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The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, a holy place of Christianity

Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion, professing that Jesus was raised from the dead and is the Son of God, whose coming as the Messiah (Christ) was prophesied in the Hebrew Bible (called the Old Testament in Christianity) and chronicled in the New Testament. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with over 2.38 billion followers, comprising around 31.2% of the world population. Its adherents, known as Christians, are estimated to make up a majority of the population in 157 countries and territories.

Christianity remains culturally diverse in its Western and Eastern branches, and doctrinally diverse concerning justification and the nature of salvation, ecclesiology, ordination, and Christology. The creeds of various Christian denominations generally hold in common Jesus as the Son of God—the Logos incarnated—who ministered, suffered, and died on a cross, but rose from the dead for the salvation of humankind; and referred to as the gospel, meaning the "good news". The four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John describe Jesus's life and teachings as preserved in the early Christian tradition, with the Old Testament as the gospels' respected background.

The three main branches of Christianity are Roman Catholicism (1.3 billion people), Protestantism (625 million-900 million), and Eastern Orthodoxy (230 million) while other prominent branches include Oriental Orthodoxy (60 million), Restorationism (35 million), and the Church of the East (600,000). Smaller church communities number in the thousands despite efforts toward unity (ecumenism). In the West, Christianity remains the dominant religion even with a decline in adherence, with about 70% of that population identifying as Christian. Christianity is growing in Africa and Asia, the world's most populous continents. Christians are persecuted in some regions of the world, particularly where they are in the minority in the Middle East, North Africa, East Asia, and South Asia. (Full article...)

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The Diocletianic or Great Persecution was the last and most severe persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire. In 303, the emperors Diocletian, Maximian, Galerius, and Constantius issued a series of edicts rescinding Christians' legal rights and demanding that they comply with traditional religious practices. Later edicts targeted the clergy and demanded universal sacrifice, ordering all inhabitants to sacrifice to the Roman gods. The persecution varied in intensity across the empire—weakest in Gaul and Britain, where only the first edict was applied, and strongest in the Eastern provinces. Persecutory laws were nullified by different emperors (Galerius with the Edict of Serdica in 311) at different times, but Constantine and Licinius' Edict of Milan in 313 has traditionally marked the end of the persecution.

Christians had been subject to intermittent local discrimination in the empire, but emperors prior to Diocletian were reluctant to issue general laws against the religious group. In the 250s, under the reigns of Decius and Valerian, Roman subjects including Christians were compelled to sacrifice to Roman gods or face imprisonment and execution, but there is no evidence that these edicts were specifically intended to attack Christianity. After Gallienus's accession in 260, these laws went into abeyance. Diocletian's assumption of power in 284 did not mark an immediate reversal of imperial inattention to Christianity, but it did herald a gradual shift in official attitudes toward religious minorities. In the first fifteen years of his rule, Diocletian purged the army of Christians, condemned Manicheans to death, and surrounded himself with public opponents of Christianity. Diocletian's preference for activist government, combined with his self-image as a restorer of past Roman glory, foreboded the most pervasive persecution in Roman history. In the winter of 302, Galerius urged Diocletian to begin a general persecution of the Christians. Diocletian was wary and asked the oracle at Didyma for guidance. The oracle's reply was read as an endorsement of Galerius's position, and a general persecution was called on February 23, 303. (Full article...)

