Monthly Archives: October 2014

Is Christianity a Western Religion? 10: Does it Claim to Be?

Posted by Caleb Coy on

Is Christianity a Western religion? What kind of religion does it claim to be?

Christianity itself claims to belong to all peoples of all nations who follow the Christ, and its initial followers believed it was their calling to spread from Jerusalem (the Mid-East) throughout all the world. This is not a religion that claims it belongs to a certain geographically fixed nation or ethnicity. It never called itself Western, but calls itself global, being called out across the world.
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Is Christianity a Western Religion? 9: Was it “Born” in Greek Culture?

Posted by Caleb Coy on

Is Christianity a Western religion? Wasn’t it born in Greek culture?

The New Testament may have been written in Greek, for a Greek audience, using Greek ideas to persuade a Hellenistic culture, (Greek being a foundational culture of the West), but Christianity sought to challenge this Western culture more than it sought to appeal to it, therefore confronting Western culture with a transcultural, transpolitical “counterculture”, a body of belief and practice very alien to its own.
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Is Christianity a Western Religion? 8: Western Creeds

Posted by Caleb Coy on

Is Christianity a Western Religion? What denominations and creeds to we find in the West?

By and large (among the denominations that arose after the Protestant Reformation) the denominations of the West and their creeds were influenced by or reactionary against Western thought, but Christianity itself predates many of these Western movements (such as The Enlightenment and The Renaissance), and was not a response to any particular cultural wind, certainly not one of the West.
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Is Christianity a Western Religion? 7:Persecution in the West

Posted by Caleb Coy on

Is Christianity a Western religion? How has the West treated Christianity?

Christianity was terribly persecuted by the West before it was accepted by the West.  And even then, the West accepted and would continue to accept Christianity partially on its own terms.

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Is Christianity a Western Religion? 6:Eastern Orthodox

Posted by Caleb Coy on

Is Christianity a Western Religion? Consider the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Christians in the West often forget about the Eastern Orthodox Church, a schism with the Roman Catholic Church that began around 1054 and spread throughout Greece, Turkey, The Middle-East, and Russia (whereas the Catholic Church spread to the West).

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Is Christianity a Western Religion? 3:Isn’t the West the “Cradle”?

Posted by Caleb Coy on

Is Christianity a Western religion? After all, isn’t the West the “cradle” of Christianity? Isn’t America, the premiere child of Western culture, the “cradle” of Christianity?

The notion that America is the “cradle” of Christianity is still very recent in history, and it may soon no longer be true—not to mention that subjectivity reigns in the answer to whether or not America is the current “capital” of Christianity.
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