Winning over the Invaders

I have just been reading a book by Rodney Stark called the Triumph of Christianity.

I was especially interested in the period after the collapse of Rome, often referred to as the Dark Ages. During this season, the part of Europe that had been controlled by the Roman Empire was successively invaded by so-called barbarian peoples from the East. Over several centuries, Europe was conquered by the Goths, Visigoths, Vandals, Huns, Franks, Saxons, Vikings, Burgundians and many other groups.

The amazing thing is that most of these groups were won by the gospel and eventually became Christians. Sometimes, it was just there leaders who converted. And sometimes they held heretical ideas, such as Arianism. However, despite the weakness of the church after the collapse of the Roman Empire, the invading peoples chose to become Christian. This confirms the glory of the gospel and power of the Holy Spirit.

Europe is still being invaded by new people groups. However, the modern church does not have the confidence to win them over. They are afraid that they will be defeated by invading cultures and religions. This suggests that the church has lost faith in the power of the gospel.

The Power of the Full Gospel

Quote from Rodney Stark’s new book, Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome.

The power of Christianity lay not in its promise of otherworldly compensations for suffering in this life, as has so often been proposed. No, the crucial change that took place in the third century was the rapidly spreading awareness of a faith that delivered potent antidotes to life’s miseries here and now! The truly revolutionary aspect of Christianity lay in moral imperatives such as “Love one’s neighbor as oneself,” “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” “It is more blessed to give than to receive,” and “When you did it to the least of my brethren, you did it unto me.” These were not just slogans. Members did nurse the sick, even during epidemics; they did support orphans, widows, the elderly, and the poor; they did concern themselves with the lot of slaves. In short, Christians created “a miniature welfare state in an empire which for the most part lacked social services.” It was these responses to the long-standing misery of life in antiquity, not the onset of worse conditions, that were the ‘material’ changes that inspired Christian growth.