Modern and Global Christianity

1900 to the present41 eventsShow on the timeline

Pentecostalism, the ecumenical movement and the Second Vatican Council reshape the churches, while persecution, secularisation and growth in Africa, Asia and Latin America shift the faith’s centre of gravity.

In 1900 most Christians lived in Europe and North America; today most live elsewhere. The century brought the fiercest persecutions in the churches’ history and also the first sustained efforts to heal their divisions, some of them reaching back to the councils of the fifth century.

Events of this era

9 April 1906, firm date
The Azusa Street Revival
In April 1906 a prayer meeting in Los Angeles led by the Black preacher William Seymour begins to speak in tongues. The mission it opens at 312 Azusa Street meets daily, draws people of many races and sends the Pentecostal message abroad.
14 January 1907, firm date
The Pyongyang Revival
At a winter Bible class in Pyongyang in January 1907, hundreds of Korean Presbyterian men pray aloud together and confess their sins in public through two nights. Those who were there carry the revival to churches across Korea.
14–23 June 1910, firm date
The World Missionary Conference at Edinburgh
About 1,200 delegates of missionary societies, most of them from Britain, North America and continental Europe, meet at Edinburgh in June 1910 to consider the evangelisation of the non-Christian world, and appoint a Continuation Committee to carry the work on.
1910 to 1925, firm date
The Fundamentals and the Modernist Controversy
Twelve volumes called The Fundamentals are sent free to Protestant ministers from about 1910. In the 1920s a dispute between Fundamentalists and liberals over the Bible, miracles and modern knowledge divides American churches and reaches a courtroom at Dayton.
1915 to 1916, firm date
The Destruction of the Armenian and Assyrian Christians
From April 1915 the Ottoman government deports Armenians from across the empire toward the Syrian desert, and the American ambassador reports massacre, starvation and the destruction of a people. Assyrian Christians of Urmia and Hakkari are attacked in the same months.
1917 to 1918, firm date
The Russian Church under the Bolsheviks
In November 1917 a council of the Russian Orthodox Church restores the patriarchate and Tikhon takes the patriarchal seat. Two months later the Soviet government separates church and state by decree and declares all church property to be the people’s.
1921, firm date
Simon Kimbangu and the Kimbanguist Church
In 1921 Simon Kimbangu, a Baptist of the Lower Congo, begins to preach and to pray over the sick at Nkamba, and crowds come to him. A Belgian military court sentences him to death; reprieved, he dies in prison thirty years later, and a church grows from his followers.
11 February 1929, firm date
The Lateran Treaty Creates Vatican City
On 11 February 1929 the Holy See and Italy sign a treaty and a concordat in the Lateran Palace. Italy recognises the pope’s sovereignty over Vatican City, and the Holy See recognises the Kingdom of Italy with Rome as its capital.
31 May 1934, firm date
The Barmen Declaration
Meeting at Barmen in May 1934, a synod of Lutheran, Reformed and United Protestants declares against the German Christians that Jesus Christ is the one Word of God the church has to hear, and that the state may not become the total order of human life.
14 March 1937, firm date
Mit brennender Sorge: Pius XI on the Church in the German Reich
In an encyclical to the German bishops dated 14 March 1937, Pius XI protests that the concordat of 1933 has been broken and rejects as contrary to faith in God the exalting of race, people or state to the highest value.
25 January 1944, firm date
The First Woman Is Ordained an Anglican Priest
In unoccupied China the Anglican bishop of Hong Kong ordains the deaconess Li Tim Oi a priest, so that her wartime congregation in Macau may have the sacraments. The Lambeth Conference of 1948 advises against such ordinations; that of 1978 accepts churches that ordain women.
9 April 1945, firm date
The Execution of Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, held for two years for his part in the German resistance, is condemned by an SS court-martial at Flossenbürg concentration camp and hanged the next morning. His letters from prison are published in 1951.
about December 1945, estimated date
The Nag Hammadi Library Is Found
Papyrus books in Coptic, holding over fifty religious texts including the Gospel of Thomas, come to light near Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt. The first reaches the Coptic Museum in 1946; the story of the find was gathered from villagers thirty years later.
