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Essay on Christianity and Islam
Christianity and Islam share much in common. Each is monotheistic, and each claims universality. Each fosters strong traditions of piety, social action, and justice. Each claims--with impressive, albeit selective, proofs--to be the religion of peace par excellence; yet the history of each attests to the sorry ease with which their holy books are invoked to legitimize or demand violent means to achieve divinely decreed ends. Each has recourse to a rich repository of self-flattering memories, providing followers with the means to excuse, reinterpret, or overlook evil perpetrated in the name of its deity.
Christianity is in a direct sense an offshoot of Judaism, because Jesus and his immediate followers were Jews living in Palestine and Jesus was believed by his followers to have fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah. Following a trend of proselytization in the Judaism of that period Christianity was from its beginnings expansionist. Its early missionaries (the most notable of whom was St. Paul , who was also responsible for the formulation of elements of Christian doctrine) spread its teachings in Asia Minor, Alexandria, Greece, and Rome. Missions have remained a major element in Christianity to the present day. (Mojzes & Swidler, 2000)
For the first three centuries of Christianity, history is dependent on apologetic and religious writings; there are no chronicles.
Historians differ greatly on how far back the 4th-century picture of the church (which is quite clear) can be projected, especially respecting organization by bishops (each bishop a monarch in the church of his city), celebration of a liturgy entailing a sacrament and a sacrifice, and claims by the bishop of Rome to be head of all the churches. There is evidence for these features in the second century. A first problem for Christians was how to resist attempts to interpret the new beliefs in pagan terms.......
