The Many Faces of Christianity

Christianity is generally divided into Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant sects. Of these three sects, Roman Catholicism is by far the oldest with a membership of approximately 1.3 billion. The Catholic community of faith is the closest numerical rival of Islam which boast around 1.8 billion adherents. Protestantism, which was launched in the sixteenth century, Is the second largest Christian sect with about 800 million members. The Orthodox community is the smallest of the three Christian sects with an estimated 300 million followers.

It is largely through the efforts of Protestantism that Christianity today has so many different faces. Both Pew research Center and the Center for Global Christianity at Gordon- Conwell Theological Seminary puts the number of Protestant denominations in the thousands. The Association of Religious Data Archives is a little more circumspect than Pew and Gordon-Conwell but still manages to arrive at a hefty list of 188 Protestant denominations.

Notwithstanding the multiplicity of doctrines and theological nuances that exist among the many Protestant denominations and among the Catholic and Orthodox sects, it is fair to say that there is a high level of congruence about the historicity of Jesus and the inspired nature of the Christian scriptures. Today, Christians of all stripes generally believe in the historicity of the Christ story and in some version of the inspiration of the Bible.

Many people today may be shocked to hear that this was not always the case. From the first century to the beginning of the fourth century there were faith communities that challenged the accepted version of Christianity that has been passed down to us. These faith communities were referred to as Gnostics because they believed that the solution to the plight of humanity was knowledge rather than a vicarious blood sacrifice. Gnostics therefore busied themselves with acquiring the right kind of knowledge that would eventually help adherents discover the divine spark within themselves.

Gnostics like many so-called pagan philosophers understood that the Christ concept was not something unique to the Christian sect. Gnostic and so-called pagans were well aware of the existence of Christ-like figures down through the annals of human history who all acted as beacons pointing mankind to the potential existing in every human being. The end game for the Gnostics and the so-called pagans was to partake of the same wisdom and spirit of all the Christs who had appeared in history thus becoming Christ figures as well.

Scriptures for the Gnostics were nothing more than collections of allegories and metaphors that encapsulated the deeper gnosis or knowledge. Gnostics rejected the literal interpretation of the Bible and viewed its stories more as moral tales rather than as historical facts. The Bible, if it was to be of any value had to be view as a collection of stories and writings design to teach the hidden gnosis. Gnostics in the early history of the Christian movement were therefore scandalized by the efforts of the church fathers to make the Bible and the Christ story into actual historical events.

For much of the first three centuries of Christian history the Gnostics and the Bible literalists waged and ideological war against each other. It was a no-holds-barred contest in which deception and forgeries were used to advance the cause of the Bible literalists. In the early fourth century CE after Emperor Constantine supposedly found God and bequeathed the sword to the Bible literalists, both Gnostics and so-called pagans were extirpated with extreme prejudice.

In hindsight we can only wonder how the history of Europe would have been altered if European societies had been guided by the wisdom of the Gnostics and the so-called pagans who seemed genuinely interested in preserving the environment, uplifting women, promoting religious tolerance, encouraging intellectual inquiry, and were very opened to the idea that Africans were not simply hewers of wood and drawers of water.

Regrettably we will never know how much Europe, Africa, and the rest of the world lost when the Bible literalists approach to Christianity was enthroned as the only true face of Christianity in the early fourth century CE. Europe, happily, has smelt the rat and has decided to part ways with the Bible literalist face of Christianity. The African continent, notwithstanding the fact that it produced one of the most outstanding allegorical Biblical scholars in the person of Origen Adamantius, seems content to perpetuate Biblical literalism and all the abuses it encourages.

Lenrod Nzulu Baraka is the founder of Afro-Caribbean Spiritual Teaching Center and the author of The Black Paradigm: New Thinking for a New Age.