"Although when Christianity appeared the total population of the planet was only a fraction of that of the twentieth century, most of the earth's surface was quite outside the Mediterranean world, Persia, India, and China"
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Latourette’s sentence is a quiet rebuke to the comforting Christian origin story that treats the ancient Mediterranean as if it were the whole world. By opening with population math, he punctures the illusion of inevitability: Christianity was born into a planet that was not only smaller in raw numbers, but radically less “connected” in the ways modern readers assume. The subtext is methodological. Any account that narrates Christianity’s rise as a global drama from day one is smuggling in twentieth-century categories - “world history,” “global reach,” “universal religion” - and pasting them onto an era whose horizons were narrower and whose centers of power were elsewhere.
The list does tactical work. “Outside the Mediterranean world” is paired with Persia, India, and China, a reminder that sophisticated, populous civilizations with their own religious and philosophical ecosystems were already humming along. Christianity isn’t framed as the natural spiritual culmination of antiquity; it’s one contender among many, emerging on the edge of empires rather than at the axis of civilization. Latourette is also signaling scale: the early Christian message traveled through particular routes, languages, and administrative grids; its later universality depended on conversions, institutions, and geopolitics that hadn’t happened yet.
Contextually, this is a historian trained to widen the lens beyond European self-regard without swapping in cheap relativism. The point isn’t to diminish Christianity, but to discipline the narrative: beginnings are local, even when outcomes become global.
The list does tactical work. “Outside the Mediterranean world” is paired with Persia, India, and China, a reminder that sophisticated, populous civilizations with their own religious and philosophical ecosystems were already humming along. Christianity isn’t framed as the natural spiritual culmination of antiquity; it’s one contender among many, emerging on the edge of empires rather than at the axis of civilization. Latourette is also signaling scale: the early Christian message traveled through particular routes, languages, and administrative grids; its later universality depended on conversions, institutions, and geopolitics that hadn’t happened yet.
Contextually, this is a historian trained to widen the lens beyond European self-regard without swapping in cheap relativism. The point isn’t to diminish Christianity, but to discipline the narrative: beginnings are local, even when outcomes become global.
Quote Details
| Topic | Faith |
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