What did Christianity have to Offer?

[Stravo]

Thinking about this after watching the independent film "Beowulf and Grendel" and thinking about the Norse Gods and mythology. Norse mythology always was my favorite when I was a kid. Greek Mythology followed a close second but Norse mythology always seemed so cool because there was inevitability to their religion. The gods were training for Ragnarok, the Final Conflict, and in the end they knew they were all going to die fighting their enemies but they went ahead and lived their lives, well I might add with the drinking, eating and fucking. And let's face it, the Norse mythologies read like a never ending adventure story.

Greek mythology as well made their gods very much like us. They also emphasized feeling good and living well without sex hating morality.

Along comes the Christians and their far more austere religion focussed on morality, living well because the end was coming soon (try to remember that ancient Christians literally believed the Second Coming was happening at any moment something the Church currently sort of glosses over, you would too if you've been saying it for 2,000 years) so you have these guys telling you your way of life was too loose and that the world was ending in your life time so better shape up.

Why the sucess in conversions that the early church had? What was it about Christianity that appealed to pagan Europe? Could it be as simple as saying that the early Christians had the greatest corporate sponsor in history - The Roman Empire. Or is it because there was something unfulfilling about pagan religions at the time? Maybe the coolness of the pagan mythology stories was part of their downfall, afterall the Norse and Greek stories didn't really address their followers' concerns while the Christian mythology spoke directly to the believer about their concerns and moral questions (Love one another as yourself, turn the other cheek, blessed are the meek, etc).

What are your thoughts? What did the pagans lack? What did Christians bring to the table that made them so much more desirable as a religion?

[Ghost Rider]

From wayback when studies, the only thing I really concluded was that Christianity offered a fantastic death package.....as long as you were loyal.

Greek and Roman, you could get a great afterlife...if you were a hero. If your were some blasphemous villain, you got to roll a rock up a hill for eternity. If you were average, you got....kinda blissful ignorance. Their height was during the empires of the respective cultures.

I really cannot say what in at the time the pagans lacked except that they likely did not have a foothold(Constantine was a push, how great...I'll let other historians say), and the living conditions needed someone to tell them that something, anything was better over the horizon.

So a combination of becoming a state religion, a nice sounding death package appealing to the masses is what I've held to why Christianity becoming so powerful during those days.

[Jew]

Could it be as simple as saying that the early Christians had the greatest corporate sponsor in history - The Roman Empire.

That's probably a big part of it. My other guess is that a religion based on lots of gods that behave just like spoiled humans isn't too appealing. Whereas the Greek and Roman gods were just a powerful but petty rabble who didn't care about mere mortals, Christianity offered a vision of an all-powerful Creator who cared so much about mortals that he sent his own son to die as a sacrifice for them. That's a fair bit more appealing, I think.

Also, Christians proselytized. Don't discount the importance of that. Not all religions do so, but Christians have always made a special effort to spread their gospel. That, combined with the fact that Christianity is available to all people of all colors and backgrounds, make it easy to spread.

[KrauserKrauser]

I'd say it was because we were so darn good at killing everyone else.

[Stravo]

I'm sort of fascintated by the idea that people would willingly move from religions that tended to condone drinking, partying, fucking and essentially enjoying life (Greek, Norse and Celtic traditions) to a religion that tells us we're all going to die real soon and do all of these things or you're a bad person and btw we're all in this position because women screwed us over in the garden of Eden. The pagans went from religions that looked at evil as part of natural balance in the world to "You were born with sin and unless you fly right you will die in sin then burn in hell for all eternity BUT god loves you."

I just don't get the appeal if one looks at the permissivesness of pagan religions in general as opposed to Christianity. Chrisitians always like to focus on the "Love one another" aspect of their religion as if pagan religions said "Be cruel to one another."

There's got to be more to it.

[FTeik]

It was especially the death-package of a better afterlife. If you look at the majority of their early converts you'll see, that a lot of those were slaves and members of the under-class. It also seems, that there has been a crisis of morals and faith in ancient Rome around that time (Caesar Augustus tightened several laws in the name of morality) and you could find a different deity at every corner. This inflation of gods caused by Rome being an empire and the centre of the then known world might have caused the appeal of the old religions to disappear.

