AHC: Christianity doesn't become Rome's state religion?

[SlyDessertFox]

Yet it had been growing for three centuries even *before* Constantine.

It had indeed, but we're talking about incredible differences of scale here. At the time of the Edict of Milan, Christianity was orders of magnitude smaller than it was less than 70 years later, when the Edict of Thessalonica was signed. As Kerney mentioned, it had spread from around 5-10% of the population at the time (after almost 3 centuries of spread), to very likely majority status, all in record time. There's no reason to think that, left to its own devices, Christianity would continue to spread and spread and that it didn't have a natural ceiling that was lifted by getting the backing of the Roman state and thus the quick adoption by Roman elites.

Hadn't Sol Invictus been around (and enjoyed Imperial favour) long enough to bring up a second generation? Mithraism certainly had. Didn't stop them being dislodged when Christianity came along.

Was there any rush to worship Elagabalus' Sun Stone when he became Emperor?

Mithraism was itself a pretty niche cult almost solely popular within the rank and file of the army. The worship of Sol Invictus was not an exclusive religion-Sol Invictus wasn't being worshipped to the exclusion of all the other Greco-Roman-Eastern gods, but as the head of that diverse pantheon. So it's not really worthwhile to ask "how far had the cult of sol invictus spread when it was promoted by Aurelian?" Most Romans would have believed in a sun god, whether they called it Sol Invictus (or Jupiter), Elagabal, Helios, or whatever.

But since you mentioned Elagabalus and Sol Invictus in the same post, I will point out that there's a popular current of scholarship that believes the prominence of Sol Invictus in the third century actually is in large part related to Elagabal being brought to Roman prominence by Elagabalus. While there was always a small cult of Sol in Rome, it was relatively muted until the third century, after Elagabalus (The Historia Augusta, I should note, eequates Elagabal with Jupiter and Sol, these gods were in effect treated as one). The Sol Invictus cult that Aurelian organized specifically is likely heavily based on Emesene Elagabal.

So to answer your question, yes, actually, the Sol Invictus/Elagabal had in fact spready remarkably fast in the third century since the introduction of Elagabal to the Romans. It's just that worship of Sol/Elagabal was not an exclusivist religion.

 

[HelloThere]

Estimates based on literally nothing, they are mathematical models that assume a certain amount of growth first and then get the results later. I don't need to refute something that doesn't justify its own assumptions properly.

So why are you even discussing if you say that we can't know anything certain? That's like discussing about what's on the other side of a black hole.

What's a "big" religion in a polytheistic Roman setting is arbitrary but insofar as you claim it was a religion of social rejects then it hardly would matter on the overall scene, especially in the West.

At first it was a Religion of social rejects, but then even people in the upper parts of the social ladder picked it up. It would matter, because it's a) a monotheistic religion and thus not possible to integrate into the Roman cult and b) it's not a secret cult.

The Muslims in Christian Spain were completely eradicated without killing them all, same goes for Christians in Japan or North Africa. There are dozens of persecutions that ended with one side being permanently converted, let's stop pretending it doesn't work or that it doesn't work against totally special Christians.

Japan sealed it off from the rest of the world, that's not something Rome can do. And the muslims in Spain didn't just give up on Islam, they practiced it in secret (which was a reason why they were expelled from the country in 1614).

Then you shouldn't understate the importance of what state's support in the religious demographics of a region. The counter-reformation and the religion of the rulers of a region caused certain regions to be 100% Catholic while the neighboring territory would be 100% Protestant.

Well yes, but that was after major wars and population exchanges on both sides. People didn't just believe in everything their ruler said.

Most of us here were talking about a Constatine-related POD regardless of what OP originally said...

Even without Constantine the Roman Empire at some point will legalize Christianity. It's just a matter of time.

Most pre-Roman religions didn't disappear under Roman rule(even Celtic religions survived beyond druids), same goes for pre-Greek religions under Hellenistic rule, not every religion was put under persecutions like under Christian or Islamic medieval regimes and even under persecution many smaller faiths survived to this day for whatever specific reasons.

