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The 18th century historian Gibbon blames Christianity for causing the spiritual decline of Rome. Take a position for or against this, and explain. Feel Christianity was not the cause for spiritual decline of Rome. Many factors contributed to the growth and expansion of the church, and ultimately its success. Rome did not welcome this new religion with open arms right from the start. Some emperors, like Marcus Aurelia’s openly rejected Christianity numerous times.
Once Christianity was welcomed and even encouraged, many people followed their emperor’s lead and embraced this new religion. The first of the reasons that the Christianity spread was a political factor. Rome was a dominant force in the world at this time and had excellent roads and shipping, which made it easy for missionaries to travel and spread the word of the gospel. This travel and preaching was easy because there was never a continuous policy against the Christians and no Imperial edicts were ever decreed.
There fore the missionaries cold travel relatively safely in times of little persecution. Another political factor would be the Paxar Roman. This existed between 27 BC and AD 180, It was along period of relative peace experienced between the states of the Empire. This allowed the interior states to remain relatively unscathed by warfare and gave the Empire the outwardly appearance of peace.
This proved advantageous for missionaries as they were almost guaranteed security while traveling. Christianity attitude towards society and Its social Impact also lead to the expansion and success of the church. The church was particularly well known for its acts of charity. The church offered this charity to everyone, including pagans. By the third century the Church was looking after one thousand five hundred widows In need.
They were also socially accepted, in some areas, because of their courage during the persecutions and the strength of their faith and the support they showed one another, Christianity high moral standards also made it very appealing to society because It offered an alternative from he pagan religions lack of morality, Also Christianity and its friendships formed form within the Church lead to its successful Roth because those who had received the Gospel felt that their duty was to pass it onto their friends, leading to a close knit community and this was appealing in this era when It was down Toyota to look after yourself.
In this era religious and social life were very much interlinked. People used to consider religious meeting as the principal source of recreation. Christianity also came at the right time, when there was growing unrest with pagan practices and a general spiritual unrest. There was an Increasing prosperity and here was the possibility for enhanced enjoyment, but there was also a spiritual 1 OFF Christianity the Roman Religion was for the ordinary man but interest was waning and mystery religions were too complicated for the everyday person, therefore the people’s obvious choice was Christianity.
Christianity also offered optimism to a usually pessimistic society that believed that their destinies were fixed, either to be in the Gods’ favor or to be out of it, with no hope of redemption. Christianity offered an alternative with the much-desired possibility of salvation.