(cathedral bell tolling)
♪ Ah, ah, ah, ah ♪
(upbeat pulsing music)
Christmas,
Easter,
two of humanity's largest celebrations.
Traditions that trace back 2,000 years to one man.
Today there are over 2 billion Christians across the globe
who consider him their Savior and Messiah.
The world's largest religious group
and its Church is a powerful institution,
but that hasn't always been the case.
Christianity from its inception has always been a religion
that has called people from the margins.
And its followers
have not always been accepted.
Christians, in periods of time,
become targeted as enemies of the state.
And while the seeds of this powerhouse religion
took root 2,000 years ago,
the New Testament's tale of the virgin birth,
sanctioned by God, is just the beginning of its story.
(air whooshes)
(dramatic enchanted music)
(somber music)
The story of Christianity's humble origins
is told in the Gospels,
still the best source on the life and times of Jesus.
These are the first four books of
the New Testament of the Christian Bible,
written by Jesus's followers after his death.
It is in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke,
written between 50 and 110 Common Era,
that we first hear of the virgin birth
in the land of Judea, in modern Israel.
A miracle that, to his future followers,
signals the coming of the Son of God.
Was Christ man or was he divine?
Or was he both?
And how do you reconcile being human as well as divine?
So we've got a theological debate
that it shapes his whole story of his life,
and it comes back to Mary.
So the idea that Mary was a virgin,
in a way, made it all the more obvious that he was divine.
Because how could a virgin conceive of a child?
That's simply not possible.
His human features and qualities
became a big object of devotion
that allowed people to connect with God
in a way that may have been less easy to do
as an abstract, unseen, historical all-powerful entity.
But this provided a way of knowing God
through the form that God takes, the divine takes,
in Jesus Christ.
(relaxing music)
The Judea of Jesus's youth
was one full of political and religious turmoil.
(somber dramatic music)
(footsteps marching)
The Romans were occupying that land,
and so you feel the heavy presence of
not just an occupying force, but a brutally occupying force.
The Romans brought peace, but it was peace at a price,
and they clamped down heavily on anything
that fell out of what they consider to be law and order.
(soldiers hollering) (swords clanging)
After years of harsh foreign occupation,
the Jewish people were calling out for a Savior
that would be known as the Messiah.
We have in Jewish thought
that there's going to be a Savior, in this case the Messiah,
who's going to come and lead one final battle
that will free all the Jews.
So that's very important to Jewish thought.
In Christian thought, that is absorbed.
This strange sort of hotbed of different responses
to the way Judea was being led,
and then along comes Jesus,
and he wasn't trying to bring down Rome violently,
but somehow he believed that what he was doing
would not just bring down Rome,
but fix the entire world
without a sword or a shield in sight.
According to his followers,
Jesus was this Messiah.
But aside from his birth,
we know little about Jesus's early life.
Historians agree that he was a real person
and that, as recorded in the Gospels,
he grew up in the town of Nazareth,
in the region of Galilee.
He was raised by his mother, Mary, and her husband, Joseph.
Jesus was born into poverty, most likely.
It's said that his father was a craftsperson.
Likely he would've followed in that tradition,
probably making enough to survive on a daily basis.
Oh, Christ himself is such a radical figure.
And by radical I mean that he is not what you would expect
in a religious leader emerging out of the Roman Empire.
So when we think about Roman society at the time,
what did it value?
Well, it valued status.
Power came with wealth.
This humble beginning would be
the foundation of his future ministry.
The earliest people it appealed to was women, slaves,
servants, a kind of underclass.
And the message basically was that
you are just as welcome in the House of the Lord
as anyone else.
You do not need to be Jewish, you do not need to be Greek.
It does not matter who you are.
If you have faith,
you can come to the Lord and the Lord will receive.
So this openness, this universality,
is the most appealing feature of Christianity.
(relaxing enchanted music)
The Gospels pick up Jesus's story again,
as an adult,
when he embarks on his Messianic mission.
His first big step is a visit to an important preacher,
John the Baptist.
John the Baptist is an important figure historically
and within the Christian tradition.
He's made a commitment to bring other people
into a right relationship with God.
Part of that is regularly confessing and being cleansed,
ritually cleansed, to represent that restoration.
And so Jesus goes to John the Baptist.
John baptizes him and when he comes out of the water,
God says, "This is my Son."
John was performing his own version of an older
Jewish purification ritual known as Tevilah.
Baptism was clearly understood as
a transformative experience.
It was meant to cleanse you of your previous sins
and clothe you in new garments, as it were,
through the cleansing capacities of the baptismal waters.
It was a kind of rebirth of the soul.