Correct. They didn't disappear because the Roman Empire tried to integrate them. So at least some of them had state-backing. But the fact that we now have next to nothing when it comes to Germanic pagan texts just shows that even after the end of the Roman Empire there was no major revival.

So you think paganism is inferior to Abrahamic religion? Why exactly?

Could you please stop with the straw men? It's really annoying. But to answer your question: It's a lot easier to go from "that Jesus guy was the Messiah" to "he was just a prophet, the church manipulated his image". I mean, up till today a lot of people believe the second statement.

 

[Kerney]

🙄 ok then. Our Not!Muhammad has a different arab name and different genetics. He is still product of an environment that is almost the same as far as our POD goes. The POD doesn't stop christianity from spreading all around the middle east, Armenia and Ethiopia. Or the fall of the western empire. Or the bizantine persian war. Or, again, the factors that caused the emergence of islam and its early expansion. Islam isnt butterflied away. Making it not happen is another POD in itself.
Where is the direct correlation here? In cases like this I feel "butterflied away" is just a lazy literary device to remove elements that get in the way of the story one is trying to write. Its not a bad device but it has no force of proof. You COULD have islam not emerging after your POD. The elements that made it emerge can be solved differently. But ypu would need to stablish it as part of your story. Make them happen. Removing this edict doesn't do that by itself.

I think here we disagree fundamentally. I believe in 300+ years, you could get a very different environment and there would be no Abrahamic faiths in a position of dominance is a definite probability.
Let me give you an example, I'm writing a tl where Saint Patrick dies a shepherd in Ireland. Some people would say 'inevitably' someone would come along and convert Ireland to Christianity. I'm having the Angles and Saxon encountering Irish Druids and adapting/integrating a professionalized clergy into Germanic Paganism. Also, without Patrick's pioneering example of working cross-culturally never happening, Christian attempts to evangelize Europe tend to be more "by the Sword" like the Franks in Saxony. In my atl's future, Germanic Paganism is a larger faith than Christianity, which is rather like Orthodoxy, in the sense that they tend to have 'national' churches and are not too Evangelical, while the Norse/Angles/Saxon colonized the Americas (The Kanatalands, all the Americas are Kanatian and yes, though they are conquerers they are very polite).

While some might argue about certain particularities of that tl and some things are low probability, I think a very butterflied tl is much more likely than a low butterfly tl like you seem to see as 'natural'.

I don't think you can conclude this. There had been previous periods of persecution, which ultimately achieved little. History has shown that religious persecution tends to lead only to outward compliance and drive religions underground, unless it is sustained for a very long time and/or features expulsions. The Diocletianic edicts also were not uniformly applied across the empire, in any event.

Christianity by all accounts experienced major growth in the third century. It is likely for this growth to have continued in the next century. However, the movement probably would have become more splintered without the unity that state sanction brought, so the concept of being Christian might be different than what we think of now. This division may have also allowed paganism to survive.

I can quote and books cite sources, including many concluding it was a fringe movement and these by history Professors at top Universities to back up my conclusions. I suspect you could find something to back up your view (in my view, probably distorted and suspect) and Gloss has done a very good job of refuting your points. So, besides saying it was obviously not by all accounts, (and I would be suspicious of all surviving accounts because well, the Churches ran the scriptoriums all through the Middle Ages) I think we are arguing such fundamentally different understandings of history.

To many, the death of Classical traditions and faith was inevitable and was replaced by something better and greater. Those who are more suspicious and probably not devout monotheists see something closer to the cultural revolution and see classical traditions (and later other faiths of Europe) as being murdered or helped along rather than dying a natural death.

Those very different attitudes are why these discussions are as emotional as anything on these boards outside those around the American Civil War.

 

[Fabius Maximus]

To many, the death of Classical traditions and faith was inevitable and was replaced by something better and greater. Those who are more suspicious and probably not devout monotheists see something closer to the cultural revolution and see classical traditions (and later other faiths of Europe) as being murdered or helped along rather than dying a natural death.

