Why did Christianity become the dominant form of religion in some nations conquered by the west, but not others

Great Debates
1

My understanding of how Christianity became the world’s dominant faith is basically this.

In Judea after the Romans conquered it, a lot of Jews were motivated by nationalism and religious fervor to kick the Romans out. Jesus was just one of probably hundreds if not thousands of Jews who did this. He had a religion made after him.

Then in 312 CE the Roman emperor Constantine converted to chrisitanity. This made christianity more mainstream in the Roman empire.

Then in the late 4th century, the Roman emperor Theodosius made christianity the official religion of the roman empire, suppressing other religions.

The Roman empire eventually broke up, and part of it became western europe.

Starting in the 15th century, western europe started engaging in the age of discovery where they ‘discovered’ and colonized other nations. They brought their religion with them, spreading christianity all over the world. Due to their military supremacy they had the ability to do this.

What I’m wondering is why did some areas conquered adopt christianity but not others?

For example, southern Africa is mostly christian. So is latin America. But India was conquered by the British and it is still Hindu. The middle east was conquered by the west but they are still muslim. However I think that conquest didn’t happen until the Ottoman empire lost ww1, and by that post-enlightment period I doubt the west cared about spreading christianity.

Meanwhile Spain was conquered by the muslims and I think held by Muslim conquered for 5 centuries, but they are still christian there.

So why do some areas conquered by the west become christian but not others?

Why did the european parts of the roman empire remain christian while the eastern parts of the empire became Islamic? I know Islam wasn’t created until after Christianity, so I’m guessing thats part. But why was christianity able to conquer the faiths of europe, but islam was able to conquer christianity in the middle east?

Also why are areas like India still hindu while in latin America almost everyone is Christian? Both were conquered by the west.

2

The West is not a monolithic force. In general, the Spanish and Portuguese were pretty hardcore about converting the people they encountered. The British, in India, weren’t as fussed. That said, they were opposed to the caste system and were a large part of pushing to have it done away with.

In the case of the Middle East, the Ottoman empire was a Muslim group that conquered the Byzantine Empire - a Christian group. Had they failed, things might have differed.

3

My guess is that it’s a matter of having an organized church vs. a religion that’s just another aspect of a culture. With Christianity and Islam there were / are popes, caliphs, kings, sultans, etc. that had an interest in proselytizing. The other faiths of the world didn’t have that model, and so the they didn’t spread in the same way. As far as the competition between Christianity and Islam, I think that just comes down to who was both there and in charge most recently.

4

The Catholics conquered it back. They then expelled the Muslims and Jews.

5

The Brits weren’t interested in proselytizing- they were out to make a buck, and gold shines just as brightly no matter who the person you’re exploiting for it prays to.

6

How much genocide and plague there was, how systematic the effort was to destroy the original culture and and how long a region was occupied was important. In South America for example there was an intense effort to destroy every last scrap of pre-colonial culture and history, along with a vast death toll; which is why our knowledge of what those cultures was like is so limited despite how recently they existed.

India on the other hand was never subjected to as much effort to destroy their culture, and didn’t suffer the apocalyptic plagues the Americas did, nor the outright attempts to exterminate them. So more of their pre-colonial culture survived.

7

The Dutch were even less interested in proselytizing than the British. It’s why Japan allowed them to keep trading after closing itself from the rest of the world (save China & Korea). The Dutch didn’t even make an effort to spread their language in Indonesia.

8

It’s not just India; various parts of south and east Asia were colonised by various European powers but Christianity made relatively little inroad into any of them. Conversely different parts of Africa were colonised by different European powers (who had different official attitudes to proselytisation) but Christianity made substantial progress in a wide range of African countries.

One factor may be how compatible the views and values of the colonised population are with Christianity — it may be that the beliefs and attitudes that were already culturally dominant in Africa meant that people were much readier to embrace Christianity and Islam, and that this was much less the case in Asia.