John's ministry was aimed at
preparing the way for forgiveness and repentance to happen.
Today,
millions around the world perform the same rite.
It is an act of obedience, repentance, and humility.
Baptisms are often marked by rites,
prayers and celebration.
Baptism becomes a core part of
Christian expression of worship, but it's the entry point.
For some, it's an infant that is baptized.
For others, it's an adult.
But there's still, for most denominations,
the requirement of baptism.
The rite marks the beginning of
a new life of faith in the life of a Christian.
Sins are washed away by holy water,
as infants and the newly faithful are sprinkled,
washed, or fully immersed just as Christ himself was.
I think so many people relish the idea of second chances,
of starting again.
And these ideas of starting again,
of new creation, of repositioning,
reconstituting, and rethinking your path in life
are very central to the Christian tradition.
For Jesus,
the experience of baptism was also transformative.
(relaxing music)
John the Baptist baptized Jesus
and then this commanding voice from the heavens that says,
"This is my Son with whom I'm well pleased."
It seems to be an announcement that,
"This is the chosen one."
(somber relaxing music)
According to the Gospel of Matthew:
And Jesus, when he was baptized,
went up straightaway out of the water,
and lo, the heavens were opened to him
and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove
and lighting upon him.
The dove is an important symbol in Christianity.
It denotes peace, love, and the Holy Spirit.
Christians believe that God is Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit at the same time.
This idea they call, "The Trinity."
By Father they mean
the Creator of all living beings and things.
The Son is Jesus Christ who became human.
The Holy Spirit offers wisdom, faith and love
between God and humans.
So God has three different states, yet always remains God.
Though Jesus is the Son of God,
an incarnation of the holy on Earth,
he'll now tread a path
all Christians will be compelled to take,
one that is fallible, subject to temptation, lured by sin.
According to the Gospels, after Jesus's baptism,
he is thrust into the Judean desert
to contemplate his calling from God.
And now here he is in this desert place.
The desert is often a place of intense communion with God,
but in another sense, intense struggle.
(somber pulsing music)
For 40 days and 40 nights,
Jesus survives in the wilderness,
in spiritual combat with
the most dreaded entity of the Christian imagination: Satan.
The Lord of the Underworld, Beelzebub, a fallen angel,
the Prince of Darkness.
In film, on television,
in books, and in the cultural imagination,
Satan is the ultimate incarnation of evil.
He's in the wilderness and he's fasting,
so he must have been absolutely starving,
and then you have this deeply accusatory voice asking Jesus,
"If you are the Son of God, turn these stones into bread."
And what Jesus said is very interesting.
He quotes from Deuteronomy 8 and he says that,
"Man does not live by bread alone."
As if to say part of the Messianic vocation
is to absolutely trust God in everything.
That even if you're starving,
you have to trust that, as Messiah, that God will provide.
Then the accusatory voice tests him.
He takes him to this high point,
shows him all the kingdoms of the world and says,
"I'll give you all of this if you'll just worship me."
And again, quoting from the Law, Jesus says that,
"You must worship God alone."
It becomes another moment in the story
where Jesus is modeling
the good Christian response to good and evil,
that it is an ongoing battle.
(somber pulsing music)
Christians commemorate this time in the desert
with the observance of Lent, beginning on Ash Wednesday,
46 days before Easter Sunday.
Lent is 40 days of reflection, repentance,
and sacrifice during which time Christians around the world
fast, pray, and give up certain luxuries like alcohol,
chocolate, technology or bad habits.
As Christians around the world give up vices for Lent,
they pay homage to Christ's resilience in the desert.
After defeating Satan, Jesus returns from the wilderness
and begins his ministry traveling through Galilee,
preaching to common people about the Kingdom of God,
performing miracles and growing a following of disciples.
The culmination of this period is when
Jesus delivers the Sermon on the Mount.
The Sermon on the Mount is quite possibly
the most important piece of literature that we have
as conveyed in the New Testament.
It is basically Jesus's program, as it were, his values.
What Christianity is all about is kind of laid out
in the Sermon on the Mount,
and it clarifies what the Kingdom of Heaven could look like.
It tells people who could get into the Kingdom of Heaven.
So it's basically a program of how to be a good Christian.
It is during the Sermon on the Mount,
dictated somewhere near the Sea of Galilee,
that Jesus uses many key motifs and metaphors
that would become the cornerstones of Christianity,
like, "Blessed are the meek."
Retribution is very much
a part of earlier legal traditions.
The idea that an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,
that's very important to part of legal cultures
in Roman society.
We look at The Beatitudes.
What it's really saying is that,
"I do not want to injure someone.
I do not need anything back from them
if they have injured me,
and so I need to be compassionate and I need to help them."