Literally every surviving Latin literary work survives because it was copied by later Christians, and virtually every prominent Patristic theologian received a classical education. It was the fall of the Roman Empire that killed off the classical tradition, not the rise of Christianity.

 

[Kippari]

The ignoring of butterflies is generally considered lazier (though to be clear, not worse) than keeping them into account. If you are working with butterflies, you are already working against the easy choice of hitting the same historical beats and instead trying for accuracy from your POD.

In the case of the above factors, whilst not all of them are necessarily butterflied away, the emergence of Islam is definitely up in the air. Islam emerged as a very specific phenomenon that even OTL could have just failed to catch on. With a most generous ignoring of butterflies, there is little reason to think that a copy of Islam would itself rise in an environment which already had other religious traditions battling it out.

It certainly possible that some sort of unified religion could be carried by the Arabs if they spread out like in otl. It could, and probably would be somewhat different. Religions, afterall, tend to be products of the prevalent culture and certain time, colored by later additions and local traditions. A female prophet of Allat and her two sisters smashing patriarchal societies would be nice. Actually, I think I’ll do just that in a timeline I’m writing.

 

[Gloss]

So why are you even discussing if you say that we can't know anything certain? That's like discussing about what's on the other side of a black hole.

Those figures show that even people that assume constant and exponential growth for the Christian community still don't give figures higher than 5-10%, I don't know anyone that did empire-wide analysis, I think one book coming this year might have something on it but we will see.

At first it was a Religion of social rejects, but then even people in the upper parts of the social ladder picked it up. It would matter, because it's a) a monotheistic religion and thus not possible to integrate into the Roman cult and b) it's not a secret cult.

It can't be integrated only insofar as Christians believe it can't, Christianity was able to create something as weird as Mormonism(without Mormonism living in polytheistic world), people tend to overestimate how cohesive a religious community can be without governmental support, we already saw how many heresies arose OTL both before and after Constantine, it's just a matter of time and chaos for heterodox and even polytheistic Christian-influenced beliefs to become popular.

Japan sealed it off from the rest of the world, that's not something Rome can do. And the muslims in Spain didn't just give up on Islam, they practiced it in secret (which was a reason why they were expelled from the country in 1614).

It doesn't matter if Rome closes itself off or not, there is nothing special to Christianity that makes it either immortal or so attractive that it will inevitably spread so fast without it first having any prestige, even you argue it won't ever go completely extinct it might as well remain something akin to Judaism, Zoroastrianism or OTL Coptic religion, an insular endogamous community.
And no, just because they accept converts doesn't mean it will spread, look at the Hui Muslim in China.

Well yes, but that was after major wars and population exchanges on both sides. People didn't just believe in everything their ruler said.

Eventually they did, the pagans in the Roman empire were persecuted too and survived for generations, we have people talking about pagan festivals way after late antiquity and we could honestly argue some such festivals survive to this day even.

Even without Constantine the Roman Empire at some point will legalize Christianity. It's just a matter of time.

Believe what you want.

Correct. They didn't disappear because the Roman Empire tried to integrate them. So at least some of them had state-backing. But the fact that we now have next to nothing when it comes to Germanic pagan texts just shows that even after the end of the Roman Empire there was no major revival.

We have no texts because they didn't write any, not because Germanic peoples were all Christians, we know that Christianity declined beyond the Alps or even in on the Rhineland and Belgium.

Also again with the contradicting arguments, first you try to deemphasize the role of state support for religion then you say that the Roman empire integrating local religions is the reason why they survived, so which is it? Your entire argument hinges on believing Christianity or Abrahamic religions are special or the only resilient ones, it runs on unjustified bias.

Could you please stop with the straw men? It's really annoying. But to answer your question: It's a lot easier to go from "that Jesus guy was the Messiah" to "he was just a prophet, the church manipulated his image". I mean, up till today a lot of people believe the second statement.

