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The spread of Christianity, from antiquity until today, on an animated map
- dghf 5mo agoWhat is going on with Celtic Christianity? Was it really as distinct from Roman Catholicism (and for as long) as the graphic suggests? Also, why no Cathars/Albigensians in the south of France during the 12th & 13th centuries?
- mistrial9 5mo agoafter non-trivial inquiry from far-away California, my best understanding is that the Celts did gracefully embrace the Christian faith among the monks and those serious about religious life. Since there were vivid and lived religious traditions alive at all times through history, this transition was not uneventful. However the kind of "top down" and by-the-sword conversion that did occur e.g. the Baltic tribes, was not the case with the equally fierce Celts
- dghf 5mo agoBut the graphic suggests that Celtic Christianity was in some sense theologically distinct from Chalcedonian Christianity, and that doesn't seem to have been the case. The main ways that the Christians of Ireland and Britain differed from those of continental western Europe seem to have been in the shape of the monastic tonsure and the calculation of the date of Easter; and in the latter, at least, British and Irish Christians were in conformity with Rome by the end of the eighth century. (There was also an emphasis on penance and absolution as a private rather than public rite, but this was ultimately adopted by the wider church.) There doesn't seem to have been any doctrinal disputes, nor any suggestion that British and Irish Christianity was in any way separate from the Church of Rome.
- gedy 5mo agoYes it was, as since it was never part of Roman empire it developed from missionary activity, and even started its own monastic missionary activity back to North Umbria, Faeroes and apparently even Iceland.
- dghf 5mo agoBut was it doctrinally different from Chalcedonian Christianity to justify its own colour on the map. Wikipedia suggests no, which chimes with my understanding: some local minor differences in practice, but nothing like the Christological disputes that caused the rift with the Church of the East, nor like the row over papal supremacy etc. that led to the Great Schism between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.
- gedy 5mo agoThat is correct afaik, though there were serious disputes in Anglo Saxon Britain about these and other issues (mostly about 'leadership' of the church as in any human organization). I'm not sure if it warrants another color, etc though per this video.
- dghf 5mo agoYes, it seems to be promoting the idea, popular in New Age writings, that Celtic Christianity was a separate denomination (or what Rome would have considered a heresy); and that just doesn’t seem to have been the case.
- gedy 5mo agoAh I see thanks, wasn't familiar with that. That sounds like a stretch, as it wasn't that long a period from St Patrick until the reunification back into the Latin church
- Guestmodinfo 5mo agoIt is not fully correct because St Thomas, who was one of the twelve disciples landed in India and martyred here in India and that's why we have A large autonomous branch, known as the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church (or Indian Orthodox Church), tracing its roots to St. Thomas the Apostle and has its headquarters in Kottayam, Kerala. We in India just call it Syrian Orthodox church. That part is not shown in the video.
- graemep 5mo agoIt looks to me that it is shown: there are three red dots along South west coast of India?
- gedy 5mo agoThis does show St. Thomas and Kerala on map though.
- anon291 5mo agoIt is shown though.
- lazyninja987 5mo agoSyrian christians in Kerala are not related to St.Thomas. Syrian chritians landed in kerala while fleeing arabic invasion of Syria. (7th century) Also 'martyrdom' of St.Thomas is debated. The earliest mention of martyrdom of St.Thomas originate from 16th century portugese missionaries who operated in india at that time. not backed by any evidence.
- vattoli_porinju 5mo agoSyrian christians of kerala is another name for st thomas christians related to st thomas visit who founded the community. The acts of thomas, which is an apocryphal writing mentions about st thomas visit. Many 3rd and 4th-century roman writers like the ambrose of milan, gregory of nazianzus, jerome and ephrem the syrian also mention thomas trip to india. Eusebius of caesarea records that st clement of alexandria's teacher pantaenus from alexandria visited a christian community in india using the gospel of matthew in hebrew in the 2nd century. There are way too many written proofs. Even long before the 1st, there were already many jews called cochin jews existing in malabar region, which itself shows the deep connections the region had with the middle east. The ramban pattu of st thomas christians mention about his arrival in malabar and the conversion of natives and jews. Martyrdom of st thomas in mylapore is not debated since no other place on earth claims that event, and it's usually attributed to his remains being later transported to edessa. None of these things originated from 16th century portuguese missionaries, and it has all existed long before that.
- whall6 5mo agoWhat blew me away was the proliferation of the Church of the East. I never knew Christianity had that much of a foothold in Asia. I wonder if geographically it appears more significant due to that region’s sparse population?
- graemep 5mo agoAlso because the region was conquered by Muslims so it did not last. It was the majority religion of the Asian parts of the Byzantine Empire. North Africa played a very important part in the development of Christianity. Augustine, Tertullian, Jerome and Origen were North Africans. Monasticism evolved in Egypt.
