According to Christian beliefs, God is made up of 3 beings: God the Father, God the Son (Jesus), and the Holy spirit. After Jesus ascended into heaven, the Holy Spirit descended on his Apostles and they began speaking in tongues as rings of fire descended onto their heads. The Apostles then began to preach to the crowd that had gathered, and although they were from many different lifestyles and spoke different languages, they all understood what the 12 were saying. This marked the beginning of the Church.
This time is know in history as the apostolic church or primitive church, which helped set up standards for later Christians, such as the permission of Gentiles to be Christian with out the need of circumcision or dietary law. The Church grew over time, and as such many other regulations, policies, and traditions were added into the religion, but it remained based on the Bible. Many of the beginning practices followed through with the Jewish practices that were derived from the Jewish sculptures that were contained in the Old Testament. Some of the early practices that where kept included incense, to represent god's presence, an altar, which was used continuously in the Old Testament as a holy area where the priest can connect to god, and the use of sculpture readings in the worship service for church. They also adapted the use of sacred hymns and praises during their worship, a religious calendar with specific religious events and a male exclusive priesthood.
That was only the beginning of what the church stood for and was just a mere foundation that continued on what Jesus had started himself, and with that start the ball began to roll, and it was only a matter of time that people would convert and so forth and it would become what it is today. After the apostles had set up rules and regulations and had begun to convert people to follow the ways of Christianity, those people begun to move also and the religion began to spread through out the Greco-Roman world. With the passing away of the apostles, the appointed bishops took charge of the church and were responsible for carrying it out. Their time was noted as the Post-Apostolic Church and their era went into the times of persecution, which were carried out by the Roman Empire because of their refusal to worship the roman emperor, and under Emperor Nero they were also blamed for the Great Fire of Rome. For 250 years they went through persecutions and suffering at the hands of the Roman Empire till the rise of Constantine who converted to Christianity and made the whole of the Roman Empire do so also. With that, Christians were able to practice freely with out fear of being punished for their ideals and with that they developed a doctrine of Apostolic Succession to help determine the next bishop, by a ritual of laying on of the hands, where a bishop becomes the spiritual successor of the previous bishop in a line that stretches far back to the apostles.
As time passed Christianity became a growing role in other major events of history, such as the Crusades, in which the roman church convinced their roman soldiers that they would fight for the glory of their god. Christianity would also play roles in the developments of architecture that would be specific to the need of the Church and would affect buildings of latter use as well. However, Christianity did not stay as a whole for long, it was not perfect as everyone else thought especially in 1521 with Martin Luther posting up the 95 thesis on the castle church of Wittenberg, Germany. That action became the first split of the church as people had known it with people who practiced the same religion began to interpret things in their own way and take it upon them to practice accordingly. As time would have it other splits would occur and divisions made with people all stressing what they believed and what they took out from the Bible, however the core beliefs where kept in touch and so where the practices.
Now there are 4 main divisions of Christianity, in which each may also have sub categories, which are Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox and Pentecostal. These divisions tie in part with the separation after the Roman Empire broke up and the split between people came between what they practiced as well and cause distinct teachings to show and thus separates those four main groups from each other. The Catholic Church believes in them directly inheriting the apostolic line of succession form the early leaders. The Orthodox Church believes that they are to continuation of the undivided church before the separation of the east and west and govern themselves. The Protestant Church varies the most of the four with many things especially over the forms of Christian organization and government. Finally, there is the Pentecostal Church who emerged within the broader Protestant Church and emphasis of sharing spiritual gifts like that of the earliest Christians.
