial alliances and participation in imperial rituals. Christianization then spread from the center to the edges of society.

Historian Ivo Štefan has written, "Although Christian authors often depicted the conversion of rulers as the triumph of the new faith, the reality was much more complex. Christianization of everyday life took centuries, with many non-Christian elements surviving in rural communities until the beginning of the modern era".

Language and literature

In the Christianization process of Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia territories, the two Byzantine missionary brothers Saints Constantine-Cyril and Methodius played the key roles beginning in 863. They spent approximately 40 months in Great Moravia continuously translating texts and teaching students. Cyril developed the first Slavic alphabet and translated the Gospel into the Old Church Slavonic language. Old Church Slavonic became the first literary language of the Slavs and, eventually, the educational foundation for all Slavic nations. In 869 Methodius was consecrated as (arch)bishop of Pannonia and the Great Moravia regions.

Bulgaria

Official Christianization began in 864/5 under Khan Boris I (852– 889). Boris I determined that imposing Christianity was the answer to internal peace and external security. The decision was partly military, partly domestic, and partly to diminish the power of the Proto-Bulgarian nobility. A number of nobles reacted violently; 52 were executed. After prolonged negotiations with both Rome and Constantinople, an autocephalous Bulgarian Orthodox Church was formed that used the newly created Cyrillic script to make the Bulgarian language the language of the Church. After a series of victories in wars against the Byzantines led by Symeon (893 to 927), the Byzantines recognized the Bulgarian Patriarchate.

Serbia

The full conversion of the Slavs dates to the time of Eastern Orthodox missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius during the reign of the Byzantine emperor Basil I (r. 867–886). The first diocese of Serbia, the Diocese of Ras, is mentioned in the ninth century. Serbs were baptized sometime before Basil I, who was asked by the Ragusians for help, sent imperial admiral Nikita Orifas to Knez Mutimir to aid in the war against the Saracens in 869. Serbia can certainly be seen as a Christian nation by 870.

Croatia

According to Constantine VII, Christianization of Croats began in the 7th century. The conversion of Croatia is said to have been completed by the time of Duke Trpimir's death in 864. In 879, under duke Branimir, Croatia received papal recognition as a state from Pope John VIII.

Bohemia/Czech lands

What was Bohemia forms much of the Czech Republic, comprising the central and western portions of the country.

Significant missionary activity only took place after Charlemagne defeated the Avar Khaganate several times at the end of the 8th century and beginning of the ninth centuries. The first Christian church of the Western and Eastern Slavs (known to written sources) was built in 828 by Pribina (c. 800–861) ruler and Prince of the Principality of Nitra. In 880, Pope John VIII issued the bull Industriae Tuae, by which he set up the independent ecclesiastical province with Archbishop Methodius as its head. Relics withstood the fall of Great Moravia.

Poland

According to historians Franciszek Longchamps de Bérier and Rafael Domingo: "A pre-Christian Poland never existed. Poland entered history suddenly when some western lands inhabited by the Slavs embraced Christianity". The dynastic interests of the Piasts produced the establishment of both church and state in Great Poland (Greater Poland, often known by its Polish name "Wielkopolska" is a historical region of west-central Poland. Its chief and largest city is Poznań.). The "Baptism of Poland" (Template:Lang-pl) in 966, refers to the baptism of Mieszko I, the first ruler. Mieszko's baptism was followed by the building of churches and the establishment of an ecclesiastical hierarchy. Mieszko saw baptism as a way of strengthening his hold on power, with the active support he could expect from the bishops, as well as a unifying force for the Polish people.

Hungary

Christianity existed in what would become present day Hungary from the time of Roman rule. Around 952, the tribal chief Gyula II of Transylvania, visited Constantinople and was baptized, bringing home with him Hierotheus who was designated bishop of Turkia (Hungary). The conversion of Gyula at Constantinople and the missionary work of Bishop Hierotheus are depicted as leading directly to the court of St. Stephen, the first Hungarian king, a Christian in a still mostly pagan country.

Stephen suppressed rebellion, organized both the Hungarian State (with strong royal authority), and the church, by inviting missionaries, and suppressing paganism by making laws such as requiring people to attend church every Sunday. Soon the Hungarian Kingdom had two archbishops and 8 bishops, and a defined state structure with province governors that answered to the King. Saint Stephen was the first Hungarian monarch elevated to sainthood for his Christian characteristics and not because he suffered a martyr's death. Hungarian Christianity and the kingdom's ecclesiastical and temporal administrations consolidated towards the end of the 11th century.

