Graduate Women in Science

# Graduate Women in Science

## Abstract

Graduate Women in Science (GWIS), formerly known as Sigma Delta Epsilon, is an international organization for women in science. It was established in 1921 at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, United States.The organization is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization that works to connect, lead, and empower women in science. It has over 1,000 members and more than 30 active chapters.

## History

GWIS was established on May 24, 1921, at Cornell University by women pursuing graduate degrees in the sciences. The organization was named the Sigma Delta Epsilon —SDE for short. In 1922, a similar local group for women at the University of Wisconsin–Madison agreed to merge with Sigma Delta Epsilon, establishing a national fraternity. Its purpose was "to further interest in science, to provide a fraternity for the recognition of women in science, and to bring them together in fraternal relationship".

Adele Gerard Lewis Grant served as its first president. Sigma Delta Epsilon was incorporated in the state of New York in April 1922. Its first national convention was held in 1922. It joined the American Association for the Advancement of Science as an associated member in 1936 and as an affiliated member in 1939.

In 1931, GWIS established its Formal Fellowships Fund. Its First Research Fellowship was awarded in 1941. In 1970, the Eloise Gerry Fellowship Fund, the first of the GWIS fellowships funded by a single individual rather than by fundraising and small membership contributions, was established.

Graduate Women in Science is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization that works to connect, lead, and empower women in science. Its mission is "building a global community to inspire, support, recognize, and empower women in science." It has over 1,000 members and dozens of chapters spread across the United States, as well as an international chapter that was established in 2013. Its national office is in Mullica Hill, New Jersey.

## Symbols

The motto of GWIS is "United in Friendship through Science". Its guiding principles or pillars are Connect, Lead, and Empower.

Its badge is a Nile key with the Greek letters ΣΔΕ in black enamel on its crossbar. Attached to the key are a benzene ring, a thunderbolt, and the nabla. Its colors are those of the spectrum.

## Membership

Membership in the Graduate Women in Science is open to anyone, regardless of gender, who has at least a bachelor's degree in a scientific discipline.

## Activities

GWIS offers grants, awards, and fellowships. It serves an international network of women scientists and promotes the participation and representation of women in science-related events. The GWIS National Meeting is held annually in June. It also sponsors additional meetings and symposia. The society publishes a monthly newsletter.

## Chapters

Graduate Women in Science has chartered more than 50 chapters and has more than 30 active chapters.


Elisabet Barnes

# Elisabet Barnes

## Abstract

Elisabet Barnes (born 13 April 1977, née Frankenberg) is a Swedish athlete specialized in ultrarunning. Her major claim to fame is winning the Marathon des Sables in 2015, winning each stage of the race. She repeated her win in 2017. The Marathon des Sables has been listed by Outside Magazine as one of the 9 toughest ultramarathons in the world. In 2015, she participated in six races, winning all and setting new course records in four.

Barnes grew up in Sweden but moved to England in 2007 where she started to run ultra trails in 2011. She holds an MSc in Engineering & Business Management and a Graduate Certificate in Change Management, and has a professional background in management consulting. Barnes co-owns a shop that specializes in running equipment. Her partner, Norwegian Sondre Amdahl, is a professional mountain ultra trail-runner and endurance coach.

## Results

2011

- 4th Lidingö Ultra 50 km (31 mi), Sweden

- 1st 50 Mile Challenge 50 mi (80 km), UK

- 5th Norfolk Coastal Ultra 100 km (62 mi), UK

2012

- 15th Marathon des Sables 251 km (156 mi), 6 stages, Morocco

- 1st Ring O’ Fire 131 mi (211 km), 3 stages, UK

- 2nd Norfolk Coastal Ultra 100 km (62 mi), UK

2013

- 9th Centurion South Downs Way 100 mi (160 km), UK

2014

- 5th North Downs Way 100 Mile Race 100 mi (160 km), UK

- 2nd 10 Peaks Brecon Beacons 58 km (36 mi), UK

- 9th Grand Union Canal Race 45 mi (72 km), UK

2015

- 1st Go Beyond Ultra Country to Capital 45 mi (72 km), UK (new course record)

- 1st Pilgrim Challenge North Downs Way Multistage Ultra 66 mi (106 km), 2 stages, UK (new course record)

- 1st Marathon des Sables 249 km (155 mi), 6 stages, Morocco

- 1st Trail Menorca Costa Sud (TMCS) 85 km (53 mi), Spain (new course record)

- 1st 10 Peaks Brecon Beacons 58 km (36 mi), UK (new course record)

- 1st Oman Desert Marathon 165 km (103 mi), 6 stages, Oman

2016

- 2nd The Coastal Challenge Costa Rica 227 km (141 mi), 6 stages, Costa Rica

- 4th Marathon des Sables 257 km (160 mi), 6 stages, Morocco

- 3rd Richtersveld Transfrontier Wildrun 200 km (120 mi), 6 stages, South Africa/Namibia

- 1st The Big Red Run 250 km (160 mi), 6 stages, Australia (1st overall)

- 2nd Grand to Grand Ultra 273 km (170 mi), 6 stages, USA

2017

- 4th The Coastal Challenge Costa Rica 236 km (147 mi), 6 stages, Costa Rica

- 1st Marathon des Sables 229 km (142 mi), 6 stages, Morocco (11th overall)

- 4th TransRockies Run 120 mi (190 km), 6 stages, USA

- 3rd Everest Trail Race 160 km (99 mi), 6 stages, Nepal

2018

- 1st Ultra Mirage El Djerid 100 km (62 mi), Tunisia (4th overall)

2019

- 1st Trans Atlas Marathon 280 km (170 mi), 6 stages, Morocco (3rd overall)


History of Christianity

# History of Christianity

## Abstract

The history of Christianity follows the Christian religion as it developed from its earliest beliefs and practices in the first-century, spread geographically in the Roman Empire and beyond, and became a global religion in the twenty-first century.

Christianity originated with the ministry of Jesus, a Jewish teacher and healer who was crucified and died c. AD 30–33 in Jerusalem in the Roman province of Judea. Afterwards, his followers, a set of apocalyptic Jews, proclaimed him risen from the dead. Christianity began as a Jewish sect and remained so for centuries in some locations, diverging gradually from Judaism over doctrinal, social and historical differences. In spite of the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire, the faith spread as a grassroots movement that became established by the third-century both in and outside the empire. New Testament texts were written and church government was loosely organized in its first centuries, though the biblical canon did not become official until 382.

Constantine the Great was the first Roman Emperor that converted to Christianity in 313. He issued the Edict of Milan expressing tolerance for all religions. He did not make Christianity the state religion, but he did provide crucial support. Constantine called the first of seven ecumenical councils. Christianity was both defined and transformed in Late Antiquity in what is sometimes called the "golden age" of Patristic Christianity. By the Early Middle Ages, Eastern and Western Christianity had already begun to diverge, while missionary activities spread Christianity across Europe. Monks and nuns played a prominent role in establishing a Christendom that influenced every aspect of medieval life.

From the ninth-century into the twelfth, politicization and Christianization went hand-in-hand in developing the society of East-Central Europe, Slavic countries, the Russian world, language, literacy, and literature. The Byzantine Empire was more prosperous than the Western Roman Empire, and Eastern Orthodoxy was influential in Eastern Europe. Centuries of Islamic aggression and the Crusades negatively impacted Eastern Christianity. During the High Middle Ages, Eastern and Western Christianity had grown far enough apart that differences led to the East–West Schism of 1054. Temporary reunion was not achieved until the year before the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The fall of the Byzantine Empire put an end to the institutional Christian Church as established under Constantine, though it survived in altered form.

Various catastrophic circumstances, combined with a growing criticism of the Catholic Church in the 1300–1500s, led to the Protestant Reformation and its related reform movements. Reform, and the Catholic Counter-Reformation, were followed by the European wars of religion, the development of modern political concepts of tolerance, and the Age of Enlightenment. Christianity also influenced the New World through its connection to colonialism, its part in the American Revolution, the dissolution of slavery in the west, and the long-term impact of Protestant missions.

In the twenty-first century, traditional Christianity has declined in the West, while new forms have developed and expanded throughout the world. Today, there are more than two billion Christians worldwide and Christianity has become the world's largest, and most widespread religion. Within the last century, the centre of growth has shifted from West to East and from the North to the Global South.

## Origins to 312

The first Christian communities began in Judea, a province of the Roman Empire, in the second quarter of the first century. They swiftly spread into the Jewish diaspora, along the trade and travel routes followed by merchants, soldiers, and migrating tribes, moving from fewer than 50,000 adherents to over a million in the hundred years between 150 and 250. Driven by a universalist logic, Christianity has been, from its beginnings, a missionary faith with global aspirations, leading it to become a part of the history of a great many civilizations.

Jewish Christianity was foundational and remained influential in Palestine, Syria, and Asia Minor into the second and third centuries. Judaism and Christianity diverged over disagreements about Jewish law, Jewish insurrections against Rome which Christians did not support, and the development of Rabbinic Judaism by the Pharisees, the sect which had rejected Jesus while he was alive. The religious, social, and political climate of the area was diverse and often characterized by turmoil. Romans of this era feared civil disorder, giving their highest regard to peace, harmony and order. Piety equalled loyalty to family, class, city and emperor. This was demonstrated through the practices and rituals of the old religious ways.

Christianity was largely tolerated, but some also saw it as a threat to " Romanness " which produced localized persecution by mobs and governors. The first reference to persecution by a Roman Emperor is under Nero, probably in 64 AD, in the city of Rome. Scholars conjecture that the Apostles Peter and Paul were killed then.

It is well documented that from 250-311, religious sentiment in the Roman Empire rose. In 250, the emperor Decius made it a capital offence to refuse to make sacrifices to Roman gods, resulting in widespread persecution of Christians. Valerian pursued similar policies later that decade. The last and most severe official persecution, the Diocletianic Persecution, took place in 303–311. There was periodic persecution of Christians by Persian Sassanian authorities, and the term "Hellene" became equated with pagan during this period.

