As of today, Christianity is considered to be the largest worldwide religion, with more than 2 billion followers worldwide.

This is pretty amazing considering the fact that this religion is still quite young (in the grand scheme of things), and the fact that it splintered off from Judaism right around 2000 years ago.

If you are looking for a little bit more inside information in regards to Christianity, how it may pertain to your life, and which denomination you may be most interested in learning more about, you’re going to want to pay close attention to this very quick – and very brief – overlook of Christianity in general.

There’s just no way that we are going to be able to cover all of the individual nuances of each of the more than 34,000 different denominations of Christianity, but we are going to try and cover as many bases as possible.

The foundations of Christianity

The majority of people – Christian as well as non-Christian – have at least heard some of the foundations of Christianity at some point in time.

Christians (all Christians) believe that Jesus Christ himself is the son of God, and was sent down by God himself to teach and lead the people of Earth as a fulfillment of the prophecies made in the Old Testament.

Though he was betrayed by one of his disciples (Judas) and left to die on the cross, days later he was resurrected and rose back into heaven – defeating Satan and paying the price for all the sins all over the world (past, present, and future).

According to information in the Gospels, Jesus was conceived and born to the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem, where he was raised by Mary as well as Joseph. All of this information is contained within the Bible itself, and while all different denominations of Christianity use the Bible, each of them has their own interpretation of the messages contained within.

Some of the major denominations of Christianity

As mentioned above, there are more than 34,000 different denominations of Christianity, each of which have their own specific set of beliefs, each of which have their own specific set of the teachings, and each of which have their own different interpretation of the words contained within the Bible.

Many of these beliefs cross over into other denominations of Christianity, and for the most part these different denominations get along well with one another. There are some exceptions (as there always are).

Here are just a couple of the largest denominations of Christianity today.

The Catholic Church

With more than 1.2 billion people all over the world, the Catholic Church is easily the largest denomination of Christianity. It has an especially devout following throughout South America and Latin America, though it’s also well represented in North America as well as most of Europe.

Protestants

There are a little bit more than 800 million Protestants in the world today, with many of them located in America, South Africa, and parts of South America. This particular denomination also has a number of sub denominations, including Historical Protestantism, Baptist churches, Lutheranism, and a host of others as well.

The Eastern orthodoxy

There are about 200,000,000 to 300,000,000 people (mostly in Russia and Eastern Europe) that follow Eastern orthodoxy teachings as far as Christianity is concerned, making it one of the largest subsets and denominations of Christianity and certainly one of the most influential.

The Oriental orthodoxy

Close to 86 million people in India, and Asia, and in Africa follow a Christianity subset and denomination known as the Oriental orthodoxy, with the largest concentration of these individuals clustering in Africa.

Resources you can use to find out more about Christianity

If you’re interested in learning more about Christianity, or a specific denomination that is of interest to you, you’ll want to seek out a local church group and speak with the church leaders there.

They’ll be able to answer all of your questions, will be to point you towards influential resources, and will be able to help you better understand that specific subset of Christianity as well as Christianity in general.

The overwhelming majority of these individuals are going to be happy to share this information with you freely and as often as possible, so do not hesitate to take advantage of these powerful community resources!