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And it won, because there are always going to be more of the ignorant, servile, and downtrodden. See the French Revolution. Guys who are "we want to go back to the days when the likes of us were rightfully the nobles and rulers" should remember the rattle of the tumbrils taking the lords and nobles to execution before the jeering crowds as entertainment.
It is impossible for Christianity to have “won” by only being attractive to the poor and the servants. For one, they have no rights or military training, so it would be impossible for them to ever exert influence on the middle or upper classes, who controlled everything and made up the military leadership. But it’s also impossible given the wealth of early Christian writings we have — it’s expensive to have dedicated theologians who copy and write thousands of pages. There’s also no reason that a pagan mystery cult couldn’t have defeated Christianity, if the only thing of importance was the promise of an afterlife (there were lots, including Mithras for the soldiers!). And if the poorest members were being converted on the promise of an afterlife, they would pose zero political threat and the powerful Pagans would be happy about this as it would reduce the problem of slave rebellions. (Is Christianity the opium of the people, or is Christianity its own “slave revolt” against the powerful? It cannot be both, so please make up your mind, 19th century.) Lastly, we know as early as the Apostles that they had issues with how to treat wealthy Christians, and they were writing rules on how to subsidize poor widows — things that wouldn’t be worth writing about if it was just a religion of the poor.
Julian wanted to bring back the gracious days of yore before the Christians turned it all to shit, and was frustrated that those shitty Christians managed to appeal to the people who should be following the lead of their betters:
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Monotheism, certainly Abrahamic religion, seems uniquely good at supplanting paganism. Christian missionaries in West Africa and Southeast Asia - even under full colonial rule - often barely even attempted to convert Muslims whom the Arabs had already converted, for example, because they always rejected Christianity and it caused social tensions and civil conflict when they killed or expelled the white missionaries. Pagans almost always embraced it. Muhammad very quickly replaced polytheism in Arabia. Even where it took longer there were major inroads in the Indian subcontinent, in East Asia and so on. In the Americas it happened quite quickly.
It took just a few centuries for the Egyptians to abandon paganism (there were a couple of remote sanctuaries that made it to 500, but most Egyptians had converted within 150 years of Christianity being introduced). By contrast, it took 800-1000 years for the Arabs to convert the majority of Egyptians from Christianity to Islam, often using much harsher methods. To some extent it's almost a historical quirk that some of the Asian civilizations retained aspects of their earlier religious traditions; without the Portuguese and British an Islamic conquest of the Hindus was probably inevitable, and in the case of the Chinese the Taiping rebellion which involved a twisted form of quasi-Christian belief was only defeated with the help of the British and French. By the time Christians conquered Japan in 1945 they didn't really care to convert defeated populations anymore.
Pagans can arguably be easily converted because the Abrahamic God can initially live 'alongside' their other gods, and then supplant them/become dominant, and then the others can be abandoned or forgotten. This is, of course, what happened to the Jews themselves in their ancient history.
Well, there was also the Shimabara rebellion, which seriously cranked up enforcement of the ban, and of sakoku more generally.
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This is begging the question a bit. There is no reason that Mithraism or Sol Invictus or some other monolatric religion couldn’t have transitioned into monotheistic. Even the transition from a Pagan pantheon to a monarch presiding over angels could have easily taken place (as it did in early Judaism), with Zeus presiding as sovereign. This also doesn’t explain why trinitarian Christianity defeated Arianism, as the latter is more “clearly” or primitively monotheistic. Monotheism was also tried once in ancient Egypt with a “son of God” figure too, but it never took off there (Atenism).
Maybe monotheism plays a part, but it’s more likely that Christianity and Islam have unique characteristics that cause their popularity. Islam, after all, was influenced by Nestorian Christianity. So it makes just as much sense that the actual beliefs, rituals, etc lead to popularity, rather than that they have only one god.
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Everyone remembers that, but forgets the centuries where the lords and nobles had peasants executed for any offense or no offense. It's bad to be on top come the revolution, but good every other time.
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