What accounts for the survival and global spread of Christianity?

[struggle4progress]

45. The historical question, of reasons for the success of Christianity in particular times and places,

should be approached by historical methods -- and this depends on distinguishing different conditions

Christianity in the Roman Empire, after the conversion of Constantine around 312 CE, is not necessarily the same phenomenon as first century Christianity, for example

Very early Christianity was a clandestine cult among some of the Jewish population in Roman-occupied Palestine, which subversively appropriated the title "Son of God" which Emperor Augustus had used and fastened this title scandalously upon a peasant who had recently been crucified by the Roman authorities. The Christian response, to this very typical Roman move to rule by terror, was to proclaim that although Jesus of Nazareth had in fact died at Roman hands, he had then been raised from the dead --- a rather in-your-face response that, if believed, somewhat undermined the Roman rule-by-terror

The destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, which followed soon afterwards, probably helped disperse this cult across the empire

Constantine's adoption of Christianity as official religion would have changed the dynamic considerably: he established an official theology, and the existence of state doctrine allowed people to use that doctrine in power struggles