What organized christian faith came first?

Answer 1

The ones started by the Apostles. They were called Christians. The others were formed from a falling away from the original sect. Than more came to dispute certain teachings the felt were not part of the Original teachings.

Answer 2

What do you mean by organized? How could the Roman Catholic church be the first when the religion started in Palestine and Christianity was outlawed by Rome! Get a brain people. Of course if you start defining what C1st Christianity was based on later creedal formations, then clearly you'll eliminate any early formulation that doesn't match those later ones as heresy! It goes something like - Nicea C4th "Christians believe X, Y and Z. Anybody now or since the time of Christ who didn't believe X, Y and Z or who believed W is a heretic. People who believed what we believe are true Christians"

All Christians who take the story literally trace their origins to the apostles and claim to be closest to what Jesus and the apostles did.

The fact is that there were lots of versions of the Christ story doing the rounds in the C1st, there's no point looking to the bible as normative either, because that is also a later compilation of texts, before that you had different gospels doing the rounds.
C4th (Fouth Century!!)45 books were whittled down to 27
Of course if you believe in divine providence organizing the sects and the texts then why bother with historical inquiry, you've got faith and tradition, you don't need history or form criticism...
(don't tell anyone but it's all myth anyway, and far more valuable as such).

Research the parallels of cruxifiction, virgin birth, ritual humiliation etc., the diabolical mimicry explanation to explain similarities before Christ was explained by the church fathers as diabolical mimicry! (plagarism in advance in scraping the bottom of the barrel)

Chazerai: "Gods do not die? Do they?" - Yes there is a very long tradition of dying a rising gods, read Frazer's Golden Bough or some near eastern mythology

Answer 3

I'm not sure what you're asking but I'd say the first christians started spreading around the world and since the begining there were divisions... Some said that they were from Paul's others from Apolo's... but maybe the biggest formal organizations was the Catholic Church... the "oficial religion" by the 300's... But of course, Jesus never said anything about groups of "faith"... there should be only one...

Answer 4

Originally there were the disciples and apostles who met together after the death and resurrection. Then they began to spread their message. The church was very loosely organized at this point, but was centered in Jerusalem, where the church was led by James, the brother of Jesus (or cousin if you want to go with that perpetual virginity thing for Mary). The church became more centrally organized after Constantine became interested in the faith, as another poster here has said.

Answer 5

The Church of The Christian Faith... on the first day of Pentacost after Christ asended. By the Power of The Holy Ghost.... no pope needed

Answer 6

When one examines the first centuries of Christianity, one finds many organized groups that existed before the rise of the Catholic Church and the orthodoxy that it imposed.

While there are many possibilities, one of the earliest groups had to have been the Gnostics.

Answer 7

No one knows. There were dozens of cults following "Christ" or the "messiah" by the time Constantine consolidated them into his universal religion and established a single doctrine for his universal religion (now called "Christianity," aka Catholic church).

Constantine organized his universal religion in 325 CE (ad) and the doctrine was established by a council he authorized and supervised (Nicene Council). That is where the doctrine that Jesus is God (Trinity) was established as official policy for the universal church.

Answer 8

The Catholic Faith.

"The Church traces its origins to Jesus and the Twelve Apostles, in particular Peter, the leader of the Apostles, who is traditionally regarded as the first Pope.[3] The term "Catholic Church" was first used in a letter by Ignatius of Antioch and Catholic writers list a number of references which point to at least a 'first among equals' status for the See of Rome from the very earliest times.[4]

The New Testament contains warnings against teachings considered to be only masquerading as Christianity, [5] and shows how reference was made to the leaders of the Church to decide what was true doctrine.[6] The Roman Catholic Church claims to be the continuation of those who remained faithful to the leadership and rejected divergent teachings.

After an initial period of sporadic but intense persecution, Christianity was legalized in the fourth century, when Constantine I issued the Edict of Milan in 313. From 380 on, Christianity was the Roman state religion. Constantine was instrumental in the convocation of the Council of Nicea, which sought to address the Arian heresy and formulated the Nicene Creed which is used to this day by the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodoxy, and various Protestant churches.

During the 11th century (the traditional date assigned is 1054, though it was in fact a process over a number of decades) the Church underwent the Great Schism in which the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodoxy divided over a number of administrative, liturgical and doctrinal issues, most notably the Filioque and papal primacy of jurisdiction. Both the Second Council of Lyons (1274) and the Council of Basel (1439) attempted to reunite the churches, but in both cases the Orthodox rejected the councils. The Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodoxy remain in schism to the present day, although efforts to end the schism are ongoing. Each church claims to be the 'one, holy, catholic and apostolic' church of the Nicene Creed. Some Eastern churches have since been reunited with the Catholic Church, acknowledging the primacy of the pope, and form the Eastern Catholic Churches.


Blessed Pope John XXIII shows the consecrated host to the people (whom he faces, since the apse in St. Peter's Basilica is to the west) at the Pontifical High Mass at the opening of the Second Vatican Council, in 1962The second great rift in the history of Christianity was the Reformation, in which various groups repudiated the primacy of the pope, various other Catholic doctrines and practices as well as abuses common at the time. Reformers within the Catholic Church launched the Counter Reformation, a period of doctrinal clarification, reform of the clergy and the liturgy, and re-evangelization begun by the Council of Trent.

The Council of Trent and its reforms provided the theme for the next 300 years of Catholic history. The period lay an emphasis on catechesis and missionary work, in both of which the Jesuit and Franciscan orders were prominent. The 18th and 19th century Church found itself facing not only the teachings of Protestantism, but also Enlightenment and Modernist teachings about the nature of the human person, the state, and morality. With the coming of the industrial revolution, and the increased concern about the conditions of urban workers, 19th and 20th century popes issued encyclicals (notably Rerum Novarum) explicating Catholic Social Teaching.

The First Vatican Council (1869-1870) affirmed the doctrine of papal infallibility which Roman Catholics hold to be in continuity with the history of Petrine supremacy in the Church, but Eastern Orthodox and Protestant churches consider a theological innovation.

The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) was convened by Pope John XXIII primarily as a pastoral council, to make the historic teachings of the Catholic Church clear to the modern world. It issued documents on a number of topics including the nature of the Church, the mission of the laity, and religious freedom. Vatican II also issued instructions for a revision of the liturgy, which led to the intermediate 1965 Missal and later the Mass of Paul VI or novus ordo mass. The most visible element of these reforms was that the mass could now be celebrated in the vernacular as well as in Latin. (However, it was intended that Latin continue to have priority.)

Vatican II has remained the source of much controversy within the Catholic Church, with some elements claiming that conservatives within the Church prevented the full "spirit of Vatican II" from being implemented, while other elements claim that liberals within the Church used the council as an excuse to make changes in practice and catechesis far more wide ranging than the council's documents authorized."

Answer 9

Old Testament Fundamentalism

Answer 10

The Holy Roman Catholic Church was first.
Later Schisms would create other churches, especially the Protestant movement with Martin Luther.