(October 9, 2017 at 5:24 pm)Alisa Wrote: This is a question that requires answers in the order of epic, and some definite answer may not be available yet. But we may think of several factors that helped in the process. First of all, Christianity was not bound to any ethnicity; it was for everyone. Although in the beginning there may have been internal conflicts within Christianity as a minority, in the question of whether non-Jews should be allowed to join, there seems to have been no way preventing Paul from quickly trying to spread the faith far beyond the boundaries of Judea among non-Jews. Moreover, Christianity had a special message aimed at just the poor and the weak; One might argue that Christianity had an early focus on them, and Celsus, an intellectual pagan, criticized the Christians for directing their mission to the poor, the unlettered, and even women.
Moreover, at the time of the birth of Christianity there were many Roman citizens who were interested in Judaism but for different reasons would not want to convert. This probably because of Judaism in some respects collided with classical Roman values, such as the requirement of circumcision for all men, which for the Roman citizen who was easily fixed by masculinity, circumcision to them looked like a kind of de-masculinization; pork that Judaism forbade was also something that was easily seen as strange. When Christianity came, these problems were solved because Christianity had no ban on either pork, demands for circumcision or the vast amount of other living rules that Jews demanded from their followers. And since most Romans could not distinguish between Christianity and Judaism (it is quite uncertain how much Christians themselves identified as followers of a completely separate religion from Judaism so early in history), it became easier to convert to Christianity. And since God-fearing people were also represented among the more influential and wealthy Romans, Christianity also received early powerful people, even though the vast majority were probably poor.
Christians also had focused on spreading the faith. Judaism also existed at some point in time, but when Christianity began, Judaism began to become more elitist and perhaps more ethnic, and missionary activity slowly to died completely.
It seems that the really powerful acceleration in the spread of Christianity came about when Constantine converted and made Christianity into a state religion. If the Emperor had converted to any religion, but let's say for the sake of argument say Hinduism, then even the Roman citizens would have done so. So, Christianity came into the open; large building projects where Christian churches could now be seen entirely in public, characterized by Christian symbols, art and with full support from the senselessly rich Emperor family.
Nevertheless, because Christianity spread really fast is not something we should be amazed, even Islam was spread really fast especially among the poor and the unlettered. Even though many dislikes and hate Islam (including me), we can still not avoid how quick it really spread, from the Hijaz to all over the world. China, Indonesia and so on. And... we also need to take something else into consideration, in ancient times they'd no knowledge about the world, no science, people used to ascribe thunder, earthquakes and other natural disasters to God, i.e., Goddidit. However today we have knowledge about how the world came into existence, the theory of gravity, the theory of evolution etc. Today, in this era and time, people are abandoning religion and becoming atheists. So, religion today, whethet it is Christianity or Islam is shrinking.
Regards.
Alisa
Neither Christianity nor Islam is shrinking nor projected to shrink. In fact, atheism is projected to shrink (as a % of world population).
http://www.pewforum.org/2015/04/02/relig...2010-2050/
