Everything needs to start at some time, and for Christianity, that was during Roman rule.
Being an early believer wasn't just a matter of answering questions, it also involved convincing
people that their long-held belief system was wrong.
Early Christians faced a lot of opposition within the Roman Empire, but they also took
advantage of some of its amenities, especially its intricate network of roads.
These marvels of the ancient world made the incredible voyages of early Christians such
as Paul possible.
He traveled 10,000 miles within the empire.
His trips included visits to some of the most sophisticated metropolitan centers there.
His message proved so compelling to the masses because, despite the grandeur of these urban
areas, they also contained barely concealed social problems.
They were marvels of the ancient world, but they were also filled with poor, struggling
people who needed some hope.
That said, the spread of Christianity wasn't entirely a conscious effort.
Warfare and the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 led to the diaspora of Jewish and Christian
communities alike.
These forced journeys led to the establishment of Judeo -Christian communities around the
known world.
These groups transported their forms of worship, scriptural studies and insights, and charitable
activities as pilgrims.
The sporadic persecutions faced by these communities made Christian groups very close-knit as they
relied on one another for preservation.
Christian parishes, the basic building blocks of each community of believers, were also
referred to as "households of faith," reflecting their intimate structuring as spiritual tribes.
Being an early Christian in the Roman Empire meant embracing a changing identity.
Nowhere in the four Gospels does Jesus refer to his followers as "Christians" or by any
other label.
The first believers in Jesus called one another "saints" or members of "The Way."
Both of these terms had deep religious significance.
The term "saints" comes from the Greek word hagios, meaning
"consecrated to God, holy, sacred, pious"
In other words, Jesus' followers identified most closely with how they lived out their
faith.
Since the word almost always appears in the plural form, they also emphasized a collective
faith rather than one of isolated individuals.
As for "The Way," it has origins in the Hebrew concept of halakhah, referring to
"the way a Jew is directed to behave, encompassing civil, criminal, and religious law"
While both terms emphasized relationship with God, neither one implied a break with the
overarching principles of contemporary Judaism.
Where did the word "Christian" come from?
It first appears in Acts 11:26 when the leaders at Antioch give the name to believers in Christ.
Jesus taught primarily to a Jewish audience, but as his teachings incorporated an increasingly
numerous gentile population into its ranks, this came with new problems.
Specific rules existed within Judaism that local Jewish communities and nearby populations
understood and followed.
But gentiles had little comprehension of these expectations.
Although some, known as "God-fearers," attended synagogue and cultivated a respect for Jesus,
other non-Jewish converts came out of a firmly pagan background.
Dietary restrictions are the perfect example of where conflict comes in, as the concept
of unclean foods proved complicated and burdensome to those unfamiliar with it.
Disciples such as Peter and Paul struggled with how to bring gentiles into the fold.
Ultimately, as more non-Jewish members joined the movement, these rules were relaxed.
This created a bit of a divide, and thus Christianity was born.
"How many are you?"
"Well… we are… few… for now, and our only weapon is love."
For Christians living in the Roman Empire, persecution came in waves.
Of the 54 emperors who ruled between A.D. 30 and A.D. 311, roughly 12 made Christians
public enemies.
But many small-time local rulers also sporadically persecuted the growing body of believers,
with the blessing of the empire, of course.
One of the most vicious periods of violence against Jesus' followers occurred under Emperor
Nero, who famously went after Christians in A.D. 64.
Why?
Nero attempted to divert attention away from his own mistakes during the Great Fire of
Rome by making Christians a scapegoat.
He had them crucified, burned alive, and –even fed to wild animals.
"I particularly like these huge candles."
"Oh, yea, I had them made specially."
"They're shaped like Christians."
"They are Christians."
Regional persecutions fluctuated based on individual emperors' beliefs.
But empire-wide harassment of Jesus' followers came in the 3rd century when Emperor Decius
took the throne.
Successors continued to ratchet up the pain felt by Christians until Emperor Constantine's
conversion brought persecution to an end in A.D. 312.