Scandinavia (Sweden, Norway and Denmark)

Christianization of Scandinavia is divided into two stages by Professor of medieval archaeology Alexandra Sanmark. Stage 1 involves missionaries who arrived in pagan territory in the 800s, on their own, without secular support. Florence Harmer writes "Between A.D. 960 and 1008 three Scandinavian kings were converted to Christianity". The Danish King Harald Gormsen (Bluetooth) was baptized c. 960. The conversion of Norway was begun by Hákon Aðalsteinsfostri between 935 and 961, but the wide-scale conversion of this kingdom was undertaken by King Olaf Tryggvason in c. 995. In Sweden, King Olof Erikson Skötkonung accepted Christianity around 1000.

According to Peter Brown, Scandinavians adopted Christianity of their own accord c.1000. Anders Winroth explains that Iceland became the model for the institutional conversion of the rest of Scandinavia after AD 1000. Winroth demonstrates that Scandinavians were not passive recipients of the new religion, but converted to Christianity because it was in their political, economic, and cultural interests to do so.

Stage 2 began when a secular ruler took charge of Christianization in their territory, and ended when a defined and organized ecclesiastical network was established. By 1350, Scandinavia was an integral part of Western Christendom.

Romania

In the last two decades of the 9th century, missionaries Clement and Naum, (who were disciples of the brothers Cyril and Methodius who had converted the Old Slavic language to a written form in 863), had arrived in the region spreading the Cyrillic alphabet. By the 10th century when the Bulgarian Tsars extended their territory to include Transylvania, they were able to impose the Bulgarian church model and its Slavic language without opposition. Nearly all Romanian words concerning Christian faith have Latin roots, while words regarding the organization of the church are Slavonic.

Romanian historian Ioan-Aurel Pop writes "Christian fervor and the massive conversion to Christianity among the Slavs may have led to the canonic conversion of the last heathen, or ecclesiastically unorganized, Romanian islands". For Romanians, the church model was "overwhelming, omnipresent, putting pressure on the Romanians and often accompanied by a political element". This ecclesiastical and political tradition continued until the 19th century.

Northern crusades

From the days of Charlemagne (747–814), the fierce pagan tribes east of the Baltic Sea lived on the physical frontiers of Christendom in what has today become Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the Kaliningrad oblast (Prussia). They survived by raiding – stealing crucial resources, killing, and enslaving captives – from the countries that surrounded them including Denmark, Prussia, Germany and Poland. When the Pope (Blessed) Eugenius III (1145–1153) called for a Second Crusade in response to the fall of Edessa in 1144, the Germanic, Danish and Polish nobles refused to go. They did not see crusading as a moral, faith based duty. They saw it as a tool for territorial expansion, alliance building, wealth, and empowerment. In fact, the result according to historian Aiden Lilianfeld was that, "The conquering forces of the Northern Crusades brought more territory under German control than nearly any other concerted expansion in the history of the Holy Roman Empire".

Combined with a need to permanently stop the raiding, they requested permission to subdue the Baltic instead. In 1147, Eugenius' Divini dispensatione, gave the eastern nobles full crusade indulgences to do so. The Northern, (or Baltic), Crusades followed, taking place, off and on, with and without papal support, from 1147 to 1316.

Since, as law professor Eric Christiansen indicates, the primary motivation for these wars was the noble's desire for territorial expansion and wealth, taking the time for peaceful conversion did not fit in with these plans. Conversion by these princes was almost always a result of conquest. According to Fonnesberg-Schmidt, "While the theologians maintained that conversion should be voluntary, there was a widespread pragmatic acceptance of conversion obtained through political pressure or military coercion". There were often severe consequences for populations that chose to resist.

Lithuania

The last of the Baltic crusades was the conflict between the mostly German Teutonic Order and Lithuania in the far northeastern reaches of Europe. Lithuania is sometimes described as "the last pagan nation in medieval Europe".

The Teutonic Order was a crusading organization for the Christian Holy Land founded by members of the Knights Hospitaller. Medieval historian Aiden Lilienfeld says "In 1226, however, the Duke of Mazovia ... granted the Order territory in eastern Prussia in exchange for help in subjugating pagan Baltic peoples".

Lilienfeld says "their status as a crusading 'monastic' order meant that they could only claim autonomy and legitimacy so long as they could convince the other European Catholic states, from whom they received recruits and financial support, that the Order had a job to do: to convert pagan populations that Catholic rulers perceived to be a threat to Christendom. The greatest of these perceived threats was the Grand Duchy of Lithuania."