### Early geographical spread

Beginning with less than 1000 people, Christianity had grown to around one hundred small household churches consisting of an average of seventy members each, by the year 100. It achieved critical mass in the hundred years between 150 and 250 when it moved from fewer than 50,000 adherents to over a million. This provided enough adopters for its growth rate to be self-sustaining.

In the first century, Christianity spread into Asia Minor (Athens, Corinth, Ephesus, and Pergamum). Egyptian Christianity probably began in the first-century in Alexandria. As it spread, Coptic Christianity, which survives into the modern era, developed. Christianity in Antioch is mentioned in Paul's epistles.

Early Christianity was in Gaul, North Africa, and the city of Rome. It spread (in its Arian form) in the Germanic world during the latter part of the third-century, and probably reached Roman Britain by the third-century at the latest.

From the earliest days, there was a Christian presence in Edessa (modern Turkey). It developed in Adiabene in the Parthian Empire in Persia (modern Iran). It developed in Georgia by the Black Sea, in Ethiopia, India, Nubia, South Arabia, Soqotra, Central Asia and China. By the sixth-century, there is evidence of Christian communities in Sri Lanka and Tibet.

### Early beliefs and practices

According to the Gospels, Christianity began with the itinerant preaching and teaching of a deeply pious young Jewish man, Jesus of Nazareth. Virtually all scholars of antiquity accept that Jesus was a historical figure. His followers came to believe Jesus was the Son of God, the Christ, a title in Greek for the Hebrew term mashiach (Messiah) meaning “the anointed one.” Jesus was crucified c. AD 30–33 in Jerusalem, and after his death and burial, his disciples proclaimed they had seen him alive and raised from the dead. Thereafter, he was said to be exalted by God. These became founding doctrines of Christianity. From its beginnings, the church has held baptism and the celebration of the eucharist (the Last Supper) as its two primary rituals.

Early Christianity's teachings on morality have been cited as a major factor in its growth. In contrast to traditional Roman social stratification, early Christian communities were highly inclusive being open to men and women, rich and poor, slave and free. In groups formed by Paul the Apostle, the role of women was greater than in other religious movements.

Intellectual egalitarianism made philosophy and ethics available to ordinary people and even slaves whom Roman culture deemed incapable of ethical reflection. Romans saw sexual morality as determined by social and political status, power, and social reproduction. Christianity impacted Roman sexuality through its teachings on freewill, divorce, and the remarriage of widows.

Christians distributed bread to the hungry, nurtured the sick, and showed the poor great generosity. They redefined family through their approach to death and burial which expanded the audience to include the extended Christian community. Christians had no sacrificial cult, and this set them apart from Judaism and the pagan world.

Christianity in its first 300 years was highly exclusive. Believing was the crucial and defining characteristic that set a "high boundary" that strongly excluded non-believers. This has been cited as a crucial factor in maintaining Christian independence in the syncretizing Roman religious culture.

#### Heresy

The teachers, leaders and philosophers of early Christianity wrote about first-century Judaizers, second century Gnosticism and Marcionism, on into the close of the eighth century using the term " heresy " to define theological error and establish Christian identity.

#### Church hierarchy

The Church as an institution began its formation quickly and with some flexibility in these early centuries before Constantine and the Council of Nicaea in 325. Christian writings from the first-century mention bishops (or episkopoi), as overseers and presbyters as elders or priests, with deacons as 'servants', sometimes using the terms interchangeably. Gerd Theissen puts forth the view that institutionalization began very early when itinerant preaching first transformed into resident leadership.

#### New Testament

First-century Christian writings in Koine Greek, including Gospels containing accounts of Jesus' ministry, letters of Paul, and letters attributed to other early Christian leaders, had considerable authority even in the formative period. When discussion began about creating a Biblical canon to separate books seen as authoritative from those that were not, there were disputes over whether or not to include some of them. A list of accepted books was established by the Council of Rome in 382, followed by those of Hippo in 393 and Carthage in 397. For Christians, these became the "New Testament", and the Hebrew Scriptures became the "Old Testament".

Spanning two millennia, the Bible has become one of the most influential works ever written, having contributed to the formation of Western law, art, literature, literacy and education.

## Late Antiquity to Early Middle Ages (313–600)

In Late Antiquity, Christianity turned the existing network of diverse Christian communities into an organization that mirrored the structure of the Roman Empire. Often referred to as the "golden age" of patristic Christianity, Christians of this era compiled many of Christianity's greatest works as they transformed and defined its art, culture, and literature, along with its theology, philosophy and politics through its internal and external relationships.

### Influence of Constantine

Constantine the Great became emperor in the West, declared himself a Christian, and in 313, just two years after the close of Diocletian's persecution, issued the Edict of Milan expressing tolerance for all religions. The Edict was a pluralist policy, and throughout the Roman Empire of the fourth to sixth centuries, people shifted between a variety of religious groups in a kind of "religious marketplace". Constantine did not make Christianity the official state religion. Law, literature, rituals, and institutions indicate that converting the empire to Christianity was a complex, long-term, slow-paced, and uneven process with no single moment or event to mark when the Roman state might have chosen Christianity as its state religion.

Even so, Constantine took important steps that supported and protected Christianity. He gave bishops judicial power and established equal footing for Christian clergy by granting them the same immunities polytheistic priests had long enjoyed. By intervening in church disputes, he initiated a precedent for ecclesiastical councils. Constantine devoted imperial and public funds to building multiple churches, endowed his churches with wealth and lands, and provided revenue for their clergy and upkeep. By the late fourth-century, there were churches in essentially all Roman cities.

### Art, literature and culture

Constantine's sponsorship produced an exuberant burst of Christian art and architecture, frescoes, mosaics, and hieroglyphic type drawings, though classicism experienced a short revival under Julian the Apostate and in the Theodosian renaissance (circa 400). While classical and Christian culture coexisted into the seventh century, Christian imagery gradually replaced classical images.

The codex (the ancestor of modern books) which replaced rolls by the sixth century, was consistently used by Christians long before it was generally adopted in the pagan world. The codex form was probably used by Christians as early as the first century. The church in Egypt had most likely invented the papyrus codex by the second century.

Among the many great orators and philosophers of the fourth and fifth centuries, prose was primary. Still, a hybrid form of poetry written in traditional classic forms with Latin style and Christian concepts began to emerge. The Christian innovation of mixing genrés demonstrated the synthesis of Christianity and classic culture that was taking place in the broader culture, while new Christian methods of interpreting and explaining, not simply recording, history began.

In Roman culture, the legal record on marriage and family shows no drive toward Christianization, yet Christianity did present a new voice on divorce, the required remarriage of widows, and the established Roman sexual double-standard. Christians continued to attend and teach in Late Antique schools, which remained philosophically pagan, by following the advice of Basil of Caesarea to take what was useful and leave the rest.

### Relations with polytheists

Twenty-first century scholarship is largely turning away from the idea of an epic “conflict between pagans and Christians” in Late Antiquity. Still, Constantine did write laws against sacrifice using language that Peter Brown describes as "uniformly vehement" with "frequently horrifying" penalties, evidencing the intent of "terrorizing" the populace into accepting its removal. Sacrifice, a central rite of virtually all religious groups in the pre-Christian Mediterranean, largely disappeared before the end of the fourth-century. Since religious identity was not tied solely to that single practice, traditional cults continued to flourish in some areas, for enough years, that there is no date, or even decade, for scholars to say "when paganism ended".

Christians of the fourth-century believed Constantine's conversion was evidence the Christian God had conquered the polytheist gods in Heaven. This "triumph of Christianity" became the primary Christian narrative in writings of the late antique age in spite of Christians representing only ten to fifteen percent of the empire's population in 313. As a minority, triumph did not, generally, involve an increase in violence aimed at the polytheistic majority.

Constantine's policy toward non-Christians was "toleration with limits", so in general, conflict between these groups was more rhetorical than actual – with a few exceptions. Constantine was vigorous in reclaiming church properties that had previously been confiscated by the government, and he used reclamation to justify the destruction of some Greco-Roman temples such as Aphrodite's temple in Jerusalem. There was no legislation forcing the conversion of pagans until the reign of the Eastern Emperor Justinian I in A.D. 529.

### Relations with the Jews

Significant Jewish communities existed throughout the Christian Roman empire. Jews and Christians were both religious minorities, claiming the same inheritance, competing in a direct and sometimes violent clash. In the fourth-century, Augustine of Hippo argued against the persecution of the Jewish people, and a relative peace existed between Jews and Christians until the thirteenth-century. Although anti-Semitic violence erupted occasionally, attacks on Jews by mobs, local leaders and lower-level clergy were carried out without the support of church leaders who generally accepted Augustine's teachings.

Sometime before the fifth-century, the theology of supersessionism emerged, claiming that Christianity had displaced Judaism as God's chosen people. Supersessionism was never official or universally held, but replacement theology has been part of Christian thought through much of history. Many attribute the emergence of antisemitism to this doctrine, while others make a distinction between supersessionism and modern anti-Semitism.

### Relations with heretics

Fourth century Christianity was dominated by its many conflicts defining and dealing with heresy and orthodoxy. In the fourth century, the writings of the church fathers and the letters of bishops emerged as sources of authority on orthodoxy and identity, in addition to apostolic authority, and they were often used to identify and condemn heretics in a highly combative manner.

While there had been earlier disagreements with the Judaizers, the first major heretical disagreement was between Arianism and traditional orthodox trinitarianism over whether Jesus' divinity and the Father's divinity are equal. The First Council of Nicaea (in modern Turkey), called by Constantine in (325), and the First Council of Constantinople called by Theodosius I in 381, produced an affirmation of orthodoxy in the form of the Nicene Creed.