But that does not involve violence.
And I think that idea of mercy
is so important to the Christian tradition over time.
But this new roadmap for salvation
was very controversial, as it challenged age-old traditions,
and this wouldn't go unnoticed.
It was subversive because it presented this idea that
you don't need a certain birth to be saved,
that God doesn't care if you're a Roman aristocrat
or a Gallish chieftain or a Jew or whoever.
You could all be saved.
Now this idea of equality is very alien
to the ancient way of thinking,
which was completely tied up in what they perceived to be
natural hierarchies of birth, right?
Like someone's born from an aristocratic family,
of course they deserve something and everything,
whereas someone who's a peasant son
probably deserves nothing.
So it would not have been welcome,
certainly not among the Pharisees
who were kind of the ruling elite in Judaism,
who, as soon as Jesus admitted that he was the Messiah,
they turned against him.
After the Sermon on the Mount,
Jesus and his followers would bring this message
to Judea's most important city.
During the important Jewish holiday of Passover,
Jesus travels to Jerusalem to continue his ministry.
There he enters the Holy of Holies,
the temple,
and comes face-to-face with practices he sees as abhorrent.
Jesus goes into the temple
and he sees the practice of money changing,
which was important because at Passover
you needed birds for sacrifice.
So there were people selling animals.
But Jesus quotes two really important prophetic statements.
He quotes from Isaiah 56:7, which says,
"My house will be a house of prayer for all the nations."
And he quotes from Jeremiah 7:11, which says,
"But you've turned it into a den of thieves
or a den of brigands."
And what Jesus is doing here is he's, in some sense,
pronouncing a kind of judgment on the temple.
Jesus is quoting from the five books of the Hebrew Bible,
the Torah, which Christians now call the Old Testament.
Its teachings are still the foundation of his ministry,
but he's now offering a radical new interpretation.
(somber enchanted music)
In a moment now referred to as,
"The cleansing of the temple,"
and in reaction to his perceived
commercialization of religion,
Jesus drives out the merchants and money changers
and emphasizes the temple's role
as a place of pure worship and prayer.
It is a place where God is saying that
His presence is for everybody,
and if worship spaces are not spaces
where everyone can commune with God,
that they are under judgment.
Fearing Roman reprisals
against any sign of civil unrest,
Jewish leaders, according to the Gospel, had Jesus arrested.
It tells us that Jesus was considered
a threat to the state.
He was turned in for fomenting dissent.
It is here in the story that Jesus performs
the ultimate act of selflessness and faith.
The idea of redemption, of humanity's redemption,
through the coming of Jesus Christ,
through the death of Jesus Christ,
as a way of, in a sense, reconciling humanity with God,
washing away the original sin is a central message.
In the Old Testament,
the Book of Genesis tells the story of Adam and Eve,
Satan, in the form of a snake,
tempts Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge,
the original sin for which Adam and Eve are jettisoned
from the Garden of Eden.
Since this day, mankind is said to have carried with them
the burden of that original sin.
But Jesus as the Messiah is ready to sacrifice himself
for the sake of humanity.
This is God's plan.
Jesus is to become the ultimate martyr and Savior.
Jesus meets with his followers for what is perhaps
the most famous meal in world history.
Today, almost half a million visitors a year
journey to Milan's St. Maria delle Grazie church
to take in a masterpiece,
Leonardo da Vinci's "The Last Supper,"
painted in the late 15th century.
It is Da Vinci's ode
to this tumultuous moment in Jesus's life.
Jesus sits among his disciples on the eve of his crucifixion
and breaks bread.
The offering of the bread and the wine
as the body and the blood is supposed to be symbolic,
but because we're not really sure about
the meaning, what Jesus intended,
it has been interpreted in different ways.
That it is literally transformed into the body of Christ
and the blood of Christ.
So you are in some sense where you believe
that you are partaking of God in his divinity.
And in other cases it's considered to be symbolic
or merely conceptual.
In the Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican Church,
followers regularly take part in communion,
the reenactment of Jesus's last supper
and commemoration of his sacrifice,
in a process of transubstantiation.
Bread and wine become the blood and body of Christ
through their consecration by a priest or minister.
This Eucharist ritual signifies
a Christian's commitment to the new covenant with God.
Under the shadow of the cross,
Christ's followers achieve communion with the Messiah.
Where Jesus has come back to the Garden of Gethsemane
to meet his followers, his disciples,
and has accepted his fate.
He knows he's going to be turned over
to the Roman authorities
on the charges of sedition by Judas,
and he knows that he's going to be executed.
He knows that that's his fate.
God has told him.
