The Explosion of Early Christianity, Explained
Do we need mass conversions to explain rapid growth?
In just 300 years, Christianity grew from a small Jewish sect in Galilee to become the dominant religion of the Roman Empire. How can we explain this?
A popular explanation is mass conversion. Acts 2:41 reports that Peter converted 3,000 people with a single sermon. Early church historian Eusebius wrote that the apostles “went on to other countries and nations with the grace and cooperation of God, for a great many wonderful works were done through them, by the power of the divine Spirit, so that at first hearing, whole multitudes of men eagerly embraced the religion of the Creator of the universe.”1
Modern thinkers tended to agree. Yale historian Ramsey MacMullen wrote that Christianity grew so quickly that it must have had “successes en masse.”2
Christians explain these mass conversions with supernatural miracles; proof that Christianity is true! Even atheists think the early Christians must have been such good preachers they converted whole audiences. Whatever the explanation for mass conversions, it seems that Christianity could not have grown so fast without them.
At least, that’s what we thought until 1996, when somebody actually bothered to do the math. That man was Rodney Stark, sociologist of religion.
The math is pretty simple. Let’s do it ourselves. We need two numbers: a early starting count of Christians and a count around 300 C.E. Here’s Rodney Stark writing about the starting number:
For a starting number, Acts 1:14-15 suggests that several months after the Crucifixion there were 120 Christians. Later, in Acts 4:4, a total of 5,000 believers is claimed. And, according to Acts 21:20, by the sixth decade of the first century there were “many thousands of Jews” in Jerusalem who now believed. These are not statistics. Had there been that many converts in Jerusalem, it would have been the first Christian city, since there probably were no more than twenty thousand inhabitants at this time… As Hans Conzelmann noted, these numbers are only “meant to render impressive the marvel that here the Lord himself is at work” [1973:63]. Indeed, as Robert M. Grant pointed out, “one must always remember that figures in antiquity… were part of rhetorical exercises” [1977:7-8] and were not really meant to be taken literally. Nor is this limited to antiquity. In 1984 a Toronto magazine claimed that there were 10,000 Hare Krishna members in that city. But when [researchers] checked on the matter, they found that the correct total was 80.3
So let’s say there were only 1,000 Christians by the year 40, a full decade after Jesus’ death.
As for the ending number, at 300 C.E., historians have made many estimates, usually around 5-8 million.4
So, Christianity may have grown from about 1,000 believers in 40 C.E. to about 5-8 million in 300 C.E. – just 260 years. That would require a growth rate of 40% per decade, as shown by this table:
| Year | Number of Christians, given 40% growth per decade |
| 40 | 1,000 |
| 50 | 1,400 |
| 60 | 1,960 |
| 70 | 2,744 |
| 80 | 3,842 |
| 90 | 5,378 |
| 100 | 7,530 |
| 150 | 40,496 |
| 200 | 217,795 |
| 250 | 1,171,356 |
| 300 | 6,299,832 |
| 350 | 33,882,008 |
That really is tremendous growth. Now we can ask, does this kind of growth require mass conversions?
As it turns out, this matches almost exactly the growth rate of the Mormon church over the past century. Mormonism has grown at 43% per decade, and without mass conversions.5
Exponential growth explains the explosion of Christianity perfectly. In fact, it also explains why Christianity seemed insignificant until about 300, when it suddenly became a huge force in the Roman Empire.6 The growth rate remained the same, but in terms of absolute numbers, Christianity would indeed explode around that time – from 6 million to 33 million adherents – if it tracked with the growth rate of Mormonism.
So, the early growth of the Christian church is impressive, but no more impressive than the growth of Mormonism.
And in fact, Christianity had several advantages that Mormonism never had.
For example, Christianity was the only missionary religion in the Roman Empire. Jews and pagans did not try to convert each other. Christianity had that field all to itself. Contrast that with the world faced by Mormonism, in which dozens of missionary religions compete with Mormonism for new adherents.
