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Why did Roman rulers oppose Christianity?

Updated: 11/21/2022
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Curtis Strite

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2y ago

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Because Christians would not worship the Roman gods

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Curtis Strite

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2y ago
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12y ago

They didn't always entirely oppose it. At one time or another they offered to include a statue of Jesus in the Pantheon among the tributes to the gods of the other countries they had conquered. But the Christians--still hard to delineate from heretical Jews at that point--would have none of that, citing the first Commandment: "I am the Lord thy God" and all that. Christianity at the time was an extremely disruptive force that couldn't be compared to the other cults Rome had found some way to co-opt and absorb. It was an all-encompassing moral and cultural revolution that foretold massive, sweeping changes that all rulers knew would threaten the culture of the time and its underlying power structures.

Christians refused to worship the Emperor as a god. Christians also prophesied the fall of Rome.
The Romans were a conquering people; they had conquered all the area surrounding the Mediterranean Sea by the time the Western Roman Empire fell. In order to appease their subjects, the Romans had a basic 'freedom of religion' policy. The conquered people were allowed to continue their religious practices, but on one condition: they must also acknowledge the Roman gods. This does not jive with the 1st commandment: God says, "You shall have no other gods before Me." The Christians refused to worship the Roman gods.

However, little was done to punish the early Church until Nero became emperor. Nero distrusted the Christians, and saw their religion as a threat to the Roman way of life. Then the great fire of Rome came and destroyed most of Rome. While there is no proof that Nero was involved in it, he was playing his lyre and singing while watching the fires burn. When the fires stopped, Nero blamed the Christians for starting the fire, and thus began several centuries of persecution.

I hope that answers your question. Let me know how I did, because this is the first answer I have posted.

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