Showing your contradictions is not a strawmanning, make coherent non-contradicting arguments and I'll stop poking holes in them.

Also no, directly contradicting a core tenant of Christianity and the explicit role of Jesus in the bible is far bigger change that fulfilling the Messiah role of Judaism, Christianity in of itself doesn't obviously contradict Judaism and that's why you had plenty of false Messiahs after Christianity, because that role is completely in tune with Judaism.

 

[TheLionOfJudah]

It can't be integrated only insofar as Christians believe it can't, Christianity was able to create something as weird as Mormonism(without Mormonism living in polytheistic world), people tend to overestimate how cohesive a religious community can be without governmental support, we already saw how many heresies arose OTL both before and after Constantine, it's just a matter of time and chaos for heterodox and even polytheistic Christian-influenced beliefs to become popular.


It doesn't matter if Rome closes itself off or not, there is nothing special to Christianity that makes it either immortal or so attractive that it will inevitably spread so fast without it first having any prestige, even you argue it won't ever go completely extinct it might as well remain something akin to Judaism, Zoroastrianism or OTL Coptic religion, an insular endogamous community.
And no, just because they accept converts doesn't mean it will spread, look at the Hui Muslim in China.


Eventually they did, the pagans in the Roman empire were persecuted too and survived for generations, we have people talking about pagan festivals way after late antiquity and we could honestly argue some such festivals survive to this day even.

The Christian faith within Rome had already dealt with polytheistic and heterodox schisms, multiple times over like the Gnostics and Arians before 380. The Church wasn't some unorganized beast with no one and nothing to answer to, doomed to schism into multiple facets. Plus you are completely ignoring that the Christian faith was not only widespread, but also had large political power in the forms of the numerous bishops as well as officials who had converted. By the 4th Century it wasn't something sealed off like Judaism, limited to a small ethnic group, but something much larger, followed by laymen and Emperors alike. Zoroastrianism and the Miaphysite beliefs are only so small and insular because of centuries of persecution and conversions to Islam, and were once the dominant forces within their own lands. And while pagan festivities did survive for centuries even with persecution, it really doesn't change the fact that they were already on the backfoot and continually shrinking in the face of Christianity. Maybe they might have survived longer, but not as the majority or even as a force to influence politics.

I think here we disagree fundamentally. I believe in 300+ years, you could get a very different environment and there would be no Abrahamic faiths in a position of dominance is a definite probability.
Let me give you an example, I'm writing a tl where Saint Patrick dies a shepherd in Ireland. Some people would say 'inevitably' someone would come along and convert Ireland to Christianity. I'm having the Angles and Saxon encountering Irish Druids and adapting/integrating a professionalized clergy into Germanic Paganism. Also, without Patrick's pioneering example of working cross-culturally never happening, Christian attempts to evangelize Europe tend to be more "by the Sword" like the Franks in Saxony. In my atl's future, Germanic Paganism is a larger faith than Christianity, which is rather like Orthodoxy, in the sense that they tend to have 'national' churches and are not too Evangelical, while the Norse/Angles/Saxon colonized the Americas (The Kanatalands, all the Americas are Kanatian and yes, though they are conquerers they are very polite).

While some might argue about certain particularities of that tl and some things are low probability, I think a very butterflied tl is much more likely than a low butterfly tl like you seem to see as 'natural'.

I know this is unrelated to the discussion at hand, but I just have to say, you do realize that there were multiple Christian bishops who went to Ireland, like Palladius, and that the Papacy sent multiple people to go and convert pagans in the British Isles like Augustine of Canterbury or Theodore of Tarsus. Patrick isn't the be all end all of Christianity in the region. Hell Palladius even arrived in Ireland before Patrick. If you want to have it make a bit more sense, you should probably wipe away a few more folks and change the main focus of how the Papacy spread Christianity.