Second, Christianity was an exclusivist religion. If an ancient Roman converted from one brand of paganism to another, he was free to keep his old gods. One brand of paganism gained an adherent, and another did not lose one. But Christianity was intolerant of other beliefs. If someone converted to Christianity, then Christianity gained an adherent and paganism lost one. This was also true of Judaism, but Jews did not evangelize. Mormonism is also an exclusivist religion, but it is competing mostly with other exclusivist religions (Christianity and Islam).
Third, Christianity offered equal status to women, who had very low status in Judaism and in Roman society. Instead, Mormonism actually offers women lower status than in the society at large – hardly an attractive feature to half of all potential converts to Mormonism.
Fourth, we have no mention of primary evidence relating to Jesus that ancient people could use to defend or discredit Christianity. In contrast, primary evidence that discredits the bogus career of Joseph Smith is easily available, because he lived in the modern era.
Fifth, Christianity competed only with Judaism – which had no missionaries – as a text-driven religion. Texts are a powerful way to spread, unify, and preserve religious movements, and the pagan world had few of any importance.7 In contrast, Mormonism had to compete with dozens of other text-driven religions during its infancy, most notably orthodox Christianity and Islam.
Sixth, after Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity, whole villages thought it best to “convert” to Christianity,8 and entire cities of barbarians “converted” with their leader when their settlement was subsumed in the Roman Empire.9 Mormonism has never benefited from such state support.
Even with all these disadvantages compared to early Christianity, Mormonism seems to have slightly outpaced the growth of the early Christian church.
Clearly, we have no need of mass conversions or magical explanations. The early growth of Christianity is, actually, much less impressive than the growth of Mormonism in the 20th century, which required neither mass conversions nor miracles.
The explosion of atheism
There is another problem for Christians who want to say that the explosive growth of early Christianity must be due to God. Compared to Christianity, atheism grew even faster during the 20th century. According to the World Christian Encyclopedia (the most respected source for religious demographics):
The number of nonreligionists… throughout the 20th century has skyrocketed from 3.2 million in 1900… to 918 million in AD 2000… From a miniscule presence in 1900, a mere 0.2% of the globe, [atheism and agnosticism] are today expanding at the extraordinary rate of 8.5 million new converts each year, and are likely to reach one billion adherents soon. A large percentage of their members are the children, grandchildren or the great-great-grandchildren of persons who in their lifetimes were practicing Christians.
At the early Christian rate of 40% per decade and 3.2 million in 1900, non-believers would have only numbered 74 million in 2000, not 918 million. The growth rate of non-belief in the 20th century was 76% per decade.
The percentage-of-world-population gain for atheism was even greater. Christianity claimed about a third of world population in 1900, and claims the same today. Hindus stayed at 1/7th of the world total throughout the century. Buddhism and paganism have declined. Islam went from 1/8th to 1/5th – not through freedom or education but through unprotected sex. In contrast, non-belief during the 20th century skyrocketed from 0.2% to 15.2%! Clearly, the gods are not winning.
Of course, atheism is not a religion, so the comparison is not fair. But what are Christians supposed to make of this? Did Satan strike a big blow to Yahweh, who is now losing the battle? Did a god who likes atheists take over? Or is our planet – which became literate and educated as never before in the 20th century – finally growing up?
- Church History, III, 37.3 [↩]
- Christianizing the Roman Empire, p. 29. [↩]
- The Rise of Christianity, p. 5. [↩]
- The Rise of Christianity, p. 6. [↩]
- Stark and Bainbridge, “The Rise of a New World Faith,” Review of Religious Research, 26 (1984) 18-27. [↩]
- The Rise of Christianity, pgs. 7-10. [↩]
- In fact, texts may explain why a Gentile Christianity came to dominate the earlier Jewish Christianity of Jesus and his disciples. It was the Gentile Christians who did the most writing. [↩]
- Eusebius, Life of Constantine, IV, pgs. 37-39. [↩]
- See The conflict between paganism and Christianity in the fourth century by Arnaldo Momigliano, p. 78. [↩]
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nice post.
