Throughout the first 1000 years of church history, councils were held, bringing church leaders together from around what we now call Europe, the Near East, and North Africa. However, gradually the Eastern churches, centred on the Byzantine Empire which had its capital in Constantinople, and the Western churches, centred on Rome, drifted apart in both their style and their leadership. In 1054, the two sections of the Christian church formally separated. Thereafter, Western Europe was dominated by the Roman Catholic Church, and the East by the Eastern Orthodox churches.

In the 15th and 16th centuries, many new groups broke with the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, forming their own denominations. Among them are most of what are referred to in the map on page 7 as ‘institutional churches’. These included the Lutheran Church, founded by Martin Luther in Germany, the Presbyterian Church founded in Scotland by John Knox (following the strong influence of John Calvin in Geneva), the Baptist Church founded by a British reformer, John Smyth, and the Church of England founded through the rejection of the authority of the Roman Catholic Church in England by King Henry VIII. The Methodist movement was founded in England in the middle of 18th century (150 years later) by John Wesley.

In recent years, many other denominations have arisen which have been loosely classified as ‘non-institutional churches’. Most of these churches have comparatively weak central administrations and centralised authority. Authority resides primarily in the local congregation. Many of these churches belong to the Pentecostal movement. The Pentecostal movement is usually said to have begun in the United States in 1904. However, similar experiences and developments arose in several countries in the first decade of the 20th century, including Britain, South Africa and Australia. The Pentecostal movement has since spread world-wide and is one of the fastest growing parts of the church throughout the world.

Roman Catholicism was taken to South America by the Spanish and Portuguese in 15th century. While the Roman Catholic Church continues to dominate the continent, the number of Pentecostal churches has grown rapidly throughout South America in recent years.

Immigration from Europe, rather than colonization, led to the spread of Christianity throughout North America. As can be seen from the map on page 6, the number of church members in North America rivals that of Europe, and the number of people in church on any one Sunday probably outstrips Europe.

European missionaries took Christianity to Africa and Asia, mostly in the 19th and 20th centuries. In many cases, the missionary influence spread along with European colonial power. The missionaries were much more successful in Africa than in Asia. However, many of the institutional churches founded in Africa by the missionaries have been replaced by ‘non-institutional’ indigenous African churches in recent years, and 31% of African Christians belong to these, as shown in the map below.

In Asia, missionaries met resilient forms of other major religions: Islam, Buddhism and the diverse range of religious practices now known as Hinduism. In eastern Asia, they also met the pervasive philosophies of Confucius, other Chinese thinkers, and, more recently Chinese forms of Marxism developed by Chairman Mao. While many Christian churches were founded throughout Asia, only in small pockets were large portions of the population converted to Christianity. Among these pockets, Korea (where 32% of the population were Christian in 1995) and the Philippines (97% Christian) are prime examples.

In Oceania, Christianity spread both through immigration (to Australia and New Zealand) and through missionary endeavours. However, with the various waves of immigration, the diversity of religion and culture has increased. This will be explored in later sections.