Over the course of the next 200 years, the Order expanded its territory to cover much of the eastern Baltic coast.

In 1384, the ten year old daughter of Louis the Great, King of Hungary and Poland, and his wife, Elizabeth of Bosnia, named Jadwiga, was crowned king of Poland. One year later, a marriage was arranged between her and the Grand Duke Jogaila of Lithuania. Jogaila was baptized, married, and crowned king in 1386 beginning the 400 year shared history of Poland and Lithuania. This would seem to obviate the need for the Order's crusade, yet activity against local populations, particularly the Samogition peoples of the eastern Baltic, continued in a frequently brutal manner.

The Teutonic Order eventually fell to Poland-Lithuania in 1525. Lilienfeld says "After this, the Order's territory was divided between Poland-Lithuania and the Hohenzollern dynasty of Brandenburg, putting an end to the monastic state and the formal Northern Crusade. All of the Order's most powerful cities–Danzig (Gdansk), Elbing (Elblag), Marienburg (Malbork), and Braunsberg (Braniewo)–now fall within Poland in the 21st century, except for Koenigsburg (Kaliningrad) in Russia."

Kievan Rus'

Around 978, Vladimir (978–1015), the son of Sviatoslav, seized power in Kiev. Slavic historian Ivo Štefan writes that, Vladimir examined monotheism for himself, and "Around that same time, Vladimir conquered Cherson in the Crimea, where, according to the Tale of Bygone Years, he was baptized". After returning to Kiev, the same text describes Vladimir as unleashing "a systematic destruction of pagan idols and the construction of Christian churches in their place".

Bohemia, Poland, and Hungary had become part of western Latin Christianity, while the Rus' adopted Christianity from Byzantium, leading them down a different path. A specific form of Rus' Christianity formed quickly.

The Rus' dukes maintained exclusive control of the church which was financially dependent upon them. The prince appointed the clergy to positions in government service; satisfied their material needs; determined who would fill the higher ecclesiastical positions; and directed the synods of bishops in the Kievan metropolitanate. This new Christian religious structure was imposed upon the socio-political and economic fabric of the land by the authority of the state's rulers. According to Andrzej Poppe, Slavic historian, it is fully justifiable to call the Church of Rus' a state church. The Church strengthened the authority of the Prince, and helped to justifiy the expansion of Kievan empire into new territories through missionary activity.

Clergy formed a new layer in the hierarchy of society. They taught Christian values, a Christian world view, the intellectual traditions of Antiquity, and translated religious texts into local vernacular language which introduced literacy to all members of the princely dynasty, including women and the general populace. Monasteries of the twelfth century became key spiritual, intellectual, art, and craft centers. Under Vladimir's son Yaroslav I the Wise (1016–1018, 1019–1054), a building and cultural boom took place. The Church of Rus' gradually developed into an independent political force in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Iberian Reconquista

Between 711 and 718, the Iberian peninsula had been conquered by Muslims in the Umayyad conquest. The centuries long military struggle to reclaim the peninsula from Muslim rule, called the Reconquista, took place until the Christian Kingdoms, that would later become Spain and Portugal, reconquered the Moorish states of Al-Ándalus in 1492 (see: Battle of Covadonga in 722 and the Conquest of Granada in 1492).

Isabel and Ferdinand united the country with themselves as its first royalty quickly establishing the Spanish Inquisition in order to consolidate state interest. The Spanish inquisition was originally authorized by the Pope, yet the initial inquisitors proved so severe that the Pope almost immediately opposed it; to no avail. Ferdinand is said to have pressured the Pope, and in October 1483, a papal bull conceded control of the inquisition to the Spanish crown. According to Spanish historian José Casanova, the Spanish inquisition became the first truly national, unified and centralized state institution.

Early colonialism (1500s–1700s)

Following the geographic discoveries of the 1400s and 1500s, increasing population and inflation led the emerging nation-states of Portugal, Spain, and France, the Dutch Republic, and England to explore, conquer, colonize and exploit the newly discovered territories. While colonialism was primarily economic and political, it opened the door for Christian missionaries who accompanied the early explorers, or soon followed them, thereby connecting Christianization and colonialism.

History also connects Christianization with opposition to colonialism. Historian Lamin Sanneh writes that there is an equal amount of evidence of both missionary support and missionary opposition to colonialism through "protest and resistance both in the church and in politics". In Sanneh's view, missions were "colonialism's Achilles heel, not its shield". He goes on to explain this is because, "Despite their role as allies of the empire, missions also developed the vernacular that inspired sentiments of national identity and thus undercut Christianity's identification with colonial rule". According to historical theologian Justo Gonzales, colonialism and missions each sometimes aided and sometimes impeded the other.

