The Growth of the Christian Church: A Search for Faith, Form and Freedom Ad 30-2000

The subject is historical and follows the development of the Church-the great movements of faith and the people that have shaped the worldwide mission over two millennia. Christianity came into being (c. 30 AD) when the Apostles received the power of the Holy Spirit to preach the resurrection and Gospel of Christ (Acts 1-2). Jesus had placed the Jewish idea of the Kingdom of God at the centre of his teaching but gave the idea a new spiritual and universal meaning (Matthew 28:16-20). He taught that God is present wherever individuals enter into the relationship of love which God is seeking to initiate with them. Throughout the ages the Catholic Church spread the Gospel, and sustained Christian communities, bringing light and hope into the lives of men and women in the darkest times of their history, playing a key role in the development of society with the founding of hospitals and institutions of education, retraining the political ambitions of monarchs. Despite emerging differences of interpretation in matters of theology and practice, and the invention of new ways of being Christian at the Reformation, belief in Jesus Christ and his Gospel has grown and spread throughout the world, beginning with the Age of Discovery. In the 20th century the Church began to reconsider its ideological traditions and to participate in the ecumenical movement, with a resurgence of scholarship, a new attitude to the witness of the Church in the world, expounded at the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). Christianity has moulded the shape of Western civilization and has been carried by missionaries to nearly all the countries of the world.