Encyclopedia of Christianity Online
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Subject: Religious Studies
Editors: Erwin Fahlbusch, Jan Milič Lochman, John Mbiti, Jaroslav Pelikan and Lukas Vischer
The Encyclopedia of Christianity Online describes modern-day Christian beliefs and communities in the context of 2000 years of apostolic tradition and Christian history. Based on the third, revised edition of the critically acclaimed German work Evangelisches Kirchenlexikon. The Encyclopedia of Christianity Online includes all 5 volumes of the print edition of 1999-2008 which has become a standard reference work for the study of Christianity past and present. Comprehensive, reflecting the highest standards in scholarship yet intended for a wide range of readers, the The Encyclopedia of Christianity Online also looks outward beyond Christianity, considering other world religions and philosophies as it paints the overall religious and socio-cultural picture in which the Christianity finds itself.
Subscriptions: see brill.com
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The Encyclopedia of Christianity Online describes modern-day Christian beliefs and communities in the context of 2000 years of apostolic tradition and Christian history. Based on the third, revised edition of the critically acclaimed German work Evangelisches Kirchenlexikon. The Encyclopedia of Christianity Online includes all 5 volumes of the print edition of 1999-2008 which has become a standard reference work for the study of Christianity past and present. Comprehensive, reflecting the highest standards in scholarship yet intended for a wide range of readers, the The Encyclopedia of Christianity Online also looks outward beyond Christianity, considering other world religions and philosophies as it paints the overall religious and socio-cultural picture in which the Christianity finds itself.
Subscriptions: see brill.com
Choir
(487 words)
The Greek word
choros meant the place where a round dance was danced, the round dance itself, or the group that danced it. For a group of singers Latin adapted the loanword
chorus for use in worship, and the group then gave its name to its place in the church. Both in the church and in secular settings, groups from ancient times have come together to make music on a higher level than that of the general public. In the earliest days of Christianity the choir had something of the function of the chorus in ancient drama, taking part in the action as representatives of the pe…
Choir Stalls
(135 words)
Choir stalls are seats in cathedrals or monastery chapels that are reserved for participants in choral worship (Hours, Canonical). They are usually arranged lengthwise in the choir in two rows. Their arrangement reflects the monastic rule and the hierarchical principle of the separation of priests and people. The rows of seats, with sidewalls, are either open or separated. On the underside the seats have supports
(misericordia) to lean on when standing. From the Romanesque period (Middle Ages 1), the backs
(dorsalia), canopies,
misericordia, armrests, and sides were richly an…
Christadelphians
(472 words)
Christadelphians (meaning “Christ’s brothers,” with allusion to Heb. 2:11) are fellowships that claim to have kept the early Christian faith in its original and unfalsified form (Primitive Christian Community). They arose from the teachings of John Thomas (1805–71), a doctor who emigrated from England to the United States and who originally joined Thomas Campbell and his son, Alexander (Christian Church [Disciples of Christ]; Churches of Christ). In studying Scripture, Thomas concluded that there were…
Christian and Missionary Alliance
(481 words)
1. Origin and Aims The Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA) was organized in 1887 as an interdenominational deeper-life and missionary movement (Mission). The founder was Dr. A. B. Simpson, a Presbyterian minister from New York City. He was an eloquent and persuasive preacher whose ministry, books, and periodicals rapidly gained for the C&MA an international reputation. Simpson was also an innovator. In 1882 he launched the first illustrated missionary magazine and the first Bible institute in North America.
The Alliance Witness and Nyack College have had an unbroken his…
Christian Art
(9,826 words)
The phrase “Christian art” may encompass any of the following: art (for the purposes of this article, inclusive of architecture) produced by Christians, art produced for Christians, or art with themes or uses that may be identified as Christian. Different historical periods saw various combinations of the above. In the earliest centuries of Christianity, art was produced for Christians but not necessarily by Christians or on distinctly Christian themes (which had not yet appeared); in the Middle…
Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
(784 words)
1. Origin and Aims 1.1 The beginnings of the Disciples of Christ movement lay peculiarly in the time and space of America’s 19th-century frontier. There the nation provided the liberty, the frontier the opportunity, and the century the dream of apostolic purity. The first generation of the new nation seized religious liberty ¶ as though it were a challenge to be met with all the energy and creativity of which human imagination was capable. The 1820s and 1830s saw a host of experiments—millennial, utopian, transcendental ( Transcendentalism), and m…
Christian Communication
(2,286 words)
1. Concept and Goals By means of communication media, the church seeks to help all people and to bring them “to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4). The church in its communications work disseminates information ¶ concerning the many facets of church life, interprets patterns and motives for Christian action in the world, encourages the adoption of a Christian lifestyle, and provides forums for reflection and debate on issues of importance to its message and mission. Thus the church makes use of communication media to relate th…
Christian Community, The
(1,053 words)