As for Latin America, I think the spread of Christianity is part of a wider spread of European culture — European languages predominate in all Latin American countries, for example, in a way that is not the case in Africa or Asia. And a possible explanation, or part of an explanation, for this may lie in the almost complete collapse of the pre-colonial societies in the face of diseases introduced by the colonists. You’re much more likely to adopt a new culture when your former culture has completely collapsed.

9

Christianity supplanted the Classical religions of the Mediterranean. Zeus, Apollo, Isis: all replaced with the Trinity and the saints. The sex cults guttered out, maybe because people enjoy guilt even more than concupiscence. The non-supernatural philosophers of Stoicism and Epicurism etc. moved smoothly into Christian philosophy.

The Norse religions amalgamated with more than were supplanted by Christianity. In the stave churches, the carvings who state back at you may be pagan trolls masquerading as Christian saints. “If you guys stop Viking-ing and get baptized, you can have Normandy. Here’s the archangel Michael: see the big sword in his hand. You can relate, right?” Neither Feudalism nor Roman Catholicism found deep roots with the Norse, and they easily shed them for simpler things like Lutheranism and assemble-yourself furniture.

The spread of Islam was, in its time, a step beyond Christianity. And it was every bit as monopolistic. When the Taliban blew up the Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001, I recalled the story of Turkic Alp Arlsan’s invasion of India. He swung his axe into the head of a Buddha, and the monks begged him to stop, offering ransom. “I am not a merchant of false Gods!” he cried, and, according to the legend, he swung again until the head burst, spilling a cache of hidden jewels onto the temple floor. (Later Turks were more reasonable as far a false gods went, levying a special tax on Christians and Jews, including select boys to serve in the sultan’s Janissaries.) Their bells outlawed, Christians were only allowed to bash their Sementra three times each morning and night, once for the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost.

In the Modern era, Christianity became dominant despite itself. Besides the above-mentioned Dutch caring more for commerce than proselytization, the New Jerusalem of Britain backed its way into world dominance by creating an outlet for enterprise outside the established church. Nonconformists were barred from the professions or public office, so they went into manufacturing and shipping. This accelerated technological growth beyond what the Chinese, Hindus, Arabs, etc. had going, and it was that technological imbalance and not a matter of one faith triumphant over the others that made the 19th and 20th centuries European centuries. Despite all the missionaries and god-botherers who took credit and continue to do so, it was hard-headed Yankees and Lancastrians who made the modern world.

10

Spain was ruled by Muslims for a long time, and as Al Andalus it was predominantly Muslim and ruled by a series of Caliphates.

It is not Muslim today because of the Reconquista and Inquisitions that followed. It was a process that took hundreds of years, and either killed or removed millions of people from Spain.

11

Unlike the Jewish prophets whose historicity is debated, or Jesus who is less debated but whose influence wasn’t very significant until after his death and the creation of his church by his followers, Muhammad was most certainly a real dude, and one who actually got into the history books. He wasn’t just a religious figure, he was also a political and military force. He was a warlord who united the Arab tribes and led them to invade the great empires of his day - the Persian empire under the Sassanid dynasty, and the Eastern Roman Empire.

As it happens, the two mighty states had literally just finished one of the largest wars they’d ever had and were incredibly depleted when Muhammad showed up. So they ended up getting absolutely demolished by the Arab armies, leading Persia to fall completely and the Byzantines to fall back to Anatolia.

Meanwhile, North Africa was former Roman territory, but in the East the Byzantines are pulling away and in the West the Roman Empire had collapsed and been replaced by a series of successor states. In North Africa, one such successor state (the Vandals) had been reconquered as a sort of external province, nominally under the control of the Byzantines - but of course, in their weakened state they were losing to the Arab armies even when fighting much closer to home. There’s no way they were going to hold Carthage and the like against the Arab invaders.

Conquering Carthage, the Arabs finally ended Roman presence in Africa. A couple of minor successor states in the Maghreb later, and they were in control of the whole northern coast of Africa. From there, a hop skip and jump took them into Iberia, where they conquered the Visigothic kingdom of Hispania in a handful of years. And that was that - the high water mark of Muslim rule in Europe.