Although crucifixion has become synonymous
with the death of Jesus,
this brutal form of execution existed
for almost half a millennia
before Jesus was nailed to the cross.
In the Roman Empire,
citizens guilty of committing capital crimes,
such as murder or rebellion,
would be thrown from a cliff or beheaded.
But the punishment of crucifixion
was reserved for non-Romans like slaves or insurgents.
It was a shameful and degrading punishment.
Crucifixion was intended to make people fearful
about disobeying the state.
So crucifixions were planned on top of, in this case,
Mount Golgotha in Jerusalem.
It's intended to be visual,
to be seen from all over Jerusalem,
and it's death that's slow and painful.
On the day of Jesus's crucifixion,
the brutality of the practice was put on full display.
According to the Gospels, Jesus is flogged, mocked,
and made to wear a crown of thorns
before being led outside the city walls of Jerusalem
and nailed to the cross
with nails that pierced his hands and feet.
He's left to hang there alongside two criminals
for several hours,
enduring thirst, hunger, and agonizing pain.
When Jesus is on the cross,
one of the words ascribed to him is that
he forgives those
because they don't know what they're doing.
In the context, this is, "They don't recognize who I am.
They don't recognize who I represent.
They don't recognize what my message was supposed to bring
in terms of the salvation for all people."
(somber music)
Jesus cries out, "My God, my God!
Why have you forsaken me?"
A final lament after hours of torture.
After death, his body is removed from the cross
and moved to a tomb.
But for Christians, his death is just the beginning.
According to tradition, three days later,
he rises again in a miracle
that is today celebrated with Easter.
The Gospel of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John
all describe the events surrounding Jesus's resurrection
in somewhat different ways,
but they all agree that Jesus appeared to his followers
after his death and they were filled with the Holy Spirit.
They began to preach about Jesus
and his teachings with great enthusiasm.
Resurrection is a powerful idea
because it shows that Christ was truly divine,
that he could come back.
No matter what the Jewish authorities thought,
he was the true messenger of God.
It shows that he belonged to a cosmic reality
that defied natural boundaries,
that he was the Son of God.
On Easter Sunday every year,
Christians celebrate the miracle of Christ's resurrection.
Sunrise services and feasts mark the day.
In Spain, Semana Santa is celebrated with ceremonies
and processions that reenact scenes
from the Passion of the Christ,
including his trial, crucifixion, and resurrection.
In Ethiopia, Christian churches celebrate Fasika
for 55 days leading up to Easter.
In the Philippines, two processions,
one male, the other female,
march towards a central church.
The men following an image of Jesus who has risen,
the women following Jesus's mother Mary cloaked in black.
When the two meet, young girls dressed as angels
remove Mary's veil and the celebration begins.
Today, Easter is celebrated widely across the globe
and in just about every continent.
But the miracle of Jesus's ascendance
was not always so celebrated.
After his death, his movement would be persecuted.
For the word of Jesus to spread,
the faith would need champions.
They would find one in one of its most ardent detractors,
Paul the Apostle, originally known as Saul of Tarsus.
Initially, he's Jewish like Jesus.
In fact, he began as a persecutor of Christians
and he has a very famous moment of conversion,
which itself becomes a model of conversion
for future Christians.
We often use in the vernacular this phrase,
"A Damascus road experience,"
an encounter where something just does a complete 180
and completely and thoroughly and permanently changes.
What happened that fateful day as he traveled to Damascus,
he is struck by this blinding light.
He falls to the ground and a voice says,
"Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?"
Now this is very interesting,
'cause of course Paul hasn't been persecuting Jesus,
he'd never met Jesus, but he's been persecuting the Church,
and yet the question that the voice asked is,
"Why are you persecuting me?"
So of course he asks, "Who are you, Lord?"
And he says, "I am Jesus."
That was the pivotal moment in Saul's life
when he suddenly realized why he was on the planet.
Inspired,
Saul begins using his Roman name, Paul,
and begins spreading Jesus's message.
When we think about the spread of Christianity,
when we ask,
"How could it spread so widely from its humble origins?"
I think one of the reasons is that
it was able to take advantage of the Roman Empire.
It had access to its institutions.
Some of the first members, people like Paul,
had a Roman education, so he used his training
and his method of communication, using letters for example,
which is very much a Roman product
that you use to communicate to a broader public.
These are public letters
in which he could explain doctrine and practice
and communicate with all the different missionaries.
Transformed by a miracle
on the road to Damascus,
Paul writes 13 letters that would become
part of the New Testament.
In them, he addresses the concepts of salvation,
spiritual warfare, and the glory of God.
(relaxing instrumental music)
While Paul was the first converted apostle,
it's Jesus's first disciple and apostle, Peter,
who spread his word throughout the Roman world,
introducing the idea of conversion.