- dadjoker 5mo ago[dead]
- dismalaf 5mo agoNo, it's because your education is western-centric and Islamic invasions took over the east. Eastern Christians have been subjected to genocide at the hands of Muslims for 1300 years. Edit - really, someone is asking for a citation that the Islamic conquests happened? Next should ask for a citation that the sky is blue... This is basic world history, like the discovery of the new world, Alexander the Great's conquests or the Roman empire... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Muslim_conquests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Muslim_conquests And yes, it happened over 1300 years ago, the first decisive battle was the Battle of Yarmuk, year 636 CE.
- amanaplanacanal 5mo agoNot a lot different from what the Christians did to non believers in the West, really.
- prerok 5mo agoDon't forget the crusades.
- gobdovan 5mo agoIt's even more interesting when you think about Christianity not as a clear category, but as a cloud of practices, beliefs and institutions in a broader family of religious patterns. Mircea Eliade asks how Christianity reinterpreted sacred history, myth, salvation. What does Christianity do with motifs older than itself, such as paradise, rebirth, sacrifice? In A History of Religious Ideas [0], he treats the emergence and development of Christianity, including Judaism, early Christianity, Gnosticism, late antiquity, medieval religious forms and also how it interacted with other traditions. I think it complements quite nicely the geographical spread of Christianity by also clarifying what kind of transformations of religious symbols make it recognisable as Christianity across such different contexts. There's also "Darwin's Cathedral" [1] that analyses religion as group-organizing system, with a focus on Calvinism. Didn't go through it, but seems relevant. It was recommended by Robert Sapolsky in his Introduction to Human Behavioral Biology lecture series [2]. [0] A History of Religious Ideas - Mircea Eliade [1] Darwin's Cathedral - David Sloan Wilson [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA
- Curosinono 5mo ago[flagged]
- gobdovan 5mo agoI was referring to the analysis of Christianity's spread and evolution as amazing. I was not making a subjective judgment about Christianity itself.
- Curosinono 5mo agoYes i know. I still think its depressing. Perhaps we use the sentiment differently? Like the spread of the black death? I would say its depressing how fast and easy it spread.
- prerok 5mo agoIt's a bit disingenius to equate spread of a religion to a disease.
- riffraff 5mo agowhat's up with the red isolated somewhere around Bhutan in 700AD? Is that Prester John[0]? :D [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prester_John https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prester_John
- dsign 5mo agoDuring the last few years, I’ve been exploring Svealand, the central part of Sweden that contains Stockholm and some other provinces. The region contains many historical places, but I walk the countryside, away from the main tourist attractions. What has impressed me the most is the amount of ancient piles of ruble with vigilant, almost hostile churches next to them. There are rock paintings from prehistoric times still around, and many, many mounds and graves from the bronze and iron age, the region is literally littered with them. But I’ve never found a single extant statue nor statuette nor depiction of the old Norse gods.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- mistrial9 5mo agothe reason you do not find them is that they were purposefully destroyed in "iconoclasm" -- the battles were so bloody that the Christian victors not only converted the conquered but also destroyed all traces of their cultural practices. Just south of there is the famous tree of Boniface ?
- HexDecOctBin 5mo agoWhen western politicians and media lectures the world on human rights, I can't help but wonder how funny it is that because westerners front loaded their genocidal violence, they now get to feel superior to others that didn't completely wipe out the conquered.
- rattlesnakedave 5mo agoYou’re pattern matching something like the Saxon Wars under Charlemagne. In this case missing idols probably owe more to wood not surviving a millennium in Swedish soil + converts destroying their own former cult objects.
- achierius 5mo agoFirst of all, you're confusing different events: iconoclasm was the destruction of Christian icons, by Christians who thought that practice was idolatrous. > the battles were so bloody that the Christian victors not only converted the conquered Who do you think 'conquered' the Swedes, some continental Frenchman? Their own kings converted, and thereafter converted their countrymen. And the first such Christian king, Olof Skötkonung, inherited the throne -- he didn't conquer it.
- ezekg 5mo agoThanks for sharing. Funny enough, I was just asking GPT to chart this for me a few days ago. And people say postmillennialism is a pipe dream...
- Curosinono 5mo ago[flagged]
- ezekg 5mo ago[dead]
- adamtaylor_13 5mo ago[dead]
- ezekg 5mo ago[dead]
- wood_spirit 5mo agoTo put it into perspective, a long time ago a friend made this https://williame.github.io/map_of_worlds_religions/ https://williame.github.io/map_of_worlds_religions/
- teepo 5mo agoAlso how I lose most Sid Meir Civilization[1] games. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_(series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_(series)
- mlmonkey 5mo agoI wish it was an actual interactive map instead of a video, as it raises so many questions. Where did Christianity come from in Tibet? If I'm reading it correctly, around 1100AD there seems to be a large number of Christians near Lhasa. And then around 1266 a majority Christian region around (I think) Mongolia suddenly gets wiped out.
