Christian movements

Christian movements are theological, political, or philosophical intepretations of Christianity that are not generally represented by a specific church, sect, or denomination. Some of them may not be recognized as Christian by other Christians.

Religious

• Charismatic movement or Neo-pentecostalism: Pentecostalism beliefs and practices spread to churches outside of the Holiness tradition.
• Christian ecumenism: the promotion of unity or cooperation between distinct religious groups or denominations of the Christian religion.

• Uniatism: a movement on the part of some particular Eastern churches to join in visible communion with the Bishop of Rome after the Great Schism

• Christian Identity: a label applied to a wide variety of loosely-affiliated groups and churches with a racialized theology.
• Christian Zionism: the belief that the return of the Jews to the Holy Land, and the establishment of the State of Israel, is in accordance with Biblical prophecy, and is a necessary precondition for the return of Jesus to reign on Earth.
• Confessing Movement: is a neo-Evangelical movement within several mainline Protestant churches to return those churches to what members see as greater theological orthodoxy.
• Conservative Christianity: a sub-division of the Judeo-Christian community that adhere to what many consider to be conservative religious values of the Christian faith.
• Creationism: the advocation of a belief that the six day creation according to Genesis provides an accurate and scientifically justifiable description of the origin of life, the Earth, and the universe.
• Evangelicalism: emphasis on faith in Jesus as necessary and sufficient for salvation.
• Fundamentalist Christianity: sought to assert a minimal set of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs against the influences of Modernist Christianity; became a movement of separation from the "mainline" Protestant churches.
• Grace Movement: A movement beginning in the 1930's embracing the Mid-Acts Position Dispensational System of Bible Interpretation. Adherents do not consider the movement to be "hyper" or "ultra" in dispensational terms.
• Holiness movement: A Wesleyan movement beginning in the 19th century which emphasized a personal experience of holiness, and which gave rise to Pentecostalism and the Charismatic movement.
• Modernist or Liberal Christianity: school of Christian thought which rose as a direct challenge to more conservative traditional Judeo-Christian orthodoxy.
• Neo-orthodoxy: emphasis on the trancendence of God, the reality of sin, and an existentialist encounter with the word of God.
• Oxford Movement: A nineteenth century movement to more closely align Anglicanism with its Roman Catholic heritage.
• Paleo-Orthodoxy: evaluating later theology in light of the writings of the early Church.
• Pentecostalism: the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit are a normal part of the "Full Gospel"
• Restorationism: a group of religious reform movements that sought to renew the whole Christian church; the movements overlap historically but are independent and doctrinally diverse. Mormonism, Christadelphians, Jehovah's Witnesses, Unificationism and other distinct movements are counted among them.
• Restoration Movement, also known as the "Stone-Campbell movement": a group of religious reform movements that sought to renew the whole Christian church "after the New Testament pattern", in contrast to divided Christendom, of Catholicism and Protestantism; a Restorationist movement that sparked the Second Great Awakening.

Political

see also Christian politics (index)

• Christian anarchism: the rejection of all authority and power other than God, including the organized church. Christian anarchists believe that Jesus of Nazareth was clearly an anarchist, and that his movement was reversed by strong Judaist and Roman statist influences.
• Christian communism: is a form of religious communism based on the teachings of Jesus and the way of life of the Apostles and first Christians.
• Christian Democracy: is a political ideology, born at the end of the 19th century, largely as a result of the papal encyclical Rerum Novarum of Pope Leo XIII, in which the Vatican recognizes workers' misery and agrees that something should be done about it, in reaction to the rise of the socialist and trade-union movements.
• Christian left: those who hold a strong Christian belief and share left-wing or socialist ideals.
• Christian right: encompasses a spectrum of conservative Christian political and social movements and organizations characterized by their strong support of social values they deem traditional in the United States and other western countries.
• Christian socialism: those on the Christian left whose politics are both Christian and socialist, broadly including Liberation theology and the doctrine of the social gospel.
• Evangelical left: part of the Christian evangelical movement but who generally function on the left wing of that movement, either politically or theologically, or both.
• Liberation theology: an important and controversial school movement in the theology and praxis of the Roman Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council, it has been officially condemned. It had broad influence in Latin America and explores the relationship between Christian theology and political activism, particularly in areas of social justice, poverty, and human rights. It gave priority to the economically poor and oppressed of the human community. See also Black theology, Dalit theology, Feminist theology, Minjung theology & Queer theology.
• Progressive Christianity: focuses on the biblical injunctions that God's people live correctly, that they promote social justice and act to fight poverty, racism, and other forms of injustice.
• Social Gospel movement: a Protestant Christian intellectual movement that was most prominent in the late 19th century and early 20th century. The movement applies Christian principles to social problems, especially poverty, liquor, drugs, crime, racial tensions, slums, bad hygiene, poor schools, and the danger of war. Theologically the Social Gospel leaders were overwhelmingly post-Millenarian.

Philosophical

• Christian asceticism: a life which is characterised by refraining from worldly pleasures, such as wealth, possessions and alcohol.
• Christian existentialism: a school of thought founded by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard.
• Christian vegetarianism: the dietary practice of vegetarianism or veganism based on the idea that Jesus, the twelve apostles and the early Messianic Jewish followers of Jesus (the Ebionites) were vegetarians.
• Christian pacifism: Christian churches, groups or communities teaching that Jesus was himself a pacifist who taught and practiced pacifism, and that his followers must do likewise.

See also

• Christian denominations

This article was forked from Wikipedia on March 26, 2006.