Additional and ongoing theological controversies led the Armenian, Assyrian, and Egyptian churches to withdraw from Nicaean Catholicism, and instead, combine into what is today known as Oriental Orthodoxy, one of three major branches of Eastern Christianity, along with the Church of the East in Persia and Eastern Orthodoxy in Byzantium.

### Relation of Church and State

The conversion of Constantine allied a monotheistic religion with a global power, both with ambitions of universality. In the Roman Empire of late antiquity, the state was seen as a religious institution with no separation between "secular" and "religious". Monarchy was thought to be the only viable form of government; therefore the chief duty of all ancient monarchs was to gain heavenly favor. However, after the restrictions on Christianity were removed, emperor and bishop began to share responsibility for maintaining relations with the divine. This caused a shift in power dynamics, since "who speaks for God" was a significant issue in Late Antiquity.

Constantine and his successors, attempted to fit the Church into their political program. The church resisted, making a case for a sphere of religious authority separate from state authority. It forms the first clearly articulated limitation on the scope of a ruler’s power, by distinguishing the power of the church from that of the empire, and arguing for the priority of one over the other.

Intersection with the state also boosted the church's authority and wealth, and for the next 800 years, the western church struggled between recognition of the State as willed by God, and defense of the church's autonomy and spiritual superiority to the world. For many centuries the Eastern church demonstrated more ability to work its way through power issues between church and state (than did its Western counterparts) by proclaiming a unanimity of church and state.

### Regional developments (300–600)

In Caesarea, monastics developed an unprecedented health care system that allowed the sick to be cared for in a special building at the monastery by those dedicated to their care. This gave the sick benefits which destigmatized illness, transformed health care, and led to the founding of the first public hospital by Basil the Great in Caesarea in 369, which became a model for hospitals thereafter.

In North Africa during the reign of Constantine, Donatism, a Christian sect, developed. They refused - sometimes violently - to accept back into the Church those Catholics who had recanted their faith under persecution. After many appeals, the empire responded with force, and in 408 in his Letter 93, Augustine defended the government's action. Augustine's authority on coercion was undisputed for over a millennium in Western Christianity, and according to Peter Brown, "it provided the theological foundation for the justification of medieval persecution".

In Late Antiquity, King Clovis I united the Franks and converted to Catholicism. The conversion of the Irish began in the early fifth-century through missionary activity and without coercion. Christianity had become an established minority faith in some parts of Britain in the second-century. Anglo-Saxon forms of Germanic paganism displaced Christianity in fifth century south-eastern Britain. Irish missionaries went to Iona (563) and converted many Picts. The Gregorian mission in 597 led to the conversion of the first Anglo-Saxon king Æthelberht around 600.

#### The East, Justinian and pentarchy

The Church of this age was seen by its supporters as a universal church. Patriarchs in the East first extended papal power and influence beyond Rome as they frequently looked to the bishop of Rome to resolve disagreements for them. Yet, the tendency for East and West to grow apart was also already becoming evident.

The western church spoke Latin, while the East spoke and wrote in at least five languages. Theological differences were becoming pronounced. The manner in which western and eastern churches related to the State differed. In the Roman west, the church condemned Roman culture as sinful, kept itself as separate as possible, and struggled to resist State control. This is in pointed contrast with Eastern Christianity which acclaimed harmony with Greek culture, and whose emperors and Patriarchs upheld unanimity between church and state.

Before Byzantine Emperor Justinian I (527–565), no Roman "Christian empire" existed. Under Justinian, subjects were left without doubt that they lived in a Christian state. Until the time of Justinian, the Byzantine emperors practiced a policy of tolerance toward all religions. Justinian's religious policies reflected his conviction that the unity of the Empire presupposed unity of faith. He persecuted pagans and religious minorities and purged the governmental bureaucracy of those who disagreed with him. He regulated everything in religion, and in law, even interfering in papal elections. Justinian attempted to regulate the church's authority through pentarchy which advocated sharing government of the church between the Patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and the Pope of Rome. The Pope opposed this idea, advocating instead for the papal supremacy of Rome.

Justinian also integrated Christian ideals with Roman law. The Code of Justinian became an essential part of the Corpus Juris Civilis which remains the basis of civil law in many modern states. Justinian made donations to the church, established foundations, and watched over church property. He supported the rights of bishops, priests and abbots, and monastic life. Justinian rebuilt the Hagia Sophia (which cost 20,000 pounds of gold) and Byzantine culture blossomed during his reign.

#### Asia

There is no consensus on the origins of Christianity beyond Byzantium in Asia or East Africa. Though it is scattered throughout these areas by the fourth-century, there is little documentation and no complete record. Asian and African Christians did not have access to structures of power, and their institutions developed without state support. Practising the Christian faith in these regions sometimes brought opposition and persecution. Asian Christianity never developed the social, intellectual and political power of Byzantium or the Latin West.

In 301, Armenia became the first country to adopt Christianity as its state religion. In an environment where the religious group was without cultural or political power, the merging of church and state is thought to represent ethnic identity. In the fourth century, Asia Minor, and Georgia forged national identities by adopting Christianity as their state religion, as did Ethiopia and Eritrea. In 314, King Urnayr of Albania adopted Christianity as the state religion.

## Early Middle Ages (600–1000)

The Early Middle Ages were characterized by diversity, however, the concept of Christendom was also pervasive and unifying. Medieval writers and ordinary folk used the term to identify themselves, their religious culture, and even their civilization. Still, religion was not a uniform pious version of Christianity. The church, before the end of the tenth-century, left room for common folk with folk beliefs who held an inherent faith without complete doctrinal understanding.

Throughout this period, a symbiotic relationship existed between ecclesiastical institutions and civil governments. Churches were dependent upon lay rulers, and it was those rulers - not the Pope - who determined who received what ecclesiastical job on their lands.

### Monasticism

In 600, there was great diversity in monastic life in both East and West even though the basic characteristics of monastic spirituality - asceticism, the goal of spiritual perfection, a life of wandering or physical toil, radical poverty, preaching, and prayer - had become established. Monasteries became more and more organized from 600 to 1100. The formation of these organized bodies of believers gradually carved out social spaces with authority separate from political and familial authority, thereby revolutionizing social history. Medical practice was highly important, and medieval monasteries are best known for their contributions to medical care. For the majority of the faithful in the early Middle Ages of both East and West, the saint was first and foremost the monk.

### Papal supremacy

Popes led the sixth century response to the invasion of northern Italy by the Lombards producing an increase in papal autonomy and prestige. By the time Pope Gregory I succeeded to the papacy in 590, the claim of Rome's supremacy over the rest of the church as stemming from Peter himself was well established. Gregory held that papal supremacy concerned doctrine and discipline within the church, but large sections of both the Western and Eastern church remained unconvinced they should be submissive to the Roman See.

Political organization of the papacy evolved between the fourth and tenth centuries. The growing presence and involvement of the aristocracy in the papal bureaucracy, an increase in papal land-holdings from the second half of the sixth into the seventh-century, and changes in their administration that brought an increase in wealth, gradually shifted popes from being beneficiaries of patronage to becoming patrons themselves. The papacy in the eighth and ninth centuries exercised power like that of an aristocrat.

From the ninth to the eleventh-century, western Christendom encompassed a loose federation of churches across the European continent under the spiritual headship of the Pope. However, the Pope had no clearly established authority over those churches, and he gave little general direction. William IX, Duke of Aquitaine, and other powerful lay founders of monasteries, placed their institutions under the protection of the papacy in the tenth-century thereby facilitating another rise in papal power.

### Regions (600–1100)

Christianity in the 600s was well established in the western kingdoms of the Franks in Gaul, and the Visigoths in Iberia, along the Rhine river in what would become Germany, out to the edge of Central Asia, as far as Zerang and Qandahar in modern Afghanistan, and into the Sassanian Persian Empire, with Christian churches concentrated in northern Iraq, the foothills of the Zagros, and in the trading posts of the Persian Gulf. Ethiopia and Himyar (the Hadramawt in modern Yemen) were long-settled civilizations that were literate and even monotheist, and Christians and Jews competed for their conversion. With the rise of Islam, the Nestorian church moved east to China.

Barbarian invasion, deportation, and neglect also produced large “unchurched” populations mixed within, and at the edges of, this largely Christian world. In these scattered spots, Christianity became one religion among many. Its residual aspects often mutated with local types of paganism as it did in Britain and Ireland after Nordic forms of paganism were introduced by Scandinavian settlers. Suppression of paganism is first recorded in England in the mid 7th century.

Towards the end of the sixth-century, two main kinds of Christian communities had formed in Syria, Egypt, Persia, and Armenia: urban churches which upheld the Council of Chalcedon (451 CE), and Nestorian churches which came from the desert monasteries. After these regions came under Islamic rule, persecution of non-Muslims was devastating to the Chalcedonian churches in the cities. The monastic background of the Nestorians made their churches more remote, so they often escaped direct attention making them the most able to survive and cultivate new traditions.

In the 720s, the Byzantine Emperor Leo banned the pictorial representation of Christ, saints, and biblical scenes, destroying much early art history. The West condemned Leo's iconoclasm. By the tenth and early eleventh centuries, Byzantine culture began to recover.

Charlemagne began the first Medieval renaissance, the Carolingian Renaissance, a period of intellectual and cultural revival, in the Frankish kingdom in the 800s. In Italy, Gregorian Reform (1050–1080) reached into the church and outward into society setting new standards for marriage and divorce.

Beginning under emperor Basil I (r. 867–886), Byzantine Christianity was instrumental in forming what would become Eastern Europe. Serbia, Alania (modern Iran), Russia and Armenia were nascient Christian states by the early eleventh-century. Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary and Croatia soon followed. Saints Cyril and Methodius translated the Bible, developing the first Slavic written script and the Cyrillic alphabet in the process. This became the educational foundation for all Slavic nations and influenced the spiritual, religious, literary and cultural development of the entire region for generations.