1947, estimated date
The Dead Sea Scrolls Are Discovered
Bedouin bring seven ancient scrolls from a cave near Qumran to dealers in Bethlehem. A Syrian Orthodox archbishop and a Hebrew University professor buy them, and scholars find Hebrew manuscripts about a thousand years older than any biblical text then known.
27 September 1947, firm date
The Church of South India Unites Four Traditions
Anglican dioceses, the Methodist Church and the South India United Church, itself a union of Presbyterians and Congregationalists, become one church with bishops in a service at Madras. Anglican bishops elsewhere are divided about its ministry.
23 August 1948, firm date
The World Council of Churches Is Founded
Delegates of 147 churches from 44 countries, meeting in Amsterdam, constitute the World Council of Churches as a fellowship of churches that accept Jesus Christ as God and Saviour. The Roman Catholic Church takes no part.
25 September 1949, firm date
Billy Graham and Postwar Evangelicalism
An eight-week tent campaign in Los Angeles in the autumn of 1949 makes the evangelist Billy Graham known across the United States. In 1956 he and the theologian Carl Henry launch the magazine Christianity Today as a voice for evangelical Christianity.
1950 to 1954, firm date
The Chinese Church under the People’s Republic
Protestant leaders in the new People’s Republic sign a manifesto pledging loyalty to the state and an end to foreign ties, and the Three-Self Patriotic Movement is organised. Some pastors refuse to join, and Rome rejects a self-governing Catholic church.
1 November 1950, firm date
The Dogma of the Assumption of Mary
Pope Pius XII defines as dogma that the Virgin Mary, at the end of her earthly life, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory. The Orthodox keep the feast of her Dormition; many Anglicans object that the definition lacks a basis in Scripture.
1960 to 1967, firm date
The Charismatic Renewal
Speaking in tongues and other gifts associated with Pentecostalism appear in the older churches. An Episcopal rector in California tells his parish of his experience in 1960, and Catholics date their charismatic renewal from a retreat of students near Pittsburgh in 1967.
1962 to 1965, firm date
The Second Vatican Council
From 1962 to 1965 the Catholic bishops of the world meet in St Peter’s. Called by John XXIII and concluded by Paul VI, the council issues texts on the liturgy, the church, revelation, religious freedom, other Christians and the Jewish people.
16 April 1963, firm date
The Churches and the Civil Rights Movement
Jailed in Birmingham, Alabama, for leading a march against segregation, the minister Martin Luther King Jr answers eight white clergymen who had called the protests untimely. His letter defends breaking unjust laws openly and reproaches the white churches.
7 December 1965, firm date
Rome and Constantinople Lift the Anathemas of 1054
On 7 December 1965 Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras I declare together that they regret the excommunications exchanged in 1054 and remove them from the memory of the church. The act does not restore communion between the two churches.
24 August 1968, firm date
Medellín and Liberation Theology
In 1968 the Catholic bishops of Latin America apply the Second Vatican Council to a continent of mass poverty and speak of liberation. Gustavo Gutiérrez builds a theology on that word, and Rome answers with a warning in 1984 and a positive statement in 1986.
25 July 1968, firm date
Humanae Vitae
In an encyclical of 25 July 1968 Paul VI teaches that every marital act must keep its relation to procreation and excludes any act meant to prevent it. The Lambeth Conference disagrees; Canada’s Catholic bishops say some Catholics find parts of it hard or impossible to accept.
1973 to 1994, firm date
Ancient Christological Divisions Are Addressed
Between 1973 and 1994 Rome signs common statements of faith in Christ with the Coptic pope and with the patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East, and Eastern and Oriental Orthodox delegates agree two statements of their own. None of them restores communion.
16–25 July 1974, firm date
The Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization
In July 1974 some 2,700 evangelical Christians from more than 150 nations meet at Lausanne. Their covenant, drafted under John Stott, commits them to world evangelization and affirms that evangelism and social responsibility are both Christian duties.
