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Pagan WRE, Christian ERE

I think it's perfectly possible for that to be the case for a few hundred years. I think long term you'll likely see conversions to Christianity anyway.

I'm perhaps overly pessimistic on this but Christian missionary work was pretty good even outside the Roman Empire. The Rus were never ruled within those borders, the Scandinavians weren't, the Irish weren't, the poles weren't, etc. etc..

Empires with a strong religious doctrine tended to spread that doctrine into neighbours which lacked that, see Islam in Africa and Central Asia as another good example of this. Generally the merchants would be converted first, then the nobility and then the peasantry.
 
Off the top of my head, I don't actually recall that many instances of monotheistic empires bordering polytheistic ones.
Regardless, I'm not sure we need the West to remain united for very long. Its successor states would presumably also be pagan. I doubt the Germanic invaders would convert to Christianity without the Western Roman Empire already being Christian.
Regardless, here's an idea for how such a split may come about, which is inspired on https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...-pagan-ere-christian-wre.457325/post-18002951 though I think the 1st century is too early for such:
A charismatic pagan leader panders to the old Roman fears of Eastern cults, a civil war breaks out and the empire splits between a Latino-Punic Pagan West and a Greco-Egyptian Christian East. What do you think of that?

Never change, pre-1900.

You're right that it is completely anachronistic for the first century. Though there were some haphazard persecutions, ultimately no-one cared much about Christianity until the second half of the second century, because it wasn't important enough. It's not going to produce anything remotely titanic as a civil war and a division of the empire as early as the first century, that's totally fantastical.

Like - does the poster understand where Christianity came from and that in the first century it was still working through its relationship to Judasim? A Christian emperor of the first century would almost certainly also be a Jewish emperor, which... yeah.
 
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I'm not an expert btw, but I think the most fruitful period for this kind of division would be the third century. Aside from it obviously being a very fluid time, it's the point when Roman sensibilities (Both governmental and intellectual) were at their most militantly anti-Christian. If a Christian-adjacent emperor like Constantine had come to power and tried toleration, I don't think it would go down very well with opinion at that time. It's possible in the atmosphere of the time that a foundational anti-Christian myth could take hold in a western Empire which was at odds with a Christian east. I doubt this would be very sustainable long-term, but if the west falls while it's still Pagan, that could effect the whole subsequent history of western Europe.
 
I think it's perfectly possible for that to be the case for a few hundred years. I think long term you'll likely see conversions to Christianity anyway.

I'm perhaps overly pessimistic on this but Christian missionary work was pretty good even outside the Roman Empire. The Rus were never ruled within those borders, the Scandinavians weren't, the Irish weren't, the poles weren't, etc. etc..

Empires with a strong religious doctrine tended to spread that doctrine into neighbours which lacked that, see Islam in Africa and Central Asia as another good example of this. Generally the merchants would be converted first, then the nobility and then the peasantry.

I think it's wrong to believe Christianity and Islam are fated to destroy any non-Abrahamic religions they meet, though. Note that the Baltics only became Christian by the sword. I could see the successor states of a pagan Western Roman Empire developing their own strong religions, syncretizing the Greco-Roman pantheon with their own local gods
 
I think it's wrong to believe Christianity and Islam are fated to destroy any non-Abrahamic religions they meet, though. Note that the Baltics only became Christian by the sword. I could see the successor states of a pagan Western Roman Empire developing their own strong religions, syncretizing the Greco-Roman pantheon with their own local gods

Or you get a patchwork quilt of native, variant forms of Christianity and some long-term Pagan states. If *Nicene (Or whatever passes for 'official' ITTL) Christianity is still trying to get its trousers on in Italy et al centuries after it did IOTL, then Western Europe might just settle into *Arianism, *Celtic forms of Christianity etc.
 
I think it's perfectly possible for that to be the case for a few hundred years. I think long term you'll likely see conversions to Christianity anyway.

I'm perhaps overly pessimistic on this but Christian missionary work was pretty good even outside the Roman Empire. The Rus were never ruled within those borders, the Scandinavians weren't, the Irish weren't, the poles weren't, etc. etc..

Empires with a strong religious doctrine tended to spread that doctrine into neighbours which lacked that, see Islam in Africa and Central Asia as another good example of this. Generally the merchants would be converted first, then the nobility and then the peasantry.

