How did Christianity become so popular

[Der/die AtheistIn]

How did Christianity become the biggest religion in the first place?

[Silver]

3 Things - Missionary zeal, Emperor Constantine, Colonialism.

https://www.quora.com/How-did-Christiani...-religions

[Minimalist]

How did Christianity become the biggest religion in the first place?

At gun point.

[energizer bunny]

Maybe because it requires less discipline while filling your mind with empty promises and false hope.

[Der/die AtheistIn]

Maybe because it requires less discipline while filling your mind with empty promises and false hope.

Aren't all religions like that?

[energizer bunny]

Maybe because it requires less discipline while filling your mind with empty promises and false hope.

Aren't all religions like that?

I would think other religions require more discipline and dedication. Showing up to church once a week for only an hour isn't much. But i don't make a habit of studying world religion hence the "maybe."

[AFTT47]

The carrot and the stick. It's a great combination if you want to brainwash somebody.

[Minimalist]

In a scathing study, George Tinker described the notorious reducciones led by the Franciscan father Junipero Serra in Spanish California from 1769 to 1782. Tinker asserted that the missionaries “functioned in complete symbiosis with the structures of Spanish civil government, and even as an extension of it,” including receiving their salary from the colonial administration.20 Serra and other missionaries arrived with Spanish troops, and upon supposed conversion, the indigenous inmates “were no longer allowed to leave the mission except for specific purposes and [with] the express permission of the missionaries.”21 In the concentration missions, natives were forced to labor to support the missionaries and soldiers, and they were subjected to compulsory religious attendance; worse yet, families were separated and children taken from their parents, the better to train and civilize them. Contemporaries like Father Antonio de la Conception Horra reported corporal punishment in the form of whipping, shackling, placing in stocks, and depriving of water, all of which were deemed reasonable to enforce the peaceful gospel on them.22 Nutrition also suffered, as the previously self-sufficient peoples were reduced to peasants and serfs who fed their masters.


David Eller - Christianity Is Not Great

It should be noted that Pope Fuckface just made Serra a "saint."  Apparently making Indians disappear by killing them was a "miracle" to these catholick pricks.

[vorlon13]

Apostle Paul kept track of what dogma sold and what didn't with whatever crowds he could attract and he kept refining/updating/changing the 'message' to maximize his return.

That's why Paul's take on Christianity is so different from Jesus' version. Retconning combined with marketing numbers to refine the product, IOWs.

Jesus' apocalyptic Judaism was a tough sell, hammering it into something VERY different made it salable.

[John V]

3 Things - Missionary zeal, Emperor Constantine, Colonialism.

https://www.quora.com/How-did-Christiani...-religions

Circular - begs the question, why were there zealous missionaries?