Western Christianity

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Western Christianity is a term used to include the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church and groups historically derivative thereof, including the churches of the Anglican, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and other Protestant traditions that share common attributes that can be traced back to their medieval heritage. The term is used in contrast to Eastern Christianity. Western Christianity makes up about 90% of Christians worldwide.

Western Christianity developed and came to be predominant in most of Western, Northern, Central, Southern and parts of Eastern Europe, ancient Northern Africa, Southern Africa, and throughout Australia and the Western Hemisphere. When used of historical periods since the 16th century, 'Western Christianity' refers collectively to Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, especially in referral to aspects shared (for example ritually, doctrinally, historically and politically) rather than aspects differing between them.

Today, the geographical distinction between Western and Eastern Christianity is not nearly as absolute, especially after the spread of missionaries.

Features of Western Christianity

Original sin

Original sin may be taken to mean: (1) a consequence of the first sin, the hereditary stain with which we are born on account of our origin or descent from Adam, or (2) the sin that Adam committed. The more common understanding is the hereditary sin meaning. Western Christianity is thought to hold this doctrine because of the influence of Saint Augustine who wrote: "the deliberate sin of the first man is the cause of original sin" (De nupt. et concup., II, xxvi, 43).

Filioque clause

Most Western Christians use an amended version of the Nicene Creed that states that the Holy Spirit "proceeds from the Father and the Son". This is considered heretical by most Eastern Christians, who use the Creed as originally promulgated by the Ecumenical Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople, saying that the Holy Spirit "proceeds from the Father" (See Filioque clause).

Date of Easter

Main article: Easter controversy

The date of Easter usually differs between Eastern and Western Christianity, because the calculations are based on the Julian calendar and Gregorian calendar respectively.

Western denominations

Western Christianity makes up about 90% of Christians worldwide with the Roman Catholic Church accounting for over half, and various Protestant and related denominations make up another 40%. Baptists, Lutherans, and Anglicans are some of the larger and older Western denominations outside the Roman Catholic Church.

The historical development of major church branches from their roots. The width of lines have no significance in this diagram.

History of Western Christianity

For most of its history the church in Europe has been divided between the Latin-speaking west, whose centre was Rome, and the Greek-speaking east, whose centre was Constantinople. Cultural differences and political rivalry created tensions between the two churches, leading to disagreement over doctrine and ecclesiology and ultimately to schism.

Like Eastern Christianity, Western Christianity traces its roots, directly or indirectly, to the apostles and other early preachers of the religion. In Western Christianity's original area Latin was the principal language. Christian writers in Latin had more influence there than those who wrote in Greek, Syriac, or other Eastern languages. Though the first Christians in the West used Greek (such as Clement of Rome), by the fourth century Latin had superseded it even in the cosmopolitan city of Rome, while there is evidence of a Latin translation of the Bible in the 2nd century (see also Vetus Latina) in southern Gaul and the Roman province of Africa.

With the decline of the Roman Empire, distinctions appeared also in organization, since the bishops in the West were not dependent on the Emperor in Constantinople and did not come under the influence of the Caesaropapism in the Eastern Church. While the see of Constantinople became dominant throughout the Emperor's lands, the West looked exclusively to the see of Rome, which in the East was seen as that of one of the five patriarchs of the Pentarchy, "the proposed government of universal Christendom by five patriarchal sees under the auspices of a single universal empire. Formulated in the legislation of the emperor Justinian I (527–565), especially in his Novella 131, the theory received formal ecclesiastical sanction at the Council in Trullo (692), which ranked the five sees as Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem."

Over the centuries, disagreements separated Western Christianity from the various forms of Eastern Christianity: first from East Syrian Christianity after the Council of Ephesus (431), then from that of Oriental Orthodoxy after the Council of Chalcedon (451), and then from Eastern Orthodoxy with the East-West Schism of 1054. With the last-named form of Eastern Christianity, reunion agreements were signed at the Second Council of Lyon and the Council of Florence, but these proved ineffective.

The rise of Protestantism led to major divisions within Western Christianity, which still persist, and wars—for example, the Anglo-Spanish War of 1585–1604 had religious as well as economic causes.

In and after the Age of Discovery, Europeans spread Western Christianity to the New World and elsewhere. Roman Catholicism came to the Americas (especially South America), Africa, Asia, Australia and the Pacific. Protestantism, including Anglicanism, came to North America, Australia-Pacific and some African locales.

Today, the geographical distinction between Western and Eastern Christianity is now much less absolute than formerly, due to the great migrations of Europeans across the globe, as well as the work of missionaries worldwide over the past five centuries.

See also

• Holy Roman Empire
• Latin Rite
• Western Orthodoxy
• List of Christian denominations
• Lutheranism
• Protestant Reformation
• Western churches
• Western religion