Chapter 15

The early modern era of world history gave birth to two intersecting cultural trends that continue to play out in the twenty-first century. The first was the spread of Christianity to Asians, Africans, and Native Americans. The second was the emergence of a modern scientific outlook, which sharply challenged Western Christianity even as it too heavily grew globally. During the early modern era, Christianity was largely limited to Europe. In 1500, the world of Christendom stretched from Spain and England in the west to Russia in the east, with small communities of various kinds in Egypt, Ethiopia, southern India, and Central Asia. Internally, the Christian world was seriously divided between the Roman Catholics of Western and Central Europe and the eastern Orthodox of Eastern Europe and Russia. Externally it was in defense against Islam. In the early sixteenth century the Protestant Reformation shattered the unity of Roman Catholic Christianity. The reformation began in 1517 when a German priest publicly invited debate about various abuses with the Roman Catholic Church by issuing a document known as the Ninety-Five Theses. The spread of Christianity motivated European political and economic expansion and also benefited from it. Mostly Catholic Missionaries  who actively spread the Christian message beyond European communities.
The Chinese encounter with Christianity was very different from that of Native Americans in Spain's New World empire. It was received well because at no point was China's political independence or cultural integrity threatened by the European missionaries and traders working there. In the Americas, African religious ideas and practices accompanied the millions of African slaves who were brought here.

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