Before there were formal churches and state religions, a small body of believers existed.
Given that, it's not entirely surprising that the first Christians had no distinct physical
locations to gather for worship.
Instead, groups met in each other's homes for fellowship and teachings.
The Apostle Paul mentions some of these meeting spots by name, including the house of married
converts, Priscilla and Aquilla, in Romans 16:3-5.
Little is ultimately known about how the teachings of Jesus got a firm foothold in Rome, but
Paul's Epistle to the Romans confirmed that house-hopping remained the favored way for
the first Christians to come together.
Fifty thousand Jews lived in the city of Rome during Paul's lifetime, and many proved receptive
to the Gospel message.
These Jewish believers attended synagogue and met at Christian households for teaching,
communion, and fellowship.
There the first believers kept Torah, and Yale scholar and pastor Jaroslav Pelikan explains:
"It is obvious — and yet, to judge by the tragedies of later history, not at all obvious
— that Jesus was a Jew, so that the first attempts to understand his message took place
within the context of Judaism."
Organized into parishes, groups of Christians could better meet the needs of local communities.
But it's worth noting that "parish" is just one letter away from "pariah," which speaks
volumes about how Christians got seen and treated in the early days.
As outcasts and refugees, they forged close-knit communities where communal care took precedence
over individual needs.
Day-to-day activities included serving the poor, visiting and providing aid to imprisoned
church members, other forms of economic sharing, religious studies, and worship.
They were, after all, redefining religion, lifestyle, and what it meant to be a community.
As Christians of every background spread the gospel message and attempted to follow the
teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, it sent shock waves through the ancient world, bringing
Jews and gentiles together as never before seen.
Being an early follower also came with increased criticism for the first Greek and Roman adherents
of Jesus' teachings.
After all, the strong stigma associated with being a gentile could make Greco-Roman converts
feel like second-class citizens.
This situation got exacerbated when one of Jesus' Apostles, Peter, quit mingling with
his non-Jewish brethren due to pressure from other religious leaders.
In Galatians 2:11-17, Paul admonishes Peter for this hypocritical stance.
The passage demonstrates how unresolved issues simmered beneath the surface of the early
church.
Paul notes that Peter, who once took meals with gentiles, started avoiding them when
Jewish leaders from Jerusalem arrived.
Soon, other Jewish followers of Jesus did the same, causing an ever-expanding rift.
Hence, Paul's public confrontation of Peter.
While one can only guess how gentile believers in Antioch felt about the situation, the implication
that they were less Christian than Jewish believers hung in the air.
So did the notion these Christ-followers were somehow unclean or unworthy.
The Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15 was meant to put questions about Jewish versus gentile
believers to rest.
During the council, church leaders concluded that as long as non-Jewish Christians avoided
a few basic sins, keeping all of Jewish law would not be required of them.
For the first followers of Jesus, martyrdom could come unexpectedly — even for the 12
Apostles.
During Nero's reign, Roman authorities beheaded Paul in Rome, and they crucified Peter.
According to some accounts, Peter asked to be crucified upside down as he didn't feel
worthy to share in Jesus' manner of death.
Tradition also tells us that both deaths occurred in A.D. 66.
Whether by the sword, stoning, or clubbing, the other Apostles fared little better.
While their deaths remain unrecorded in the New Testament, apart from James' death in
Jerusalem at the hands of King Herod, early church history speaks of violent ends in all
cases but one.
John, the author of the Gospel of John, lived to a ripe old age exiled on the island of
Patmos, where he penned the New Testament's Book of Revelation.
But you didn't have to be an Apostle to face a grim fate as an early Christian.
The first Christian martyr, Stephen, was stoned to death in Jerusalem.
Ironically, the pre-Christian Paul (then known as Saul of Tarsus) oversaw his execution.
In A.D. 62, James the Just, Jesus' brother, died after getting thrown from a roof and
stoned, and even women endured persecution.