Many cultural, geographical, geopolitical, and linguistic differences between East and West existed for centuries. There were disagreements over whether the Eastern Patriarch could claim a universal jurisdiction in the East to match Rome’s jurisdiction in the West. There were differences in ritual such as the use of unleavened bread in the Eucharist, and differences in points of doctrine such as the Filioque Clause and Nestorianism. There was a general lack of charity and respect on both sides. Eventually, this produced the East–West Schism, also known as the "Great Schism" of 1054, which separated the Church into Western Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.

## Middle Ages (1000–1500)

The Middle Ages can be seen as holding characteristics that led to modern civilization. The new mendicant monks, the university elite and the bureaucratic clerics were central to developing early-modern concepts of power, authority and orthodoxy.

Medieval society was also unlike modernity in that it was dominated by the presuppositions of religion. Christian ideals, inherited folklore, and secular intellectualism overlapped and competed across a wide spectrum of belief. Institutional centralization of both church and state, the spread of Mendicant monks, and the international universities contributed to uniformity while also helping to create doubts, questions and diversity in Medieval society.

The church of 1000 - 1300 became a more imposing institution with a more formal theology. The papacy of this period can be characterized by its focus on canon law as Popes from 1159 to 1303 were predominantly lawyers not theologians. While Early Christianity was both inclusive and exclusive with no canon law in its first five centuries, canon law in the Middle Ages became a large and highly complex system of laws which largely omitted early principles of inclusivity and tolerance.

The educated leaders of the church were advisors and estate managers for the church, kings, and nobles, often acting as judges and negotiating treaties. The clergy, and the laity, became "more literate, more worldly, and more self-assertive" and they did not always agree with the hierarchy. The village parish emerged as one of the fundamental institutions of medieval Europe.

The church of the Middle Ages was involved in many conflicts as it faced tremendous challenges that prompted vigorous political responses. The dialectic between parishes and universities, the learned and the illiterate, toleration and violent aggression, produced great diversity while also containing observable efforts to define, establish and maintain coherence and order. This era is characterized by tremendous religious devotion, reform and technological advancement, Christian humanism, and the intellectual revolutions of High Scholasticism and the Renaissance of the 12th century.

### New monks, new understanding

The Abbey of Cluny became the leading centre of reform in Western monasticism into the early twelfth-century. The Cistercian movement, a second wave of reform after 1098, also became a primary force of technological advancement and its spread in medieval Europe. Between the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries, the church built cathedrals using Gothic architecture which developed innovations (such as flying buttresses) that impacted building techniques thereafter. Technological advancements contributed to economic growth.

Beginning in the twelfth-century, the pastoral Franciscan Order was instituted by the followers of Francis of Assisi. Later, the Dominican Order was begun by St. Dominic. Called Mendicant orders, they represented a significant and impactful change in understanding a monk's calling. Instead of prayer and contemplation, they saw their vocation as a charge to go out and actively reform the world.

### Scholasticism, Renaissance and modern science

Between 1150 and 1200, intrepid monks travelled to formerly Muslim locations in Sicily and Spain. Fleeing Muslims had abandoned their libraries, and among the treasure trove of books, the searchers found the works of Aristotle, Euclid and more. Reconciling Aristotelian logical reasoning with Christian faith created a revolution in thinking called scholasticism, (a departure from Augustinian thinking which had dominated the church for centuries). This process successfully elevated reason, reconciled reason and faith, and formed the first chapter of modern free thought.

The writings of Thomas Aquinas contained ideas that provided the foundation of much modern law and politics. Renaissance also included the revival of the scientific study of natural phenomena. Historians of science see this as the beginning of what led to modern science and the scientific revolution in the West.

#### Education and universities

A widespread literate religious culture was slow to develop in Medieval Christianity, though vague notions of its mysteries were common. The means and methods of teaching a mostly illiterate populace included mystery plays (which had developed out of the mass), wall paintings, vernacular sermons and treatises, and saints' lives in epic form. Rituals, art, literature, and cosmology were shaped by Christian norms but also contained some pre-Christian elements. Christian motifs could function in non-Christian ways, while practices of non-Christian origin became endowed with Christian meaning.

From the 1100's, western universities, the first institutions of higher education since the sixth-century, were formed into self-governing corporations chartered by popes and kings. Bologna, Oxford and Paris were among the earliest (c. 1150). Divided into faculties which specialized in law, medicine, theology or liberal arts, each held quodlibeta (free-for-all) theological debates amongst faculty and students and awarded degrees.

### The Church in Confrontation

#### With the state

The church appointed its bishops and abbots, but it was the nobles who had control over who got "invested" into a paying job. Under Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085), the Roman Catholic Church was determined to end this duality. This produced the Investiture controversy which began in the Holy Roman Empire in 1078. Specifically, the dispute was between the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV, and Pope Gregory VII, over who had the right to invest a bishop or abbot, but more generally, it was over control of the church and its revenues.

In this controversy, papal supremacy took a political turn. Gregory recorded a series of statements asserting that the church must be the higher of the two powers of church and state, and that the church must no longer be treated as a servant to the state. Disobedience to the Pope became equated with heresy.

The Dictatus Papae declared the pope alone could invest bishops in 1075. Henry IV rejected the decree. This led to his excommunication, which contributed to a ducal revolt, that led to a civil war: the Great Saxon Revolt. Eventually, Henry received absolution. The conflict of investiture lasted five decades with a disputed outcome. A similar controversy occurred in England.

#### With Islam

When Eastern Emperor Alexius I asked for aid from the western Pope Urban II, Urban responded (1095) with an appeal to European Christians to "go to the aid of their brethren in the Holy Land". Urban's message had tremendous popular appeal, and there was much enthusiasm supporting it. It was new and novel and tapped into powerful aspects of folk religion. Voluntary poverty and its renunciation of self-will, along with a longing for the genuine "apostolic life," flourished in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries connecting pilgrimage, charity, remission of sins, and a willingness to fight.

Crusading involved the church in certain paradoxes: Gregorian reform was grounded in distancing spirituality from the secular and the political, while crusade made the church dependent upon financing from aristocrats and kings for the most political of all activities: war.

Crusades led to the development of national identities in European nations, increased division with the East, and produced cultural change. Hotly debated by historians, the single most important contribution of the crusades to Christian history was, possibly, the invention of the indulgence.

##### In Mesopotamia and Egypt

Between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries, the Christian churches in Egypt, Syria and Iraq became subject to fervently Muslim militaristic regimes. Christians were dhimma. This cultural status guaranteed Christians rights of protection, but discriminated against them through legal inferiority. Various Christian communities adopted different strategies for preserving their identity while accommodating their rulers. Some withdrew from interaction, others converted, while some sought outside help. By the end of the eleventh-century, Christianity was in full retreat in Mesopotamia and inner Iran. Some Christian communities further to the east continued to exist.

#### With heretics

Pope Innocent III and the king of France, Philip Augustus, joined in 1209 in a military campaign that was promulgated as necessary for eliminating the Albigensian heresy also known as Catharism. Once begun, the Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229) quickly took a political turn. The king's army seized and occupied strategic lands of nobles who had not supported the heretics, but had been in the good graces of the Church. Throughout the campaign, Innocent vacillated, sometimes taking the side favouring crusade, then siding against it and calling for its end. It did not end until 1229. The campaign no longer had crusade status. The entire region was brought under the rule of the French king, thereby creating southern France. Catharism continued for another hundred years (until 1350).

#### In Inquisition

Moral misbehavior and heresy, by the folk and clerics, were prosecuted by inquisitorial courts that were composed of both church and civil authorities. Jointly referred to as the Medieval Inquisition, this includes the Episcopal Inquisition (1184–1230) and the Papal Inquisition (1230s–1240s), though these courts had no actual joint leadership or organization. Created as needed, they were not permanent institutions but were limited to specific times and places. The Medieval Inquisition brought somewhere between 8,000 and 40,000 people to interrogation and sentence. Death sentences were a relatively rare occurrence. The penalty imposed most often by Medieval Inquisitorial courts was an act of penance which could include public confession.

Between 1478 and 1542, the Roman, Spanish and Portuguese inquisitions were created as permanent State controlled bureaucracies. As political institutions, they had a much broader reach than previous inquisitions.

#### With pagans

When the Second Crusade was called after Edessa fell, the nobles in Eastern Europe refused to go. The Balts, the last major polytheistic population in Europe, had been raiding surrounding countries for several centuries, and subduing them was what mattered most to the Eastern-European nobles. (These rulers saw crusade as a tool for territorial expansion, alliance building, and the empowerment of their own nascent church and state.) In 1147, Eugenius' Divina dispensatione gave eastern nobility indulgences for the first of the Baltic wars (1147–1316). The Northern Crusades followed intermittently, with and without papal support, from 1147 to 1316. Priests and clerics developed a pragmatic acceptance of the forced conversions perpetrated by the nobles, despite the continued theological emphasis on voluntary conversion.

#### With the East

For most of its existence, the Byzantine Empire was the largest and most prosperous polity of the Christian world. The wealth and safety of its capitol Constantinople, were seen, even by distant outsiders, as resulting directly from the religious devotion of its inhabitants. After suffering many losses to Islam, the eleventh-century began a period of relative peace and prosperity that lasted until April of 1204, when western crusaders in the Fourth Crusade stormed, captured, and looted Constantinople. It was a severe blow. Byzantine territories were divided among the Crusaders establishing the Latin Empire and the Latin takeover of the Eastern church. By 1261, the Byzantines had recaptured a much weakened and poorer Constantinople.

#### With the Jews

A turning point in Jewish-Christian relations took place in June 1239 when the Talmud was put "on trial", by Gregory IX (1237–1241) in a French court, over contents that mocked the central figures of Christianity. This resulted in Talmudic Judaism being seen as so different from biblical Judaism that old Augustinian obligations to leave the Jews alone no longer applied. As townfolk gained a measure of political power around 1300, they became one of Jewry's greatest enemies charging Jews with blood libel, deicide, ritual murder, poisoning wells and causing the plague, and various other crimes. Although subordinate to religious, economic and social themes, racial concepts also reinforced hostility.

