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The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, the holiest Christian site

Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion, professing that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead and is the Son of God, whose coming as the Messiah was prophesied in the Hebrew Bible (called the Old Testament in Christianity) and chronicled in the New Testament. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with over 2.4 billion followers, comprising around 31.2% of the world population. Its adherents, known as Christians, are estimated to make up a majority of the population in 157 countries and territories.

Christianity remains culturally diverse in its Western and Eastern branches, and doctrinally diverse concerning justification and the nature of salvation, ecclesiology, ordination, and Christology. The creeds of various Christian denominations generally hold in common Jesus as the Son of God—the Logos incarnated—who ministered, suffered, and died on a cross, but rose from the dead for the salvation of humankind; and referred to as the gospel, meaning the "good news". The four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John describe Jesus's life and teachings as preserved in the early Christian tradition, with the Old Testament as the gospels' respected background.

The six major branches of Christianity are Roman Catholicism (1.3 billion people), Protestantism (1.17 billion), Eastern Orthodoxy (230 million), Oriental Orthodoxy (60 million), Restorationism (35 million), and the Church of the East (600,000). Smaller church communities number in the thousands despite efforts toward unity (ecumenism). In the West, Christianity remains the dominant religion even with a decline in adherence, with about 70% of that population identifying as Christian. Christianity is growing in Africa and Asia, the world's most populous continents. Christians remain greatly persecuted in many regions of the world, particularly in the Middle East, North Africa, East Asia, and South Asia. (Full article...)

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Intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God, presented by its proponents as "an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins". Proponents claim that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." ID is a form of creationism that lacks empirical support and offers no testable or tenable hypotheses, and is therefore not science. The leading proponents of ID are associated with the Discovery Institute, a Christian, politically conservative think tank based in the United States.

Although the phrase intelligent design had featured previously in theological discussions of the argument from design, its first publication in its present use as an alternative term for creationism was in Of Pandas and People, a 1989 creationist textbook intended for high school biology classes. The term was substituted into drafts of the book, directly replacing references to creation science and creationism, after the 1987 Supreme Court's Edwards v. Aguillard decision barred the teaching of creation science in public schools on constitutional grounds. From the mid-1990s, the intelligent design movement (IDM), supported by the Discovery Institute, advocated inclusion of intelligent design in public school biology curricula. This led to the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial, which found that intelligent design was not science, that it "cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents", and that the public school district's promotion of it therefore violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. (Full article...)