From what I remember hearing growing up in church, many christians will probably think of this (or already think of this) as the ‘falling away’ predicted in II Thes 2:3, that has to occur before ‘the rapture.’ So whether they admit it or not, my guess is that alot of christians who think we are in the end times actually welcome this growing loss of faith by the general populous as a fulfillment of prophecy.
the growth rate comparison between Mormomism and the early church is fascinating. DW
Interesting fact:
Rodney Stark is now a Christian, teaching at Baylor.
http://www.rodneystark.com/
“I have always been a “cultural” Christian in that I have always been strongly committed to Western Civilization. Through most of my career, however, including when I wrote The Rise of Christianity, I was an admirer, but not a believer. I was never an atheist, but I probably could have been best described as an agnostic. As I continued to write about religion and continued to devote more attention Christian history, I found one day several years ago that I was a Christian. Consequently, I was willing to accept an appointment at Baylor University, the world’s largest Baptist university. They do not require faculty member to be Baptists (many are Catholic) and I am not one. I suppose “independent Christian” is the best description of my current position.”
http://www.cesnur.org/2007/mi_stark.htm cartesian
By the way, I know that doesn’t affect any virtues of your argument (which is no doubt very interesting). I just thought it was worth mentioning.
I guess it’s relevant in this way: clearly this argument does not rationally defeat Christianity, since the guy who is more familiar with this argument than anyone else is himself a Christian (and, presumably, rational). cartesian
Lol, I was going to mention that but forgot. I was going to say something like, “And this isn’t some crazed atheist trying to debunk Christianity. Stark actually IS a Christian.”
Certainly, these facts don’t defeat Christianity, only Christianity’s claim that there must have been miraculous mass conversions in its early history. Also, it is one more pebble on the mountain of evidence that supernatural explanations keep being replaced by natural ones, every time we look a bit more closely, a bit more carefully. lukeprog
>>Also, it is one more pebble on the mountain of evidence that supernatural explanations keep being replaced by natural ones, every time we look a bit more closely, a bit more carefully.>>
That’s the part where you lose me. What you’ve shown, at the very most, is that the rise of Christianity CAN be explained naturalistically. (But surely we already knew *that*).
How do you move from that to the claim that here a supernatural explanation HAS BEEN REPLACED by a natural explanation? How do you move from the bare possibility to the claim of actuality?
You’ve described an illicit “retreat to the possible.” This looks like a brazen and fallacious “advance from the possible.” cartesian
Great post!
One thing that should be mentioned is that Mormonisms grew while the population as a whole was growing, unlike the first several centuries AD. I didn’t crunch the numbers, but Mormons probably got a 20% boost per decade from this. But with all the obstacles facing Mormons, I still agree that their growth is more impressive. Jeffrey
cartesian,
>>How do you move from that to the claim that here a supernatural explanation HAS BEEN REPLACED by a natural explanation? How do you move from the bare possibility to the claim of actuality?>>
Occam’s razor. Even Christian apologists accept that when a natural explanation is good enough, we need not tack on a magical explanation behind it.
You are the one who, when it’s show that lightning is a product of electric charges, insists it’s still Zeus behind the electric charges. Do you not see that? lukeprog
hey luke it’s me again. i would like to see how will comment on this article by robert turkel a.k.a jp holdinh. thanks!
http://www.tektonics.org/lp/nowayjose.html
“…only Christianity’s claim that there must have been miraculous mass conversions in its early history.”
and about this one, i do think jp holding holds some interesting point. thanks luke. jared
jared,
Holding’s book has been thoroughly rebutted by Richard Carrier, in book-length form:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/improbable/
Moreover, Holding is dishonest. He knows that Carrier was paid to research and publish this response, and even brags about it – but does not give Carrier’s name or link to his response. lukeprog
Hi Luke,
So I said:
>>How do you move from that to the claim that here a supernatural explanation HAS BEEN REPLACED by a natural explanation? How do you move from the bare possibility to the claim of actuality?>>
You replied:
>>Occam’s razor. Even Christian apologists accept that when a natural explanation is good enough, we need not tack on a magical explanation behind it.>>
Sure, in some sense we may not “need” to tack on a supernatural explanation. But your claim is that the correct explanation is the natural explanation. How could you know that?