1. The Christian Community (Ger.
Christengemeinschaft) is the name and claim of a movement that seeks to bring Christianity to fulfillment by a new reformation. It sees itself as the driving force of the “third epoch”—the first being that of a suprapersonal but unfree cultus (Catholicism [Roman]), the second that of the loss of the cultus and restriction to the personal alone (Protestantism). In the third epoch the suprapersonal, spiritual aspiration of free people will find cultic expression in the renewed sacramentalism of the Christian Community.
2.1. The development and many …
Christian Conference of Asia
(494 words)
1. Scope The Christian Conference of Asia (CCA) is a regional ecumenical association of Christian churches and national church councils (National Councils of Churches). It comprises more than 100 member churches and 15 national councils. Its territory stretches geographically from Pakistan in the West to Japan in the East. In the South it includes Australia and New Zealand.
2. Founding Church representatives planned for a council of Asian Christians at a meeting at Prapat (Indonesia) in March 1957. It was officially founded at Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) in …
Christian Development Services
(1,331 words)
1. International Background In 1960 the United Nations initiated a decade-long program of development, which, by means of a strategy of economic aid and with the help of such special agencies as the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), was designed to abolish poverty. Disenchantment, however, soon set in. In 1969 the Pearson Report described the alarming results of the “trickle-down” process and showed the need for a second decade of development. Economic growth and wealth would …
Christian Education
(1,595 words)
This increasingly important concept embraces all the educationally relevant phenomena, processes, and tasks associated with the founding and growth of Christian congregations (Church Growth; Congregation). It concerns the congregation viewed as a sphere of education and relevant learning processes and comes under the general rubric of religious instruction. Its development has been promoted by various challenges, interests, and motives and stands closely related to the history of the relationshi…
Christian Peace Conference
(713 words)
1. Founding and Goal The Christian Peace Conference (CPC) was founded in Prague in 1958 under the leadership of several important theologians and church leaders, including Joachim Beckmann, Josef Hromádka, Hans-Joachim Iwand, Martin Niemöller, Werner Schmauch, Helmut Gollwitzer, and Heinrich Vogel. Its headquarters are in Prague. It is an ecumenically oriented movement inspired by the gospel of peace. It seeks the establishment and safeguarding of peace, social justice and a life of dignity for all,…
Christian Publishing
(4,435 words)
1. Definition
Christian (or, more frequently,
religious)
publishing is an autonomous literary activity that supplements the oral witness to the Christian faith and is “addressed to man in his total situation” (mandate of the Christian Literature Fund [subsequently, as the Agency for Christian Literature Development of the World Council of Churches, a founding partner of the World Association for Christian Communication], 1963). It is particularly suited for purposes of presenting the Christian message i…
Christian Science
(754 words)
1. Rise In the early 1860s the American Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910) reported that she was cured of a nervous disorder with physical manifestations by a healer named P. P. Quimby (1802–66) in Belfast, Maine. She connected a further healing in 1866 with Matt. 9:2, and according to her own statements, she came to the view that the life of the spirit is the only reality. She produced her main work,
Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures (SH), in 1875. The Christian Scientists Association was founded in 1876, and then in 1892 a new central organization called The First C…
Christians for Socialism
(575 words)
1. Founding The Christians for Socialism movement was started in Santiago, Chile, in April 1971. Beginning in 1967, many groups of Latin American priests had taken up the cause of the poor (Poverty). Their experience of mass misery had led them from reformism, which brought no amelioration, to the demand for a Latin American socialism. This experience was the root of liberation theology. After the triumph of the Unidad Popular in Chile in 1970, the hardening middle-class opposition, which laid claim to the Christian tradition, made it necessary to publicize…