church summary

Second Vatican Council, (1962–65), 21st ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church, announced by Pope John XXIII on January 25, 1959, as a means of spiritual renewal for the church and as an occasion for Christians separated from Rome to join in a search for Christian unity. Vatican II, as the

Presbyterian, form of church government developed by Swiss and Rhineland Reformers during the 16th-century Protestant Reformation and used with variations by Reformed and Presbyterian churches throughout the world. John Calvin believed that the system of church government used by him and his

Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, Oriental Orthodox church and principal Christian church in predominantly Muslim Egypt. The people of Egypt before the Arab conquest in the 7th century identified themselves and their language in Greek as Aigyptios (Arabic qibṭ, Westernized as Copt). When

Anabaptist, (from Greek ana, “again”) member of a fringe, or radical, movement of the Protestant Reformation and spiritual ancestor of modern Baptists, Mennonites, and Quakers. The movement’s most distinctive tenet was adult baptism. In its first generation, converts submitted to a second baptism,