I have a few more thoughts on this: The parts of Europe that weren't part of the Roman Empire converted to Christianity either by force or because they were dependent on trade with Christian regions. We should stop with this myth that Christianity is inherently superior to paganism and was fated to replace it. I think many of us tend to believe this because of our own Christianity background.
 
I have a few more thoughts on this: The parts of Europe that weren't part of the Roman Empire converted to Christianity either by force or because they were dependent on trade with Christian regions. We should stop with this myth that Christianity is inherently superior to paganism and was fated to replace it. I think many of us tend to believe this because of our own Christianity background.

I mean religions travel down trade lines and religions with stronger doctrine tend to supplant ones that don't.

That's not just a christianity thing, hinduism, buddhism and islam travelled the same way.

If you have an Eastern Roman Empire with a strong Christian doctrine and an important trade position because of controlling the middle east, Christianity is going to still spread outwards from that place as it did in otl to the rus and the bulgars and the like.

It won't be as successful as in otl with a christian western europe too, but conversions will still happen. They do in pretty much every single comparable situation.
 
I mean religions travel down trade lines and religions with stronger doctrine tend to supplant ones that don't.

That's not just a christianity thing, hinduism, buddhism and islam travelled the same way.

If you have an Eastern Roman Empire with a strong Christian doctrine and an important trade position because of controlling the middle east, Christianity is going to still spread outwards from that place as it did in otl to the rus and the bulgars and the like.

It won't be as successful as in otl with a christian western europe too, but conversions will still happen. They do in pretty much every single comparable situation.

If this timeline's Western Europe has an anti-Christian foundational myth, I think they would be very resistant to conversion.
I agree, though, that much of Eastern Europe may still convert due to trade with Constantinople.
 
Given you seem to be doing that thing again of copying my points, you should know that I agree with GO on this. You don't have to believe that Christianity was morally/intellectually/religiously superior to acknowledge that any strong religion which establishes itself in the eastern med is likely to flow outwards. On the contrary, that's just following the social reality which as I said was why Christianity was so successful within the empire.

It's also wrong to say it was all entirely, purely, narrowly 100% transactional. If that was the case the various Germanic tribes wouldn't have become Arian and significantly resisted converting to orthodoxy.
 
I think it's relevant that it's estimated that the Western Roman Empire was still majority pagan in 400. This shows how strong paganism was in the western provinces of the Roman Empire.
 
Given you seem to be doing that thing again of copying my points, you should know that I agree with GO on this. You don't have to believe that Christianity was morally/intellectually/religiously superior to acknowledge that any strong religion which establishes itself in the eastern med is likely to flow outwards. On the contrary, that's just following the social reality which as I said was why Christianity was so successful within the empire.

It's also wrong to say it was all entirely, purely, narrowly 100% transactional. If that was the case the various Germanic tribes wouldn't have become Arian and significantly resisted converting to orthodoxy.

Looking back at this thread of mine, I now understand your post. I guess I was angry at the fact that, as you said, people always apply the tree of technology on regards to this issue and, thus, I swung the pendulum too far the other way. Regardless, I don't see why the point of divergence for a Pagan WRE needs to be as early as the 3rd century. If Constantine never converted, it's, IMO, perfectly possible that the Empire would still have split between West and East and that the East would have become Christian but the West wouldn't have.
 
Looking back at this thread of mine, I now understand your post. I guess I was angry at the fact that, as you said, people always apply the tree of technology on regards to this issue and, thus, I swung the pendulum too far the other way. Regardless, I don't see why the point of divergence for a Pagan WRE needs to be as early as the 3rd century. If Constantine never converted, it's, IMO, perfectly possible that the Empire would still have split between West and East and that the East would have become Christian but the West wouldn't have.

The other possibility is that the WRE fragments on schedule without converting and it looks more like the patchwork conversion of the Balkans (or like the spread of Islam in places where it was driven by sufis or merchants or other non-rulers)
 
Paganism isn't sustainable. It's not unifying and doesn't actually help structure people's lives, which was needed in the days of the Late Roman Empire (post the Imperial crisis).

You would get something similar to Zoroastrian theological structure, if not Christianity. Maybe a religion centred around Sol or Mithra, could be chosen if not Christianity. These won't be considered "Pagan", but rather something like Zoroastrianism minus the ethnic structure. But I surely think Paganism can't survive in that environment.
 