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The following are images from various Christianity-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Detail of the earliest known artwork of the Trinity, the Dogmatic or Trinity Sarcophagus, c. 350 (Vatican Museums)
Three similar figures, representing the Trinity, are involved in the creation of Eve, whose much smaller figure is cut off at lower right; to her right, Adam lies on the ground (from Trinity)
Image 2A 'Jesus Saves' neon cross sign outside of a Protestant church in New York City (from Salvation in Christianity)
Image 3The Baptism of Christ, by Piero della Francesca, 15th century (from Trinity)
Image 4The Holy Trinity in an angelic glory over a landscape, by Lucas Cranach the Elder (d. 1553) (from Trinity)
Image 5A Greek fresco of Athanasius of Alexandria, the chief architect of the Nicene Creed, formulated at Nicaea (from Trinity)
Image 6God in the person of the Son confronts Adam and Eve, by Master Bertram (d. c. 1415) (from Trinity)
Image 7Nativity at Night, by Geertgen tot Sint Jans, c. 1490 (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 8The Glory of Saint Nicholas, by António Manuel da Fonseca; Nicholas of Myra, a participant in the First Council of Nicaea, achieves the beatific vision in the shape of the Holy Trinity. (from Trinity)
Image 9The Communion of the Apostles, by Luca Signorelli, 1512 (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 10Renaissance painting by Jerónimo Cosida depicting Jesus as a triple deity Inner text: The Father is God; the Son is God; the Holy Spirit is God (from Trinity)
Image 11The Adoration of the Trinity by Albrecht Dürer (1511)
From top to bottom: Holy Spirit (dove), God the Father and Christ on the cross (from Trinity)
Image 1213th-century depiction of the Trinity from a Roman de la Rose manuscript (from Trinity)
Image 13A compact diagram of the Trinity, known as the "Shield of Trinity". The Shield is generally not intended to be a schematic diagram of the structure of God, but it presents a series of statements about the correlation between the persons of the Trinity. (from Trinity)
Image 14The Father, The Holy Spirit, and Christ crucified, depicted in a Welsh manuscript c. 1390–1400 (from Trinity)
Image 15The "Heavenly Trinity" joined to the "Earthly Trinity" through the Incarnation of the Son–The Heavenly and Earthly Trinities by Murillo (c. 1677) (from Trinity)
Image 16The Trinity by Russian icon painter Andrei Rublev, early 15th century. This portrayal of the three angels who visited Abraham at the Oak of Mamre (Genesis 18:1–8) was not intended as a literal or exact representation of the Trinity, but as a meditation upon the relational life of the Trinity through the Biblical narrative. (from Trinity)
Image 17Pope Clement I prays to the Trinity, in a typical post-Renaissance depiction by Gianbattista Tiepolo (d. 1770) (from Trinity)
Image 18Depiction of Trinity from Saint Denis Basilica in Paris (12th century) (from Trinity)
Image 19A Gospel of John, 1056 (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 20Jesus' Farewell Discourse to his eleven remaining disciples after the Last Supper, from the Maestà by Duccio (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 21Representation of the Trinity in the form of the mercy seat (epitaph from 1549) (from Trinity)
Image 22Depictions of the Resurrection of Jesus are central to Christian art (Resurrection of Christ by Raphael, 1499–1502). (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 23First page of Mark, by Sargis Pitsak (14th century): "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God". (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 24God the Father (top), and the Holy Spirit (represented by a dove) depicted above Jesus Painting by Francesco Albani (d. 1660) (from Trinity)
Image 25Jesus healing the paralytic in The Pool by Palma il Giovane, 1592 (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 26The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is a holy site in Jerusalem believed by most Christians to encompass the tomb of Jesus and the site of his crucifixion and resurrection. (from Jesus in Christianity)
Image 27Atypical depiction The Son is identified by a lamb, the Father an Eye of Providence, and the Spirit a dove; the painting is by Fridolin Leiber (d. 1912). (from Trinity)
Image 28A depiction of the Council of Nicaea in AD 325, at which the Deity of Christ was declared orthodox and Arianism condemned (from Trinity)
Image 29God the Father (top), the Holy Spirit (a dove), and the child Jesus, painting by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (d. 1682) (from Trinity)
Image 30The Good Samaritan is a painting by James Tissot. The Parable of the Good Samaritan is one of the parables of Jesus. (from Jesus in Christianity)

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The west front of Bristol Cathedral

Bristol Cathedral, formally the Cathedral Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, is a Church of England cathedral in the city of Bristol, England. It is the seat of the Bishop of Bristol. The cathedral was originally an abbey dedicated to St Augustine, founded in 1140 and consecrated in 1148. It became the cathedral of the new diocese of Bristol in 1542, after the dissolution of the monasteries. It is a Grade I listed building.

The earliest surviving fabric is the late 12th century chapter house, which contains some of the first uses of pointed arches in England. The eastern end of the church is medieval, the oldest part being the early 13th century elder lady chapel. The remainder of the east end was rebuilt in the English Decorated Gothic style during the 14th century as a hall church, with aisles the same height as the central choir. In the 15th century the transepts were rebuilt and the central tower added. The nave was incomplete when the abbey was dissolved in 1539 and demolished; a Gothic Revival replacement was constructed in the 19th century by George Edmund Street, partially to the original plans. The western towers, designed by John Loughborough Pearson, were completed in 1888. (Full article...)

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A rendering of the Last Supper made from salt, Wieliczka salt mine, Poland

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... that wood type for printing was invented in China, first mass-produced in the United States, and later exported back to China for use by missionaries?
... that Herb Lusk retired from the National Football League at the age of 26 to become a minister?
... that in the Book of Mormon, the city of Ammonihah kills Christians by fire as a deliberately twisted reference to a warning that spiritual death is like a "lake of fire and brimstone"?
... that a Catholic radio station in Texas wields the "velvet hammer" to promote Christianity?
... that a call to prayer is a common feature to Christianity, Islam and Judaism?
... that American religious speaker Ann Kiemel Anderson ran in two Boston Marathons and two Israel marathons near the Sea of Galilee to promote Christianity?

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Then each of them went home, while Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, they said to him, ‘Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?’ They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, ‘Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’ And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus straightened up and said to her, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’ She said, ‘No one, sir.’ And Jesus said, ‘Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.’

— Jesus and the woman taken in adultery, Gospel of John; John 7:53-John 8:11; New Revised Standard Version

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