Early Christianity: Extremist and Rebellious

Early Christianity was viewed as being extremist and rebellious and it was not popular with governing authorities. Rome built huge grandiose structures to glorify and worship their leaders and deities, Christianity went against this as it is a monotheistic religion, meaning that they only worshipped one god. This was a rarity in the ancient world and it frightened the governments of many civilizations. Arguably one of the biggest goals of a person in power is to remain in power. Christianity was seen as a threat to this power because for one of the first times in ancient civilizations, a religious community did not believe that the ruler of their country was divine but that he was human, not to be worshipped. The bible, which was the Holy Book for Christianity, clearly states that it is against their beliefs to worship false deities, only the one true god was divine.
Tacitus, an aristocrat and historian during the period of the Roman Empire, is known for the criticisms he wrote about of the Roman government. The status of Christianity during the time that Tacitus wrote about was that it was a nuisance to the Roman Empire. The Roman authorities viewed Christianity as being “irreligious because they declined to participate in state approved religious ceremonies” (Bentley and Zeigler 240). Christians were seen as menacing to the empire partly because Jesus’ teachings about the “kingdom of God”. They took this as a political statement and felt it threatened the stability of Roman rule in Palestine, “especially since enthusiastic crowds routinely accompanied Jesus” (Bentley and Zeigler 227). Therefore the Romans succeeded in executing Jesus in the early 30’s which only resulted in making the Christian movement bigger and more popular with the masses, which made the Roman authorities even more uncomfortable and hostile towards them.
According to Tacitus, Christians were so disagreeable to the Romans because of their popularity that they were closely