Top religion stories of millennium picked Layman Online Wednesday, September 8, 1999 What were the 10 most significant religious stories of the second millennium? Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly has compiled its own list, in chronological order. 1. For the first thousand years of its existence, Christianity was basically one faith, although there were always disputes about belief and style. But in 1054, the "Great Schism" split the faith into two distinct branches: Eastern Orthodoxy, headed by the ecumenical patriarch in Constantinople (now Istanbul), and Roman Catholicism, headed by the Pope in Rome. 2. The Crusades worsened the relationship between east and west. In 1095, Eastern Orthodox leaders appealed to the Pope for help fighting the Muslim forces that had invaded the Holy Land. Briefly, it seemed the two churches might unite against a common threat. But the western crusaders built their own castles and attacked not only Muslims, but eastern Christians as well, looting Constantinople. Muslims finally drove out the last crusaders in 1299. 3. By the 13th century, Muslims controlled much of India, with the great spread of Islam. Hinduism survived there, but Buddhism became virtually extinct in India, the land where it originated. Muslim power was consolidated in the Middle East and in parts of Europe. The extensive Islamic Empire of the Ottomans captured Constantinople in 1453 and turned the historic Hagia Sophia church into a mosque. 4. In 1455, Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press and published the Bible. Religious teachings and other ideas could now be produced for mass distribution. 5. By the early 1500s, the Vatican had commissioned Michelangelo to paint the famous Sistine Chapel ceiling, one example of how the church helped develop art, music, and culture. Religious patronage also created the first universities, in cities such as Paris, Oxford, and Cambridge, revolutionizing intellectual life. 6. On October 31, 1517, a young monk named Martin Luther posted his famous 95 Theses, or points of contention with the Catholic leaders of his day. Luther accused them of corruption and false doctrine. That led to the Protestant Reformation, another major division within Christianity. 7. The first of two major Christian missionary movements began in the 16th century. The early European explorers helped take mostly Catholic missionaries around the world. By the 18th and 19th centuries, Protestant revival movements began another missionary effort, bringing the Christian faith and culture to Asia, Africa, and Latin America. 8. In 1620, English puritans sailed to Plymouth, MA, seeking religious liberty. They were the first of several waves of immigrants fleeing persecution at the hands of governments and other religions. One of the founding principles of the United States of America was that government should not establish a religion or prohibit the free exercise of religious belief. 9. The 19th century brought major challenges to religious ideas: Charles Darwin with his theory of the evolution of species, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who called Christianity the "one great curse" of humankind, psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, who called religion an illusion, and Karl Marx, whose materialistic worldview inspired communist revolutions around the world. 10. Centuries of anti-Semitic persecution in Europe culminated in the Holocaust, when an estimated six million Jews were systematically exterminated by the Nazis. Out of the ashes of the tragedy came a story of survival and renewal, with the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, an event with profound implications for Muslims and Christians as well.

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