Thecla, a convert of Paul, survived two attempted martyrings.
"Brilliant, isn't it?
You get to light up your garden, and torture Christians at the same time.
So, you know, two birds, one stone."
Because of Jesus' short ministry and violent death, early church leaders had to deal with
many unanswered questions.
These involved not only queries about how Jewish a Christian must be, but also the very
nature of who Christ was.
Arguments could get abstract and confusing, as exemplified by the debate over "low Christology"
and "high Christology."
"Low Christology" refers to the idea that Jesus proved as human as any other person
walking the planet, apart from his liberation from sin nature.
As for "high Christology," it argues that Jesus, as a part of the Holy Trinity, brought
his divinity to Earth and was all-knowing.
Another area for debate involved the nature of the Holy Trinity.
While some argued that the Trinity represented three separate deities rather than one Supreme
God in three forms, others preached that, essentially, God and Jesus were of the same
substance.
Tensions inevitably flared between Jews and Christians.
After all, Jesus famously argued with various leaders within Judaism, and the first Christian
martyr, Stephen, got stoned to death by a crowd of non-Christian Jews.
Later, the revolving doors of persecution would swing the other way, with great atrocities
perpetrated against Jewish communities by those claiming to be Christian.
But many scholars also think there's another story of relatively peaceful cohabitation,
and even co-worship, between Jewish and Christian groups that existed for roughly 400 years.
This shouldn't come as a surprise: The origins of Christianity were in Judaism.
That said, the New Testament doesn't reflect much of this history because of the tumultuous
times during which it was written.
And the only thing that compared to the hatred between Jews and their Roman occupiers was
the great internal strife within Judaism.
Ultimately, the New Testament tells the story of the broken relationship between the Jews
and Christians that points to later repercussions.
Emperor Septimius Severus carried out the fifth persecution of Christians beginning
in A.D. 192, meaning many believers in Jesus met their end in the gladiatorial arena as
tortured objects of Roman entertainment.
It only got worse: By A.D. 202, Severus banned Roman conversion to Judaism and Christianity,
ramping up the momentum of violence.
Those who ignored Severus' laws faced cruel and inventive punishments.
Beheading, immolation, attack by wild animals, scalding baths, and more...
all in front of a live audience.
Among the victims were a 22-year-old noblewoman, Perpetua, and her slave Felicitas.
A handful of male converts would share in their arena fate.
The men ran a gauntlet of "hunters" and wild animals, whipped and savagely attacked along
the way, while officials stripped the two women and threw them into the gladiatorial
arena with a "wild heifer" followed by a leopard.
"How is that any better, huh?
He's going to tear me to pieces!"
But the crowd's bloodlust remained unsatisfied, and they called for the deaths of all in the
ring, meted out at the sharp end of a gladiator's sword.
Despite these horrors, many early Christians remained undeterred.
As "Foxe's Book of Martyrs" notes,
"Though persecuting malice raged, yet the Gospel shone with resplendent brightness;
and, firm as an impregnable rock, withstood the attacks of its boisterous enemies with
success."
When Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan in A.D. 313, Christianity received
formal legalization.
After centuries of persecution, this sudden, radical acceptance by a Roman emperor left
many Christians breathing a sigh of relief.
And with good reason.
Constantine delved into immediate public action on behalf of Christians.
He set policies on the return of property and status for those who were persecuted,
church construction funding, and curbing pagan worship.
But the repercussions of Roman appropriation of the faith soon followed as the emperor
demanded a unified, clearly organized religion.
Third-century Christianity proved far from it.
The emperor pushed for the formal adoption of an orthodoxy by calling the Council of
Nicaea, and the resulting Nicene Creed represented an attempt to get all believers on the same
page.
Of course, this meant exclusion for those who refused to negotiate.
Many fringe Christian groups lost their legal status because they were considered heretical,
and they also had their property seized by the empire.
These believers traded the frying pan for the fire, proving that new challenges followed
going mainstream.
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