The Spread of Christianity Animated

Christianity has long been closely identified with Western civilization. The association is especially strong, in modern times, with the United States of America, that source of derisively quoted, quite possibly apocryphal arguments that “if English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it ought to be good enough for our children.” But of course, Jesus never heard a word of English, and though the spread of the religion named after him did shift into high gear not long after his death — to say nothing of after Constantine’s — it took its sweet time getting to the American continent. In fact, it doesn’t show up there until more than five and a half minutes into the new eight-minute video from Ollie Bye above, which animates Christianity’s historical propagation on a world map.

It’s a world map by the end, in any case: the view zooms out as the reach of Christianity increases, starting with the region we now call the Middle East and ending up with every continent on display, none of them untouched save Antarctica (which actually does have eight churches of its own). Remarkable though it is that this first-century “desert religion” has taken root in such a variety of environments, cultures, and societies, it hasn’t come through that process completely unchanged.

Indeed, Bye’s map includes a running legend of its major variants, from Nicene, Celtic, and Chalcedonian Christianity early on to Anglican, Lutheran, Baptist, and many more in our time. It makes less sense to speak of the spread of Christianity, perhaps, than the spread of Christianities.

In the singular or the plural, what has made all this so adaptable to such a wide variety of human settings? Christianity’s non-ethnic universalism surely has something to do with it, as does the broad emotional resonance of its core narratives of sin, salvation, and rebirth. The assiduous translation of its texts and outward march of missionaries and other carriers of the gospel has been going on almost since the very beginning. Throughout its history, Christianity has also shown the versatility to thrive as a clandestine underground movement, a state religion, and everything in between. All the while, it has assimilated qualities of the civilizations it enters, from Greco-Roman philosophy to Celtic festivals to Korean shamanistic traditions. In fact, I’m writing this very post from one of the many church cafés in Seoul, as convincing an experience as to underscore Christianity’s improbable — and continuing — endurance.