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The following are images from various Christianity-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Jesus healing the paralytic in The Pool by Palma il Giovane, 1592 (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 2The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is a holy site in Jerusalem believed by most Christians to encompass the tomb of Jesus and the site of his crucifixion and resurrection. (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 3God the Father (top), and the Holy Spirit (represented by a dove) depicted above Jesus Painting by Francesco Albani (d. 1660) (from Trinity)
Image 4God the Father (top), the Holy Spirit (a dove), and the child Jesus, painting by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (d. 1682) (from Trinity)
Image 5Atypical depiction of the Trinity where the Son is identified by a lamb, the Father an Eye of Providence, and the Spirit a dove (from Trinity)
Image 6Nativity at Night, by Geertgen tot Sint Jans, c. 1490 (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 7Detail of the earliest known artwork of the Trinity, the Dogmatic or Trinity Sarcophagus, c. 350 (Vatican Museums)
Three similar figures, representing the Trinity, are involved in the creation of Eve, whose much smaller figure is cut off at lower right; to her right, Adam lies on the ground (from Trinity)
Image 8Depictions of the Resurrection of Jesus are central to Christian art (Resurrection of Christ by Raphael, 1499–1502). (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 9Three doors representing the trinity at a cathedral in Cleveland, Ohio. (from Trinity)
Image 1013th-century depiction of the Trinity from a Roman de la Rose manuscript (from Trinity)
Image 11The Trinity by Russian icon painter Andrei Rublev, early 15th century: this portrayal of the three angels who visited Abraham at the Oak of Mamre (Genesis 18:1–8) (from Trinity)
Image 12The Glory of Saint Nicholas, by António Manuel da Fonseca; Nicholas of Myra, a participant in the First Council of Nicaea, achieves the beatific vision in the shape of the Holy Trinity. (from Trinity)
Image 13A Greek fresco of Athanasius of Alexandria, the chief architect of the Nicene Creed, formulated at Nicaea (from Trinity)
Image 14Pope Clement I prays to the Trinity, in a typical post-Renaissance depiction by Gianbattista Tiepolo (d. 1770) (from Trinity)
Image 15The Holy Trinity in an angelic glory over a landscape, by Lucas Cranach the Elder (d. 1553) (from Trinity)
Image 16A compact diagram of the Trinity, known as the "Shield of the Trinity" consisting of God the Father, God the Son (Jesus), and God the Holy Spirit (the Shield is generally not intended to be a schematic diagram of the structure of God, but it presents a series of statements about the correlation between the persons of the Trinity.) (from Trinity)
Image 17A depiction of the Council of Nicaea in AD 325, at which the Deity of Christ was declared orthodox and Arianism condemned (from Trinity)
Image 18The Adoration of the Trinity by Albrecht Dürer (1511)
From top to bottom: Holy Spirit (dove), God the Father and Christ on the cross (from Trinity)
Image 19Renaissance painting by Jerónimo Cosida depicting Jesus as a triple deity Inner text: The Father is God; the Son is God; the Holy Spirit is God (from Trinity)
Image 20The Father, The Holy Spirit, and Christ crucified, depicted in a Welsh manuscript c. 1390–1400 (from Trinity)
Image 21An anonymous 18th century Catholic painting from the Peruvian Cuzco School. This work depicts the Holy Triune God; one in essence, with three persons (from Trinity)
Image 22The "Heavenly Trinity" joined to the "Earthly Trinity" through the Incarnation of the Son–The Heavenly and Earthly Trinities by Murillo (c. 1677) (from Trinity)
Image 23A Gospel of John, 1056 (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 24The Baptism of Christ, by Piero della Francesca, 15th century (from Trinity)
Image 25First page of Mark, by Sargis Pitsak (14th century): "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God". (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 26A 'Jesus Saves' neon cross sign outside of a Protestant church in New York City (from Salvation in Christianity)
Image 27Jesus' Farewell Discourse to his eleven remaining disciples after the Last Supper, from the Maestà by Duccio (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 28Depiction of Trinity from Saint Denis Basilica in Paris (12th century) (from Trinity)
Image 29The Good Samaritan by James Tissot. The Parable of the Good Samaritan is one of the parables of Jesus. (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 30The Communion of the Apostles, by Luca Signorelli, 1512 (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 31The Trinity depicted in stained glass (from Trinity)
Image 32God in the person of the Son confronts Adam and Eve, by Master Bertram (d. c. 1415) (from Trinity)
Image 33Representation of the Trinity in the form of the mercy seat (epitaph from 1549) (from Trinity)

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The church from the east

St Peirio's Church is a small disused medieval church, in Rhosbeirio, Anglesey, north Wales. It is unclear when a church was first established on this site, although it has been said that this happened in about 605. The current structure, which may date from the 15th century, has been restored in the 18th and 19th centuries. It ceased being used for services some years ago and has been boarded up.

It is a Grade II listed building, a national designation given to "buildings of special interest, which warrant every effort being made to preserve them", as "a simple, rural Medieval church" that retains "much of its original vernacular character" despite alterations. One 19th-century writer said that it was "one of the humblest ecclesiastical buildings in Anglesey", and that there were "no architectural features in this church worthy of delineation." (Full article...)

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Credit: User:Akumiszcza

A rendering of the Last Supper made from salt, Wieliczka salt mine, Poland

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... that the Kitab al-wadih bi-l-haqq is a critique of Islam written by a convert to Coptic Christianity during a period of persecution?
... that Herb Lusk retired from the National Football League at the age of 26 to become a minister?
... that 19th-century American evangelist Dwight L. Moody was converted to Christianity in the stock room of a shoe store by his Sunday School teacher Edward Kimball?
... that in the Book of Mormon, the city of Ammonihah kills Christians by fire as a deliberately twisted reference to a warning that spiritual death is like a "lake of fire and brimstone"?
... that although the Jesuit missionary He Tianzhang despised his "sad Chinese appearance", it allowed him to circumvent the Qing's ban on Christianity and enter China?
... that a Catholic radio station in Texas wields the "velvet hammer" to promote Christianity?

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And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay, And said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is by interpretation, Sent.) He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing. The neighbours therefore, and they which before had seen him that he was blind, said, Is not this he that sat and begged? Some said, This is he: others said, He is like him: but he said, I am he. Therefore said they unto him, How were thine eyes opened? He answered and said, A man that is called Jesus made clay, and anointed mine eyes, and said unto me, Go to the pool of Siloam, and wash: and I went and washed, and I received sight. Then said they unto him, Where is he? He said, I know not.

— Healing the man blind from birth, Gospel of John; John 9:1-12; King James Version

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