Different state actors created colonies that varied widely. Some colonies had institutions that allowed native populations to reap some benefits. Others became extractive colonies with predatory rule that produced an autocracy with a dismal record.

Disease

A catastrophe was wrought upon the Amerindians by contact with Europeans. Old World diseases like smallpox, measles, malaria and many others spread through Indian populations. "In most of the New World 90 percent or more of the native population was destroyed by wave after wave of previously unknown afflictions. Explorers and colonists did not enter an empty land but rather an emptied one".

Spanish and Portuguese India, Mexico and the Americas

Under Spanish and Portuguese rule, creating a Christian Commonwealth was the goal of missions. This included a significant role, from the beginning of colonial rule, played by Catholic missionaries.

Portugal practiced extractive colonialism. Early attempts at Christianization were not very successful, and those who had been converted were not well instructed. In the church's view, this led them into "errors and misunderstandings".

In December 1560, the Portuguese Inquisition arrived in Goa, India. This was largely the result of the crown's fear that converted Jews were becoming dominant in Goa and might ally with Ottoman Jews to threaten Portuguese control of the spice trade. After 1561 the Inquisition had a practical monopoly over heresy, and its "policy of terror ... was reflected in the approximately 15,000 trials which took place between 1561 and 1812, involving more than 200 death sentences".

The Spanish military was known for its ill-treatment of Amerindians. Spanish missionaries are generally credited with championing efforts to initiate protective laws for the Indians and for working against their enslavement. This led to debate on the nature of human rights. In 16th-century Spain the issue resulted in a crisis of conscience and the birth of modern international law.

In words of outrage similar to those earlier missionaries, Junipero Serra wrote of the depredations of the soldiers against Indian women in California in 1770. Following through on missionary complaints, Viceroy Bucareli drew up the first regulatory code of California, the Echeveste Regulations. Missionary opposition and military prosecution failed to protect the Amerindian women. On the one hand, California missionaries sought to protect the Amerindians from exploitation by the conquistadores, soldiers and colonists. On the other hand, Jesuits, Franciscans and other orders relied on corporal punishment and an institutionalized racialism for training the "untamed savages".

French Canada, North America, west Africa and the West Indies

In the seventeenth century, the French used assimilation as a means of establishing colonies controlled by the state rather than private companies. Within the context of western geocentrism, assimilation (integration of a small group into a larger one) has been used to legitimize European colonization morally and politically for centuries. It advocated multiple aspects of European culture such as "civility, social organization, law, economic development, civil status", dress, bodily description, religion and more to the exclusion of local culture.

Their goal was a political and religious community representative of an ideal society as articulated through the progressive theory of history. This common theory of the time asserts that history shows the normal progression of society is toward constant betterment; that humans could therefore eventually be perfected; that primitive nations could be forced to become modern states wherein that would happen.

This was linked with the emergence of the modern state and was instrumental in the development of racialism.

Dutch Indonesia, South Africa, Curaçao, New Guinea

The Dutch Reformed church was not a dominant influence in the Dutch colonies. However, the Dutch East Indies Trading Company was often brutal in its use of assimilation in its Asian port towns, encouraging intermarriage and cultural uniformity, to establish colonies. Slavery was practiced in these Dutch colonies until 1863.

British North America, Australia, New Zealand, Asia and Africa

Colonies in the Americas experienced a distinct type of colonialism called settler colonialism that replaces indigenous populations with a settler society. Settler colonial states include Canada, the United States, Australia, and South Africa.

Great Britain's colonial expansion was for the most part driven by commercial ambitions and competition with France. Investors saw converting the natives as a secondary concern. Laura Stevens writes that British missions were more talk than walk. From the beginning, the British talked (and wrote) a great deal about converting native populations, but actual efforts were few and feeble. These missions were universally Protestant, were based on belief in the traditional duty to "teach all nations", the sense of obligation to extend the benefits of Christianity to heathen lands just as Europe itself had been "civilized" centuries before, and a fervent pity for those who had never heard the gospel. Historian Jacob Schacter says "ambivalent benevolence" was at the heart of most British and American attitudes toward Native Americans. The British did not create widespread conversion.

