What challenges did Christianity face in the beginning?

Question

What sort've stuff did they have to overcome with the Romans and etc when the religion was first starting out? What political social aspects did they overcome? Etc So confused

Answer 1

Christian spirituality blossomed in the Roman Empire between 64 and 313 AD in spite of official efforts to suppress it. The earliest record of the use of the term is by Tacitus when he recorded that Nero blamed the "Christians" for the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD. Sometime around 200 AD, one leader, Tertullian, is quoted as saying, "The blood of the martyrs is the seed [of the Church]" to account for this phenomenon of persecution of Christians. Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History 2.25[1] recorded: "The Roman Tertullian is likewise a witness of this. He writes as follows: "Examine your records. There you will find that Nero was the first that persecuted this doctrine, particularly then when after subduing all the east, he exercised his cruelty against all at Rome. We glory in having such a man the leader in our punishment. For whoever knows him can understand that nothing was condemned by Nero unless it was something of great excellence."" In 313 AD, the Edict of Milan ended official persecution, and under the Emperor Constantine, Christians acquired powerful political influence, the results of which are controversial to this day, beginning with Constantine's First Council of Nicaea, sometimes called the Constantinian shift. In 390, Theodosius the Great declared Catholic Christianity the state religion of the empire (Codex Theodosianus).

Christians developed hierarchical structures to lead the visible Church over the course of many centuries. From the early formation of the Church until the Great Schism in 1054 AD, virtually all Christians subsisted within one Church as one visible organization, led locally by bishops, and regionally by patriarchs. However, minor divisions occurred over differences in doctrine as early as the Council of Chalcedon, and continued through the progression of ecumenical councils.

Answer 2

In a nutshell: Much skepticism from pagan and mythological beliefs. From Judaism it was the unbelieving of the man Jesus as the Messiah. And as Christianity began to root, it was fracturing of it into different sects.

Answer 3

prosecution by Roman emperor until the Emperor Constantine took over from his father and he converted to Christianity the prosecution stop

Answer 4

To stay alive, there was always the threat of
persecution, imprisonment, being fed to the lions etc...

Answer 5

They had to overcome the fact that God isn't real.

Answer 6

Persecution....

The refusal to pay homage to Ceasar....which is totally biblical...we are to pay homage to God and not to man.

Answer 7

so not confused - sound like homework time to me!