Earliest converts were actually Jewish, right?
They began as a Jewish cult.
But with Paul, and Peter in particular,
Peter has a vision that everyone should be included,
that it shouldn't be just restricted,
it shouldn't be just a Jewish faith.
As we know with Judaism, you had to be born into it, right?
But Christianity from very early on had a message in which
anyone could be saved.
And so Peter and Paul actually made it central
to their missions that they should bring in Gentiles.
Peter brings it to Rome, the center of the Roman Empire.
The revolutionary universality
of the early Christian message
won the religion many new converts
from the oppressed people in Roman society.
In the initial stages,
here was a religion which attracted women, slaves,
children, the kinds of people who were very much pushed
to the social margins.
And the message basically was that
you are just as welcome in the House of the Lord
as anyone else.
You do not need to be Jewish.
It does not matter who you are.
If you have faith, you can come to the Lord
and the Lord will receive.
So this openness, this universality,
is the most appealing feature of Christianity.
But as the followers of Jesus grew in number,
so did the backlash.
Christians were treated by the Roman Empire
as dangerous weirdos
because they would not conform to the imperial hierarchy.
They were preaching among slaves and servants
a doctrine of equality before God.
So this is a doctrine which will bring down the empire.
(somber music)
When a fire destroyed almost 3/4 of Rome
in 64 AD,
the distrust of Christians turned violent.
The great fire in Rome goes back to time of Emperor Nero.
As a result of this fire,
Nero, who was under enormous political pressure at the time,
he was facing a lot of resistance
from other members of society,
he wanted a scapegoat.
And Nero thought that
he could put the blame on the Christians for this fire
as a way of distracting people
from blaming him as the emperor.
Because there's nothing more dangerous
than a very angry population in Rome.
There was periods of great persecution
in the time of Nero.
The Romans threw Christians to the lions
and made a spectacle of it.
Peter and Paul were both arrested.
Peter was crucified upside down, at his own request.
He felt he was unfit to die in the same way as Jesus.
Paul was beheaded.
Those martyr stories become the core legends
that are passed down,
that continue to give hope
as well as inspiration for other believers
because it is dangerous being a Christian
for the first three centuries.
It's very dangerous,
and there are times when we have thousands killed.
So these martyr stories give them hope,
but they also give them tales to imitate.
(enchanted victorious music)
Today,
their deaths are remembered and celebrated.
June 29th is the Feast day of Saint Peter and Saint Paul.
In addition, Vatican Hill,
the site of Saint Peter's execution,
is now home of the Vatican,
the center of the Roman Catholic faith
and the smallest independent state in the world.
The Vatican contains important cultural sites
including St. Peter's Basilica, the Sistine Chapel,
and Vatican Museums.
From the Vatican, the Pope rules as a sovereign of the state
and is considered
the spiritual head of the Roman Catholic Church,
providing guidance from on high.
Up to 3.1 million people attend Pope Francis's
first 10 general audiences.
In the summer months,
the Pope's weekly addresses are held in St. Peter's Square
with a capacity of 80,000.
Though millions recognize the Pope as an emissary of God,
unlike the Roman emperors of old, he is not to be worshiped.
Worship is reserved for the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Spirit.
Many Christians also venerate saints,
a concept that emerges
around the time of Saint Paul's execution.
Go back to the New Testament
and you have writers like Paul or Peter
talking about believers who are saints.
The word means holy.
So sometimes when you read in the English version,
"The holy people of God,"
it's the same word that gets used for saints.
And so for them early on,
everyone that believes in God is a saint.
It's only later that people get this label applied to them
for their particular witness.
So Paul, Peter, start to become Saint Paul,
different than the regular people who are the faithful.
And one of the ways that they start looking for that
is not just did they witness to their faith,
but have there been miraculous things associated with them?
Paul and Peter are just two
of a number of Christians who have been canonized as saints.
Although women cannot be Pope,
many venerated saints were women,
one of which is Jesus's most misunderstood follower,
Mary Magdalene.
Mary Magdalene is a complex figure,
as part of the tradition.
She plays a large and fairly crucial role
in the narratives about Jesus,
and yet she's not named as one of the disciples.
And according to Luke 8, she is one of quite a few women
who are supporting Jesus financially.
And it's an important question,
"How does the guy get to wander around
for one or more years not working?
How does he eat?"
Well, Luke says, "These women are paying."
And Mary is named as one of them.
In the Gospel of John,
it talks about Mary being at the empty tomb
and talks about an appearance of Jesus.
And Mary is looking in the tomb
and she hears what she thinks is the gardener,
and she turns,
and the text says literally she turned and she sees Jesus.
