Did persecution of Christians increase or decrease the spread of Christianity. Why?

Answer 1

Although the evidence is not conclusive, it is likely that persecution followed an increase in the number of Christians, rather than persecution increasing the number of Christians.

It was certainly the case that an increase in the number of Christians was followed by persecution. This happened from the very earliest days of the Church, when it was growing quite rapidly, and met with opposition from the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem.

Similarly, when Paul was in Ephesus, it was said that nearly the whole of the province of Asia had heard the message of Jesus. This province covered the western coast region of Anatolia (modern Turkey), and went for a couple of hundred kilometers inland (not all of modern Asia - it is a naming issue). There was some hyperbole here, but at least we can accept that many people in the entire province of Asia had heard the Christian message. The result was that Demetrius the silversmith saw that his business was likely to fall off, so he tried to have something done to stop Paul from spreading the message. This can be understood to indicate that it was the identifiable measure of success in spreading the Christian message that led to persecution.

The next reported period of persecution was in Rome, when it was reported that Nero blamed the Christians in Rome for starting the fire of Rome. This charge against the Christians wasn't believed by Tacitus, but nevertheless, it indicates that there were sufficient Christians in Rome to be targeted in this way.

Early in the second century, in Bithynia (north-western Anatolia) Pliny reported that the traditional cults were being deserted, and the people were attending Christian worship instead. By torture, execution and threats Pliny said that he was able to stop the spread of Christianity, and to bring people back to the old gods.

The best known examples of persecution following the successful spread of Christianity relate to the empire-wide persecution of Emperor Decius, starting in 250, and the empire-wide persecution started by Emperor Diocletian, starting in 303. Both of these persecutions started after extended periods of peace for the Church, during which the numbers of Christians, especially in the eastern half of the Roman Empire, had grown virtually exponentially.

It is likely that the Church lost members during each period of persecution. As far as we can tell, the persecutions by the Roman state were quite effective in forcing Christians to recant. However, after the persecution ended, the Church was very open to receive the failed members back, even though it required significant periods of penitence before full readmittance.

The failure of each period of persecution to totally crush the Church appears to have meant that it resumed with more confidence than before. Even if the Church was faced with an immediately reduced membership, there is evidence that after these persecutions it emerged stronger than before, although one would be hard pressed to say that persecution increased the number of Christians: they represented a bitter blow at the time. Although we do not have the evidence to be dogmatic, it is more likely that the persecutions only temporarily slowed down the spread of Christianity.

To judge this for yourself, read the letter written by the Christians of Lyon and Vienne, on Rhone River (in modern France), after a particularly fierce period of persecution in AD 177 (listed in the related links below). You will be able to assess for yourself how they felt about this event.