[Rye]

I'm sort of fascintated by the idea that people would willingly move from religions that tended to condone drinking, partying, fucking and essentially enjoying life (Greek, Norse and Celtic traditions) to a religion that tells us we're all going to die real soon and do all of these things or you're a bad person and btw we're all in this position because women screwed us over in the garden of Eden. The pagans went from religions that looked at evil as part of natural balance in the world to "You were born with sin and unless you fly right you will die in sin then burn in hell for all eternity BUT god loves you."

I just don't get the appeal if one looks at the permissivesness of pagan religions in general as opposed to Christianity. Chrisitians always like to focus on the "Love one another" aspect of their religion as if pagan religions said "Be cruel to one another."

There's got to be more to it.

If you read the gospels understanding the target audience, i.e. the poor people and the oppressed specifically, it's going to encourage brotherhood to a large degree to anyone that feels hard done by. It was open to all and once you got in, you were part of God's chosen people. Any sins barring blasphemy of the holy ghost could be forgiven by mere words. Personality cults cropped up and the whole desperation for the messiah no doubt encouraged it to flourish, I'll touch more on this in a minute.

It would also be a very dominating and occasionally extreme religion, and whenever strife hits an area, the most extreme survive. Similar thing with Islam, initially subversive and hated, so it's pitched to those undergoing oppression. It gains widespread conversions with its promises of fairness, forgiveness, the One True Path To God™ to the exclusion of others, and at the same time it creates a lot of peer pressure to show how faithful you are. Other religions were fine with the status quo; people that believed in vague gods that could be appeased with the occasional sacrifice, but the christians were fervently encouraging religiosity.

This is something that's repeated itself since, which is why there's so many schisms in christianity. Guys like Luther, nasty sadomasochistic people that detested the church becoming more lax, or becoming more obsessed with worldly goods and iconography than pure faith crop up every now and again to get things more faithful. It happened so many times amongst the baptists it became a running joke.

In addition to this revitalising and charismatic nihilism, there was the carrot and stick approach of the afterlife, and the very authoritative system of belief that the religion put forth and inherited. The fact is that a lot of people prefer to be mentally submissive, especially if they were brought up that way, so christians start having lots of kids, and start passing on the dominating ideas and that continues to this day. Islam did much the same thing, and is probably seen in the modern climate as even more domineering than christianity, which is why it's the fastest growing religion, even amongst western women, who I would predict feel disenfranchised with consumerist life and want to feel secure by submission.

Christianity's spread was certainly helped by the Romans and Constantine, along with a lot of the emulation tactics they used. Christianity and islam have also been tempered by a sort of natural selection, making sure the parts with staying power really stick around, plus development of mass hysteria techniques in the case of protestants, as well as the mysticism, tradition, groupthink and squashing of the individual that stuff like pilgrimages encourage.

[NecronLord]

Imagine you're in Ancient Rome.

Chances are you're a slave.

*Whammo* That is the sound of a giant gate slamming in your face from the direction of Mount Olympus. You're chattel now, that's all you'll ever be.

Here's a guy called Jesus, talking about how the cruel asshole who castrated/whipped/branded/whatever you is going to get his comeuppons, and be tortured and tortured and tortured and tortured and tor [ad infinitum] for it and you're going to be able to sit in paradise and gloat.

[Velthuijsen]

Bear in mind that for this discussion that Augustine and Constantine enforced major change on christianity. The first formulated original sin, the second after making it a state religion basically required that christianity got a formalized bible which included the revelations chapter (since it was one of the few that allowed a behave or else mentality).

[Lagmonster]

I just don't get the appeal if one looks at the permissivesness of pagan religions in general as opposed to Christianity. Chrisitians always like to focus on the "Love one another" aspect of their religion as if pagan religions said "Be cruel to one another."

There's got to be more to it.

While I'm no sociological expert, it may well be that human beings are simply easier to control through indoctrination than a well-educated person like yourself is willing to believe.

Besides, getting people into a religion once the foundations are laid is easy, all it takes is indoctrination from birth - if you tell someone over and over from birth that X is correct and suppress dissent physically, you win. All you need is that first generation of scared or ignorant people on which to build, and we can see those trends even today with things like Scientology, where seemingly normal people, motivated by fear or ignorance, gravitate towards the truly bizarre and then raise their kids in it as though it were normal.