Jews had often acted as financial agents for the lords providing them loans with interest while being exempt from taxes and other financial laws themselves. This attracted jealousy and resentment. Emicho of Leiningen massacred Jews in Germany in search of supplies, loot, and protection money. The York massacre of 1190 also appears to have had its origins in a conspiracy by local leaders to liquidate their debts along with their creditors. In 1283, the Archbishop of Canterbury spearheaded a petition demanding restitution of usury and urging the Jewish expulsion in 1290.

The medieval Catholic church never advocated the full expulsion of all the Jews from Christendom, nor did the Church ever repudiate Augustine's doctrine of Jewish witness, but new canon law from the Third and Fourth Lateran councils supported discrimination as secular rulers repeatedly confiscated Jewish property and evicted Jews from their lands.

The Spanish inquisition was authorized by the Pope in 1478 in answer to Ferdinand and Isabella's fears that Jewish converts (known as Conversos or Marranos) were spying and conspiring with Muslims to sabotage the new state. Five years later, in October 1483, a papal bull conceded control of the Spanish Inquisition to the Spanish crown. It became the first national, unified and centralized institution of the nascent Spanish state.

Of those condemned by the Inquisition of Valencia before 1530, ninety-two percent were Jews.

Anti-Judaism had become part of the Inquisition in Portugal before the end of the fifteenth-century, and forced conversion led many Jewish converts to India where they suffered as targets of the Goa Inquisition.

Frankfurt's Jews flourished between 1453 and 1613 despite harsh discrimination. They were restricted to one street, subject to strict rules if they wished to leave this territory and forced to wear a yellow patch as a sign of their identity. Within the community they maintained some self-governance. They had their own laws, leaders and a Rabbinical school that functioned as a religious and cultural centre.

#### With itself

In 1309, Pope Clement V moved to Avignon in southern France in search of relief from Rome's factional politics. Seven popes resided there in the Avignon Papacy, but the move away from the "seat of Peter" caused great indignation and cost popes prestige and power. Papal power stopped increasing, while kings continued to substantively gain and consolidate power for themselves.

Pope Gregory XI returned to Rome in 1377. After Gregory's death, the papal conclave met in 1378, in Rome, and elected an Italian Urban VI to succeed Gregory. The French cardinals did not approve, so they held a second conclave electing Robert of Geneva instead, giving the church two popes. This began the Western Schism.

For the next thirty years the Church had two popes, then in 1409, the Pisan council called for the resignation of both popes, electing a third to replace them. Both Popes refused to resign, leaving the Church with three popes. Five years later, Sigismund the Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437) pressed Pope John XXIII to call the Council of Constance (1414–1418) and depose all three popes. In 1417, the council elected Pope Martin V in their place.

#### With reform

Attitudes and behaviours against the clergy identify the period from around 1100 to 1349 as an era of “anticlerical revolution". Multiple strands of criticism of the clergy between 1100 and 1520 were voiced by clerics themselves. Such criticism condemned abuses and sought a more spiritual, less worldly, clergy. However, there is a constancy of complaint in the historical record that indicates most attempts at reform between 1300 and 1500 failed.

The many calamities of the "long fourteenth-century" - plague, famine, war, social unrest, urban riots, peasant revolts and renegade feudal armies - led folk to believe the end of the world was imminent. This sentiment ran throughout society and became intertwined with anticlerical and anti-papal sentiments.

The combination of catastrophic events, inside and outside the church, undermined its moral authority and constitutional legitimacy opening it to local fights of authority and control. Diarmaid MacCulloch writes that, "Even before Luther, challenges were being posed".

### Western Church and society

During the European Renaissance of the 15th and 16th centuries, the Church became a leading patron of art and architecture, directly commissioning many individual works and supporting many artists such as Michelangelo, Brunelleschi, Bramante, Raphael, Fra Angelico, Donatello, and Leonardo da Vinci.

Catholic monks developed the first forms of Western musical notation leading to the development of classical music and its derivatives, up to and including modern music. Scholars revealed the Donation of Constantine as a forgery.

During the Late Middle Ages, groups of laymen and non-ordained secular clerics sought a more sincere spiritual life. A vernacular religious culture for the laity arose. The new devotion worked toward the ideal of a pious society of ordinary non-ordained people. Inside and outside the church, women were central to these movements.

### Byzantium and the Fall of Constantinople

In 1439, a reunion agreement between the Eastern and Western church was made. However, there was popular resistance in the East, so it wasn't until 1452 that the decree of union was officially published in Constantinople. It was overthrown the very next year by the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453.

Compulsory resettlement returned many Greek Orthodox to Constantinople. While Islamic law did not recognize the Patriarch as a "juristic person", nor acknowledge the Orthodox Church as an institution, it did identify the Orthodox Church with the Greek community, and concern for stability allowed it to exist. The monastery at Mt. Athos prospered from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries. Ottomans were largely tolerant, and wealthy Byzantines who entered monastic life there were allowed to keep some control over their property until 1568.

Leaders of the church were recognized by the Islamic state as administrative agents charged with supervising its Christian subjects and collecting their taxes. Compulsory taxes, higher and higher payments to the sultan in hopes of receiving his appointment to the Patriarchate, and other financial gifts, corrupted the process and impoverished Christians. Conversion became an attractive solution.

The conquest of 1453 had effectively destroyed the Orthodox Church as an institution of the Christian empire inaugurated by Constantine, sealing off Greek-speaking Orthodoxy from the West for almost a century and a half. However, the spiritual and cultural influence of the Eastern church, Constantinople, and Mount Athos the monastic peninsula continued among Orthodox nations. By the time of Süleyman the Magnificent (1520 – 1566), the patriarchate had become a part of the Ottoman system, and continued to have great influence in the Orthodox world.

### Russia

From the 950s to the 980s, polytheism among the Kievan Rus declined, while many social and economic changes fostered the spread of the new religious ideology known as Christianity. The event associated with the conversion of the Rus' has traditionally been the baptism of Vladimir of Kiev in 989.

The new Christian religious structure was imposed upon the socio-political and economic fabric of the land by the authority of the state's rulers. The Rus' dukes maintained control of the church which was financially dependent upon them. While monasticism was the dominant form of piety, Christianity permeated daily life for both peasants and elites who identified themselves as Christian while keeping many pre-Christian practices.

In a defining moment in 1380, a coalition of Russian polities headed by the Grand Prince Dmitrii of Moscow faced the army of the Golden Horde on Kulikovo Field near the Don River, there defeating the Mongols. This began the fusing of state power and religious mission that eventually transformed the Kievan Rus into the Russian state (1547).

Ivan III of Muscovy adopted the style of the ancient Byzantine imperial court a generation after Constantinople fell to the Turks. This gained Ivan support among the late fifteenth and early sixteenth-century Rus elite who saw themselves as the New Israel and Moscow as the new Jerusalem. Jeremias II (1536 - 1595) was the first Eastern patriarch to visit north-eastern Europe. Ending his visit in Moscow, he founded the Orthodox patriarchate of Russia.

### Asia

The sixteenth-century success of Christianity in Japan was followed by one of the greatest persecutions in Christian history. Sixteenth-century missions to China were undertaken primarily by the Jesuits.. Sheridan Gilley writes that "The cruel martyrdom of Catholics in China, Indochina, Japan and Korea, another heroic missionary country, was connected to local fears of European invasion and conquest, which in some cases were not unjustified."

### Scandinavia

Christianization of Scandinavia (Sweden, Norway and Denmark) occurred in two stages. In the first stage, missionaries arrived on their own, without secular support, in the ninth-century. Next, a secular ruler would take charge of Christianization in their territory. This stage ended once a defined and organized ecclesiastical network was established. By 1350, Scandinavia was an integral part of Western Christendom.

## Reformation and Early modern (1500–1750)

Powerful and pervasive ecclesiastical reform developed from medieval critiques of the church, but the institutional unity of the church was shattered. Church critics of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had challenged papal authority. Kings and councils asserting their own power had also created challenges to church authority, while vernacular gospels created problems for the church amongst the laity.

### Reformation and response (1517–1700)

Though there was no actual schism until 1521, the Protestant Reformation (1517–1648) has been described (since the nineteenth-century) as beginning when Martin Luther, a Catholic monk advocating church reform, nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the church door in Wittenberg in 1517.

Luther's theses challenged the church's selling of indulgences, the authority of the Pope, and various teachings of the late medieval Catholic church. This act of defiance and its social, moral, and theological criticisms brought Western Christianity to a new understanding of salvation, tradition, the individual, and personal experience in relationship with God. Edicts handed down by the Diet of Worms condemned Luther and officially banned citizens of the Holy Roman Empire from defending or propagating his ideas.

The three primary traditions to emerge directly from the Reformation were the Lutheran, Reformed, and the Anglican traditions. At the same time, a collection of loosely related groups that included Anabaptists, Spiritualists, and Evangelical Rationalists, began the Radical Reformation in Germany and Switzerland. Beginning in 1519, Huldrych Zwingli spread these teachings in Switzerland leading to the Swiss Reformation.

#### Counter-reformation

The Roman Catholic Church soon struck back, launching its own Catholic Reformation beginning with Pope Paul III (1534–1549), the first in a series of 10 reforming popes from 1534 to 1605. A list of books detrimental to faith or morals was established, the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, which included the works of Luther, Calvin and other Protestants along with writings condemned as obscene.

New monastic orders arose including the Jesuits. Resembling a military company in its hierarchy, discipline, and obedience, their vow of loyalty to the Pope set them apart from other monastic orders, leading them to be called "the shock troops of the papacy". Jesuits soon became the Church's chief weapon against Protestantism. The Council of Trent (1545–1563) denied each Protestant claim, and laid the foundation of Roman Catholic policies up to the twenty-first century.

