WI Christianity in the West like Buddhism in China?

Going through phases of being in control, underground, and dozens of different sects, as well as existing along side at least two other faiths and being influenced/influencing the other two?
 
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A good POD would be that Constantine is defeated at the Milivian Bridge. Without him the process which lead to a unified Church will not start. The other two religion could then be Zoroastrianism in the east and various pagan religions in the north.
The results would of course be far reaching.
Probably a more througly fall of Rome: Without the Church preserving Latin and being centred around rome there is less reason to hold onto the legacy of the roman.
Also more and bloodier wars based on religion as after the Fall of rome the different states won't be united by a common religion.
The jews won't be presecuted as IOTL, as they will just be annother christian sect.
Mission of the pagans the other sects will be much different from IOTL, where it was a more or less centralised effort by the catholic church, ITTL it will more resemble to the voyages of Cryll and Patrick.
 
If Rome declined in power without Christianity as its state religion, the culture may very well have survived in some form anyway. You see, many of the germanic and northern and eastern European warlords that had gone to war with Rome had either served in the Auxilia or had spent their youth in Roman custody as peace hostages, learning of Roman cultural life and military practices firsthand. That would have given them more of a reason to wish to conquer Roman territory, not to destroy, but to take over and preserve for their own benefit. Also, if Rome had somehow developed a more stable and durable form of government that wasn't so prone to dynastic struggles or military coups, then there wouldn't have been any need for the Church any, since they didn't need it before.
 
Julian the Apostate might be a good POD. He tried to force Christianity out of the government much like the mandarins in China did Buddhism (although Hendryk probably knows more), although he didn't reign long enough to succeed.

If Julian lives longer and is able to establish a viable organized-pagan counterpart to Christianity (and kill off most of the persecution crowd among the Christians, should they make trouble), the religious situation in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages might be a bit more fluid.
 
Buddhism is just one of many religions in China. Throughout most of Chinese history it wasntt the dominant one. What would be the alternative religions to Christianity in the West? I suppose paganism would have to be a LOT stronger.
 
Julian the Apostate might be a good POD. He tried to force Christianity out of the government much like the mandarins in China did Buddhism (although Hendryk probably knows more), although he didn't reign long enough to succeed.

If Julian lives longer and is able to establish a viable organized-pagan counterpart to Christianity (and kill off most of the persecution crowd among the Christians, should they make trouble), the religious situation in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages might be a bit more fluid.

IMHO a POD with Julian the Apostate would be too late - a POD that prevents the reign of Constantine would work much better, as Christianity was less unified and the non-Christian religious movements were still stronger and more diverse.

Buddhism is just one of many religions in China. Throughout most of Chinese history it wasntt the dominant one. What would be the alternative religions to Christianity in the West? I suppose paganism would have to be a LOT stronger.

The very concept of "paganism" would propably not even exist in such a scenario.

"Paganism" was, after all, originally little more than a blanket therm for the mostly rural remnants of the old polytheistic religions.

In this scenario, the many different polytheistic religious traditions, cults, and philosophical traditions would most propably develop their own identity at some point, allthough they propably wouldn't quite identify themselves as separate religions, like Judaism, Christianity, and Manicheism (which is also bound to be a major religion in this scenario).
 
IMHO a POD with Julian the Apostate would be too late - a POD that prevents the reign of Constantine would work much better, as Christianity was less unified and the non-Christian religious movements were still stronger and more diverse.
The problem is that Constantine is probably too early. Without the influence of Constantine, Christianity is unlikely to assert much pull over the socio-political landscape of the west to begin with. It'll probably survive, in some form, but it's far more likely to follow a trajectory similar to OTL's Judaism than OTL's Buddhism.

I think you can have a realistic chance of dislodging Christianity from its dominant position in Rome (and, later, Europe) up until the Battle of the Frigidus in 394. Until that point, there was enough heterodoxy within Christianity itself, and a large enough percentage of Roman aristocracy clung to paganism, that the pendulum could have swung back the other way. After Theodosius takes a hard line against pagans, though, it's all over bar the shouting.

That said, Julian is going to be problematic. He'd need to have a long enough reign to reverse the trends in place since Constantine's time, and his military adventurism makes it a bit tricky to keep him going that long. After he goes, in addition, he'd need someone to continue his policies. It's possible: Julian's not "too late," chronologically speaking, but he's going to have to make some radically different choices than he did in OTL.

I think a more plausible POD is to prevent Licinius from renegging on the Edict of Milan. Without the renewed persecutions, Constantine is more likely to continue hedging his bets, at least publically (with Sol Invictus showing up on some coins, Christ on others), and there's a decreased likelihood of the two emperors coming to blows. Getting rid of Constantine entirely prevents Christianity from reaching critical mass (so to speak...) to begin with; getting rid of him too late makes it that much harder to reverse the trend.

The other possibility is that Constantine's heirs lose the purple to a more pagan-friendly dynasty. This is certainly possible, and there's probably a number of potential emperors available, but the sources are spotty enough that its hard to speak in specific terms.
 
If your going to have it as "Like Buddhism in China" then Christianity needs to be mostly wiped out in the land of its birth (Palestine), this is done with the OTL rise of Islam, so check that particular part of the scenario. Now you need to make it influential, but not dominant. In China I think the fact that the Emperors were regarded as God-Kings had a good deal to do with the ability of the state to get Buddhism out of government. Basically, you could argue that China already had a "civic religion" in its Imperial system, so it was able to force other religions (like Buddhism) out.

So a more organized system around the deification of Roman Emperors, which in turn leads to much more stable succession, could be the answer. I think the problem that you have is that the Roman Empire was never able to develop that kind of long-term dynastic stability that so defines China. You could argue that this was in large part due the heterogenous nature of the Roman Empire, which was very unlike China. Basically, without a single central geographic unit upon which to base the Empire, there is the constant threat of the Empire splintering. For much of the Empire's history this central unit was Italy, but as Italy declined other areas of the Empire rose in importance, and you ended up with the division of the Empire.

Using this central geographic unit thing you can trace the breakdown in stability. In the early years of the Empire there was political instability but it was mostly limited to internal family politics in Rome. Later political instability was characterized by Empire-wide civil wars between various military factions, and still later instability by massive barbarian migrations into the heartlands of the Western Roman Empire. The barbarian migrations can probably be chalked up to massive population decline, as the barbarians were able to move into land that was being held by an Empire which no longer had the demographic ability to resist.
 
In response to an earlier post Quest for the Past says that Mithraism would likely have taken western Europe if christianity did not.
 
In response to an earlier post Quest for the Past says that Mithraism would likely have taken western Europe if christianity did not.
Which is very unlikely since it was a male-only intentionally secret religion. Much like you don't see Freemasons (visibly) running the world.
 
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