Figure out what the religious instinct is, and that will be your answer. Don't overcomplicate your theory unnecessarily. Religions and cults pop up everywhere. Was the Heavens Gate cult trying to take down the US? The religious impulse is nearly universal, and not surprisingly, there are people this impulse gathers around and plants its hooks in. Charismatics. It has its secular variants, too. Some take off, for complicated reasons. Certainly, Rome had a big part in the reason Christianity became what it is today. Major.
Christianity wasn't the downfall of Rome. It was a symptom of the problem. The whole reason for converting - Constantine's was a nominal conversion - was political. Christianity had started to become popular in some of the peripheral military outputs in the near east. Military installations are critical in this regard, culturally speaking, because, like prisons, they are vulnerable to ideological contagion, what with being near to the threat of death. The fact that Christianity could make the headway it did is a sign that the problems were already there, like over-expansion, poor administration, lack of unity, lack of identity. Just my two cents. These personal savior cults are very cosmopolitan, the sort of thing that would become popular where cohesion was low, incl. where there was "diversity". We really don't need to overthink this. Consider Mithraism. This was a mystery cult for the rich. People knew this was a rich guy's thing. Christianity comes along as a poor man's mystery cult. It is to hip mystery cults what the Corvette is to sports cars.
Not to mention, the Christianity we receive today is a heavily Romanized system - it isn't as simple as "Christianity took Rome". More like: Rome took Christianity. It isn't the "Christianity" that began with the Jesus movement, which is lost to the fog of time. There is a reason Catholicism was stronger against the Jew for centuries: in spirit it was still the Roman Cult. Catholicism was doomed from its inception, it was just a slow burn. It became critically weak by the time of the Renaissance. Catholicism and Protestantism are fucked after the schism. Catholicism becomes infiltrated by other more esoteric religious fraternal orders, which have political tendrils everywhere. So on and so forth.
CHIRO 0 points 1 month ago
Figure out what the religious instinct is, and that will be your answer. Don't overcomplicate your theory unnecessarily. Religions and cults pop up everywhere. Was the Heavens Gate cult trying to take down the US? The religious impulse is nearly universal, and not surprisingly, there are people this impulse gathers around and plants its hooks in. Charismatics. It has its secular variants, too. Some take off, for complicated reasons. Certainly, Rome had a big part in the reason Christianity became what it is today. Major.
Christianity wasn't the downfall of Rome. It was a symptom of the problem. The whole reason for converting - Constantine's was a nominal conversion - was political. Christianity had started to become popular in some of the peripheral military outputs in the near east. Military installations are critical in this regard, culturally speaking, because, like prisons, they are vulnerable to ideological contagion, what with being near to the threat of death. The fact that Christianity could make the headway it did is a sign that the problems were already there, like over-expansion, poor administration, lack of unity, lack of identity. Just my two cents. These personal savior cults are very cosmopolitan, the sort of thing that would become popular where cohesion was low, incl. where there was "diversity". We really don't need to overthink this. Consider Mithraism. This was a mystery cult for the rich. People knew this was a rich guy's thing. Christianity comes along as a poor man's mystery cult. It is to hip mystery cults what the Corvette is to sports cars.
Not to mention, the Christianity we receive today is a heavily Romanized system - it isn't as simple as "Christianity took Rome". More like: Rome took Christianity. It isn't the "Christianity" that began with the Jesus movement, which is lost to the fog of time. There is a reason Catholicism was stronger against the Jew for centuries: in spirit it was still the Roman Cult. Catholicism was doomed from its inception, it was just a slow burn. It became critically weak by the time of the Renaissance. Catholicism and Protestantism are fucked after the schism. Catholicism becomes infiltrated by other more esoteric religious fraternal orders, which have political tendrils everywhere. So on and so forth.