Knowing the biblical history associated with Jesus (I.e. Pontius Pilate crucifying him to appease the Jews), how did Roman Catholicism end up becoming the dominant religion in the Roman world? It seem like they’d want to distance themselves from that, sort of like how it would be kind of awkward for Jews to accept Jesus as the messiah, ya know?
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It was a movement that started slowly and built its way up over the centuries until it kind of had a critical mass. One interesting aspect is that its spread was really more of a bottom-up rather than top-down (i.e. the masses adopted it before the people in charge). Though we only really think about Christianity, the Roman Religion, Judaism and a couple other religions as the main ancient religions, there were actually a lot of religious movements that would pop up every few years and then burn out quickly. Christianity was one of many movements, but it stuck around.
So why did it end up being so popular? Well, the big thing was that it had a pretty appealing, positive message. The ancient world kind of sucked – most people lived pretty rough lives just barely scraping by as farmers or laborers. Any minor accident or sickness could result in death. Christians came to communities and preached, “Hey, don’t worry about all this stuff. Your life sucks but your suffering isn’t for nothing. If you have faith and do good things, you will go to heaven.” And they also ran charities that would take care of the sick and poor. This message and their social services naturally appealed to marginalize groups – lower classes, slaves, and women. It may shock you, but many other religions in the ancient world didn’t really have a similar message – most of them just kind of explained the mysteries of the universe, but didn’t promise this nice eternal salvation thing. Anyway, that last group (women) is important, because, this may shock you, but women were the ones raising children. So if a mom was sympathetic towards Christians, it would probably rub off on her children as well.
So with an appealing message and a willingness to set up social services for the needy, early Christianity gradually made its way around the Mediterranean. For the most part it was tolerated, but went through eras where it was harshly targeted by the authorities, but these often did more harm than good since Christians were often sympathetic to commoners. “Sure, they’re kind of weird, but all they really do is run charities that take care of sick and poor people. They don’t seem that dangerous.” Eventually, the Christian population became large enough that it was a significant minority of the Empire. At this point, Emperors themselves started being Christian and the spread was endorsed by the Empire itself.
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