The Eastern Orthodox Church, officially the Orthodox Catholic Church, and also called the Greek Orthodox Church or simply the Orthodox Church, is the second-largest Christian church, with approximately 230 million baptised members. It operates as a communion of autocephalous churches, each governed by its bishops via local synods. The church has no central doctrinal or governmental authority analogous to the head of the Catholic Church. Nevertheless, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople is recognised by them as primus inter pares, a title formerly given to the patriarch of Rome. As one of the oldest surviving religious institutions in the world, the Eastern Orthodox Church has played an especially prominent role in the history and culture of Eastern and Southeastern Europe.
The Christian right, otherwise referred to as the religious right, are Christian political factions characterized by their strong support of socially conservative and traditionalist policies. Christian conservatives seek to influence politics and public policy with their interpretation of the teachings of Christianity. In the United States, that means opposing any interpretation of the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution that implies a "separation of church and state".
This is an index page of Wikipedia articles related to the topic of religion.
The Christian left is a range of Christian political and social movements that largely embrace social justice principles and uphold a social doctrine or social gospel based on their interpretation of the teachings of Christianity. Given the inherent diversity in international political thought, the term Christian left can have different meanings and applications in different countries. While there is much overlap, the Christian left is distinct from liberal Christianity, meaning not all Christian leftists are liberal Christians and vice versa.
Christianity and other religions documents Christianity's relationship with other world religions, and the differences and similarities.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Christian theology:
Cultural Christians are the nonreligious or non-practicing Christians who received Christian values and appreciate Christian culture. As such, these individuals usually identify themselves as culturally Christians, and are often seen by practicing believers as nominal Christians. This kind of identification may be due to various factors, such as family background, personal experiences, and the social and cultural environment in which they grew up.
A lapsed Catholic is a Catholic who is non-practicing. Such a person may still identify as a Catholic, and remains one according to Catholic canon law.
Results of the 2021 Census for England and Wales, which asked the question "What is your religion?", showed that Christianity is the largest religion, followed by Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Judaism, Buddhism, and Taoism in terms of number of adherents, while Shamanism is the fastest growing religion. Among Christians, Anglicans are the most common denomination, followed by Roman Catholics, Presbyterians, Methodists, Unitarians, and Baptists. This, and the relatively large number of individuals with nominal or no religious affiliations, has led commentators to variously describe the United Kingdom as a multi-faith and secularised society. The Census has also been criticised by statisticians and demographers for its use of a leading question which critics say inflates the number of people reporting a religious identity. Other major surveys which ask a differently worded question find a majority of people in the UK do not belong to a religion, with Christianity the largest religion.
The relationship between Christianity and politics is a historically complex subject and a frequent source of disagreement throughout the history of Christianity, as well as in modern politics between the Christian right and Christian left. There have been a wide variety of ways in which thinkers have conceived of the relationship between Christianity and politics, with many arguing that Christianity directly supports a particular political ideology or philosophy. Along these lines, various thinkers have argued for Christian communism, Christian socialism, Christian nationalism, Christian anarchism, Christian libertarianism, Christian democracy, the divine right of kings, or tsarist autocracy. Others believe that Christians should have little interest or participation in politics or government, or none at all.
The religious views of George Washington have long been debated. While some of the other Founding Fathers of the United States, such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Patrick Henry, were noted for writing about religion, Washington rarely discussed his religious and philosophical views.
Robert Burton Ekelund Jr. was an American economist.
Christianity is the most prevalent religion in the United States. Estimates from 2021 suggest that of the entire U.S. population about 63% is Christian. The majority of Christian Americans are Protestant Christians, though there are also significant numbers of American Roman Catholics and other Christian denominations such as Latter Day Saints, Eastern Orthodox Christians and Oriental Orthodox Christians, and Jehovah's Witnesses. The United States has the largest Christian population in the world and, more specifically, the largest Protestant population in the world, with nearly 210 million Christians and, as of 2021, over 140 million people affiliated with Protestant churches, although other countries have higher percentages of Christians among their populations. The Public Religion Research Institute's "2020 Census of American Religion", carried out between 2014 and 2020, showed that 70% of Americans identified as Christian during this seven-year interval. In a 2020 survey by the Pew Research Center, 65% of adults in the United States identified themselves as Christians. They were 75% in 2015, 70.6% in 2014, 78% in 2012, 81.6% in 2001, and 85% in 1990. About 62% of those polled claim to be members of a church congregation.
Cafeteria Catholic, also called à la carte, is an informal term used to design a follower of Catholicism who dissents from certain official doctrinal or moral teachings of the Catholic Church. Polling indicates that many Catholics dissent from the institutional hierarchy on at least one issue.
This is a glossary of terms used in Christianity.
Moralistic therapeutic deism (MTD) is a term that was first introduced in the 2005 book Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers by the sociologist Christian Smith with Melinda Lundquist Denton. The term is used to describe what they consider to be the common beliefs among U.S. youths. The book is the result of the research project the National Study of Youth and Religion.
The official teachings of the Catechism of the Catholic Church promulgated by Pope John Paul II in 1992 oppose all forms of abortion procedures whose direct purpose is to destroy a zygote, blastocyst, embryo or fetus, since it holds that "human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person – among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life". However, the Church does recognize as morally legitimate certain acts which indirectly result in the death of the fetus, as when the direct purpose is removal of a cancerous womb. Canon 1397 §2 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law imposes automatic excommunication on Latin Catholics who actually procure an abortion, if they fulfill the conditions for being subject to such a sanction. Eastern Catholics are not subject to automatic excommunication, but by canon 1450 of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches they are to be excommunicated by decree if found guilty of the same action, and they may be absolved of the sin only by the eparchial bishop. In addition to teaching that abortion is immoral, the Catholic Church also generally makes public statements and takes actions in opposition to its legality.
The Catholic Church and abortion in the United States deals with the views and activities of the Catholic Church in the United States in relation to the abortion debate. The Catholic Church opposes abortion and has campaigned against abortion in the United States, both saying that it is immoral and making statements and taking actions in opposition to its classification as legal.
Cafeteria Christianity is a derogatory term used by some Christians, and others, to accuse other Christian individuals or denominations of selecting which Christian doctrines they will follow, and which they will not, similar to how one picks and chooses what food to select in a cafeteria.
Catholicism and Deism are two theologies that have opposed each other in matters of the role of God in the world. Deism is the philosophical belief which posits that although God exists as the uncaused First Cause, responsible for the creation of the universe, God does not interact directly with that subsequently created world. As deism is not organized, its adherents differ widely in important matters of belief, but all are in agreement in denying the significance of revelation in Christian Scripture and Tradition. Deists argue against Catholicism by either, only considering Scripture to be a helpful moral tool, or denying: its divine character, the infallibility of the Church and Traditions, and the validity of its evidence as a complete manifestation of the will of God. Deism is first considered to have manifested itself in England towards the latter end of the seventeenth century.