 

[Gloss]

The Christian faith within Rome had already dealt with polytheistic and heterodox schisms, multiple times over like the Gnostics and Arians before 380. The Church wasn't some unorganized beast with no one and nothing to answer to, doomed to schism into multiple facets.

Dealt how exactly? By writing pamphlets back and forth? If that was enough to actually squash heresies then things such as the Albigensian crusade or the Iconoclast controversy in the middle ages wouldn't have arisen.
Marcionites for example seem to have survived so long they are attested by medieval Arabs in the middle East, of course Gnosticism goes without saying remained popular, other heresies like Montanism, early groups such as the Ebionites survived into the early middle ages as well.
And those are just doctrinal issues, there would also clearly be issues of leadership and authority or by differing traditions, we already saw that OTL by how the Visigothic bishops responded to attempts of the Roman bishop at controlling the discussions going on there, despite no obvious disagreement existing yet.

Plus you are completely ignoring that the Christian faith was not only widespread, but also had large political power in the forms of the numerous bishops as well as officials who had converted.

Before Constantine Christians were largely confined to cities and to the East, according to Peter Heather even by 325 only 1/3 of civitates had a bishop and he claims just 1-2% of the Roman population was Christian(based on guesstimations, still no rigorous work done empire-wide demographics).

By the 4th Century it wasn't something sealed off like Judaism, limited to a small ethnic group, but something much larger, followed by laymen and Emperors alike. Zoroastrianism and the Miaphysite beliefs are only so small and insular because of centuries of persecution and conversions to Islam, and were once the dominant forces within their own lands.

The fact Christianity was not sealed off is exactly what makes it more vulnerable to persecution, heresy or apostasy, sealed off religious community had the ability to enforce participation and enthusiasm by effectively holding off most of any given individual's social life and community hostage, the reason why Coptic communities survived at 5-10% level for centuries despite declining extremely fast prior is exactly this very reason.
I pointed out those cases exactly because they were the best examples of what a surviving Christianity would look like in the face of persecution or different hostile regimes, instead of assuming that this alternate Christianity could somehow remain and open missionary religion while still being invulnerable as if it was a closed off community like the ones I listed before.

And while pagan festivities did survive for centuries even with persecution, it really doesn't change the fact that they were already on the backfoot and continually shrinking in the face of Christianity. Maybe they might have survived longer, but not as the majority or even as a force to influence politics.

You seem to be talking about a 380 POD, like I said before me and many others ended up talking about a Constantinian POD instead.

If you want to have it make a bit more sense, you should probably wipe away a few more folks and change the main focus of how the Papacy spread Christianity.

There isn't any reason to believe Ireland was inherently more open to Christianity and would be so throughout Late Antiquity with any random missionary sent there, they could just end up acting just like the other dozen or so neighbours of the Franks or Byzantines that didn't convert to Christianity for centuries or generations even when they were under Christian control(like the Alemanns or Bavarians), IMHO the easiest way to delay or even butterfly away the Christianization of Europe with a mid-late 5th century would be to have the Franks stay pagan(many ways to go about it, after all they did convert pretty late) instead of trying to work around a Christian Frankish state holding Gaul, or maybe have another deep Germanic tribe migrate into Northern Gaul and dislodge the Franks there, the Lombards(especially beyond the upper nobilty) remained semi-arian and semi-pagan for 2-3 generations in Italy despite kings marrying Christian queen often.

 

[Kerney]

Literally every surviving Latin literary work survives because it was copied by later Christians, and virtually every prominent Patristic theologian received a classical education. It was the fall of the Roman Empire that killed off the classical tradition, not the rise of Christianity.

What I getting at is those Christian who were copying were much less likely to copy the works of anti-Christians, creating a bias in the surviving literature.

Basically, I suspect this is causing the Christian Determinists to overstate Christianity's actual popularity, quite unintentionally in this and similar arguments.


As for the Classical world, while it was on life support in the West, it could arguably have survived in a Pagan alt Byzantine Empire.