You also said:
>>You are the one who, when it’s show that lightning is a product of electric charges, insists it’s still Zeus behind the electric charges.>>
Uh, what? When did I say that? If I were an ancient Greek who believed in Zeus, and if I were to find out about electrical discharges, I would (rightly!) reason this way: “Hm, well, it looks like this phenomenon could be the result of purely natural processes, and not the result of some agent. But the phenomenon could just as easily be the work of some agent like Zeus, who is very powerful and intelligent. So I guess I’ll have to sit on the fence about this until I get more evidence concerning Zeus’ existence, attributes, and intentions.”
How does the mere *possibility* of a purely naturalistic explanation somehow command the allegiance of all rational people, on your view?
We don’t think that happens in other cases, for example, that case I described in our debate. If I find “Hi Cartesian, welcome to the beach!” inscribed in the sand near my families beach house, and if I know that it’s *possible* that sandcrabs did the inscribing, I don’t automatically accept the non-agential naturalistic explanation, right? Of course not, since I have this other explanation on which the inscription is much more probable: that my family did the inscribing.
So yeah, I still think you’re making an illicit “advance from the possible.” You find out that a non-agential naturalistic explanation is *possible*. You therefore conclude that it is the actual explanation.
There are counterexamples to that move in general, so I’m wondering why you think it’s a reasonable move. cartesian
Here’s another amusing example in which we wouldn’t move from the mere *possibility* of non-agential naturalistic explanation to the actuality of that explanation.
Imagine that in five years, Japanese scientists make organic robots that are utterly indistinguishable from normal human beings. These robots are, of course, not conscious.
I call Luke and share the exciting, though somewhat disturbing, news. Luke realizes that *POSSIBLY* all his friends and family have been replaced by such robots. This explanation has the sort of austere simplicity that Luke likes in his theories. It only posits the existence of matter and energy, and excludes conscious human persons. It’s just the sort of non-agential naturalistic explanation that Luke loves.
So he concludes that this possible explanation is indeed actual. All of his friends and family, he thinks, have been replaced by robots.
The weird thing is that we don’t have to wait for evidence that Japanese scientists have actually done this. It’s enough that they have *possibly* done it already. Since Luke likes moving from the mere possibility of naturalistic explanations to their actuality, he should already, here and now, make that move and conclude that all his friends and family are robots.
After all, that’s what happened with lightning, right? We learned that *possibly* this isn’t the action of a powerful agent, and so we ought to have concluded that *actually* it isn’t. Right? That’s what you believe anyway. So I’m wondering why you don’t believe that all your friends and family are robots. cartesian
cartesian.
hi, i’ve been following your last several entries. i think some good points were brought up at the beginning, but i’m lost after the last one. how the japanese scientist / robot story is supposed to be a legitimate analogy for positing a naturalist explanation for lightning is beyond me.
out of curiosity, where do you draw the line for what you chalk up to an invisible agent and what is best explained by naturalism? I genuinely would like to know. I fail to see how the inability to understand something is somehow legitimate cause to believe in the supernatural, as in the case of the greek guy holding out for zeus. I personally don’t agree that one explanation is as valid as the other.
Let me try an example. I am a biochemist and much of my research focuses on neurodegenerative diseases, alzheimer’s disease being one of them. In spite of millions of dollars spent every year on the work of hundreds of labs and thousands of scientists across the world trying to figure out what the root cause of sporadic alzheimer’s is, we still don’t have the first clue, and it’s been about 100 years now since people first began studying it. Does that make it ok to think that it might just be god reaching into peoples brains causing plaques and tangles and killing neurons,and ‘to sit on the fence about it until we get more evidence concerning god’s existence, attributes, and intentions’? If not, then why not? What’s the litmus test for supernaturalism? DW
cartesian,
If I bake a cake in front of you, is it more probable that the cake is explained by the natural processes we see clearly evidenced before our very eyes, or is it more probable that invisible green gremlins, Vahiguru, or distant aliens did it?
