There are three basic types of religion according to a geographical definition: Global, ethnic, and tribal. Global religions are prevalent throughout the world and are open to anyone regardless of one's race or ethnicity. One of the "most widespread and common religion in the world," Christianity is the most evenly distributed religion around the globe, covering Europe, North America, Latin America, and Sub-Saharan Africa (A Closer Look: Patterns of Religion).
There are three main denominations of Christianity that most Christians belong to: Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant. Catholicism is the largest denomination overall, but the geography of Protestantism varies on an international scale. Because countries such as Russia have a large population who are predominantly Orthodox, Protestantism is best found throughout Europe and North America. The main point is that while Christianity is the most evenly dispersed religion throughout the world, the same cannot be said for the variation within the religion.
A basic concept in the historical geography of culture, diffusion is the "spread of cultural formations from place to place" (A Closer Look: Historical Geography of Christianity).
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In the case of the Great Schism, the Christian world began to split into two for the first time. Western Christianity (Roman Catholics) was predominant in Western Europe while Eastern Christianity (Greek Orthodox) was encouraged and prevalent in Constantinople, Southeast Europe, and eventually Russia. Because the beliefs and practices of these two sects diverged from one another, the Roman and Byzantine Patriarchs mutually excommunicated each other, which we know as the "Great Schism." The effects of this action can still be witnessed today by how largely different the the global distribution of each denomination of Christianity is in Western Europe and in Eastern Europe including