[FTeik]

And Constantine forced/convinced the Christians to include as many appealing things from the other religions, that were around at the time. I think it was at the Council of Niccea.

[Broomstick]

It's the afterlife.

In the old pagan religions the afterlife sucked for most people.

Among the Egyptians, originally only the pharoh lived on as a god, the rest of the crew, IF they were lucky, winding up as servants for pharoh, in destinations not specified, or if especially evil, their soul devoured by a monster/demon/deathgod. Of course, that changed over time, until in the latter part of the culture everyone had a shot at an afterlife - IF you could afford mummification, building and outfitting a tomb, and the embalmers/grave robbers didn't rob you blind.

In ancient Sumer, the Epic of Gilgamesh tells us that a man's status in the afterlife depends on the number of sons he has to sing his praises - no sons, you're screwed. No mention of what women, slaves, etc. received, if anything.

In the Norse mythos war heros who died in battle went to Valhalla, the big Frat Party in the Sky. Everyone else wound up under the jurisdiction of Hel, Goddess of the underworld, child of Loki, and a thoroughly creepy diety in many ways. It wasn't wonderful and didn't include parties, mead, or pork roasts.

In ancient Greece and Rome a mythic hero might make it to Olympus or be set in the stars, but the best the rest could hope for was a sort of drugged ignorance. The Elysium Fields might have been an alright place to spend eternity, but the gist of the myths seems to be that death was not much fun and Hades was a cold and awful place to be.

Judaism doesn't speak of hell - hell was being separated from God, that is, not in heaven. But being Jewish involved difficult, complicated rules and the focus, even today, is mostly on this life and not a lot about what comes after.

Hinduism? You get reborn and reborn and reborn... and most of the time it was a shitty existance.

Buddism - reborn, reborn, reborn and the best outcome was simply to dissolve as an individual into the greater universe.

Various animist religions offer a "Happy Hunting Ground" or afterlife incorporating the best of this existance with less of the bad stuff, or go for reincarnation. Which is fine if you LIKE your existance but if your life sucked this wasn't exactly appealing.

What do Christianity and Islam offer? Let's see.... obey the rules, perform these rituals and you get AN ETERNITY IN PARADISE!!! All good things, no bad. And it's open to EVERYONE!!!! Rich, poor, slave, free, male, female....

What's not to like?

Particularly for the poor and oppressed, who experienced few luxuries in this life anyhow, living a frugal and restricted life for a couple decades in exchange for an eternity of goodies probably didn't seem so bad. Particularly since you didn't need to be heroic or strong or rich to get the big payoff, just obedient, which slaves and subordinates learn to be in order to get by anyhow.

And don't forget - Christianity didn't include icky, painful things like circumcism, scarification, or bloody initiation rites. No doubt that didn't hurt its appeal, either. Islam requires circumcism, but compared to some initial rituals (such as Australian rites including subincision, or various Polynesian variants on scarring or tattooing involving most of the body such that death from blood loss or shock was possible) that's relatively minor.

[NecronLord]

Shamefully I missed the woman angle, had it pointed out to me over dinner, but Broomstick got there first. Damn.

That too.

[K. A. Pital]

A Christian once said:

The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its will against all others. ... The greatness of Christianity did not lie in attempted negotiations for compromise with any similar philosophical opinions in the ancient world, but in its inexorable fanaticism in preaching and fighting for its own doctrine.

I have nothing to add here.

[Surlethe]

Christianity and islam have also been tempered by a sort of natural selection, making sure the parts with staying power really stick around, plus development of mass hysteria techniques in the case of protestants, as well as the mysticism, tradition, groupthink and squashing of the individual that stuff like pilgrimages encourage.

I wonder just how different the Christianity we see today is from the Christianity of the first century AD. Anyway, if the traditional Christian understanding of the spread of Christianity is to be taken at face value (sans miracles, etc.), I wouldn't be surprised if what caused it to survive was the extension of the family to include those who shared your beliefs. As far as I know, none of the other religions present first century AD had anything like this identification of belief = family, so I can see how this "instant family" upon acceptance would both foster the belief and give it a leg up with regards to other religions which didn't have it.

[SirNitram]

From what I recall, Rome had a slightly different afterlife.

