ABSTRACT
With more than two billion adherents, Christianity is the largest and most widely dispersed religion in the world today. It is also very diverse, especially in what it says and does about health and healing. Roman Catholicism dominated in Western Europe for centuries, with the theologian Augustine of North Africa in the fifth century and Thomas Aquinas in Italy and France in the thirteenth century as the era's intellectual giants. Christians believe that all human beings are created in the "image of God", the expression coming from the biblical account of the creation of humankind. Christians believe that Jesus Christ was the incarnation of God, the embodiment of God in human life. Christians hold a positive view of the human body and its natural environment. The considerations that inform the intra-Christian debate on abortion surface again with respect to stem cell research.
