Has Christianity really experienced a meteoric expansion? Can we quantify it? In what social climate did it arouse so much interest? Did it only interest the poor? What role did women play in it? Were there really as many martyrs as people said, and how were they perceived?
With the eye of a sociologist, and on the basis of rigorous documentation, Rodney Stark depicts the living conditions of the large urban centers of the Greco-Roman Empire, where population density, unsanitary conditions and violence were... apocalyptic .
It is in this atmosphere that the apostles and their successors delivered their innovative message by matching their words with action. In this perfected, but cynical and exhausted civilization, the message of Christ brings a hope which will make, in a few centuries, the marginal movement of the disciples of Jesus the dominant religious force of the Western world.
ISBN: 9782755001884