Specifically, most people didn't go. You existed as a ghost at your tomb, and gods damn was it boring.

[Pablo Sanchez]

I wonder just how different the Christianity we see today is from the Christianity of the first century AD.

The pacifism has definitely gone away.

[Feil]

'Sign here to become a child of God' can't have hurt either, though I don't know when that became part of the theology.

[Jew]

'Sign here to become a child of God' can't have hurt either, though I don't know when that became part of the theology.

"Child of God" was part of Christianity from the beginning.

Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God

While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, "Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you."

He replied to him, "Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?" Pointing to his disciples, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother."

There are other biblical references as well.

[General Trelane (Retired)]

Bear in mind that for this discussion that [. . .] Constantine enforced major change on christianity [. . .] after making it a state religion basically required that christianity got a formalized bible which included the revelations chapter (since it was one of the few that allowed a behave or else mentality).

Evidence please.

And Constantine forced/convinced the Christians to include as many appealing things from the other religions, that were around at the time. I think it was at the Council of Niccea.

And again, evidence please. And no, don't quote from The Da Vinci Code or Holy Blood, Holy Grail.

Granted, Christianity took a major turn (for the worse) after it became the reiligion of power in the Roman Empire (thanks Constantine!). As for the emphasis on eternal life, I've always assumed that this developed as the church became entrenched in power. . .as a means of controlling the masses and getting them to accept the status quo (after all, if you're a peasant, there wasn't much to look forward to in life, so the eternal reward was held out as the carrot). The earliest Christianity had more of a counter-cultural justice flavour which just wouldn't do once it became culturally established.

[Darth Wong]

Christianity has the same thing to offer that the lottery does: totally unrealistic hope for the poor and downtrodden.

[FTeik]

Bear in mind that for this discussion that [. . .] Constantine enforced major change on christianity [. . .] after making it a state religion basically required that christianity got a formalized bible which included the revelations chapter (since it was one of the few that allowed a behave or else mentality).

Evidence please.

And Constantine forced/convinced the Christians to include as many appealing things from the other religions, that were around at the time. I think it was at the Council of Niccea.

And again, evidence please. And no, don't quote from The Da Vinci Code or Holy Blood, Holy Grail.

Granted, Christianity took a major turn (for the worse) after it became the reiligion of power in the Roman Empire (thanks Constantine!). As for the emphasis on eternal life, I've always assumed that this developed as the church became entrenched in power. . .as a means of controlling the masses and getting them to accept the status quo (after all, if you're a peasant, there wasn't much to look forward to in life, so the eternal reward was held out as the carrot). The earliest Christianity had more of a counter-cultural justice flavour which just wouldn't do once it became culturally established.

You might be thinking of this:

http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/nicaea.html

which also links to this as source of what really happened

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11044a.htm

[Ariphaos]

Polytheism was expensive. Bankrupting Rome, even. Every God had to have their temple, after all, and the city-dwellers were getting rather sick of it. China got rid of its superstitions for much the same reason. Some people even referred to Christians as atheists since they did not believe in the traditional pantheon.

As for why Constantine chose Christianity over Mithraism or Sol Invictus, I think it was simply because so much of the common city public accepted it. Mithraism was mostly rooted in the military, as well as being Persian in origin, while Sol Invictus barely got any traction at all.

The Dionysus mystery cult (the apparent origin of Christianity's heaven) sort of stayed that way.

Constantine did get the Council of Nicaea going, particularly to rule on Unitarianism vs. Trinitarianism, which had nearly divided the faith in half.

[Darth Wong]

Polytheism was expensive. Bankrupting Rome, even. Every God had to have their temple, after all, and the city-dwellers were getting rather sick of it. China got rid of its superstitions for much the same reason. Some people even referred to Christians as atheists since they did not believe in the traditional pantheon.

There are still polytheistic religions today, and you can't seriously tell me that Christianity was an economic success story. The Church has been systematically and parasitically draining the rest of the economy in any country where it has hold for as long as anyone can remember. Thousands of ornate churches for one God cost no more or less than thousands of ornate shrines to many gods. Just look at how many Christian churches there are.

[Flagg]

Christianity has the same thing to offer that the lottery does: totally unrealistic hope for the poor and downtrodden.

But to be fair, the poor and downtrodden occasionally win the lottery.