Monastic reform also led to the development of new, yet orthodox forms of spirituality, such as that of the Spanish mystics and the French school of spirituality. The Counter-Reformation also created the Uniate church which used Eastern liturgy but recognized Rome.

#### Religious War

Reforming zeal and Catholic denial spread through much of Europe and became entangled with local politics. The quarreling royal houses, already involved in dynastic disagreements, became polarized into the two religious camps.

Wars ranging from international wars to internal conflicts, began in the Holy Roman Empire with the minor Knights' War in 1522, then intensified in the First Schmalkaldic War (1546–1547) and the Second Schmalkaldic War (1552–1555). In 1562, France became the centre of religious wars. The involvement of foreign powers made the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) the largest and most disastrous.

The causes of these wars were mixed. Many scholars see them as fought to obtain security and freedom for differing religious confessions, however, most have interpreted these wars as struggles for political independence that coincided with the break up of medieval empires into the modern nation states.

#### Modern concepts of tolerance

Since the 1400's, those who became Protestant had steadfastly sought toleration for heresy, blasphemy, Catholicism, non-Christian religions, and even atheism. Anglicans and other Christian moderates also wrote and argued for toleration. In the 1690s, many humanists were rethinking on a political level all of the State's reasons for persecution. This third group also began advocating for religious toleration. Over the next two and a half centuries, many treaties and political declarations of tolerance followed, until concepts of freedom of religion, freedom of speech and freedom of thought became established in most western countries.

### Colonialism and missions

Colonialism opened the door for Christian mission in many new regions. According to Sheridan Gilley "Catholic Christianity became a global religion through the Spanish and Portuguese colonial empires in the sixteenth century and French missionaries in the seventeenth and eighteenth." However, Christian missionaries and colonial empires had separate agendas which were often in direct opposition to each other.

Most missionaries avoided politics, yet they also generally identified themselves with the indigenous people amongst whom they worked and lived. On the one hand, vocal missionaries challenged colonial oppression and defended human rights, even opposing their own governments in matters of social justice for 500 years. On the other hand, there are an equal number of examples of missionaries cooperating with colonial governments.

### Witch trials (c. 1450–1750)

Until the 1300s, the official position of the Roman Catholic Church was that witches did not exist. While historians have been unable to pinpoint a single cause of what became known as the "witch frenzy", scholars have noted that, without changing church doctrine, a new but common stream of thought developed at every level of society that witches were both real and malevolent. Records show the belief in magic had remained so widespread among the rural people, it has convinced some historians that Christianization had not been as successful as previously supposed. The main pressure to prosecute witches came from the common people, and trials were mostly civil trials. There is broad agreement that approximately 100,000 people were prosecuted, of which 80% were women, and that 40,000 to 50,000 people were executed between 1561 and 1670.

### The Enlightenment

The era of absolutist states followed the breakdown of Christian universalism. Abuses from political absolutism, practiced by kings who were supported by Catholicism, gave rise to a virulent anti-clerical, anti-Catholic, and anti-Christian sentiment that emerged in the 1680s. Critique of Christianity began among the more extreme Protestant reformers who were enraged by fear, tyranny and persecution. Twenty-first century scholars tend to see the relationship between Christianity and the Enlightenment as complex with many regional and national variations.

## Late modern (1750–1945)

The enlightenment shifted the paradigm, and after 1750, secularization at every level of European society can be observed. Various ground-breaking discoveries led to the Scientific revolution (1600–1750) and an upsurge in skepticism. Virtually everything in western culture was subjected to systematic doubt including religious beliefs.

Biblical criticism emerged using historicism and human reason to make study of the Bible more scholarly, secular, and democratic. Depending upon how radical the individual scholar was, this produced different and often conflicting views, posing particular problems for a literal Bible interpretation which had emerged in the 1820s. The Christian reaction to the new historicism was generally more nuanced and complicated than literalism allowed, and this eventually produced liberalism and fundamentalism in reaction.

Urbanisation and industrialisation created many new problems. In Europe and North America, both Protestants and Catholics worked to assist the poor providing massive support for family welfare, medicine and education. Religion was connected to national culture and character, and the influence of anticlerical socialism and communism produced secession and disruption in many locations.

A feminisation of religion was taking place, and women made a major contribution to the Protestant missions of this age.

### Church, state and society

During the Age of Revolution, the cultural centre of Christianity shifted to the New World. The American Revolution and its aftermath included legal assurances of religious freedom and a general turn to religious plurality in the new country.

In the decades following the American revolution, France also experienced revolution, and by 1794, radical revolutionaries attempted to violently ‘de-Christianize’ France for the next twenty years. When Napoleon came to power, he acknowledged Catholicism as the majority view and tried to make it dependent upon the state.

The French Revolution resulted in Eastern Orthodox church leaders rejecting Enlightenment ideas as too dangerous to embrace.

Revolution broke the power of the Old World aristocracy, offered hope to the disenfranchised, and enabled the middle class to reap the economic benefits of the Industrial Revolution. Scholars have since identified a positive correlation between the rise of Protestantism and human capital formation, the Protestant work ethic, economic development, and the development of the state system. Max Weber says Protestantism contributed to the development of banking across Northern Europe and gave birth to Capitalism.

#### Awakenings (1730s–1850s)

Religious revival, known as the First Great Awakening, swept through the American colonies between the 1730s and the 1770s. Beginning among the Presbyterians, revival quickly spread to Congregationalists (Puritans) and Baptists, creating American Evangelicalism and Wesleyan Methodism. Verbal battles over the movement and its dramatic style raged at both the congregational and denominational levels. This caused the division of American Protestantism into political 'Parties', for the first time, which eventually led to critical support for the American Revolution.

In places like Connecticut and Massachusetts, where one denomination received state funding, churches now began to lobby local legislatures to end that inequity. In 1791, the United States became the first Christian nation to mandate the separation of church and state. Theological pluralism became the new norm.

The Second Great Awakening (1800–1830s) extolled moral reform as the Christian alternative to armed revolution. These reformers established nation-wide societies, separate from any church, to begin social movements concerning abolition, women's rights, temperance and literacy. Developing nation-wide organizations was pioneering, and many businesses adopted the practice leading to the consolidations and mergers that reshaped the American economy of the nineteenth-century. The second awakening produced the Latter Day Saint movement, the Restoration Movement and the Holiness movement.

The Third Great Awakening began from 1857 and was most notable for taking awakening throughout the world, especially in English speaking countries. Restorationists were prevalent in America. They have not described themselves as a reform movement but have, instead, described themselves as restoring the Church to its original form as found in the book of Acts. Restorationism gave rise to the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement, Adventism, and the Jehovah's Witnesses.

#### Western Slavery

For over 300 years, many Christians in Europe and North America participated in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade which had begun in the sixteenth century. Moral objections had arisen immediately but had small impact. By the eighteenth-century, the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), followed by Methodists, Presbyterians and Baptists, began to campaign, write, and spread pamphlets against the trade and slavery itself. In the years after the American Revolution, black congregations led by black preachers provided an institutional base for keeping abolitionism alive. By the early nineteenth-century, American Protestants had organized the first anti-slavery societies. Christian reformers in both England and America, African Americans themselves, and the new American republic eventually produced the "gradual but comprehensive abolition of slavery" in the West.

### Protestant Missions (1800s–1945)

Protestant missionaries had a significant role in shaping multiple nations, cultures and societies as well as in making Christianity a global religion. A missionary's first job was to get to know the indigenous people and work with them to translate the Bible into their local language. Approximately 90% were completed. The process also generated a written grammar, a lexicon of native traditions, and a dictionary of the local language. These were used to teach in missionary schools resulting in the spread of literacy. On the one hand, the political legacies of colonialism include political instability, violence and ethnic exclusion, which is also linked to civil strife and civil war. On the other hand, Lamin Sanneh writes that many native cultures responded to Protestant missions with "movements of indigenization and cultural liberation" that generated many beneficial long-term effects.

#### Boarding schools

Preceded by mission schools, the Federal government began a boarding school system in 1819, (before there was a public school system (1869)), for the purposes of education and assimilation of Native Americans. Funded by the federal government, schools were run by Catholics, Quakers, Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians and by the government itself. The majority of native children did not attend boarding school. Of those that did, many did so in response to requests sent by native families to the Federal government, while many others were forcibly taken from their homes. For indigenous populations in Canada and the US, the history of boarding schools shows a continuum of experiences ranging from happiness and refuge to suffering, forced assimilation, mistreatment and abuse. Over time, missionaries came to respect the virtues of native culture, and spoke against national policies.

### Social and political change

In the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, competition caused Protestantism to divide as it spread. The authority of the Bible, within Evangelicalism and Pietism, was a driving force in the growth of many denominations, while liberal Protestants subjected the Bible to critical scrutiny, emphasizing ethics more than the doctrine, and holding a positive view of science and education. A ‘High-church’emphasis on the sacraments, the priestly office, ritual, ceremony, and church tradition developed in Anglicanism and Lutheranism.

The Roman Catholic Church was increasingly centralized, conservative, and focused on loyalty to the Pope. Early in the twentieth century, the Pope required Catholic Bible scholars who used biblical criticism, (which had been pioneered by Protestants), to take an anti-modernist oath.

Liberal Christianity, sometimes called liberal theology, is an umbrella term for religious movements within late 18th, 19th and 20th-century Christianity. According to theologian Theo Hobson, liberal Christianity has two traditions. Before the Enlightenment of the eighteenth-century, liberalism was synonymous with Christian Idealism in that it imagined a liberal State with political and cultural liberty.

The second tradition derived from seventeenth-century rationalism's efforts to wean Christianity from its "irrational cultic" roots. Lacking any grounding in Christian "practice, ritual, sacramentalism, church and worship", liberal Christianity lost touch with the fundamental necessity of faith and ritual in maintaining Christianity. This led to liberalism's decline and the birth of fundamentalism.