In the United States

Missionaries played a crucial role in the acculturation of the Cherokee and other American Indians. A peace treaty with the Cherokee in 1794 stimulated a cultural revival and the welcoming of white missionaries. Historian Mark Noll has written "what followed was a slow but steady acceptance of the Christian faith". Both Christianization and the Cherokee people received a fatal blow after the discovery of gold in north Georgia in 1828. Cherokee land was seized by the government, and the Cherokee people were transported West in what became known as the Trail of tears.

The history of boarding schools for the indigenous populations in Canada and the US is not generally good. While the majority of native children did not attend boarding school at all, of those that did, recent studies indicate some found happiness and refuge while others found suffering and abuse.

Historian William Gerald McLoughlin has written that, humanitarians who saw the decline of indigenous people with regret, advocated education and assimilation as the native's only hope for survival. Over time, many missionaries came to respect the virtues of native culture. "After 1828, most missionaries found it difficult to defend the policies of their government" writes McLoughlin.

The beginning of American Protestant missions abroad followed the sailing of William Carey from England to India in 1793 after the Great awakening.

Africa (19th to 21st centuries)

Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, New Imperialism was a second wave of colonialism that lasted until World War II. Economists Jan Henryk Pierskalla and Alexander de Juan write, "Early colonial encounters in the Americas of the fifteenth century had little in common with the "scramble for Africa" during the age of New Imperialism." During this time, colonial powers gained territory at almost three times the rate of the earlier period. By 1914, the two largest and most powerful empires, the British empire and the Japanese empire, extended over 85% of the globe.

Some of the different colonial practices, along with the pre-existing conditions in the colonial states, have had a negative long-term effect socially and politically, and on economic development, democracy, and the ability of their government to accomplish policy goals. The political legacies of colonialism include political instability, violence, and ethnic exclusion which is also linked to civil strife and civil war.

While the sixteenth century has generally been seen as the "great age of Catholic expansion", the nineteenth century was that for Protestantism. Sociologists Alexander de Juan and Jan Henryk Pierskalla, have written that

Sociologists have identified the key role of Christian missionaries, in particular Protestant missionaries, in generating a democratic legacy for many former colonies, through the spread of literacy, mass printing, and voluntary organizations.

Although contact with Christian missionaries might have had beneficial long-term effects for human capital, political participation, and eventually democratization, contact with the colonial slave trade has had pernicious effects.

In the process of Christianization, the Bible and other Christian writings have been translated into more than half of the world's over 7000 languages. Missionaries of this era worked with indigenous people to create a written grammar, a lexicon of native traditions, and a dictionary of their vernacular language, in approximately 90% of those languages. Tracing the impact of this shows local native cultures have responded with "movements of indigenization and cultural liberation".

Sanneh writes that "The translated scripture ... has become the benchmark of awakening and renewal" in Africa. According to anthropologist Elizabeth Isichei, it is the transition to literacy that translation of scripture and missionary schools created that engendered much of the transformation that followed. In Sanneh's view, this means that western missionaries pioneered the "largest, most diverse and most vigorous movement of cultural renewal in history" of Africa.

In 1900 under colonial rule there were just under 9 million Christians in Africa. By 1960, and the end of colonialism there were about 60 million. By 2005, African Christians had increased to 393 million, about half of the continent's total population at that time. Population in Africa has continued to grow with the percentage of Christians remaining at about half in 2022. According to Isichei, "The expansion of Christianity in twentieth-century Africa has been so dramatic that it has been called 'the fourth great age of Christian expansion'."

Zaire

Simon Kimbangu's movement, the Kimbanguist church, had a radical reputation in its early days in the Congo, was suppressed for forty years, and is now the most studied of all the African prophet movements. It has become an establishment church in Zaire, is very much involved in modern Zairian life, and with upwards of 3 million members, is now the largest independent church in Africa.

Whether Kimbanguism is a political or a religious movement is resolved by making a distinction between the genuine Kimbanguists and the pseudo-Kimbanguists, also known as the Ngunzists. Of first importance to genuine Kimbanguism is unquestioning acceptance of the intercession of Christ. Measured according to Reformation criteria - a firm rejection of ancestor worship, an ecclesiastical organization, dignity in worship, the subordinance of healing, a firm commitment to stated moral principles, public generosity, volunteer work, and the attempt to promote industry and economy in the membership - the Church of Jesus Christ of this Earth by the Prophet Simon Kimbangu (EJCSK) is a Christian religion.

Jules Rosette shows how ritual symbolization is the training ground, the interface, for the translation of the African into the Christian, "how ritual vocabulary translates tradition into new practices." Christianity, she suggests, provides the grammar and syntax, as it were, and traditional customs the lexicon that is formulated by Christianity into a new religious argument.