I know this is unrelated to the discussion at hand, but I just have to say, you do realize that there were multiple Christian bishops who went to Ireland, like Palladius, and that the Papacy sent multiple people to go and convert pagans in the British Isles like Augustine of Canterbury or Theodore of Tarsus. Patrick isn't the be all end all of Christianity in the region. Hell Palladius even arrived in Ireland before Patrick. If you want to have it make a bit more sense, you should probably wipe away a few more folks and change the main focus of how the Papacy spread Christianity.

First of all it is ASB, not from this but because its set in the 2050s and we have alt Norse/Iroquois related hybrid culture traveling across TLs mining our abandoned cities for building materials and searching Atlanta to secure the CDC and the Coke Building (so that they can manufacture it and sell it to their Neanderthal trade partners a few timelines over). Patrick is my working 'way back' PoD, (but none of my characters are too sure).

But back to the point, yes, Patrick was not the end-all. But he was the first great success outside the Roman Cultural Sphere and the Irish Monastic Tradition mattered quite a lot in future conversions. Pallidus was there, but he really didn't make much of a dent. The Britons weren't really trying to convert anyone. Augustine was more of Courtier and a Churchman for the Queen of Kent, and not much of a populizer. What I'm getting at, without the Irish contribution, less prestige to the faith, due to a weaker Frankish Kingdom, it is easy to imagine a more insular version of Christianity that is less successful.

This does get to the fundamental argument of this thread. Did Christianity gain dominance mostly from a bottom-up (popularization from the masses) or top-down (people converting to suck up to Constantine and his successors and it eventually sticking). The Irish IMHO is one of the few, perhaps only, genuinely bottom-up conversion. Even 'peaceful' conversions, say Iceland, came with a threat of economic boycott or force in one form or another.

I would say your personal read of that question is deeply tied to how we see faith and the world in general.

 

[An Thuong]

I've always thought that the crisis of the third century is the most suitable POD for preventing this. This is all speculation, obviously, but the timeline goes something like:

• Rome breaks up in three.
• Palmyrene converts to Christianity around the 330's
• Doesn't take long to persecute Polytheists, Neo-Platonists etc.
• They seek refuge in the West, creating tension: Christians vs. Polytheists/Philosophes.
• Remnant Rome has a civil war between Classicists and Christians leading to schism (South Balkans and Anatolia become Byzantine Empire (Christian), North Africa becomes African Empire (Christian); Remnant Rome (Italia and Iberia) remain Polytheistic/Philosophic.
• Extremely harsh punishments in the West see most Christians flee East if they can. Otherwise they revert, become cryptos or accept slavery. Similar movements to the West.
• Roughly fifty to a hundred years of Sub-Roman conflicts before the Hunnic, Germanic migrations etc. Germanic kings adopt the religions of the majority. Vandals and Ostrogoths become Christian; but Visigoths, Franks, Anglo-Saxons and Lombards remain Polytheistic.
• Probably see gradual fusion of Germanic and Greco-Roman Polytheism and perhaps, from that, a reformed Polytheistic faith; a sort of Hinduism for Western Europe.

Been working on a timeline of this forever; trying to take it as close to modern day as possible before telling a story through it, but I become stuck in the possibilities around the 16th century.

 

[SlyDessertFox]

At first it was a Religion of social rejects, but then even people in the upper parts of the social ladder picked it up. It would matter, because it's a) a monotheistic religion and thus not possible to integrate into the Roman cult and b) it's not a secret cult.

This has a lot to do with the fact that it became advantageous after the Edict of Milan for elites to convert to Christianity. From what I can recall, there's little evidence that any serious number of elites had converted to Christianity prior to the Edict. But after the edict, with Constantine and subequent Roman emperors favoring Christians, being a Christian became a good way to gain favor and rise into and up the ranks of the bureaucracy and imperial administration.

As for the Classical world, while it was on life support in the West, it could arguably have survived in a Pagan alt Byzantine Empire.

