Christianity And Its Popularity
...that "Religion is the
chief differentiating characteristic of man" (1). If as Mr. Hume says religion is what
differentiates us lets go a step further and ask why is it that Christianity is the most popular
religion practiced today?
As we begin to answer this question lets put the worlds major religions into perspective. Below
is a time line of the worlds major religions and information about each according to research
done for Mr. Hume.
Name Founder Deity Location Date started Number in millions*
Hinduism None Brahma India 1500 B.C. 322
Judaism Moses Jehovah Scattered 1200 B.C. 12
Shinto None Nature-gods Japan 660 B.C. 79
Taoism Lao-tze The Tao China 604 B.C. 50
Buddhism Buddha None, then The East 560 B.C. 150-275
Founder
Confucianism Confucius Heaven, or China 551 B.C. 300
Founder
Christianity Jesus Christ Father-God World 4 (?) B.C. 835
Islam Mohammed Allah Muslim 570 A.D. 420
Countries
* These are only rough estimates in most cases (graph is from resource 1)
McConnell 2
Upon looking at the chart of the worlds major religions two things are immediately
noticeable, 1. Christianity has nearly double the number of practitioners as the next closest
religion, and 2. It is practiced world wide. Is would be reasonable to assume that maybe it is so
large because of the fact that it is practiced world wide, but there must be more to it or the other
major religions, especially those that are much older, would have equal or greater numbers in
terms of those people practicing them.
Christianity has its roots in Judaism. Judaism is for those that practice it the old
testament laws, for those who practice Christianity it is the meeting of the old testament with the
new testament. The core belief within Christianity is...
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