If you don’t understand why it’s VASTLY more probable that currently understood natural processes are the more likely cause than totally unknown magical forces, then I have some work to do. Perhaps this, also, deserves its own post. lukeprog
“If I bake a cake in front of you, is it more probable that the cake is explained by the natural processes we see clearly evidenced before our very eyes, or is it more probable that invisible green gremlins, Vahiguru, or distant aliens did it?”
Natural processes, of course. I don’t believe that these other entities exist, or that they would have any reason to engage in this action.
But suppose — and this is going to require a great deal of imagination on your part — that you strongly believe that Hestia exists, that she has a strong desire to bake cakes on occasions like this, and that she has the ability to do it in a way that is consistent with all of our visual evidence. Suppose you REALLY believed that, and that you indeed had good evidence for it.
Then, of course, you’ll at most be on the fence about whether Hestia did it, or whether it was a purely natural process. You may even be convinced that Hestia did it. Importantly, *there would be nothing irrational in drawing this conclusion.*
Similarly, consider that Japanese robot story I told you a while ago. Even if you learn that *possibly* all the apparent conscious personhood you see around you is a result of unconscious robot behavior, you’re not going to suddenly give up your strongly held belief that there are other conscious people around. You strongly believe that there are other conscious people, so Ockham’s razor isn’t going to cut that off for you.
But then the same thing goes with theists. When told that *possibly* the spread of the early church was the result of purely natural processes, the theist isn’t going to just suddenly submit to Ockham’s razor, since the theist strongly believes that God was involved (as you strongly believe that there are other minds in the robot example). So just as it’s OK for you to hold on to your belief in other conscious minds in the robot example (despite the availability of a purely non-agential naturalistic explanation), it’s OK for the theist to hold on to her belief in God’s miraculous action in the early church (despite the availability of a purely non-agential naturalistic explanation).
So to answer DW’s question, I guess something like this is operative:
Given two competing explanations X and Y where Y is purely non-agential and naturalistic, every subject S should accept Y unless she knows that the entities involved in X exist and could/would act in the way described by X.
This explains why you shouldn’t accept the purely non-agential naturalistic explanation in the Japanese robot case: you already know that conscious people exist and could/would act in the way you observe.
But this theory also gives the result that early Greeks shouldn’t abandon their Zeus-lightning-throwing explanation UNLESS in fact they didn’t know that Zeus exists (say because it’s false that Zeus exists, and you can’t know what’s false). The reason we accept the naturalistic explanation is that we don’t believe in Zeus. But that doesn’t mean the early Greek would be irrational in rejecting the naturalistic explanation.
Similarly, this theory also gives the result that theists shouldn’t abandon their God-causing-growth-of-early-church explanation UNLESS in fact these theists don’t know God exists. So to show that theists are irrational in giving up their supernatural explanation, you’ll have to show that they don’t know that God exists, either by showing that their belief is unjustified, or by showing that it’s false. That’s a tremendous burden of proof on you. cartesian
cartesian, thanks for the answer. but i have to dig a little deeper.
so, by your reasoning, if alzheimer’s is caused by either Y: natural processes that we aren’t fully cognizant of, or X: jahweh, who would be acting in complete accordance with the bible and the beliefs of millions if he were to, for instance, inflict people with a debilitating illness (Exodus 4:11), it would be perfectly rational to think that god is causing alzheimer’s, or for that matter, any other disease for which we don’t have an understanding of the root cause, rather than a natural process. why bother looking for a cure?