Tanzania

In Tanzania, a child is not a full member of society until they reach adulthood. Adulthood begins at puberty, but a man fully enters adult society by marrying, a woman by giving birth, and the transition from childhood to adulthood is marked by initiation rites. For the Maasai, this includes circumcision of both boys and girls.

Anne Marie Stoner-Eby writes, "The Christianization of initiation rites in the Anglican Diocese of Maasai in what is now southeastern Tanzania is arguably the most famous instance of ‘adaptation’ in African mission Christianity." It has long been assumed that Vincent Lucas, Bishop of Maasai (1926-1944), initiated the Christianizing of the initiation rites in an effort to adapt, and not destroy African cultural life, publishing what became a famous essay on ‘The Christian Approach to Non-Christian Customs’.

Initiation was one of a chief's most important and prestigious responsibilities, but long before ‘adaptation’ became a missionary watchword, Maasai clergy had taken advantage of a crucial increase in their numbers to place jando la kikristo (Christian initiation) in place of unyago wa lupanda (Lupanda initiation in ancestor worship) by 1913.

Other countries

Eastern Maghrib was one of the first three places in the world where Christians were a majority.

In the early twenty-first century outside the United States, Kenya has the largest yearly meeting of Quakers. In Uganda, more Anglicans attend church than do so in England. Ahafo, Ghana is recognized as more vigorously Christian than any place in the United Kingdom. There is revival in East Africa, and vigorous women's movements called Rukwadzano in Zimbabwe and Manyano in South Africa. The Apostles of John Maranke, which began in Rhodesia, now have branches in seven countries.

As in all preceding cultures, Christianity in Africa has been influenced by local African culture just as local African culture has absorbed aspects of Christianity. Whether a church is 'orthodox' or 'syncretistic' is not an academic question, yet it remains a concern for anthropologists attempting to record a history of religious changes in Africa. Isichei writes that the history of religion should focus on "what is central to religion: belief, ritual and the religious community" while still recognizing that religion is of central importance to contemporary world history.

Decolonization

Just as Christianization had a role in colonialism, it has also played a central role in decolonization moving former colonies toward independence. Shifting beliefs about Christianity's role in empire began in France in the 1930s and 40s. Christians were rethinking the relationship between religion and politics. From the 1960s onward, this new understanding of theology combined with Christian activism, was instrumental in motivating indigenous people, such as the Algerians, to work toward and fight for independence from foreign governments. This in turn, influenced global trends. In some colonial societies, Christian missionaries played a transformative role in the development of decolonization and post-colonial Christianity, where in others, the nature of the Christian missionary presence shaped the pattern of decolonization as one of violence and opposition.

In the post-colonial world, it has become necessary for Christianization to break free of its colonial moorings, says Sanneh. Mark Boyle writes that:

Christianity's historical alignment with the Western project and histories of colonialism and imperialism raises questions about its capacity to serve as a progressive force in global affairs today. Placing Christianity under postcolonial scrutiny, ... Christianity offers a variety of complex, contradictory, and competing approaches to peace building that variously defend the hegemonic ambitions of the West on the one hand, and support critical practices that usurp and decenter the sovereign supremacy assumed by the West on the other.

Global Christianization

Dana L. Robert has written that one third of the world's population is now Christian in a huge variety of forms. The geographic range, cultural diversity and organizational variety of these many types of Christians includes traditional Catholics in Brazil, Apostles in Zimbabwe, Coptic Christians still surviving in Egypt, new Pentecostals in Ghana, established Lutherans in Germany, and secret House church believers in China.

In the early twenty-first century, Christianity has been declining in the West and growing in former colonial lands. Sanneh says Christianity has become the most diverse, pluralist, fastest growing religion in the world.

China

Joseph Tse-Hei Lee observes that, historically, Christianity has long had a tendency to flourish in areas where there is suffering, dislocation and warfare, and that this is evident in its modern development in China. Chaoshan in northeastern Guangdong Province has transitioned from a state of disintegration in the late imperial era (960-1895) to one of modern entrepreneurial cosmopolitanism with the aid of Christianization. Indigenization happened quickly and Christianization has survived through family lineage networks, which function like a single corporate unit, and native congregations.

Christianity grew as a grassroots movement in rural areas first, through self-propagation and native agency. This led to an overlap of religious, kinship and territorial identities, so that when the socio-political order shattered, the church was able to step in. Lee sees this as revealing "the importance of the church as a major building block and a viable civic institution in the midst of widespread chaos and unrest".