She's the first one to recognize Jesus, the risen Jesus,
for who he is, according to John.
So this is showing just how important she was
in that tradition.
The first witness of the resurrection
is therefore the first true apostle, was Mary Magdalene.
So in some sense, she was the first Gospel preacher.
She was the first person to announce that Jesus has risen.
(enchanted victorious music)
It may also have been a woman
who first legitimized Christianity
in the eyes of the Roman Empire.
During the second and third centuries, the Christians
were still targets of brutal Roman persecution,
but nothing could compare to
the great persecution of the 303 Common Era.
The Romans burned scriptures to raze churches,
and it's estimated that about 3,000 Christians
were executed there.
Only a few decades later,
Christians would go from a persecuted and hunted minority
to the throne of the empire.
Flavia Julia Helena Augusta was born in
the 3rd century Common Era.
She was the mother of Emperor Constantine
and a devout Christian.
Her influence would fundamentally changed
Christianity's position in the empire.
She seems to have been very influential
on her son Constantine,
and it may be because she was a Christian herself
that he was willing to not convert to the Christian faith,
but adopt it and make it legal in 313.
As a breakaway sect of Judaism,
Christianity would've had a very limited life
and it could not have become global
in any sense of the term.
So what it had to do was,
whether this was fortuitous or whether this was planned,
Christianity, as it developed,
had to ally itself with a power, a political power,
and it allied itself with an empire.
Once you have the emperor,
the most powerful guy in the world,
or at least the known world at that time, say,
"Yeah, you know these Christians? I like that stuff.
I'm signing up on that."
The basic fabric of opposition,
the rationale of opposition, is gone
that this is a dangerous doctrine,
this is a doctrine which will bring down the empire,
this is a doctrine which will cause subversion, changes,
because the people at the very top,
the person at the very top,
has accepted Christianity, has accepted the cross.
By the end of the fourth century,
Christianity would become the state religion
of the Roman Empire.
But the new state religion still lacked
its definitive holy books.
Today the Bible is the holy text of Christianity
with New Testaments in every hotel drawer,
tucked into every pew,
and memorized and cited in Bible study.
But how did it become Christianity's seminal text?
During the first two centuries after Christ,
we have a lot of stories, what we now call Gospels,
that are circulating.
They're attributed to the disciples Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John.
The New Testament has 27 books in it,
which is canonized or made sort of sacred,
important and unquestionable, for the Christian Church.
That now they can have a visible structure,
now they can have a visible doctrine.
With the canonized Bible,
the theology of Christianity becomes more standardized,
which gives the central authority of the Church
more power than ever over the faith.
And after the fall of the Western Roman Empire
in the late 5th century, the Bishop of Rome,
who today is known as the Pope,
becomes the leader of that faith.
The Church begins to bring together
disparate European kingdoms.
Many of these new European kingdoms are ruled
and populated by former barbarian tribes
who are new to the Christian faith.
These barbarian kings, the Franks first,
but then also the Germans,
the English, and so on,
all basically took the Pope as the ultimate vindicator
and legitimizer of their rule and became Christian.
As these tribes became Christian,
the Church adopts some of their cultural practices.
It's at this point
that some of Christianity's most noteworthy traditions grow.
Many elements of today's Christmas celebrations
were taken from pagan traditions.
Mistletoe was sacred to the Ancient Celts of Britain
and gift giving and holly wreaths
were taken from the Roman Winter Festival of Saturnalia.
But one of the most visually stunning great traditions
to mark the holiday is the Christmas tree.
The modern Christmas tree has many origins,
but according to the Koran,
Maryam, Arabic for Mary, is surprised by labor pains
and leans against the tree.
And it's here under the tree's shade that Jesus is born.
However, the tree is described as a palm tree.
It isn't until the pagans of Northern Europe
are ushered into the Christian faith
that the roots of current traditions begin to take hold.
The pagans bring along with them
the winter solstice Festival of Yule,
where they decorate fir trees.
Today, millions of natural Christmas trees are purchased
in celebration of Christ's birthday every year.
The Christmas traditions we know today,
as they're expressed, at least in the West,
have a long and complex history.
The figure of Santa Claus, for example,
is linked to St. Nicholas in the 4th century
and it's said that he was a benevolent bishop.
One of the stories about him that is linked to Christmas
is that he was aware of the people in his congregation
and he knew that there was a poor family
who couldn't afford the dowry for their daughters.
And so he secretively at night dropped a bag of monies,
and this gets linked to the particular time of year
that he'd said to have done this, December 25th,
marking the birth of Jesus.
And so all of these things develop over time.