or better yet, deanna laney could have thought god wanted her to kill her kids because Y, she has a physical and pyschological condition that made her mentally ill, or X, god really told her to. again , by your reasoning, because she wouldn’t be wrong to ‘believe’ that god was communicating with her, as many christians believe, smashing her sons’ skulls with rocks was perfectly rational. how does simply believing in something bestow rationality on an argument? that’s seems pretty freaking dangerous. DW
Hi DW,
You said:
>>so, by your reasoning, if alzheimer’s is caused by either Y: natural processes that we aren’t fully cognizant of, or X: jahweh, who would be acting in complete accordance with the bible and the beliefs of millions if he were to, for instance, inflict people with a debilitating illness (Exodus 4:11), it would be perfectly rational to think that god is causing alzheimer’s…?>>
So the principle I tentatively endorsed in my last comment was this:
Given two competing explanations X and Y where Y is purely non-agential and naturalistic, every subject S should accept Y unless she knows that the entities involved in X exist and could/would act in the way described by X.
I think you do describe a case in which we have to competing explanations, one purely naturalistic and one not so much. You ask about a subject who knows that Yahweh exists and could/would act in the way described by the non-natural explanation.
I think the answer is “yes,” it would be rational for this person not to adopt the purely naturalistic explanation. What may be luring you toward answering otherwise is the fact that WE don’t believe that Yahweh could/would act in this way (because you don’t believe that he exists, and because I don’t believe he would act this way). So the principle doesn’t apply to US. For US it may be rational to accept the naturalistic explanation.
So consider a more neutral case. Suppose you were one of the ancient Israelites enslaved in Egypt. You’re there when Moses shows up and tells everyone a bunch of crazy crap is going to happen unless the Israelites are freed. You see a bunch of crazy crap happen just as Moses predicts it will. Then, Moses predicts that the Egyptian population will get really nasty boils tomorrow, unless the Israelites are freed. You now have excellent reason to believe that Yahweh exists, and that he would act in this way. Let’s say you even KNOW that. But let’s say you also know that boils COULD be caused by purely naturalistic means.
So when tomorrow comes and the Egyptians all have nasty boils, you have two competing explanations: the purely naturalistic one, and the one involving Yahweh. Would it really be irrational for you to accept the one involving Yahweh? I can’t see how. I think you’d be perfectly rational in accepting the one involving Yahweh.
>>or better yet, deanna laney could have thought god wanted her to kill her kids because Y, she has a physical and pyschological condition that made her mentally ill, or X, god really told her to.>>
Notice that I say “S should accept Y unless she KNOWS” certain things. My explanation of why Laney should have accepted the naturalistic explanation here is that it’s not true that God would act in this way, and so Laney could not have known that. So my principle still gives the intuitively correct result here. cartesian
cartesian, one last try here.
“because I don’t believe he would act this way”
“it’s not true that God would act in this way, and so Laney could not have known that”
again, you make interesting points, but your argument in both cases is that you happen to believe that god would and would not act in certain ways. how do you know? if you are justified in disbelieving that god would cause Alzheimer’s simply because of your subjective belief that he would not act that way, than why is diane laney not justified in having her own personal beliefs about how god would act? just because you don’t believe that god would command her to kill her children doesn’t mean that she doesn’t. it’s not like he hasn’t done it before (Gen 22), whether or not you agree with it, it is in the bible. in that case, either your argument collapses are you are presuming to know both the mind of god and the mind of another human being. If she genuinely believed that god told her to kill her children and that that was a reasonable thing to expect of god based on her belief, how is it irrational by your yardstick of rationality? DW
As a late reader of this post I must say thank you because I’ve used the Mormons as examples of more modern religions and their growth curve as an explanation of early christian growth in debates with old friends (who are still christian), but all without actual math to back it up (just some rough estimates of percentage of population in 1st century and such, not an analysis of growth rates).
I’d love to see a similar analysis done of scientology because it would make an even more interesting comparison (because I know many christians who would use the Mormon numbers to say “see, even an incorrect version of God is compelling”, but it’s much harder to defend scientology). Of course I’m not sure scientology would give you reliable numbers, but that’s universal (what’s the line in Ender’s game? “If you know somebody is lying to you it can be as useful as the truth” or something to that effect). CharlesP
One of the main differences between christianity and the mystery religions which most members of the Roman Empire adhered to was that the mystery religions were very expensive to progress in. If you wished to be initiated into all the mysteries it was going to cost a lot of money, so the potential pool of initiates was limited to the relatively wealthy. Christianity was effectively free. You had to support the church but you didn’t have to pay out large sums just to learn the gospel message and be ’saved’.
