Why did the Romans dislike the Christians?

Answer 1

The Romans allowed conquered people to worship their own gods as long as they worshipped the Graeco-Roman gods. The Jews were given a special exemption from this law against 'Atheism' because of the apparent antiquity of their religion. At first, the early Christians were treated as a sect of Judaism and were generally exempted from worship of the Roman gods. However, splits soon developed between Christianity and Judaism, so that Christianity could no longer be portrayed as a form of Judaism. Even then, we have early correspondence showing that some Roman leaders preferred not to know about the Christian stance unless they made a public point of offending the gods.

Answer 2

The majority of people in particular and societies in general are distrustful of new ideas. This can be caused by fear of the unknown, xenophobia, superstition or simply greed: when new religions or political powers appear on the scene those who derive power and wealth from their positions in the current regime become afraid of losing power, status and, of course, money. This makes it important to them to encourage the population in distrust, hate, and fear of new ideas. When sections of society rise against other sections of society, look for the bottom line: money and power. ________________ Religion and politics were intimately connected; there was no concept of church separate from state. This would be hard to avoid when the emperor is literally worshipped as a god. So when Constantine came along with his radical ideas, it was extremely unsettling. ________________

Answer 3

The Romans disliked the Christians for a variety of reasons. First of all, the early Christians were not the meek, white-robed, kindhearted pure souls that Hollywood would have you believe. They were a clannish cult who aggressively went after converts. The Romans, while generally tolerant of other religions, were concerned about the secretiveness of the early Christians. All sorts of negative rumors grew about them. The Christians also would not give at least lip service to the ceremonies the Romans had for honoring their gods. To Roman thinking this amounted to sedition, because they held that if the gods were not honored, they would take away their protection from Rome.

Roman Catholic AnswerThe Romans formally persecuted the Christians for heresy, i.e. for refusing to worship the "gods" of their religion. Thus they were killed for being irreligious and pagans.

Answer 4

The Romans distrusted the Christians because of the Christians adherence to the concept of there being one god rather than many. The Romans would adopt any of the gods worshiped by the people they assimilated, either through diplomacy or violence, the Christians would not accept that there were any other god or gods. This coupled with the fact that the Christian faith was growing exponentially, made them appear a threat to classic Roman culture and thus they were made to be the scapegoats for many social troubles and disasters.

AnswerAnother, reason is the fact the the Christians were claiming that they had a new king, namely Jesus, that would bring down the Roman Empire and give the Jews there independence. The Romans, understandably, did not like the idea of having one of their conquered nations proclaim a new king for themselves.

Answer 5

There were lots of reasons! I think one of the biggest ones was that by following their own set of beliefs and laws, the Christians weren't following the Roman's beliefs and laws. Not only did this mean that in an already unstable empire (revolts and wars with other empires who were constantly trying to take pieces of their empire) more factions were being divided off, but the people whom they conquered were supposed to accept them and submit to their authority. Also, by worshipping God and making Him their true leader, they were choosing him over both the Emperor and the Emperor's chosen deities.

There were also a lot of misunderstandings about the Christian faith in the beginning. They were seen as a cult (think about how we perceive cults even today) with weird rules. The people didn't associate or participate in normal everyday activities and walked around calling each other 'brother' and 'sister' including their wives and fathers and then spoke about drinking their prophet's blood and eating his flesh... You can see how the rumours of Christians being incestuous cannibals were easily believed!

Answer 6

they were suspicious of not worshiping the roman gods.