1978 to 1979, firm date
John Paul II and the Churches under Communism
In October 1978 the cardinals elect the archbishop of Kraków as pope. He tells the world not to be afraid and to open the frontiers of states to Christ, and in June 1979 he preaches in Warsaw that Christ cannot be kept out of human history.
24 March 1980, firm date
The Assassination of Óscar Romero
On 24 March 1980 the archbishop of San Salvador is shot dead while celebrating Mass, the day after he had called on soldiers to stop the repression. A UN truth commission later finds that former Major Roberto D’Aubuisson gave the order.
1982 to 1986, firm date
The Churches and Apartheid
Between 1982 and 1986 the Reformed world alliance calls the theological defence of apartheid a heresy, the Dutch Reformed Mission Church adopts the Belhar Confession, and the Kairos Document appears. The Dutch Reformed Church, which had sanctioned apartheid, later confesses it.
9 October 1989, firm date
Churches and the Fall of Communism
On 9 October 1989, after peace prayers in four Leipzig churches, tens of thousands march round the city and the East German state does not use force. A bishop, church groups and party officials had all appealed for calm that day.
11 October 1992, firm date
The Catechism of the Catholic Church
On 11 October 1992 John Paul II orders the publication of a catechism for the whole Catholic Church, asked for by the bishops’ synod of 1985 and drafted over six years under Cardinal Ratzinger. It sets out Catholic teaching in four parts.
31 October 1999, firm date
Lutherans and Catholics Agree on Justification
At Augsburg the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church confirm a joint declaration: they share a consensus in basic truths of the doctrine of justification, and the condemnations of the sixteenth century do not apply to the teaching it sets out. Differences remain.
6 January 2002, firm date
The Clergy Sexual Abuse Crisis
From January 2002, reports from Boston and then official inquiries in the United States, Ireland and Australia document the sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy and its concealment by church authorities. Popes change church law. Reports on other churches follow.
11 February 2013, firm date
Benedict XVI Resigns and Francis Is Elected
Benedict XVI tells the cardinals that his strength is no longer equal to the office and renounces it from 28 February 2013. On 13 March the conclave elects Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, a Jesuit, who takes the name Francis.
15 February 2015, firm date
The Twenty-One Martyrs of Libya
In February 2015 twenty-one Christian workers, twenty Egyptian Copts and one man from Ghana, are beheaded on the coast of Libya. The Coptic Orthodox Church enters them in its Synaxarium within a week, and in 2023 Pope Francis announces their inclusion in the Roman Martyrology.
June 2016, firm date
The Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church
After decades of preparation a council of the Orthodox churches meets on Crete under the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. Ten of the fourteen autocephalous churches take part; Antioch, Bulgaria, Georgia and Russia stay away, having asked for it to be postponed.
31 October 2016, firm date
Catholics and Lutherans Mark 500 Years of the Reformation Together
Pope Francis and the leaders of the Lutheran World Federation open the five-hundredth anniversary year of the Reformation with a common prayer in Lund Cathedral, and sign a statement of thanks, repentance and commitment to common witness.
6 January 2019, firm date
Constantinople Grants Autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine
The Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew hands Metropolitan Epiphanius a tomos declaring the Orthodox Church in Ukraine autocephalous. The Moscow Patriarchate, which counts Ukraine as its own canonical territory, has already broken communion with Constantinople over the decision.
8 May 2025, firm date
Leo XIV, the First Pope from the United States
After the death of Pope Francis on Easter Monday 2025 the cardinals elect Robert Francis Prevost, an Augustinian friar born in Chicago who had been a missionary and bishop in Peru. He takes the name Leo XIV.
28 November 2025, firm date
The Churches Mark 1,700 Years since Nicaea
Pope Leo XIV, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and leaders of other churches pray together at İznik, the ancient Nicaea, and profess the creed. The next day pope and patriarch sign a declaration naming the faith of Nicaea as what binds Christians together.