The Muslim conquests began under Muhammad in the early 600s; by 711 the successor Caliphates had conquered the Middle East, North Africa, and Iberia. Perhaps they planned to continue, but the Umayyad Caliphate had perhaps overextended itself. In the 730s they tried to invade further into Europe, but were stopped at the Battle of Tours by Charles Martel, an important event in the transformation of the Franks into an organized and powerful kingdom that would prevent further Islamic expansion North.

Why didn’t the Muslims expand elsewhere? Well, Christianity expanded within the Roman Empire, but Islam expanded within the Caliphates. So the places Islam expanded to are the places where the ruling political body was Muslim. They didn’t conquer Italy, for example, because the Byzantines were still quite powerful there at this time, having coopted or kicked out some of the Successor States that took over after the Western Romans fell. And indeed, when the Byzantine hold over Sicily weakened, it WAS conquered by Arabs (and then conquered by Normans, and then… Sicily is a mess).

Now, AFTER this period, once the Caliphates had created big and prosperous Muslim states, Islam DID start to expand through other means as well, for example Indonesia was converted gradually by the influence of Muslim traders.

12

That’s partially true, but it’s also got to do with the actual dogma taught by the different religions. Islam and Christianity are both Universalist Religions. What does that mean?

Judaism is a good example because it’s monotheistic but not Universalist, whereas many other religions are neither Universalist nor monotheistic and it becomes confusing what properties come from which aspect of the religion.

A Universalist religion believes that EVERYONE should follow that religion. It doesn’t matter if you’re Roman, Arab, ethnically Jewish, Chinese, native Hawaiian, Australian Aboriginal… Doesn’t matter. You are a SINNER and you will go to HELL unless you ACCEPT JESUS into your life and let him SAVE YOU!!!

Same goes for Islam. Sure, there’s a clause about Christians and Jews being “People of the Book” and thus “Wrong within Normal Parameters”. So we don’t have to convert those people by the sword right away, unlike those nasty Pagans, but the end goal is still for everyone to be Muslim.

That’s not how Judaism works, as one example. Judaism holds that there are some moral laws that should apply to everyone, so it does have something to say about the behavior of non Jews, as well as some specific rules for Jews who live in Jewish society. But Judaism, certainly as it was in the 0s or 700s, is a set of instructions for how the Jews need to behave; there is no expectation that there should be ONLY Jews, or even that it would be a good thing if more people followed these laws.

Judaism is a contract. We do A, B, and C (ok, it’s actually 613 things, not 3) and in exchange God will do certain things for us. And all the deals God makes with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are for practical, earthly things rather than esoteric afterlife stuff: we get to live in our land free and sovereign; it will rain and the land will be fertile; we will be fruitful and have lots of children; etc.

This is much more similar to how traditional religions around the world viewed their relationship with the Divine, especially in polytheistic societies. Under this framework, there’s no need to proselytize. It doesn’t make any sense to. You might tell people “Man, Joe makes really good deals, he doesn’t ask for much and he always pays his debt”, but you wouldn’t view it as a moral imperative to ensure as many people sign deals with Joe as possible. If someone already had a deal with Joe, and wasn’t holding up his end of the bargain - IE if someone shares your faith and violates its rules or morals - THEN you might get angry. But why get angry at people who didn’t have a deal with Joe to begin with?

Also, since you mentioned Hinduism - keep in mind that before the British colonization of India you wouldn’t have necessarily had one faith called “Hinduism”. You would have had a bunch of different people focusing on worshipping different gods in the pantheon in different ways. Certainly there was a lot of shared culture and mythology, but it wasn’t thought of as a single religion so much as a mosaic of related faiths. Under British rule, the British created a system that split people into categories of Muslim, Christian, or… Hindu.

