Christianity: A Revitalization Movement

Christianity served as a revitalization movement that arose in response to the misery, chaos, fear, and brutality of life in the urban Greco-Roman world...[It provided] new norms and new kinds of social relationships able to cope with many urgent urban problems. To cities filled with the homeless and impoverished, Christianity offered charity as well as hope. To cities filled with newcomers as well as strangers, Christianity offered an immediate basis for attachments. To cities filled with orphans and widows, Christianity provided a new and expanded sense of family. To cities torn by violent ethnic strife, Christianity offered a new basis for social solidarity...And to cities faced with epidemics, fires and earthquakes, Christianity offered effective nursing services...For what they brought was not simply an urban movement, but a new culture capable of making life in Greco-Roman cities more tolerable.

Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity. Quoted in Darrow Miller, LifeWork.