As far as I can tell, I don't think this was the case, particularly since the Byzantine world is responsible for a lot of the preservation of ancient texts we have now anyway.

 

[WotanArgead]

This has a lot to do with the fact that it became advantageous after the Edict of Milan for elites to convert to Christianity. From what I can recall, there's little evidence that any serious number of elites had converted to Christianity prior to the Edict. But after the edict, with Constantine and subequent Roman emperors favoring Christians, being a Christian became a good way to gain favor and rise into and up the ranks of the bureaucracy and imperial administration.

Soviet researchers associate the change in the religious paradigm with the decline of the old aristocracy and the rise of the new nobility under Constantine. In the honesty of the growing influence of the Illyrian military leaders. In particular, this was reflected in the fact that in the West, the main proponents of the old kluts were the Roman Senators (who used the pontificate to obtain benefits and privileges), and in the east - the Curial Nobility associated with local temples.

 

[kholieken]

There is no evidence of this, even scholars that use baseless mathematical models leave the figure at around 5-10% and who knows how many of those people are simply converted Jews(whose conversion was hardly such a big change).

5-10% would mean complete and total dominance of cities. Christianity is very successful religion "from below" that later converted up.

I think putting importance of Roman elites as reason of Christianity is mistake.

and even pre-Christianity, number of Jews and adjacent God-fearer already very large. when Christianity absorbs these people, stopping its success is very difficult.

 

[Maeglin]

What I getting at is those Christian who were copying were much less likely to copy the works of anti-Christians, creating a bias in the surviving literature.

Sure, little anti-Christian stuff survives. That is hardly the same as the wholesale destruction of Classical culture, or that only Christian-adjacent stuff survives. Christian monks copied Petronius' Satyricon, for goodness sake, which is not exactly the most morally wholesome of texts.

 

[Mikestone8]

people may begin to jump ship to rival religions like Manicheanism or to established pagan cults that provide more opportunities for social advancement.

I agree about Manichaenism. Like Christianity if was tenacious, so that almost a millennium later the Pope still had to proclaim a crusade against it. Had Constantine adopted it, it could have at least stood a chance, despite Christianity's two and a half century head start.

But I don't see how that applies to the Pagan sects. When did any Pope need to call a crusade against Sol Invictus or any of the others? Manichaenism was still putting up a fight, but they were long gone.

Incidentally I've seen some references to those sects surviving after Constantine's conversion,- but how *long* after? Were they still alive after the fall of the WRE, or did they die with it? By contrast, Christianity and Manichaenism seem to have done just fine without it.

 

[mial42]

Simplest way would be Constantine doesn't become emperor (and so there's no line of Christian emperors) and the western empire (if it exists as a separate entity) collapses at approximately the same time as OTL (the proximate causes of the OTL collapse will be butterflied, but the long-term causes of economic decline, population loss, the increased military strength of Rome's periphery, and political turmoil are still going to be there, so the western empire going down at about the same time is quite probable). Not sure what the actual effects of this would be. Obviously the structure of Christianity will be completely unrecognizable, and there's a good chance that without the Church far more of classical culture will be lost. Christianity as whole would definitely be weaker, but I still think it would predominate, for a few reasons:
1) Christianity was perfectly capable of spreading outside the structure of the Roman empire OTL, as in Ethiopia and Ireland.
2) By modern estimates, Christianity was already undergoing exponential growth pre-Constantine.
3) Christianity had an excellent combination of traits to spread rapidly. It was (a) universal, (b) proselytizing, (c) exclusive, (d) had significant ideological appeal, especially to women, the urban middle and lower class, and slaves, (e) was able to provide material benefits in the form of communal assistance and charity to its adherents, and (f) not competing against other religions with that same combination of characteristics.

 

[Gloss]

5-10% would mean complete and total dominance of cities. Christianity is very successful religion "from below" that later converted up.

