Christianity

Since my last post was about Constantine and his conversion to Christianity, I wanted to continue with the subject of how Christianity was viewed before and after he switched his religion. I find this to be an important subject because it really shows the impact that people of power had on everyone else. I think people today should look at examples like this and realize that we are all persuaded by others, and we really just need to think for ourselves.

To start off, Christianity was not very accepted when it first came about. In some places, if they found out you were a Christian, you would be killed. “Early Christians, facing scorn at best and persecution at worst, depending on Emperor and the era, were forced to blend in with their Pagan counterparts.” For Christians to even celebrate their holidays, they would have to cover it up from a different celebration that was going on.

Christianity was also not only influened by Constantine; there were many other factors. As talked about in lecture, religions in general were being spread through trade routes (silk road), because they were universal, had morals, and many other reasons. The spread of Chrisitianity through political dynamics goes hand in hand with they way Constantine the Great dealt with Christianity. It started to become more popular after he became the sole ruler of the Roman Empire. Though he did not punish those who were not Christian, he started giving benefits to those who were.

In conclusion, there were many apsects to the spread of religion (Christianity in particular). Though each person had their own reason for converting to Christianity, it is one of the most popular religions today. People would not have all the morals and faith we have today without all of these events occuring.

http://www.unrv.com/culture/spread-christianity.php

Roman influence on Christianity

As we discussed this week Christianity went from a minority religion to a major religion in Rome. The person that helped with this huge shift from repressing Christian to accepting them was Constantine. His adoption of the religion started the acceptance of the religion and it continue to gain popularity when he started to give Christians benefits such as tax breaks. Until Constantine Christianity was seen as a cult. It also gained popularity because people could chose to be Christians, they were not forced to. Christianity started to become a powerful part of society in Rome. This religion however was so foreign to the Romans because they were used to having many gods for many different thing and Christianity believes in one god who is all powerful. The buildings that were built to be churches ended holding government meeting during time when church was not being held. Also Christianity started to form itself around the Roman government model. The early churches modeled their leadership positions after the Roman government. There is many other ways that Christianity became "Romanized" it is even said that Christian holidays such as Easter and Christmas were changed so that they correlated with popular Roman festivals of the day. Many of these details (i.e. when to celebrate Christmas and Easter.) were debated out at the Council of Nicaea in which Constantine sat as the debate settler. He would let two parties argue their points and then would decide which one he felt was right.




http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/sbrandt/nicea.htm