The other possibility is that the WRE fragments on schedule without converting and it looks more like the patchwork conversion of the Balkans (or like the spread of Islam in places where it was driven by sufis or merchants or other non-rulers)

When I said "West", I meant the WRE itself, not its successor states.

Paganism isn't sustainable. It's not unifying and doesn't actually help structure people's lives, which was needed in the days of the Late Roman Empire (post the Imperial crisis).

You would get something similar to Zoroastrian theological structure, if not Christianity. Maybe a religion centred around Sol or Mithra, could be chosen if not Christianity. These won't be considered "Pagan", but rather something like Zoroastrianism minus the ethnic structure. But I surely think Paganism can't survive in that environment.

As has been said before, this tree of technology reasoning is wrong. The Roman Empire existed for centuries while being pagan.
Again, the Mithras culture has no chance. It was elitist. I don't as for Sol Invictus.
 


Watch this video. There clearly was a shift from unstructured Polytheism to highly structured Monotheistic or Monistic Philosophies in the Roman Empire, post the Imperial Crisis. This is only natural. You need unity and Goal oriented behaviour when you are at an adversity. You also see the Monotheistic/Monistic oriented behaviour among the Steppe peoples like the Ancient Turkic and Uralic peoples, which include Sky/Sun/Moon Gods, and types of Shamanism.

Roman, Greek and the Oriental Polytheistic religions, and even a Hinduism analogue weren't structured at all. That fact that Rome survived for centuries being this type of Pagan is because of the Roman Warm period. Unstructured Paganism cannot unify empires in that way. And even among the Ancient Greek conquests, Buddhism and different cults became popular (Anatolia and Northern South Asia, both of which were inhabited by Greeks for centuries). Difficult landscapes or situations demand such unifications and Goal oriented behaviour.

If you think that this is a relic of the past, you are mistaken. We will probably encounter this in the next decade, when we face Climate adversities and other Socio-Political issues. In my view, I think a new Monistic/Physicalist/Cosmist philosophy, based on Transhumanism and unification with the Universe and the Multiverse, will be the Philosophy that will triumph on the Earth, as did Christianity in Rome (though this will be entirely different and more fit for our current era). We will surely see one or two Aurelian analogues, then. What such figures might first enable is finding a way to efficiently implement Nuclear Fusion Power, Space Colonization and Transhumanism. Time is getting ripe for such a figure, as the Crisis looms, as we enter nearer and nearer to it everyday. This is for a side, but unification and Goal oriented behaviour is needed when crisis strikes, anytime and anywhere.
 
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Watch this video. There clearly was a shift from unstructured Polytheism to highly structured Monotheistic or Monistic Philosophies in the Roman Empire, post the Imperial Crisis. This is only natural. You need unity and Goal oriented behaviour when you are at an adversity. You also see the Monotheistic/Monistic oriented behaviour among the Steppe peoples like the Ancient Turkic and Uralic peoples, which include Sky/Sun/Moon Gods, and types of Shamanism.

Roman, Greek and the Oriental Polytheistic religions, and even a Hinduism analogue weren't structured at all. That fact that Rome survived for centuries being this type of Pagan is because of the Roman Warm period. Unstructured Paganism cannot unify empires in that way. And even among the Ancient Greek conquests, Buddhism and different cults became popular (Anatolia and Northern South Asia, both of which were inhabited by Greeks for centuries). Difficult landscapes or situations demand such unifications and Goal oriented behaviour.

If you think that this is a relic of the past, you are mistaken. We will probably encounter this in the next decade, when we face Climate adversities and other Socio-Political issues. In my view, I think a new Monistic/Physicalist/Cosmist philosophy, based on Transhumanism and unification with the Universe and the Multiverse, will be the Philosophy that will triumph on the Earth, as did Christianity in Rome (though this will be entirely different and more fit for our current era). We will surely see one or two Aurelian analogues, then. What such figures might first enable is finding a way to efficiently implement Nuclear Fusion Power, Space Colonization and Transhumanism. Time is getting ripe for such a figure, as the Crisis looms, as we enter nearer and nearer to it everyday. This is for a side, but unification and Goal oriented behaviour is needed when crisis strikes, anytime and anywhere.


Sorry, but I am tempted to dismiss this entire reply as nonsense.
 
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