Jesus and the Samurai

By 250 AD, Christianity had spread throughout India and China. Known as the Shining Religion or the Luminous Teaching, it drewadherents from Buddhism and Hinduism who were seeking a faith that taught the possibility of achieving a society founded on love and compassion for their fellow man. The new doctrine reached the island nation of Japan where it was so well received that Christianitythreatened to supplant Buddhism as the dominant religion. By the close of the 16th century Japanese Christian