Scientology is a reversion to the business plan of the ancient mystery religions. If you wish to move up the hierarchy of the initiated it’s going to cost you a LOT of money. This would make it an interesting study. You could see what difference it makes.
Rodney Stark (in the days when he wasn’t a christian and still made sense) pointed out that in order to be satisfying religion has to extract some kind of cost, otherwise it’s all too easy and freeloaders will become rife. So then the question is, how much cost is optimal for the spread of the new cult? Would scientology spread faster if it was cheaper?
Are they spreading as fast or faster than the mormons?
Janet Holmes
And, according to Acts 21:20, by the sixth decade of the first century there were “many thousands of Jews” in Jerusalem who now believed.
Acts 21:20 does absolutely not say that there were thousands of believing Jews in Jerusalem. The reference is to the many thousand of believing Jews that Paul had touched through his minstry during his travels, not to Jews in Jerusalem. In fact, Acts 21:11-14 clearly suggests that Jerusalem was a a very anti-Christian environment – that surely wouldn’t have been the case if there were thousands of believing Jews since as we acknowledge, given its population, that would have made it a Christian city.
Furthermore, given that early Mormonism had at its disposal technologies like railways and the printed word (and less persecution, of course) it makes – by comparison – the early expansion of Chritianity even more remarkable.
Finally, I don’t find the arguments for the advantages to Christianity over Mormonism to be very convincing. In points one and two, Christianity was competing with the divinity of the Roman Emperor and hence was opposed by the full might of the Roman army. All gods were tolerated by the Romans as long as they accepted the Emperor as divine. Both of these points worked against early Christianity more than they worked for it.
Point three also worked against early Christianity. The whole of Roman society did not want such a radical shift in attitudes towards women. This was a further reason for Rome to oppose and persecute the Christians.
In point four, several Roman writers wrote skeptical and derisory passages about the Christians – calling them superstitious, and spreading rumours that they were cannibals. Plus, Jesus was being discredited by the Pharisees throughout the empire, so this point seems historically inaccurate.
In point five, again Mormons had the print press available to them and therefore should have been more capable of reaching more people more quickly. Given this fact, its comparitive growth pales next to that of early Christianity.
Point six, doesn’t explain the remarkable rise of Chritsianity prior to Constantine’s conversion, especially in light of the extremely powerful forces determined to destroy it.
Thank you for your essay, I will continue to read your blog. Bob
Is it not possible that the rise of atheism in the 20th century was due to the fact that it is practically law to be an atheist in China the country with 1/6th of the worlds population. I guess atheism took a sharp leap around 1917 and 1949.
Also is it not possible that Christianity spread so quickly was due to the fact that it was a relief from the religions of the time. It actually liberated people from the rigid and barbaric order the Roman/Greek pantheon had descended into by this time. Paganism in Rome was more to hold the empire together so Christianity was a rebellion against a powerful yet utterly morally corrupt empire. ned
This is an old post, but my first thought was, Were these numbers corrected for national population, and population growth? You’d have to consider the total populations available for conversion; Mormonism was drawing converts from Europe within its first few decades, and the western world was booming through the industrial revolution, green revolution, and modern medicine. Rome was declining politically, but I don’t know if that means the Empire’s population was declining or how far afield Christian missionaries were able to reach. Not that the explosion of Christianity adds much weight to its truth claims in my mind anyway. Zeb
And probably a better title for this post would be “The Explosion of Christianity Demythologized.” I’d be fascinated to hear the process explained, and wouldn’t be surprised if a convincing explanation required no reference to the supernatural, but you have not explained at all how it happened. What you’ve shown is that it needn’t have necessarily been supernatural. Decent point, but not the end of the story. Zeb
I recommend you read Stark’s chapter on that. lukeprog