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From its humble beginnings as a Jewish reform movement in the boondocks of the Roman Empire, Christianity spread with remarkable speed. In just a few hundred years, it grew from a persecuted underground faith to convert the Roman emperor, perhaps the most powerful man in the world at the time. A century later, it was the official religion of the empire, ending millennia of Latin paganism.
How did it manage to convert so many, so fast? Unlike certain other religions, its initial spread was not by warfare. Forced Christianisation came long after it had cemented its place as the Ancient World’s leading religion (and was officially banned by the pope roughly 500 years later).
Instead, the early lightning-fast spread of Christianity was, contrary to common myth, purely by example and admiration for it. Especially among some of the most downtrodden people of the time. As historian Geoffrey Blainey notes, women in particular flocked to the new religion, as did slaves and the poor.
It should first be borne in mind just how radical the precepts of Christianity were, at the time.
First of the keys to the religion’s success was the general message which the early followers of Christianity seemed to adhere to to an almost fanatical level. And that is this. If you were in need, it was not just considered the right thing to do in the religion for followers of Christ to help you even if it hurt or even killed them to do so, but was the second most commandment of God and more or less tied to the first as a way to practice the most important commandment. Since importantly to the spread of the religion, it did not matter if you were a follower of Christ or not. If you are a human being in need, Jesus demanded his followers help that person regardless of what nation they were from, what they believed or thought, or even if they were your mortal enemy.
Specifically, when Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, he allegedly responded, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments […]
Jesus then expands on this in his famed sermon on the mount where he states, “You have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, you do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your father in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so.”
This was an astounding message to many ears at the time. As academic Rodney Stark put it, “Christianity served as a revitalisation movement that arose in response to the misery, chaos, fear and brutality of life in the urban Greco-Roman world. Christianity revitalised life in the Greco-Roman cities by providing new norms and new kinds of social relationships able to cope with many urgent problems.”
To the elites of the day, this was a dangerous message. To say that even slaves and women were equals in the eyes of God threatened to upset the entire social order. That Jesus not only talked to women, but discussed theology with them, was revolutionary. This was a time, remember, when even cosmopolitan Roman and Greek women were as much subject to the rule of their male relatives as women in Iran or Afghanistan today.
Obviously, though, this was music to the ears of the vast underclass of women and slaves. Christians treating them as relative equals and with extreme kindness was simply nothing like they’d ever experienced.
Religiously, too, Christianity was revolutionary.
In a nutshell, unlike the pagan gods whose relationship with mankind was purely transactional with usually no real love for each other on either side, the Christian God loved all mankind and thus the best way to please him and show your love for him was to in turn love and sacrifice for all mankind. And that’s exactly what the early Christians seem to have done.
People took notice.
As noted in a letter by Dionus of Alexandria in 260, “most of the Christians in our city showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of others. Heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending their every need, helping and comforting them. And with them departed this life serenely happy, for they were infected by others with the disease, drawing on themselves the sickness of their neighbors, and cheerfully accepting their pain” […]
Just the fact that these people were caring for these individuals at all when the more normal for so many of the era when religion was just to be left to die, especially if they were thought to be suffering from a catchable disease. Care for them, however, and some got better. And you better believe those some who did get better were often eager to join up and pay it forward. And note here, there were two major epidemics in Rome. One in 165 and one in 251, which resulted in allegedly up to about a third of the Roman population dying during each, so there was always plenty of people who needed help.
In the fourth century, the Emperor Julian, not a fan at all of Christianity, nonetheless grudgingly admitted that Christianity “has been specifically advanced through the loving service rendered to strangers and through their care of the burial of the dead. It is a scandal that there is not a single Jew who is a beggar and that the Christians care not only for their own poor but for ours as well. While those who belong to us look in vain for the help we should render them.”
Another thing so many Ancients couldn’t help noticing was just how happy these upstart Christians were. To perhaps understand their attitude, watch the South Park episode where Stan befriends a new kid whose family are Mormons. As much as everyone else mocks them, Stan can’t help but notice how nice and happy they are.
Aristades of Athens writes in a letter to Emperor Hadrien only a 100 years after Jesus’s crucifixion, noting of the propensity of Christians to be professor positives no matter what. Quote, “Every morning and all hours on account of the goodness of God toward them, they render praise and lord him over their food and their drink, they render him thanks. And if any righteous person of their number passes away from this world, they rejoice and give thanks to God. And they follow his body as though he were moving from one place to another.” And when the child is born to them, they praise God. And if again it chances to die in its infancy, they praise God mightily. As for one who has passed through the world without sins as to what they had to be so happy about in the face of anything, it was the promise of not just an afterlife, but one of distinction and better than anything this world full of its suffering could offer. This was in stark contrast the afterlife offered by the pagan gods, if in some cases any afterlife at all […]
In short, for those who interacted with them, the Christians had an incredible reputation for honesty, integrity, and kindness no matter what. A rather powerful testimony and a way to endear people to them and their message. And going back to even pretty extreme levels of self-sacrifice in some of this, he states, “And there is among them a man that is poor and needy. And if they have not an abundance of necessities, they fast two or three days that they may supply the needy with the necessary food.”
All that stuff brought results. From the 13 at the Last Supper, three centuries later, the religion had amassed roughly six million followers. Roughly 10 per cent of the Roman population. All from leading by example, not official edicts. In fact, after Constantine’s famous conversion, the growth of Christianity actually slowed.
Over its 2000 year history, as Fact Quickie’s Simon Whistler says, Christianity’s foundation in good works has by and large persisted. For every Spanish Inquisition, there’s a John Quincy Adams and William Wilberforce, Abolitionists fighting to end slavery because it contradicted their faith. More recently, ordained ministers like Martin Luther King Jr and Mr Rogers utilised “the core message of Jesus in the way they did as a positive force in the world”.
And, of course, the millions more who “through their day-to-day actions practising their faith in this way change the world subtly and positive ways”.
