Christians Lived Next to Romans
What did the Roman world think about Christians?
The Roman perception of Christians framed the Christian experience in the early church. Christians were a messianic people living in a Roman world.
Their neighbors were Romans.
Their governing authorities were Romans.
Their cultural ideals were influenced by Romans.
The milieu of everyone around them was Roman.
Early Christians lived in a Roman world, and Rome set the standard and expectations for how people within a Roman world ought to live.
This directly affected the Christian experience.
Rome’s Religious Expectations
Romans did not have the modern cultural slogan of “you do you.” Romans weren’t pluralistic in the sense of autonomous religious liberty. In the United States, people have the right to the freedom of religion. People in the US are free to practice the religion of their conscience. This means people in the US can practice one religion exclusively. You can be Christian without also having to be Muslim, Buddhist, or Hindu, etc.
That wasn’t the case for the Roman world.
Rome didn’t much care if you practiced one religion or another as long as you participated in emperor veneration. People in the Roman world were not free to exclusively practice the religion of their conscience – except for Judaism because Rome recognized it as such an ancient religion; this is why early Christians wanted Rome to see Christianity as under the umbrella of Judaism because Jews were able to practice Judaism exclusively. Regardless of your first religious practice, you were expected to also participate in the Roman religion of worshipping the emperor. In this sense, Rome expected the people within the empire to practice religious syncretism – that is, the melding of multiple religions together. This was common throughout the ancient world.
Emperor veneration was not simply to stroke the ego of the emperor. Romans saw emperor veneration as the cultural and religious practice that brought peace, security, and prosperity to the empire. Offering sacrifices to the image of the emperor stabilized the empire and allowed for society to flourish. Failing to participate in emperor veneration drew negative attention. Emperor veneration wasn’t done in the privacy of your own home. It was public. It was cultural. Religion in Rome was not “to each his own.” Instead, it was “we as a culture corporately do this together, and it will bring prosperity to society.” In a basic sense, Rome followed the prevailing philosophy of religion throughout the ancient world that placating the gods resulted in societal prosperity.
A Christian’s absence from the public religious practice would have been noticed. In the early church, to be Christian meant you abstained from many Roman cultural practices – especially the corporate and public practice of emperor veneration. Participation was the standard and expectation. It is no wonder, therefore, that emperor Trajan affirmed Pliny the Younger’s policy of executing Christians if they failed to (1) recant their Christian faith; (2) make an offering to the image of the emperor; and (3) curse Christ.
Dangerous Weirdos
To be Christian in the early church was to be a dangerous weirdo in the eyes of Romans. To be Christian meant you intentionally abstained from the cultural expectations that brought security to the empire. To be Christian meant your Roman neighbors thought your beliefs were dangerous and you were a threat to their security. Once Rome distinguished Christianity from Judaism,1 This distinction took decades to determine. It became Rome’s official policy to distinguish Christianity from Judaism by AD 112. to be Christian was to be stigmatized with the constant possibility that you could be reported to the authorities and executed. To be Christian in the Roman empire before Constantine was to be misunderstood and to be seen as dangerous to the prosperity of the empire.
Further Reading
A modern historical narrative of the early church
González, Justo L. The Story of Christianity. Vol. 1, The Early Church To The Dawn Of The Reformation. Rev. ed. New York: Harper Collins, 2010.
Ancient Sources
Tertullian. “The Apology.” In Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian, edited by Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, translated by S. Thelwall, Vol. 3. The Ante-Nicene Fathers. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885, particularly chs. 29–30.
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