Fundamentalist Christianity is a movement that arose (mainly within British and American Protestantism) in the late 19th century and early 20th century in reaction to modernism. Before 1919, fundamentalism was loosely organized and undisciplined. In 1925, fundamentalists participated in the Scopes trial, and by 1930, the movement appeared to be dying. Then in the 1930s, Neo-orthodoxy, a theology against liberalism combined with a reevaluation of Reformation teachings, began uniting moderates of both sides. In the 1940s, "new-evangelicalism" established itself as separate from fundamentalism. Today, fundamentalism is less about doctrine than political activism.

"Christianity was sometimes weakened by social and political change". European states were politically separating church and state while also establishing authoritarian governments and state supported churches. Such consanguinity would, after 1945, implicate the church in abuses of power.

#### Christianity and Nazism

Pope Pius XI declared in Mit brennender Sorge (English: "With rising anxiety") that fascist governments had hidden "pagan intentions" and expressed the irreconcilability of the Catholic position with totalitarian fascist state worship which placed the nation above God, fundamental human rights, and dignity.

In Poland, Catholic priests were arrested and Polish priests and nuns were executed en masse.

Most leaders and members of the largest Protestant church in Germany, the German Evangelical Church, which had a long tradition of nationalism and support of the state, supported the Nazis when they came to power. A smaller contingent, about a third of German Protestants, formed the Confessing Church which opposed Nazism.

Nazis interfered in The Confessing Church's affairs, harassed its members, executed mass arrests and targeted well known pastors like Martin Niemöller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer, a pacifist, was arrested, found guilty in the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler and executed.

#### Russian Orthodoxy

The Russian Orthodox Church held a privileged position in the Russian Empire, expressed in the motto of the late empire from 1833: Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Populism. Nevertheless, the Church reform of Peter I in the early 18th century had placed the Orthodox authorities under the control of the tsar. An ober-procurator appointed by the tsar ran the committee which governed the Church between 1721 and 1918: the Most Holy Synod. The Church became involved in the various campaigns of russification and contributed to antisemitism.

The Bolsheviks and other Russian revolutionaries saw the Church, like the tsarist state, as an enemy of the people. Criticism of atheism was strictly forbidden and sometimes led to imprisonment. Some actions against Orthodox priests and believers included torture, being sent to prison camps, labour camps or mental hospitals, and execution.

Historian Scott Kenworthy describes the persecution of the Russian Orthodox church under communism as "unparalleled by any in Christian history". In the first five years after the October Revolution, one journalist reported that 28 bishops and 1,200 priests were executed. Others report that 8,000 people were killed in 1922. The League of Militant Atheists adopted a five year plan in 1932 "aimed at the total eradication of religion by 1937".

Despite oppression and martyrdom under hostile rule, the Orthodox churches of the twentieth-century continued to contribute to theology, spirituality, liturgy, music, and art. Kenworthy adds that "Important movements within the church have been the revival of a Eucharistic ecclesiology, of traditional iconography, of monastic life and spiritual traditions such as Hesychasm, and the rediscovery of the Greek Church Fathers".

## Christianity since 1945

In this period, Christianity became a global religion, but it also faced major challenges. Further important aspects of Christian history are seen in the breakdown of denominational boundaries, the impact of war, and Christian movements aiding the oppressed. In all these areas, five institutions have been of international significance: the papacy, the Ecumenical movement, the missionary movement, Pentecostalism, and Independency.

### A global religion

The world's largest religion has been Christianity since the eighteenth century. After 1945, it grew and expanded in the Third World and in eastern Europe (after the collapse of communism). Its population center shifted to the global east and south, but it remains the world's largest religion into the Twenty-first century with roughly 2.4 billion followers comprising around 31.2% of the world population.

Before 1945, about a third of the people in the world were Christians with about half of those Roman Catholic. About 80% of all Christians lived in Europe, Russia and the Americas. By 2000, the percentage of Christians in the West dropped to around 40 percent, while the proportion living in Asia and Africa rose to 32 percent. Coptic Christianity went from survival as a small minority church to revival in the twentieth-century.

In the latter half of the twentieth century, the church's power was still concentrated in Europe and North America. Global growth has led Western Christians to be more inclusive of non-Western forms of Christianity.

In 2000, approximately one quarter of all Christians worldwide were part of Pentecostalism and its associated movements. By 2025, Pentecostals are expected to constitute one-third of the nearly three billion Christians worldwide making it the largest branch of Protestantism and the fastest growing religious movement in global Christianity.

#### Africa (19th–21st centuries)

In 1900, under colonial rule, there were just under 9 million Christians in Africa. By 1960, and the end of colonialism, there were about 60 million. By 2005, African Christians had increased to 393 million, about half of the continent's total population at that time. Population in Africa has continued to grow with the percentage of Christians remaining at about half in 2022. This expansion has been labeled a "fourth great age of Christian expansion".

#### Asia

Christianity is growing rapidly in China, and the rest of Southeast Asia, especially Korea, where it grew faster after colonialism than before it. A rapid expansion of charismatic Christianity began in the 1980s, leading Asia to rival Latin America in the population of Charismatic and Pentecostal Christians. Increasing numbers of young people in China are becoming Christians. Council on Foreign Relations data shows a 10% yearly growth in Chinese Christian populations since 1979.

### Challenges

Highly authoritarian and totalitarian governments have brought about crises and decline in churches in many areas. From 1945 into the 1980's, the world's first Marxist super-power, along with the many other communist governments, pursued anti-religious policies that were often violent. In 2013, 17 Muslim majority states reported 28 of the 29 types of religious discrimination against 45 of the 47 religious minorities, including Christianity. Anti-Christian persecution has become a consistent human rights concern.

The challenges of secularism, and the changing moral climate of the 1960's and 1970's, caused controversy within the churches concerning sexual ethics, gender, and exclusivity. In the U.S., Pew has reported that, "As recently as the early 1990s, about 90% of U.S. adults identified as Christians. But today, about two-thirds of adults are Christians". A growing demand for greater individual freedom led to new forms of religion which embrace the sacred as a deeper understanding of the self. This spirituality is private and individualistic, and differs radically from Christian tradition, dogma and ritual. The Prosperity gospel formed as an adaptation of Pentecostalism and has moved away from the Reformation view of biblical authority to the authority of personal charisma. Begun in the twentieth-century's last decades, it has become a trans-national movement.

Hugh McLeod writes that,

The most powerful and effective criticism of Christianity in the twentieth century has been the charge that it has been too closely identified with the rich and powerful, and too ready to legitimate the status quo. These political criticisms have had a far wider impact than those deriving from scientific or philosophical objections to religion.

### Diversity and commonality

The common threat of secularisation and a recognition of the destructive potential of religious hatred has encouraged co-operation between churches. Collaboration between Protestants and Catholics made little progress until 11 October 1962, when Pope John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council, the 21st ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. On 21 November 1964, the Second Vatican Council published Unitatis Redintegratio, stating that Roman Catholic ecumenical goals are to establish full communion amongst all the various Christian churches including Protestants. Amongst Evangelicals, there is no agreed upon definition, strategy or goal for ecumenism. Different theologies on the nature of the Church have produced some hostility toward it instead.

While sentiment is widespread that ecumenism at the upper levels of leadership has stalled, the trend at the local level has been toward discussion and prayer meetings, pulpit exchanges, shared social action and an increase in inter-marriage. Almost 40% of couples married since 2010, compared to 19% before 1960, have married someone outside of their faith, according to Pew Research Center.

Christians still disagree, but the grounds have changed to internal rather than external conflicts. In Hugh MacLeod's view, "A liberal Catholic is likely to have a lot in common with a liberal Methodist", and this commonality is only likely to increase with the influence of the internet.

### War

Twentieth-century history with its multiple wars have brought questions of theodicy to the forefront. Wars have had contradictory effects on the church, sometimes producing a loss of faith in human solutions to human suffering, an upsurge in religiosity and patriotism, or an alienation from Christianity. In the 60's and 70's, Christian pacifism, for the first time since the pre-Constantian era, became an advocated Christian option.

By the twentieth-century, the nineteenth-century revolutions that established the Serbian, Greek, Romanian, and Bulgarian nations had changed Orthodoxy from a universal church into a series of national churches that became subordinate to nationalism and the state.

### Emancipation

By using the "kingdom ideals" from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, the Social Gospel and liberation theology redefined social justice, and focused on the community's sins, in an effort to expose institutionalized sin and redeem the institutions of society.

Originating in America in 1966, Black theology developed a combined social gospel and liberation theology that mixes Christianity with questions of civil rights, aspects of the Black Power movement, and responses to black Muslims claiming Christianity was a "White man's" religion. Spreading to the United Kingdom, then parts of Africa, confronting apartheid in South Africa, Black theology explains Christianity as liberation for this life not just the next.

Historian of race and religion, Paul Harvey, says that, in 1960s America, "The religious power of the civil rights movement transformed the American conception of race." Then the social power of the religious right responded in the 1970s by recasting evangelical concepts in political terms that included racial separation. In the twenty-first century, the Prosperity Gospel promotes racial reconciliation and has become a powerful force in American religious life.

The feminist movement of the mid to late Twentieth century began with an anti-Christian ethos, but soon developed a Feminist theology dedicated to transforming the churches and society. In the last years of the twentieth-century, the re-examination of old religious texts through diversity, otherness, and difference developed womanist theology of African-American women, the "mujerista" theology of Hispanic women, and insights from Asian feminist theology.

#### Missions

After World War II, Christian missionaries played a transformative role for many colonial societies, moving them toward independence through the development of decolonization. In the mid to late 1990s, postcolonial theology emerged globally from multiple sources. It analyzes structures of power and ideology in order to recover what colonialism erased or suppressed in indigenous cultures.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, while being unable to prevent the influence of nineteenth century scientific theories asserting racial and cultural superiority, western missionaries still began the "largest, most diverse and most vigorous movement of cultural renewal in history" of Africa, according to historian Lammin Sanneh.

