Christian denomination

=== Christians with Jewish roots ===
{{Main|Jewish Christian|Messianic Judaism|Hebrew Christian movement}}
[[Messianic Jews]] maintain a Jewish identity while accepting Jesus as the [[Messiah]] and the [[New Testament]] as authoritative. After the founding of the church, the [[Jewish Christian|disciples of Jesus]] generally retained their ethnic origins while accepting the [[Gospel]] message. The [[Council of Jerusalem|first church council was called in Jerusalem]] to address just this issue, and the deciding opinion was written by [[James, brother of Jesus|James the Just]], the first bishop of Jerusalem and a pivotal figure in the Christian movement. The history of Messianic Judaism includes many movements and groups and defies any simple classification scheme.

The 19th century saw at least 250,000 Jews convert to Christianity according to existing records of various societies.<ref>{{Citation |first1=Stanley N |last1=Gundry | first2=Louis |last2=Goldberg |title=How Jewish is Christianity?: 2 views on the Messianic movement |year=2003 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sYfcuBdLqyEC&pg=PA24 |format=Books |page=24 |publisher=Zondervan |isbn=9780310244905}}</ref> Data from the [[Pew Research Center]] has it that, as of 2013, about 1.6 million adult [[American Jews]] identify themselves as [[Christians]], most as [[Protestant]]s.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/10/02/how-many-jews-are-there-in-the-united-states/ |title=How many Jews are there in the United States? |work=[[Pew Research Center]] |access-date=2019-03-18 |archive-date=2021-05-29 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210529104046/https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/10/02/how-many-jews-are-there-in-the-united-states/ |url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="pew: portrait">{{cite web |url=http://www.pewforum.org/2013/10/01/chapter-1-population-estimates/ |title=A PORTRAIT OF JEWISH AMERICANS: Chapter 1: Population Estimates |work=[[Pew Research Center]] |date=October 2013 |access-date=2019-03-18 |archive-date=2019-05-05 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190505093610/https://www.pewforum.org/2013/10/01/chapter-1-population-estimates/ |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/news/.premium-1.549713|title=American-Jewish Population Rises to 6.8 Million |work=[[Haaretz]] |access-date=2019-03-18 |archive-date=2017-11-29 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171129115904/https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/news/.premium-1.549713 |url-status=live}}</ref> According to the same data, most of the Jews who identify themselves as some sort of Christian (1.6 million) were raised as Jews or are Jews by ancestry.<ref name="pew: portrait" />