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It expanded, for sure. Usually though, when I see people argue Christianity is pro-growth they mean in modern terms: Christianity (allegedly), through mechanisms like banning child marriage and insisting on monogamy created societies stable enough to function as market economies that advanced to an unprecedented level.
Yeah, I've never been able to get past Paul's question of the value the things he subjected himself to to spread the the faith if Jesus be not risen.
A faith isn't just words. It's motivation. Peterson seems to be the sort of person capable of the effortful control of maintaining his Christian code regardless of whether we find some early source tomorrow that vitiates Jesus' divinity.
How scalable is this? How many people got the short end of the stick when it comes to conscientiousness who would be kept in check by strong social norms and a bone-deep fear of roasting in hell but not any of more loosey-goosey stuff? "Do this or burn in hell" can be understood by anyone. Once you start quoting Chesterton your audience shrinks.
But maybe it's because my background is in Islam. I've found it incredibly difficult to fulfill even a few of the pillars without faith motivating me. I'm not praying 5 times a day or fasting in perhaps the worst and most annoying way I can think of if I don't think it's for something. The omnipresence of Arabic certainly doesn't help. It sounds nice but a lot of the time you have to bring your own context to things.
I suppose it's much easier for Protestants. (On the other hand, maybe this doesn't bode well for cultural Christians when it comes time to sacrifice. Maybe they're just putting it off)
I think the big one was that it was a missionary religion that essentially downplayed ethnic differences. Once you became Christian, the old tribes no longer mattered as much. There is neither Jew nor Greek thus you can integrate into the culture. This would serve to stabilize an empire as you ideally no longer have people who put their ethnic identity first. We can certainly see tge fruits of tribal thinking in our age when people can think their religion, race, sexuality or gender is more important than being an American.
Both normative monogamy and the idea of a higher identity making ethnicity irrelevant were part of Roman culture before the Roman Empire Christianised.
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