Lee writes that hostility toward Christianity as expressed in the Anti-Christian Movement (1925-1926) and in the anti-religious Maoist Era (1949-1976), "the impact of regime change, encounters with secular state-building, the church's involvement in transforming local religious and socio-economic landscapes, and the importance of religious agency", are all key factors in Chinese Christianity. There exists a multiplicity of Chinese Christian experiences and religiosity, and they all tend to reject the view that Christianity is incompatible with modern Chinese culture.

Notes

1. The Ichthys, Christian Fish, also known colloquially as the Jesus Fish, was an early Christian symbol. Early Christians used the Ichthys symbol to identify themselves as followers of Jesus Christ and to proclaim their commitment to Christianity. Ichthys is the Ancient Greek word for "fish", which explains why the sign resembles a fish; the Greek word ιχθυς is an acronym for the phrase transliterated as "Iesous Christos Theou Yios Soter", that is, "Jesus Christ, God's Son, the Savior". There are several other possible connections with Christian tradition relating to this symbol: that it was a reference to the feeding of the multitude; that it referred to some of the apostles having previously been fishermen; or that the word Christ was pronounced by Jews in a similar way to the Hebrew word for fish (though Nuna is the normal Aramaic word for fish, making this seem unlikely).
2. A number of elements coincided to end the temples, but none of them were strictly religious. Earthquakes caused much of the destruction of this era. Civil conflict and external invasions also destroyed many temples and shrines. Economics was also a factor.

   The Roman economy of the third and fourth centuries struggled, and traditional polytheism was expensive and dependent upon donations from the state and private elites. Roger S. Bagnall reports that imperial financial support of the Temples declined markedly after Augustus. Lower budgets meant the physical decline of urban structures of all types.

   This progressive decay was accompanied by an increased trade in salvaged building materials, as the practice of recycling became common in Late Antiquity. Economic struggles meant that necessity drove much of the destruction and conversion of pagan religious monuments.

3. At the sacred oak and spring at Mamre, a site venerated and occupied by Jews, Christians, and pagans alike, the literature says Constantine ordered the burning of the idols, the destruction of the altar, and erection of a church on the spot of the temple. The archaeology of the site shows that Constantine's church, along with its attendant buildings, only occupied a peripheral sector of the precinct, leaving the rest unhindered. In Gaul of the fourth century, 2.4% of known temples and religious sites were destroyed, some by barbarians. In Africa, the city of Cyrene has good evidence of the burning of several temples; Asia Minor has produced one weak possibility; in Greece the only strong candidate may relate to a barbarian raid instead of Christians. Egypt has produced no archaeologically confirmed temple destructions from this period except the Serapeum. In Italy there is one; Britain has the highest percentage with 2 out of 40 temples.
4. There are only a few examples of Christian officials having any involvement in the violent destruction of pagan shrines. Sulpicius Severus, in his Vita, describes Martin of Tours as a dedicated destroyer of temples and sacred trees, saying "wherever he destroyed heathen temples, there he used immediately to build either churches or monasteries". There is agreement that Martin destroyed temples and shrines, but there is a discrepancy between the written text and archaeology: none of the churches attributed to Martin can be shown to have existed in Gaul in the fourth century.

   In the 380s, one eastern official (generally identified as the praetorian prefect Cynegius), used the army under his control and bands of monks to destroy temples in the eastern provinces. According to Alan Cameron, this violence was unofficial and without support from Christian clergy or state magistrates.

5. There have, historically, been many different scholarly views on Constantine's religious policies. For example Jacob Burckhardt has characterized Constantine as being "essentially unreligious" and as using the Church solely to support his power and ambition. Drake asserts, "critical reaction against Burckhardt's anachronistic reading has been decisive". According to Burckhardt, being Christian automatically meant being intolerant, while Drake says that assumes a uniformity of belief within Christianity that does not exist in the historical record.

   Brown calls Constantine's conversion a "very Roman conversion". "He had risen to power in a series of deathly civil wars, destroyed the system of divided empire, believed the Christian God had brought him victory, and therefore regarded that god as the proper recipient of religio". Brown says Constantine was over 40, had most likely been a traditional polytheist, and was a savvy and ruthless politician when he declared himself a Christian.

