History of Christianity

In the history of Christianity, many disputes and conflicts have arisen over the direction that should best be taken by the institutions and practices of Christianity in the interests of serving the faith’s dissemination throughout the world, the continued adherence to it displayed by religious worshipers, and the assurance that the dominant form being taken by then currently practiced varieties of Christianity can be considered correct and in line with the basic precepts of Jesus Christ. Often these occurrences of discord have had significant effects not simply on the history of Christianity but also on the political, social and economic history of cultures and countries in their totalities. The great importance and stress placed on the ability of Christianity to provide for the spiritual needs of people in the next life has also been shown in the long course of the history of Christianity to be a potential cause for conflict in terms of the immediate, material world, an issue which has proved central to understanding the continued relevance and place that Christianity has in the contemporary world. One such instance in the history of Christianity of conflict arising to an extent which disturbs the overall course of world history can be found in the events leading up and resulting from the split that occurred in the earliest general institution of Christianity between the sections of the church that can be found in the Eastern and Western sections which largely dominated the practice of the faith at that point in the history of Christianity.

At that point in time, the two primary divisions in the kinds of institutions which were available to worshipers to guide them in and provide for their practice of Christianity were both centered in the part of the world stretching from Europe to the Middle East, roughly understood as centered on the Mediterranean region, which had provided the two basic languages operative in the history of Christianity, Greek and Latin. The former was the language in which the Gospels were composed and was also the language of choice for the early leaders in the history of Christianity such as Paul, while the latter was the language of the Roman Empire, which transitioned in the reign of Emperor Constantine from enforcing the suppression of the Christian faith to acting as the agency through which it was spread throughout the Western world. After the destruction of the Roman Empire, it survived through the course of the history of Christianity as the main reminder of the period when the Roman Empire had dominated much of the world. These two sections of the Roman Empire were, however, eventually split from each other, during the eleventh century, when a dispute arose over the control over the practice of Christianity exercised by the Pope in comparison to the Eastern source of authority to be found in the Patriarch of Constantinople, who struck the first blow by suppressing the others’ language in their regions, which led to a final and irrevocable split in Christianity.