The missionary movement of the twenty-first century has transformed into a multi-cultural, multi-faceted global network of NGO's, short term amateur volunteers, and traditional long-term bi-lingual, bi-cultural professionals who focus on evangelism and local development and not on 'civilizing' native people.

## Sources


# List of Veterans Benefits Administration regional offices

## Abstract

The US Veterans Benefits Administration operates a network of regional offices across the country to serve the needs of veterans and their families. These offices provide a range of services including Compensation, Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment (VR&E), Pension Management, Fiduciary Services, Education, Home Loan Guaranty, and Insurance.

## By District

The regional offices are organized into four districts: Northeast, Southeast, Continental, and Pacific. This list provides an overview of the VA regional offices by district, including the services offered at each location, based on the following key:

- Comp: Compensation

- VR&E: Veterans Readiness and Employment

- EDU: Education Processing Office

- LGY: Home Loan Regional Office

- PMC: Pension Management Center

- Fid: Fiduciary Hub

### Northeast District

District Office: St. Louis, MO

### Southeast District

District Office: Nashville, TN

### Continental District

District Office: Lakewood, CO

### Pacific District

District Office: Phoenix, AZ

## By Service Line

Outside of Compensation and VR&E, most other service lines have consolidated the processing of their claims through regionalized processing centers. For Compensation and VR&E, refer to the list by district provided earlier. All Insurance claims are processed at the Philadelphia Regional Office and Insurance Center.


Jason Segel

# Jason Segel

## Abstract

Jason Jordan Segel (/ ˈ s iː ɡ əl / SEE -gəl; born January 18, 1980) is an American actor. He is best known for his role as Marshall Eriksen in the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother from 2005 to 2014. He began his career with director and producer Judd Apatow on the television series Freaks and Geeks (1999–2000) and Undeclared (2001–2002) before gaining prominence for his leading roles in various successful comedy films in which he has starred, written, and produced.

Segel has starred in many comedic films such as Knocked Up (2007), Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008), I Love You, Man (2009), Bad Teacher (2011), The Five-Year Engagement (2012), This Is 40 (2012), and Sex Tape (2014), as well as family films such as Despicable Me (2010), and The Muppets (2011). For his role as David Foster Wallace in The End of the Tour (2015) he received a nomination for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead. He also starred in the dramas Jeff, Who Lives at Home (2011), The Discovery (2017), Our Friend (2019), and Windfall (2022). From 2022 to 2023, he played the role of Paul Westhead in the HBO series Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.

In 2023, he began starring as a therapist in the Apple TV+ series Shrinking, which he also co-created alongside Bill Lawrence and Brett Goldstein. For his performance, he was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series.

## Early life

Segel was born on January 18, 1980, in Santa Monica, California, to Jillian (née Jordan; born 1952) and Alvin Segel, a lawyer. He grew up in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood. He has an older brother, Adam, and a younger sister, Alison.

Segel's father is Jewish, whereas his mother is of English, Scottish, Irish, and French descent. He has stated that he was raised Jewish, as well as "a little bit of everything". Segel went to Hebrew school and had a Bar Mitzvah ceremony, and also attended St. Matthew's Parish School, a private Episcopal school.

Following elementary school and middle school, Segel completed his high school studies at Harvard-Westlake School, where his 6 ft 4 in (1.93 m) frame helped him as an active member of the 1996 and 1997 CIF state champion boys' basketball team. He won a slam dunk contest in high school and he was nicknamed "Dr. Dunk." He was a backup to the team's star center, Jason Collins, who went on to play in the NBA.

## Career

Segel's first major role was as stoner "freak" Nick Andopolis on the critically acclaimed but short-lived 1999 NBC comedy-drama series Freaks and Geeks. The series revolved around a group of suburban Detroit high school students circa 1980. Segel personally composed a song for his character, Nick, to sing to the lead female character, Lindsay (Linda Cardellini).

Segel had recurring roles on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation as Neil Jansen and on Undeclared as Eric. He played Marshall Eriksen on the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother; he had previously stated he would move on to other projects in 2013 when his contract expired, but was convinced to finish the series after its ninth season in 2014.

Segel made his film debut with Can't Hardly Wait in 1998. His other early feature film appearances include Slackers, SLC Punk!, The Good Humor Man, and Dead Man on Campus. In 2007, he appeared in Knocked Up, directed by Freaks and Geeks producer Judd Apatow. Segel starred in the lead role of 2008's Forgetting Sarah Marshall, a film he wrote and Apatow produced with Shauna Robertson for Universal Pictures. He also starred in I Love You, Man, which was released on March 20, 2009, by DreamWorks.

In Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Segel's character writes a " Dracula " musical performed by puppets. He also appeared in the most prominent scene containing full frontal nudity in the film. In an interview, he stated that the Dracula musical with puppets, as well as being broken up with while naked, were real experiences he wrote into the movie. Those cloth creatures were custom-made by the Jim Henson Company, and the experience emboldened Segel to pitch his concept for a Muppets movie. Segel performed a song from the film, "Dracula's Lament", on the 1000th episode of The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.

For the 2010 comedy Get Him to the Greek, Segel co-wrote most of the soundtrack's music which was performed by the fictional celebrity singer, Aldous Snow, including Infant Sorrow. He also appeared on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson and sang an original song entitled "Wonky Eyed Girl".

In 2010, he voiced Gru 's arch-rival Vector in Universal's CGI animated film Despicable Me and appeared as "Horatio" in a fantasy comedy film Gulliver's Travels directed by Rob Letterman and very loosely based on Part One of the 18th-century novel of the same name by Jonathan Swift. Segel appeared in Bad Teacher, starring Cameron Diaz, which opened in June 2011. He played gym teacher and thwarted suitor Russell Gettis. Along with Nicholas Stoller, Segel approached Disney in 2007 to write the latest Muppets film. Disney was unsure on how to take the request, as Segel had just appeared nude in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but after realizing that he was a fan, the project was approved. Segel stated that he wanted to do the film because the last film in the series to be released in theaters was Muppets from Space in 1999, and he felt that the younger generation was missing out on enjoying one of his childhood favorites.

Segel decided not to star in the sequel to The Muppets, Muppets Most Wanted. He filmed The Five-Year Engagement, with Emily Blunt, in spring 2011 in Michigan, and the film was released on April 27, 2012.

In 2013, Segel revealed he was working on a series of young adult novels, based on a story he conceived when he was 21. In the fall of 2014, the first novel of the series Nightmares!, co-written with Kirsten Miller, was released, with the followup coming out the following year.

In 2015, Segel received praise for his portrayal of the late author David Foster Wallace in the independent biographical drama film The End of the Tour. For his performance, he earned an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Male Lead.

In 2017, Segel and Miller released a new book, Otherworld, the first of a new young adult series. A second book in the series, OtherEarth, was released in 2018, and a third novel, OtherLife, in 2019. Segel created and starred in the American drama television series Dispatches from Elsewhere, which premiered on March 1, 2020, on AMC.

In 2019, Segel starred in Our Friend based on Matthew Teague's 2015 essay "The Friend".

## Personal life

Segel is an ordained minister with the Universal Life Church. He performed a wedding ceremony on The Tonight Show on July 6, 2010, for a couple that solicited his services by placing pictures of him around his hometown and the bar he frequently visited.

Segel dated his Freaks and Geeks co-star Linda Cardellini for several years following the show's cancellation. He dated Michelle Williams from 2012 to 2013. From December 2013 to April 2021, Segel dated photographer Alexis Mixter. Since 2024, he has been dating former Taylor Swift backup dancer Kayla Radomski.

## Filmography


# Oliver Harvey, 1st Baron Harvey of Tasburgh

## Abstract

Oliver Charles Harvey, 1st Baron Harvey of Tasburgh GCMG GCVO CB (26 November 1893 – 29 November 1968) was a British civil servant and diplomat.

## Life

Harvey was the son of Sir Charles Harvey, 2nd Baronet (1849-1928). He was educated at Malvern College. He was one of the Harvey family of baronets.

### Diplomatic career

He joined the Diplomatic Service as a Third Secretary in 1920, after being admitted under open competition in September 1919. He advanced to Second Secretary from 15 December 1920, to First Secretary from 22 October 1926, and Counsellor from 21 January 1936. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George in the 1937 Coronation Honours.

He was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath in the 1944 New Year Honours following his service as Principal Private Secretary to the Secretary of State, who had been Anthony Eden. He served as Deputy Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs from 1946 to 1948 and as Ambassador to France from 1948 to 1954. He was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George in the 1946 Birthday Honours (and promoted to Knight Grand Cross of that Order in the 1948 New Year Honours) and Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order in the 1950 Birthday Honours.

On 3 July 1954 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Harvey of Tasburgh, of Tasburgh in the County of Norfolk. Four months later he succeeded his half-brother as fourth Baronet, of Crown Point.

### Personal life

Lord Harvey of Tasburgh married Maud Annora, daughter of Arthur Watkin Williams-Wynn, in 1920. He died in November 1968, aged 75, and was succeeded in his titles by his son Peter. Lady Harvey of Tasburgh died in 1970.

Lord Harvey and Maud Annora (née Williams Wynn) had issue:

- Peter Charles Oliver Harvey, 2nd Baron Harvey of Tasburgh (b. 28 Jan 1921, d. 18 Apr 2010)

- Hon. John Wynn Harvey (b. 4 Nov 1923, d. 21 Sep 1989)

### Diaries

Lord Harvey's diaries are housed at the British Library. The diaries can be accessed through the British Library catalogue. Edited by his son John Harvey, they were published in two volumes as:

- The Diplomatic Diaries of Oliver Harvey 1937-1940 (Collins, 1970)

- The War Diaries of Oliver Harvey 1941-1945 (Collins, 1978)