The Growth of Christianity in Rome英文文献资料.pdf

The Growth of Christianity in the Roman Empire Why did Christianity become so quickly popular in the Roman Empire? Especially at a time when it was illegal? Hundreds of thousands of Christians were tortured and killed by the Roman government, yet more people kept freely choosing to j oin the new religion. Why did they so easily let go of the polytheistic paganism which was typical of the early Romans? By the time Constantine legalized the practice of Christianity in 3 13, the empire was already heavily Christianized. By the year 300 perhaps 10 percent of the people were Christians, and by the middle of the century, Christians may well have been a maj ority of the citizens, 33 million Christians in an empire of 60 million people. So Constantine did not so much ensure Christianity’s success as acknowledge it. These were not 33 million “nominal” Christians. In the decade before Constantine ’s edict, the Church had suffered its most ruthless and systematic persecution ever under the emperor Diocletian and his successors. The practice of the faith was, in many places, punished by torture and death. In many places, to live as a Christian meant, at the least, to accept social stigma and humiliation. What is more, the Christian way itself was characterized by voluntarily engaging in demanding disciplines in the life of prayer and in the moral life. To be a Christian was not easy in the year 300. Christians were laying their lives on the line every time they met to discuss the New Testament, and they continued to do so through the course of every day. Yet the rate of conversion throughout the empire — beginning with the first Christians, long before Constantine — was most remarkable. In the first Christian centuries there was an astonishing growth r