13

Certainly disease is part of it, more so in North America where entire communities were wiped out before they even made direct contact with Europeans. But as @Der_Trihs points out, the Spanish did make a pretty concentrated effort to wipe out native culture in their colonies. They viewed the Aztec and Inca religion and culture as evil (mostly because it was pagan, and pagan = the devil, although the existence of human sacrifice in some cultures didn’t help).

That’s not exactly unique, though. There were periods during which the Muslim rulers of Persia did the same sort of thing to Zoroastrians, for example - under the Abbasids it was especially bad, IIRC - and I’m sure it has happened elsewhere too.

Isn’t there a carving of a one eyed Jesus wielding a spear and a thunderbolt?

As “people of the book” Christians and Jews are dhimmi, IE second class citizens to be taxed, not infidel pagans to be (forcibly) converted or butchered. It’s not that the Turks eased up, it’s that Jews and Christians fall into a different category than Buddhists.

Zoroastrians were persecuted to different degrees at different times for that reason. They aren’t “people of the book”, they aren’t even really monotheistic, but they aren’t fully polytheistic either, so if you squint you can make the case for dhimmi status. So the Caliphates did exactly that, squinting whenever they wanted to tax the rich Persian provinces and then removing that dhimmi status when they wanted to punish some infidels.

14

I think you forgot NE Africa, Egypt and Ethiopia which is Judaiac/Coptic

15

Did you forget the Philippines?

16

Egypt was under Roman rule and became Christian for that reason. You are right that Christianity spread beyond Rome’s strict borders, to places like Ethiopia, Armenia, etc, but these were places with close ties to Rome.

17

That’s like two millennia of world history we are talking about so there isn’t one reason. But I’d sum it up by how important religion was to the conquerors.

The pagan warlords that conquered western Europe at the end of the Roman empire (not that all of them were pagan by any means) didn’t care about imposing paganism, they just wanted the awesome luxurious lifestyle of the Roman ruling elite. In fact seeing as Christianity was so integral to that lifestyle they were happy to convert to make things easier.

The arab conquests was a bit more complicated as as while obviously spreading Islam was a huge part of them, there was actually a big economic incentive for the new Arab rulers not to convert the populace, as it meant more taxes for them. But over time that incentive also worked on the populace (also there was plenty of oppression against non Muslims even if in comparison to Christian Europe it was fairly tolerant). Islamic Spain was largely Muslim at the time of the reconquest but that Muslim population was ultimately forced to covert or flee (not during the initial reconquest which was generally the model of chivalry but in the years that followed)

Religion and the “enlightened” spread of the one true church was a huge part of the conquest of the Americas. The native population was either killed or forcibly converted (though plenty of syncretic beliefs survived)

Indian colonisation was on the other hand purely an economic exercise of extraction of wealth by a tiny number of East India company employees (who planned on returning home if they survived their career). The few attempts at evangelizing Christianity detracted from that money making exercise (and tended to trigger revolts that almost got all the EIC employees killed) so weren’t encouraged generally

The (much more recent) European African colonisation was again heavily driven by the idea the poor benighted population of Africa needed saving, and converting to Christianity (not that it was any less a wealth extraction exercise than Indian colonisation).

18

Complicating things was the slavery question. Both Catholic and Protestant empire-builders were in on it, until the acquisition of African territory, as opposed to just hauling off the inhabitants to the Western Hemisphere, coincided with the rise of the Abolitionist movement. Heroes like David Livingston and Charles Gordon would venture deep and dangerous to suppress slavery, but a closer examination showed they also served the express purposes of imperialism.

19

Also, slavery was promoted in part as a method of converting people to Christianity. A quite successful one, given how effective slavery was at completely erasing people’s culture and history. Which also got caught up in the the Catholic/Protestant rivalry, with them playing Opposite Day and one side opposing slavery because the other supported it, as well as religious disputes like teaching slaves to read so they could read the Bible (which the slavers opposed, wanting their slaves to be as ignorant as possible).

20

I don’t have anything to contribute, I just wanted to say what an interesting and informative thread this is.