Bishop Nicholas becomes Saint Nicholas, becomes Santa Claus,
and seems far, far distance from that story.
It wasn't just Christmas
that changed during this period.
The Easter tradition, as it has spread,
has adopted pagan rites.
Today probably the most famous is the Easter egg.
In ancient times,
eggs symbolized fertility and the renewal of nature
after a winter's darkness.
Early Christian missionaries embraced this symbol,
using eggs to represent the resurrection of Jesus.
And Easter,
it's timed with the renewal of the land for spring
so it works well with pagan festivals
showing devotion to the deities associated with fertility.
So in that sense,
it very much builds around a cycle of life on Earth
that is already being honored
through other religious festivals.
It just sort of superimpose and engages with them.
(relaxing upbeat music)
As with Peter and Paul's willingness
to preach to the Gentiles,
it is thanks to this flexibility
that Christianity becomes the dominant force in Europe.
But this adaptability
also causes tension and stress across the Christian world,
especially among its leaders.
Modern day Christianity is divided into
many sects and denominations.
The Roman Catholic Church is the largest
and is led by the Pope,
while Eastern Orthodox is led by
the Patriarch of Constantinople.
In later years,
Protestantism developed with further variations
in core beliefs, texts and practices.
But the cracks started to show way back in the 11th century.
The Christian family tree historically
is a very dysfunctional genealogy.
It's a bit of a royal mess, to be honest.
In the Middle Ages, there were a group of bishops
who didn't accept the papacy of Leo the 9th.
One in particular, Michael of Cerularius,
effectively rejected the papacy of Leo 9th.
It was difficult to tell where politics ended
and religion began.
In 1054,
Humbert of Silva Candida, a cardinal and papal official,
ex-communicated the Patriarch of Constantinople,
so the Patriarch ex-communicated the Papal official
and the Pope in return.
Excommunication is a formal declaration
that a person is no longer in good standing with the Church
and is no longer considered a member.
West and East went their separate ways.
This is what became known as The Great Schism.
You have the development in the West
of the Holy Roman Empire and focused mostly in Rome.
And you have the development in
the Eastern part of the empire of Greek Orthodox
versus Russian Orthodox versus Coptic Christianity.
Diverging histories and disparate geographies
create differences in practice.
Today, Roman Catholics kneel in prayer
while Orthodox worshipers stand.
The Eastern Orthodox Church uses the Septuagint,
an Ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament.
While the Roman Catholic Church
uses the Latin Vulgate translation.
The Roman Catholic Church places greater emphasis on
the Virgin Mary and the Saints,
while the Eastern Orthodox Church focuses on
liturgy and sacraments.
Though today these differences may seem small,
at the time of the Schism,
they marked a deeply existential moment.
In 1088, newly elected Pope Urban the 2nd
tried to reverse the fracture,
hoping to unite the two sects once more
through a common enemy.
The Seljuk Turks
had become the primary power in the Middle East
and were in power in many of the most important
pilgrimage sites in Christianity.
Pope Urban the 2nd launched the First Crusade
as a Holy War wrapped in the guise of a pilgrimage.
The Pope, in 1095,
allowed people to go across to Jerusalem
and kill in the name of the preservation of Jerusalem
and Christianity.
From the start,
it was sold to people by the Pope as a rescue mission
that would allow the cleansing of the land.
But through that process, you are a pilgrim,
you are a pilgrim who is serving the Church
by going there and being purified,
through the act of waging war on Muslims.
The First Crusade ended with
the bloody taking of Jerusalem in 1099.
Thousands of Muslims and Jews
were slaughtered by the Crusaders.
(dramatic music)
The Crusades are one of the bloodiest events
in Christian history,
and they will continue onwards until 1270,
with campaigns in the Middle East, the Baltics, and Spain.
Historians estimate the casualties in the millions.
It is during this age that
the Christians' understanding of Heaven and Hell
takes a more complex form.
The Book of Revelation,
the only full apocalyptic text in the New Testament,
has an image of Hell.
In contrast to the beautiful Heavenly city,
you have this image of Hell,
which is a fiery place where the enemies of God
will be burned for an eternity.
One of the most interesting explorations of the afterlife
comes in the poet Dante's "Divine Comedy."
And it was theologically sophisticated,
so there's a lot of interesting components
from Christian doctrine that he's working with
when he portrays Hell as
a circle of different levels of torments
dedicated to particular sins.
And there is a concept also in the afterlife,
particularly in Catholic tradition of Purgatory
as this intermediate plane of existence
where a true believer will ultimately gain salvation,
but they first have to go through a purgative,
hence Purgatory, and expurgation of those sins.
For many, the Crusades were a shortcut,
a way to quickly purge their sins
and guarantee their entry to the Kingdom of Heaven
through violence.
