Domination review: Alice Roberts investigates the unstoppable rise of Christianity

Domination
Alice Roberts (Simon & Schuster)

Alice Roberts’s latest book is something of a left turn. In her previous works Crypt and Buried, she fused expertise in osteoarchaeology – the study of preserved human bones – with more traditional historical approaches, such as the analysis of ancient texts. Technical science was interwoven with empathic and thoughtful discussions of the historical record as she aimed for, and often achieved, nuanced, three-dimensional portraits of past human lives and cultures.

In Domination: The fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of Christianity there is virtually no osteoarchaeology. The focus is much more on historical documents. That isn’t a criticism – Roberts is a careful and curious reader of history – but it just might take some fans by surprise.

Roberts’s topic here is the rise of Christianity from humble eastern Mediterranean sect to a religion with billions of adherents. How and why did it become dominant, when most faded away?

At the centre of the narrative is the Roman Empire. When Christianity emerged, the empire controlled almost all the lands around the Mediterranean, from Britain all the way to Syria. The Romans had many gods, but Christianity gradually became more popular. There are several obvious turning points. One was when Constantine I, who ruled from AD 306 to 337, decriminalised Christianity (and supposedly converted, but Roberts points out gaps in the evidence on that front). Another came when Theodosius I, who reigned from AD 379 to 395, made Christianity the state religion.

Roberts is sceptical about traditional explanations for this: that the ideas of Christianity were especially appealing, say, or that its followers were more dedicated. Such claims, she argues, are little more than Christian propaganda.

Instead, Roberts says the real secret to Christianity’s success is how swiftly it penetrated the upper echelons of Roman society. Jesus may have hung out with lepers and sex workers, but the evangelists who followed in his wake targeted moneyed Romans, soldiers and the educated elite. This recruitment effort succeeded wildly. “Early adopters were to be found, not among the rural, or even the urban, poor of the Empire – but among the urban middle and upper classes,” writes Roberts.

In the following decades and centuries, the church acquired a portfolio of moneymaking enterprises. As Roberts writes, “peel away the religious overlay and what you’re left with is a huge, sophisticated system of interconnected businesses: welfare, health, legal, agribusiness, shipping, education”.

The church also took on many state functions, especially charitable efforts directed at poverty. However, it did so in a way that looks distinctly cynical. “Christian charity,” writes Roberts, “was never intended to solve the problem of poverty.” Instead, it enabled the church to market itself to all levels of society: “The poor were to be told that they would reap rewards in heaven. The rich were to be told that the only way they’d get to heaven was by donating to the Church.”

This was a system built on steep social inequality. One can’t help but compare it to modern billionaires’ philanthropy.

Eventually, the entire Roman socioeconomic system was reorganised around the church, says Roberts. Elite, educated Romans pursued church careers, in part because they were lucrative.

When the Western Roman Empire collapsed, this elite aligned themselves with the new regimes but kept the system intact, and often retained their positions. “Whatever the rhetoric, whatever spiritual messages were being adduced, the entity as a whole is looking very much like Roman business, Roman society as usual,” writes Roberts. “The eternal truth is not theological: gods come and go, temples rise and fall – but business is always business.”

Domination is a little hard going at first: there are a great many names to keep track of, and the narrative jumps around in space and time. Everything shifts up a gear, however, once Roberts’s argument comes into focus. The result is an incisive, provocative and sometimes polemical account of one of the most important organisations in human history.

Michael Marshall is a writer based in Devon, UK

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