- craftkiller 5mo agoIf they made it interactive, it would be nice to be able to toggle various layers. For example, I was watching it thinking "It's odd that nestorianism is drifting away from the rest" until I realized that empty void in the middle was Islam. It'd be nice if they also had other religions like Islam mapped, and let us toggle which ones we want to see so it doesn't become too noisy.
- jltsiren 5mo agoThe short version is that the internal politics of the Mongol Empire shuffled the religious map of Asia. Christianity gradually spread further into Asia, but the rise of Islam severed the contact between the Church of the East and Western Christianity. Mongols had their own shamanistic religion, but many of their tribes had also become Christian, Muslim, or Buddhist. The Mongol Empire tolerated most religions, and individual leaders often favored one religion or another. When the empire fragmented, three of the major khanates chose Islam and the fourth chose Buddhism, while Christianity largely faded away in the Asian parts of the empire.
- samcgraw 5mo agoThose interested may find Dominion[0] an excellent read. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Dominion-Christian-Revolution-Remade-World/dp/0465093507 https://www.amazon.com/Dominion-Christian-Revolution-Remade-...
- ppsreejith 5mo agoSeconded! Great read though maybe a bit reductive in places
- atrooo 5mo ago"For the Earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea."
- cynicalpeace 5mo agoThe low point of Christianity after the council of Nicaea was the "Dark Ages" (early middle ages) and the high point is circa 2000. The exact opposite of what we tend to think.
- lanfeust6 5mo agoIn terms of sheer numbers, or percentage of population?
- tracker1 5mo agoIt would be cool to see this expanded to include other prominent religious systems.. in particular Islam, Budhism, Hindu, etc... as it is, there's no context at all in terms of contraction events.
- josefritzishere 5mo agoThis would be more historically accurate if it included the body counts.
- dang 5mo agoAll: please don't post religious flamewar comments to Hacker News. That includes proselytizing in any direction, pro or anti. Such threads are as tedious as they are flamey, and those are the two qualities we can most do without here. Intellectually curious conversation is an entirely different thing and is of course welcome on this or any topic. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- jvdvegt 5mo agoInteresting that in the last two years of the video, central Europe seems to turn gray. The decline has been going on for several decades (and the official numbers of Christian people are artificially inflated due to weird exceptions the church has by law).
- keiferski 5mo agoI’m sure a book has been written with this thesis, but I often think that a system like Christianity was somewhat inevitable, sociopolitically. By this I don’t really mean the specifics of the religion; but rather 1) the idea of universalizing the value all human life and not only certain subsets and 2) a synthesis of ideology and politics with the explicit goal of expanding its domain by means of assimilation, not just conquest. Now of course the reality didn’t actually play out exactly along those lines, but I think a similar sort of movement probably would have occurred across the Roman Empire, had Christianity not specifically grown. In other words I have a hard time imagining that the world would have continued with Roman values indefinitely. The world was changing and Christianity was as much a consequence as a cause. Very interesting to consider in any case!
- lanfeust6 5mo agoI think there's something to this. For gentiles especially, Christianity was more attractive and life-affirming than what they had, as long-suffering subjects of the Roman Empire with little to hope for. Notwithstanding the enduring core messaging, the allure might have shifted over time between some components as quality of life improved (for instance I think the role of 'sin' and 'salvation' qua deliverance from guilt became more significant later for adherents, where earlier on the "afterlife" sells itself when life is shit).
- moralestapia 5mo agoI have recently noticed (especially over the last year) a lot of mainstream stories portraying Christianity as growing significantly, things like Instagram posts, tweets, etc., with phrases like “Christianity is back”, you get the idea. I’m not really sure to what extent this is accurate, though, since those platforms are obviously shaped by my own algorithm. For example, Instagram knows I’m Catholic, so it tends to show me Catholic-positive content. Does anyone know of a reliable source where I can check the actual numbers? I’m especially curious about Gen Z, since it seems to be relatively pro-Christian.
- keiferski 5mo agoYou might be interested in a book called Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? by Kaufmann. Basically a lot of it comes down to birth rates and cohesiveness of culture. Another good one is A Secular Age, although it's on a much longer timeline. It tracks the shift of Christianity from ±1500 to the present and what it will likely be in the near future.
- warumdarum 5mo agoDoes it display the minority genocide in the middle east ?
- wormius 5mo agoOne of the most interesting facts I learned this past year was that the first country to adopt Christianity as a formal religion was Armenia.
- matusp 5mo agoI find it interesting how slow the spread really was after the initial burst. I am used to think about Christianity as a global religion. But before 16th century it was a pretty regional thing and its position seemed pretty precarious in handful of moments.
- Curosinono 5mo agoI find it disappointing that a clearly political topic isn't allowed to be discussed accordingly. The impact of religion on a lot of humans like 'everyone who isn't following the norm of religion: woman not making kids...' etc. is something you should always clarify with topics like this especially in a context were its not clear what the general consensus is. Rape is bad, done very little to be discussed for example.