The concept of Purgatory also leads to
one of the most controversial practices
of the Catholic Church: The indulgence.
The Church was recommending that
all good faithful Christians
spend some money on indulgences.
And this is a doctrine in the Catholic Church.
It is making payment
in order to relieve the time in Purgatory.
So it's on behalf of a beloved one.
Many thought
the Church had put a price tag on salvation.
This was sort of repulsive to many people
and it heightened the kind of exploitative
and commercial aspect of the Church.
(cathedral bell tolling)
Today, it is normal for church congregants
to donate to churches to facilitate programming,
worship services, and community outreach.
Vatican City is maintained via the sale of postage stamps,
souvenirs, and the price of admission,
but also by donations of the faithful.
But in the 16th century, amid demands for indulgence,
and in the context of a Church getting ever richer,
the Christian faith splintered yet again.
Many in the West were looking for change and reform,
and on October 31st, 1517,
a German monk would forever change history.
Luther was a pious monk,
and so he was appalled at the notion
that there was certain Catholic bishops
who were effectively selling salvation to rich elites.
And he famously, according to legend,
nailed 95 disputations against indulgences
against the wall of Castle Church in Wittenberg
and was excommunicated for his troubles.
Aided by the invention of the printing press
and the rise in literacy,
"The Ninety-Five Theses" quickly spread across Europe.
This challenge to the Church itself
opened the doors to the Protestant Reformation,
which is this fracturing,
the schisming, of Christianity across Europe.
There are many leaders
in the Protestant movement, including Martin Luther,
John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli,
and Henry the 8th, among others.
These leaders developed
their own interpretations of Christianity
and founded their own denominations such as Lutheranism,
Calvinism, and Anglicanism.
After centuries of evolution,
the Christianity found in Europe was much different
than that of Jesus's early teachings,
and people were looking for a place where they could,
in their own minds, get back to the Christianity of Christ.
Through this quest,
Christianity would grow to a world religion.
(bright relaxing music)
Plymouth Rock, site of the landing of the Mayflower
in December, 1620.
Every year, a million visitors come to see the place
where they first landed in America.
Those aboard the Mayflower were Pilgrims
driven by the promise of religious freedom.
In 1630, John Winthrop, a leading figure of
the foundation of the Massachusetts Bay Colony,
delivered a sermon to his fellow settlers,
telling them that they were founding
a new type of community,
a shining example for all, a city on the hill.
What it means for American identity as it develops there
is the conceptualization that God is behind
the development of this country,
and it's meant to be a city on a hill
to draw attention to other nations,
to other peoples, of how Christianity can be fully realized
to its full extent.
Today,
there are over 210 million Christians in the United States,
making it one of the most populous Christian countries
on the planet.
But the Europeans' desire to spread their religion
had a dark side in the Americas and elsewhere.
There's been missionary zeal for Christianity
pretty much from day one.
Unfortunately, a lot of missionary activity
was a Trojan horse, really, for colonialism.
There's been missionary activity to Africa
from as early as the 15th century,
and this is perhaps where much of the Christianity
in Sub-Saharan Africa started to come from.
The work of Christian missionaries in Africa
had tragic consequences.
Their work led to
the destruction of numerous Indigenous cultures,
and they often supported European imperialism and racism.
Despite this,
Christianity continues to grow in Africa today.
In the 21st century,
Christianity has many faces, practices,
beliefs, and customs.
And while the faith is showing strength
in regions of the world like Africa and Latin America,
it risks falling behind in Europe and North America.
In these regions,
traditional Christianity clashes with
the secular culture of modernity,
which places a greater emphasis on personal freedoms
rather than religious tradition.
Many raised in the faith have lost trust with the Church
after numerous scandals.
These include the multiple child abuse coverups
involving Catholic priests,
the residential school scandal in Canada,
which involved both Catholic and Protestant churches.
These scandals are a grim reminder
of Christianity's role in colonialism.
Issues of race, of gender, of social class,
they are hurtling towards the Christian Church
at breakneck speed,
and the Church has to look deep within its tradition
to be able to address some of these challenges
in ways where the Gospel isn't compromised,
but that it is, as it has always been,
an inclusive ideology,
one which seeks to draw in from the margins
and wrap its arms around the downtrodden
and the quieter voices in the community.
Christianity has this unique flexibility
because it is not a exclusivist religion.
People who are not satisfied by what rationalism and science
and the growth of technology has to offer,
if people are looking for something more,
Christianity can provide that because it is flexible enough,
it is sensitive to the social and economic forces.
(gentle victorious music)
(pulsing exotic music)
(dramatic victorious music)