6. In his 1984 book, Christianizing the Roman Empire: (A.D. 100–400), and again in 1997, Ramsay MacMullen argues that widespread Christian anti–pagan violence, as well as persecution from a "bloodthirsty" and violent Constantine (and his successors), caused the Christianization of the Roman Empire in the fourth century. Salzman describes MacMullen's book as "controversial". In a review of it, T. D. Barnes has written that MacMullen's book treats "non-Christian evidence as better and more reliable than Christian evidence", generalizes from pagan polemics as if they were unchallenged fact, misses important facts entirely, and shows an important selectivity in his choices of what ancient and modern works he discusses. David Bentley Hart also gives a detailed discussion of MacMullen's "careless misuse of textual evidence". Schwarz says MacMullen is an example of a modern minimalist. Schwarz suggests that minimalism is beginning to show signs of decline because it tends to understate the significance of some human actions, and so makes assumptions that are hard to support. As a result, "MacMullen's account of Christianization as basically an aggregation of accidents and contingencies" is not broadly supported. In Gaul, some of the most influential textual sources on pagan-Christian violence concerns Martin, Bishop of Tours (c. 371–397), the Pannonian ex-soldier who is "solely credited in the historical record as the militant converter of Gaul". These texts have been criticized for lacking historical veracity, even by ancient critics, but they are still useful for illuminating views of violence held in late fourth century Gaul. The portion of the sources devoted to attacks on pagans is limited, and they all revolve around Martin using his miraculous powers to overturn pagan shrines and idols, but not to ever threaten or harm people. Salzman concludes "None of Martin's interventions led to the deaths of any Gauls, pagan or Christian. Even if one doubts the exact veracity of these incidents, the assertion that Martin preferred non-violent conversion techniques says much about the norms for conversion in Gaul" at the time Martin's biography was written. Archaeologist David Riggs writes that evidence from North Africa reveals a tolerance of religious pluralism and a vitality of traditional paganism much more than it shows any form of religious violence or coercion: "persuasion, such as the propagation of Christian apologetics, appears to have played a more critical role in the eventual "triumph of Christianity" than was previously assumed".

   According to Raymond Van Dam, "an approach which emphasizes conflict flounders as a means for explaining both the initial attractions of a new cult like Christianity, as well as, more importantly, its persistence". In the twenty first century, this model of early Christianization has become marginalized.

7. Grave goods, which of course are not a Christian practice, have been found until that time; see: Padberg (1998), p. 59
8. Historian Ivo Štefan asserts that, in general, adoption of Christianity in Bohemia, Poland and Hungary was not forced either by pressure from outside or by violence.
9. Hungarian historian László Veszprémy writes: "By the end of the 11th century, Hungarian expansion had secured Croatia, a country that was coveted by both the Venetian and Byzantine empires and had already adopted the Latin Christian faith. The Croatian crown was held by the Hungarian kings up to 1918, but Croatia retained its territorial integrity throughout. It is not unrelated that the borders of Latin Christendom in the Balkans have remained coincident with the borders of Croatia into present times".

See also

• Anti-paganism policies of the early Byzantine Empire
• Christianity and other religions
• Christianity and violence
• Forcible conversion to Christianity
• History of Christianity
• History of Christian thought on persecution and tolerance
• Role of Christianity in civilization
• Spread of Christianity
• Conquistador
• Crusades
• European colonization of the Americas
• Goa Inquisition
• Inculturation
• Missions
• Taiping Rebellion
• Christianization of Anglo-Saxon England
• Christianization of England
• Christianization of Ireland
• Christianization of the Celtic peoples
• Christianization of Roman (Southern) France
• Christianization of Bavaria
• Christianization of the Netherlands
• Christianization of the Swiss
• Christianization of Lithuania
• Christianization of the Faroe Islands
• Christianization of the Basque people
• Christianization of Iceland
• Christianization of Scandinavia
• Christianization of Finland
• Christianization of Kievan Rus'
• Christianization of the Rus' Khaganate
• Christianization of Poland
• Christianization of Bulgaria
• Christianization of Armenia
• Christianization of Goa
• Christianization of Tonga

In other religions

• History of religion
• Religious violence
• Islamization
• Judaism

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External links

• Jorge Quiroga and Monica R. Lovelle, "Ciudades atlánticas en transición: La "ciudad" tardo-antigua y alto-medieval en el noroeste de la Península Ibérica (s.V-XI)" from Archeologia Medievale vol xxvii (1999), pp 257–268 Christianizing Late Antique Roman sites from the 6th century onwards.
• Unilineal Descent Groups and Deep Christianization: A Cross-Cultural Comparison

• Christianization
• Christian terminology