Roman urbanization rates were a bit higher than 10% and certainly higher than 5% and by that point not all Christians were in urban areas, at least in the East. Even in Egypt using a 20-30% Christian figure, only if we assume all Christians were in cities would cities have a majority Christian population. Peter Heather also gives a figure of 25-40% Christian in the city of Antioch during the 370s, if that's true one can hardly assume "total dominance" in all cities before 313
Also never mind the fact cities were generally demographic sinks compared to the countryside.

I think putting importance of Roman elites as reason of Christianity is mistake.

Not Roman elites, just the figure of the Roman emperor and no we cannot overstate the importance of elite religion, here Peter Heather explains its importance in the economic and social realm:

Spoiler: Video

and even pre-Christianity, number of Jews and adjacent God-fearer already very large. when Christianity absorbs these people, stopping its success is very difficult.

No it was not, scholars that argue about large numbers of Jewish converts are just as bad as people making up demographic figures like the 5-10% figure, when you actually read what those few scholars say and then their critics you see that they literally just make tons of empty assumptions and backward arguments, in reality there is NO evidence of large scale or intentional Jewish proselytization in the Hellenistic or early Roman period, none.

There is no point assuming the existence of large Jewish, god-fearing, Christian communities until anyone actually provides evidence for it.

 

[Gloss]

1) Christianity was perfectly capable of spreading outside the structure of the Roman empire OTL, as in Ethiopia and Ireland.

In both cases it relied on the new political strength of Christianity in the Roman empire, less so for Ethiopia than Ireland but it was still present and in Ethiopia Christianity remained a shallow faith for a couple centuries.

2) By modern estimates, Christianity was already undergoing exponential growth pre-Constantine.

Not modern estimates, modern assumptions. Rodney Stark literally based his entire argument by assuming Christian growth was exactly like the growth of the Jehova's Witness and Mormon community, a totally solid argument...

3) Christianity had an excellent combination of traits to spread rapidly. It was (a) universal, (b) proselytizing, (c) exclusive, (d) had significant ideological appeal, especially to women, the urban middle and lower class, and slaves, (e) was able to provide material benefits in the form of communal assistance and charity to its adherents, and (f) not competing against other religions with that same combination of characteristics.

This remains, despite dozens of users here repeating it ad nauseum for years, just an ad hoc rationalization of a yet unproven assumption about the demographic situation.

 

[Gustavus Adolphus]

People give too much credit to the power of christainity during constantines time christains still formed a minority and were more common in certain urban centers. Heck most senators in Rome as well as vast majority of rural populations were pagan. All we really need is for the battle of Milvian Bridge to go the other way and succeeding emperors strenghten the emperor worship Imperial cult around the personality of Sol Invictus. I think Sol Invictus cult had a lot of potential to serve as a counter to christianity maybe have it gain popularity and be more appealing to the masses

 

[stephen the barbarian]

People give too much credit to the power of Christianity during Constantine's time Christians still formed a minority and were more common in certain urban centers.

eh, not really.
yes they were a minority but by 311 ad they likely would have been a sizable minority. given their evangelical nature and charitable acts (unthinkable to roman pagans) it's likely that they also were a highly visible group . Rodney Stark has written about it in 'The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries'. (btw, i'm on the last chapter atm .)
assuming a grown rate around the lds churches 19th century growth rate and a very small starting population he got this chart. note that in the book he assumed a stable roman population rather than the otl shrinking population.

Christian Growth Projected at 40 Percent per Decade (Based on an estimated population of 60 million)

40AD.....1,000 Christians.....0.0017% of population
50 ......1,400.....................0.0023%
100 .....7,530....................0.0126%
150 .....40,496...................0.07%
200 .....217,796..................0.36%
250 .....1,171,356................1.9%
300 .....6,299,832...............10.5%
350 .....33,882,008..............56.5%

a source
just by simple math he shows that it's possible for Christianity to become a significant religion by the Edict of Milan and the majority by the Edict of Thessalonica.

edit: i should mention that in the us Jews make 2.4% of the us population as of 2020, are you going to say that they've had no impact on the American experience?