It "thrived" under the Roman Empire.

It "thrived" under Spanish colonization.

It "thrived" under Portuguese colonization.

It "thrived" under British colonization.

The techniques included bait-and-switch.

I am sorry, but you need to study history or just don't make comments at all I expect better from you. This is the type of comment I would expect Rize or other people that do not care about the truth to make.

Of course I do.

Does the story say the husband and wife both "fell down and died"?

Who else was in the room?



An extortion plot gone bad, imo

wrong, from 30 AD to 330 AD it grew at a rate or 2.5% percent annually ... since 330 AD to 2000 AD its grown at a rate of .3% per year. i wouldn't call that "great rates" by any means.

Ok, I stand to be corrected here by people who have studied this in more detail. But my general understanding is that while Christians certainly would not always have had it easy during that time period, they were not especially persecuted, at least no more or less than any other non-roman faith would be.

There were some time periods where Christianity was persecuted quite brutally (made illegal, etc.) but that was a relatively short time. There were some well publicized martyrs, but those were people who didn't play ball with the empire (The Empire genarally allowed people to keep their faiths, but you had to give appropriate nods to the empire to avoid losing your head.)

I also understand that the persecutions of Christians before it became the official religion of the Roman Empire, paled in comparison to the persecution by Christians after the fact.

Now, I'm not saying these in a cocky manner and I certainly stand to be corrected (my info comes from listenifng to - admitedly biased - podcasts. Do you have any non-biased sources that show different?

The question is not whether Christians were persecuted (from time to time they were) the question was to what extent, and was it disproportional to the persecution of other groups? These were not easy times for many people!

the romans were smart cookies, they wanted to expand and conquer and make lots of money and if one religion kept a certain region happy and not revolting they were usually extremely tolerant of it.

until the empire adopted christianity as its state religion with the advent of the "holy roman empire" very few emperors actually fed christians to the lions etc.

now I google for 30 seconds but here is a number that sounds nothing like yours,

http://authenticmeansreal.blogspot.c...ch-growth.html

I would say that it pretty significant growth.

Sure, if you are to trust a random pastor who has in own blog on the interwebs.

Well, the contending source so far is a random webpage that looks like it was made at the birth of the interwebs.

How many people did Christians kill between 33AD and 400AD? Christianity became the official religion of Rome during the 380's. I think that landmark qualifies it for major world religion status and it got there without a whole lot of killing as you errantly suggest.

I was surprised by it too. It really had nothing to do with what we were discussing except to derail the conversation that he/others were losing.

Pretty sure you know that I was talking about post 400...


Edit: actually, probably post 380s, I think they pretty much started killing people right away...

I based my numbers on a pentecostal # at 3000. Given that, in 100 years, reaching 1 million requires a growth of ~6% annually.

Whether you want to consider that significant growth is up to you. I've heard different numbers, but regardless, the growth from 30 to 330 averages out to 2.5% annually, hardly anything worth writing home about.

Nah. You lost or made an impassable stalemate situation as soon as you broke out the God has a plan man deal.

Huh?

I didn't see anyone else link to anything.

That's because they didn't link, but a quick google search will produce a page that says almost verbatim what DX said.

All i am saying is these two things:

1. Christianity did not "explode" in growth like some Christians want to think.
2. Asserting that it had "extraordinary growth" despite persecution is both overstating the amount (in both period, and numbers) of persecution, and the growth, and discounts the fact that many other religions faced/face persecution in many forms, and that almost every religion has adherents who are more than willing to die for their beliefs.

Feel free to take a look at other religions like Islam (1.8 billion in 1400 years) and Mormonism (13 million in 180 years), both which have growth rates that far surpass those of Christianity. Even Scientology has incredible growth compared to Early Christianity.

btw, that page was written by a Christian, and i double checked his math, it is accurate.

I think that first thing we would need to do is get a accurate number of Christians for the first few centuries from a reliable source.

Then we need to put it into context. You use Islam and Mormonism as examples. I don't think that this is even close to a fair comparison as the number of people in the world at those times are not being taken under consideration. What one would need to do is look at the percentage of people, not just the number as that will be deceiving.

Going from 1,000 adherents to 10,000 adherents in a population of 15,000 in a span of 1 year is significantly more impressive then going from 1,000 adherents to 30,000 adherents in a population of 1,000,000 in the span of 1 year

Jib, even if we accept your argument (and I don't really care either way) I'm not sure where to go from there. This is kind of like being proud of your local sports team that wins the playoffs, right? I don't think you're trying to say that the spread of Christianity - no matter what the pace - is evidence of its veracity? Right?

Christianity had an attractive message and a good marketing campaign. So did other religions. Christianity got popular enough to worry the Romans, who coopted it, then we're off to the races. I don't know how you can make the argument that converts = truth, if indeed that's what you're trying to do.

If this is just an incidental discussion for interests' sake, then please ignore the above. If you have an upshot, I'd like to hear it.

not necessarily. World population is not really relevant for the religions I listed. That should be pretty obvious. As for taking a "percentage" of the people, thats also not really relevant since a 2.5% annual growth is not impressive even if the worlds population was only 1000 people. Note if the rate that Christianity grew was somehow limited by the number of people, then you might have a point. Unfortunately, in today's world, Christianity is growing much slower than most other religions; "The World Christian Database as of 2007 estimated the growth rate of Christianity at 1.32%. High birth rates and conversions were cited as the main reason." For reference, world population grows at ~1.41% a year.

regardless, the world population at 0 AD was about 200 million, and at 500 AD it was at 300 million. (these are, of course, all best estimates that historians can provide). I would say that puts Christianity and Islam on relatively the same footing considering Christianity had a 600 year head start.

Finally, if you think extreme growth in times of persecution is a sign of truthfulness, see Falun Gong. If anything persecution (especially when your holy book says its "good" and necessary) will make *any* religion more likely to grow.