DBWI: Why was Christianity adopted in China, but not Rome?

[Morraw]

During the first few centuries after the death of Christ, the faith he brought spread both East and West along the Silk Road to the extreme ends of Eurasia. There, despite decades of hardship and repression by both local hegemons (China in the East; Rome in the West), the new religion begun to grow, drawing in converts largely from the lower and less-fortunate classes. Despite the Kalabhra Dynasty being the first state to formally adopt Christianity in 411 AD, the first true power to adopt it would be China a little under a century later; meanwhile in the West it began to flounder after 500 years of campaigns that suppressed Christian worshippers.

My question is this; just why was Christianity adopted in China, but not Rome (or any of it's successor states), despite the latter being the birthplace of the religion?

Was it the fact that Christianity was seen as being 'in opposition' to Rome given that it was the Romans that crucified Jesus?

Was it the fact that China already had philosophical and religious teachings that more easily allowed for Christianity to be adopted by Chinese people (and ultimately, the Jin Dynasty)?

Also; could there have been any time in Roman (or European history in general) in which Christianity could have been adopted?

 

[Zhou Yu]

First off, what happened to Jesus' disciples? Last I checked, they (and their disciples) were running about the Roman world. They might've made it to India. How the hell did they get to China, and what made it so that the government accepted the religion? (This is referring to the plausibility of this DBWI scenario)

 

[Morraw]

First off, what happened to Jesus' disciples? Last I checked, they (and their disciples) were running about the Roman world. They might've made it to India. How the hell did they get to China, and what made it so that the government accepted the religion? (This is referring to the plausibility of this DBWI scenario)

OOC: I kept the OP deliberately vague so other posters could come up with their own reasons as to why it occurred (which is, after all, the point of a DBWI). Also, I established in the OP that Christianity was active in Rome as well as throughout the East (including India as well as China); why it floundered one place here and not the other is up for responders to decide.

 

[Behemoth]

To be fair, the Roman authorities did crack down on what they perceived to be the start of a rebellion quite hard. To answer Zhou Yu, there were a few disciples that were roaming about the Roman world but it seemed that the locals were quite attached to the Roman religion that was prominent at the time and weren't open to hearing from them due to fear of being caught, like the "Christians" in Jerusalem were after Jesus' death. The subsequent purges were quite brutal. I can't seem to remember the name of the fellow that supposedly travelled to China and if he was one of the original disciples. One of the Simons possibly?

 

[Tripledot]

I mean, in a sense the Romans did adopt Christianity. The most common religious devotion in Europe is towards Christ, it's just that several other "sons of God" were recognized by the Romans, like Hercules or Caesar Augustus. I don't think that the strictly monotheistic conception of God could ever take root in Rome, especially given how adept they were at adopting the gods of foreign lands. It's a wonder that they reached a consensus on the concept of a singular Creator at all, though I credit that to Plato as much as the Judeo-Christian tradition. But to tie Jesus to the Godhead in such a direct fashion to me seems to inflexible for the Romans to have taken seriously- they simply did not find any contradiction in worshiping Christ on one day and Mithras on another.

It's not like there wasn't a degree of syncretism in China, either. Many saints are simply repurposed Buddhist deities, and Chinese Christianity was heavily influenced by Taoist thought. In some ways, I'd say Chinese Christianity is as divergent from Jesus' original teachings as the "Roman rite" is.